Getting Started with Fantasy Football

So it is the start of a new season of pro football here in the States.  Now I am a Fantasy Football fan, so lets look at what it takes to get started in Fantasy Football.  Of course, I am talking about Fantasy Football with elves and ogres not that stat compilation system that makes people watch tons of games because they have one of the players.

The Blood Bowl game of Fantasy Football by Games Workshop is a great game.  It is really a game of resource allocation and risk management.  When do I use my blitz this turn? Who can I risk injury to by marking opponent players?  It has some random elements to it since pretty much anything you do can go wrong and end your turn but mitigates that nicely through the reroll system.  GW still sells the game but the cost is high for the components included and the plastic minis are pretty lame compared to what they have put of recently in their one off games or starter boxes.  Of course those minis were first produced in plastic 20 years ago and GW has come a long way since then in terms of plastic model detail and appearance.  So if you are not going to get the box game from GW what do you need to get started?

Here is a nice list of the things you need:

Rules:  Free to Download from GW.  Once you have a couple games under your belt you can go find the NAF approved expansion teams.

Dice: You need Block dice, 6 siders, and an eight sider.  You can buy block dice but if you do not want to at first the block dice to standard 6 sider conversion is 1=Attacker Down, 2=Both Down, 3-4=Push, 5=Defender Stumbles, 6=Defender Down.

Pitch: You need a board.  Now you can buy some pretty cool boards, or make your own.  Now you do not have to be that fancy but what is important is the gird size (how big are the squares) and pattern(how many squares wide, how many squares deep, how deep is the end zones, how wide are the wide zones) .   You can see the pattern here in my pitch post for the green regulation board.  You can start out with the pattern on cardboard or even a large dry erase board which you might already have a gird pattern on for DnD or something.-

Templates:  You need a passing, scatter, and throw-in templates.  All pretty easy to make on card board or card stock. The rules has pictures of the scatter and throw in templates that are really simple. For the passing template one you need to make sure it is scaled properly based on your grid size from your board.

Team:  There are many great manufacturers of fantasy football teams.  I personally have mainly the GW teams since that is a collection and I really like the old second edition teams from the late 80's when I first started but some of the independents are now putting out really great looking teams but then generally cost about the same as the GW metal teams so there is not a cost savings.  You can also convert your own if you have any plastic fantasy miniatures around.  Here you can see my basic lizardman team where I just did weapon clips on fantasy models.  Then you can trade or buy partial spures (or sell partial spures) to get the cost of these down as you generally only need part of a GW box to make a certain type of player.  Most of the teams have about 4-5 different types of players so you will need that many different styles for your conversion work.  Or you can use the base edge painting technique to mark what position players are if you want your team to have a very team look of all in the same uniform.  General conventions are Red=Blitzer, Green=Blocker, White=Thrower/Runner, Yellow=Catcher, and Grey=Lineman.

Opponent(s): You need to find an opponent but if you work together on the pitches and making the teams it can become a little club event.  

Now Go out and crack some skulls and bring glory to Nuffle.  If you find you like it I have some random extra Blood Bowl minis in my bargain bin on sale at very reasonable prices.  Someone just came along and cleaned me out of most of my 2nd edition stuff but I still have some other bits and pieces.