BattleBall stands out on the shelf at your local toy store like nobody's business: Bubble-packed onto the top of the game's box is a set of 22 extremely high quality fully painted plastic miniatures of various futuristic grid-iron gladiators. It's too bad a little cardboard BattleBall logo covers up part of the bubble packing, because hiding beneath it is a set of color coded polyhedral dice (sans any D4's but including a brown football shaped "crystal" style D6). Maybe the marketing people at Milton Bradley thought the sight of all those different dice would scare off the average consumer? Regardless, I can't remember the last time a mainstream board game utilized a set of polyhedral dice for it's core mechanics. Fortunately it's not just a gimmick; at first I was wondering how the game used these dice to it's advantage, after playing the game I wonder how the game could ever work without them.
The game is deceptively simple. Each miniature (22 total, 11 on each team) has a base color-coded to a specific die type (the fast weaklings, for example, have red bases corresponding to the red D20's packed with the game). All you ever need to know about each player is their die type. Each turn, you decide which player you want to move and roll his corresponding die type: That's how many squares on the field he can move. On a turn one of your players can move with or without the football and tackle an opposing player. Picking up the football is a simple matter of moving onto/through it's square on the field, afterwards the little football piece rests on the figure's base. Tackling is a simple matter of moving into an adjacent square to your victim and having each figure roll their die type: LOWEST roll wins. So, while your speedy little wimp gets to roll a mighty D20 to see how many spaces he moves, he also is forced to roll that D20 against a D6 in a roll lowest contest when fat monsterman decides that fast wimpy guy's had enough field time. Whenever a player loses a tackle contest he's removed from the field for the rest of the half (the game is divided into halves, once the first touchdown is scored by someone the first half is over, second touchdown scored is the end of the game. If the 2 touchdowns were by the 2 different players, leaving the game tied 1-1, then it's overtime. Sudden death, third score wins.) If a player botches on the tackle roll (rolls a 1) he's out for the entire game.
It's an intuitive, elegant and brilliant system that sucks you into the strategy of the game. As an aside, I've never seen RPG design theory so expertly crafted into traditional board game setting. This boardgame, when you pop the hood, is implementing a perfect dice step engine that a lot of RPG enthusiasts should take note of. During play you'll think about whether your fast wimp can roll 15 or higher on a D20 to get into the end zone without being touched by a hulking D6 wielding linebacker, as opposed to the route most games of this type take- forcing you to remember what page the movement diagram for the fast wimpy guy is on, or where the "fast wimpy guy end zone charge table" is. All you need to know is the bigger the die, the faster/farther the player moves and the more likely he is to get dismembered if someone touches him.
There's a set of "advanced rules", which basically adds passing into the mix (instead of moving then tackling or doing nothing, on your turn you also now have the option to move a player then have whoever has posession of the football roll the football-shaped D6 plus the die type of the player getting passed to. Add the 2 rolls together, if the total is equal to or greater than the number of spaces between the two players then it's a complete pass. If the roll is lower, the opposing player gets to put the football on any space on the field up to the number of spaces away from the intended receiver as was the passer's failed dice roll. Therefore, the longer the distance of the pass the more risky it is since failure means the opponent has that much more control of where the ball is. Again, an elegant and intuitive system that frankly should have been thrown into the basic rules section rather than segregated off as "advanced". On the other hand, there's also some advanced rules that allow for team customization, like certain players having certain movement rules, but they feel tacked on and detract from the spirit of the game. Thankfully they're tucked away as optional rules that you'll most likely never even glance twice at. Looking across the internet I've seen an insane cult following for this game. There's leagues popping up everywhere and some people are going as far as taking the miniatures and attatching them to customized Hero Clix/Mage Knight bases to give them hit points. Take that as a testament to how lovable this game is, but nothing more. As I said, this game is meant to be fast and fun, hit points and special rules have no place here.
The field itself is enormous. It's made up of 3 folded interlocking pieces; when laid down for play it measures in at 20" by 44". At the time I gave the game a play I didn't have access to a table that big, we had to lay it out on the floor. I think that only added to the beer-and-pretzels-"I'm going to decapitate your fancy little speedster!" style of the game. Football knowledge isn't nessesary or even useful, personally I'm a casual fan of the game of football itself but I can't stand the NFL. If you despise football with a dire passion then you still enter this game with no disadvantage: You're moving around cybered-up figures with colorful names like "The Forge", trying to destroy each other and combine luck with common sense based strategy to get into the designated scoring zone. There's no playbooks, no special rules, just take your pieces and your dice and let's rumble. This isn't the kind of thing they show or talk about on ESPN, and I actually played this game for the first time with my girlfriend of all people (she HATES football and yet 10 minutes into the game was trash-talking me like a pro as she sent my beloved "Live Wire Lebowski" figure to the morgue.
The game is undeniably a fantastic value at $24.99 ($19.99 at most places last I checked, including Toys R Us). For your money you get a 20" X 44" football field board, 22 detailed prepainted plastic miniatures, 2D20, 2D12, 2D10, 2D8, 4D6 plus a really awesome football shaped and colored D6, and a cool little die cast football piece for the minis to run around with. Factor into that the sheer fun and replayability that this little game provides and I'd say it belongs on every board game player's shelf. I think this game flew under the radar for a lot of people (myself included as I only noticed it recently), and as it's price is dropping from it's original MSRP of $29.99 to $24.99 and now $19.99, it would seem most places are trying to unload it. Pick it up while you still can, I can see this being on Ebay in a few years for far more than 20 bones. Why not just ride down to the local toy store and pick this baby up now on the cheap, you'll be glad you did when you're kicking back with a few cold ones smashing bashing and trash talking the night away. Highly Reccomended.
