Hi, I'm Stewart. I am the Assistant to the Commissioner of the South Kent Area Blood Bowl (SKABB) League. I like procrastinating and this is why I have started up a blog rather than doing pressing work things that need to be done. It's ok, I work for myself and my boss is totally cool with me slacking off to do Blood Bowl nonsense.
I am starting this up because the community we are building in our local league (and hopefully expanding across Kent) is pretty awesome and I thought it would be great to share what is going on, how our league is going, tournaments we run or go to and the like. I've read a couple of other people's blogs (mainly Wotfud Boy) and it has inspired me to do the same.
Also because I love wasting time writing and then later feeling stressed that I didn't get enough work done.
If anyone else wants to contribute to this (especially to talk about events that I'm not at, or your own experiences of Blood Bowl) then you are more than welcome. Let me know and I'll try to figure out the technical side of giving you access to do so. Advance warning: this could take me several weeks to do as I'm an old man and IT is a young person's game.
We are just about to start the seventh season of the league. I joined in the first season, although the league had been running in other forms prior to this. We are looking at around 20 coaches which is an excellent number for our little town of Folkestone, especially as half of our catchment area is populated by fish.
We are always happy to welcome more coaches, and some of that 20 have been playing BloodBowl for only a few months, and a couple of them have never played a game until now (although they are both wargaming veterans).
The start of a new season is very exciting. As a coach, you have grand dreams about how this could be your year. You can see your name engraved on the excellent league trophy (provided to us by Chaos Cards, who have been great supporters of our league having recently funded some league shirts). You've not suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of a bitter rival. You've not had one of your closest friends foul your star player to death, or worse, stat busted. The future is bright!
As a commissioner (or The Assistant to The Commissioner) there is a slightly different buzz around the start of the league season. Yes, you're excited to play your team, but you are also trying to make sure everyone else who wants to sign up has managed to sign up. There is also the format of the league season to take into account.
At the end of the last season, there were a number of games forfeit and this had a slight impact on who was playing who in the playoffs (although not on who made the playoffs) and also upset a few people - partly because we perhaps didn't communicate clearly enough what was happening.
We have put a change in place for season 7 to help to combat this. We have never been a league that is tough on enforcing deadlines, and when we have it has been rather reluctantly. Rather than having set deadlines for when games should be played, we have put in when we want the coaches to have scheduled in their games by, along with the two week period in which we expect the game to be scheduled for (if possible - if not, then slightly earlier or slightly later is fine). We have also added a two week period at the end of the season to allow any unplayed games to be caught up and at that point, if they are still unplayed, they will game be forfeit as a 0-0 draw (at the Commissioner's discretion one coach may be awarded the victory to avoid anyone gaming the system).
This will hopefully encourage coaches to plan their games several rounds in advance to avoid any issues such as holidays or work schedules prevented the game getting played in a timely manner. I've no idea if it will work, but it seems to be worth a go.
I thought it would also be useful to briefly explain the logic on how we are going to split teams into different divisions. Whilst the exact number of coaches is still to be determined as we are waiting on 1 or 2 potential late entrants, the logic behind the draw has been locked in.
Of the 20 declared coaches, 7 are redrafting their teams. These are in the first pot and will be drawn out first and placed in alternating divisions. The second pot will contain any coach that has played 2 or more full seasons (not Sevens) in SKABB Leagues. Again, these will go to alternating divisions. After this, the third pot contains everyone else. This should in theory mean each division has the same mix of redrafted teams, experienced coaches and newer coaches.
Obviously those in the newer coach pool may in theory have a lot more expierence than those in the experienced coach pool if they have played elsewhere, but this seemed like an easy way to divide the leagues without having to make judgments about skill levels.
The only other rule in place in the draw is that coaches of the same race will not be drawn in the same division. SKABB promotes racial diversity, and also wants to make sure that no-one has to play more than one dwarf team per season (no-one is actually playing dwarfs, but you get the point).
One other final change we have made is to tweak the bonus points available. Last season they was 1 point available for 3+ touchdowns, 1 point for victory by 2+ touchdowns and 1 point for 3+ casualties. This favoured some teams more than others, and so now there will be 1 point for each touchdown and 1 point for each casualty each to a maximum of 3 per game.
So, I'm looking forward to the new season. I'm excited to see how my redrafted Chaos Chosen team fare this season, and keeping my fingers crossed that I avoid those bloody Lizards. I am also keen to see how the tweaks to the way we are running the league go. It's not possible to pleased everyone all of the time, but hopefully we are making a positive change to how the league is operating and will provide a better playing experience for everyone.
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