Role-Player Game Reviews

Shadowdark – Review…sort of…

I don’t usually review role-playing games here at Gamersdungeon.net, and for good reason. Reviewing an RPG after a single read-through or a session or two is like reviewing a restaurant after sniffing the menu. Sure, you could, but you’re not doing the chef, or in this case, the designer, any favors. It doesn’t help your readers either. RPGs are machines with a lot of moving parts, and you only hear the engine purr (or cough) after you’ve actually run the thing for a while.

But Shadowdark is a different beast. A strange, time-twisting beast. Because even though it’s a brand-new game, I’ve been playing it for… oh, about thirty years. Yes, thirty. Cue the Twilight Zone music.

How is that possible? Well, Shadowdark isn’t just a game, it’s the codex of house rules we old-school Basic/Expert D&D folks have been scribbling in the margins for decades. Shadowdark is, for the most part, “the best of” mixtape of all those tweaks, adjustments, and modern fixes that grognards like me have been lugging around in binders and notebooks since the Reagan administration. Reading it felt less like discovering something new and more like reading my own notes, only better formatted and with a professional layout instead of coffee stains with a few clever extras.

So yeah, I know this game. I know it like the back of my GM screen.

And yet, that doesn’t take away from what Kelsey Dionne (The Designer) has pulled off here. She’s taken the essence of classic D&D, bottled it, polished it, and somehow made it shine brighter than it ever did in the first place.

Spoiler alert: it’s a masterpiece. So instead of doing the usual review thing, I’m going to give you the tour of how Kelsey pulled off this wizardry.

Introduction to Shadowdark

If you’re an old-school D&D player, Shadowdark needs no introduction; it is a dungeon-crawling survival adventure in which players (not their characters) are challenged to take their avatars into dangerous places, explore them, and relieve them of their treasure. It’s the foundational concept of old school D&D dungeon survival gameplay, and Shadowdark doesn’t just lean into it; it makes it almost exclusively about that.

This core concept isn’t just a metaphorical thing, as it is the case in some modern fantasy RPG’s (think Forbidden Lands) that try to capture the dungeon survival genre. Like 1st edition B/X, it is a literal, mechanically supported goal built into the game. How much XP you get in this game is based on how much treasure your surviving avatars walk away with. This is key as treasure is intended to be the primary motivation behind the game…period….

This core pillar (treasure = XP) is not part of modern RPG fantasy play like 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons; rather, it has been replaced by the many shinaningans that go into character creation and session 0 planning. In modern games, “motivation”, aka, why are we here, why are we going on this adventure, how does “my character” feel about the story, events and plots, is the replacement for this rather simplistic motivation Shadowdark (and old school D&D) offers.

Shadowdark, as a concept, is a derivative of 1st edition Basic/Expert rules, even if many of its core mechanics are drawn from modern 5th edition D&D.

It’s a significant complication that comes with playing a modern take on role-playing in fantasy worlds. I’m not here to tell you what Shadowdark is better; it’s not a competition, but it is a hell of a lot simpler. So simple, in fact, it alleviates the need to have any discussion in advance at all. Like a board game, treasure = XP, is a simple, direct goal that ensures all the players and their characters understand the “why” behind the game’s primary motivation. All you have to do is create mechanical characters, and you’re ready to play. You don’t need any more information.

That, however, doesn’t mean that this old school approach doesn’t have character, story, plot, and narrative, but it puts those things outside of the scope of the work at hand.

Think of it this way. Your life, what you’re about, who you are, how you live, and what you wish to accomplish in your life aren’t necessarily linked to the 9 to 5 you put in every day. You do that for money, it’s what supports your other, more important ventures in life.

This is more or less how Shadowdark (and the old school gaming approach) sees it. You don’t go on personal quests in pursuit of some glorious ambition; being an adventure is “your work”. It’s dangerous work to be certain, but it’s where your wealth comes from, and so when you show up to work at the door of a dungeon, it’s time to buckle down and focus on the job at hand. Go in there, find the treasure, and get out. What you do with that treasure, what ambitions you will fulfill with it, well, that’s a kind of sidescape that is developed between player and DM later, perhaps even between sessions as a sort of backdrop to the game. That is, if you do it at all.

Maybe you open a tavern, maybe you start a guild, perhaps you build a Wizardry tower, or become a land owner constructing a keep and town. Perhaps you use it to destabilize the politics in the region etc.. etc.. All of it is possible, but none of it has a direct impact on what you actually do in Shadowdark as a game.

Now it’s important to recognize the difference between intent and application. As is always the case with RPG’s, you do with it as you please. You can just as easily run Shadowdark as a traditional story-driven game; there is nothing about the rules that prevents it, but as a design, what you find in the book in terms of advice and direction will push you towards the more classic old school gaming tradition. It’s a game, first and foremost, not a narrative storytelling “concept” as is the case with many RPGs that came after the 90’s.

While many will argue, the concept of storyteller and narrative first style gaming is largely credited to Vampire The Masquerade by White Wolf. Though story has always been a part of role-playing, prior to VTM, most people did not think of the game as theatre.

In the end, it is plain and simple: Shadowdark is a dungeon-crawling survival adventure game. It’s challenging and it’s fun.

Characters

Let’s talk avatars. One of the pillars of old-school dungeon crawling is simplicity, not just in the rules, but in the very idea of what your character is supposed to be. This isn’t about min-maxing or building the perfect “damage engine” with more moving parts than a Swiss watch. Shadowdark hands you a mostly-random pile of stats, a handful of hit points, and enough pocket change to buy a pointy stick and maybe a sack to carry your regrets in. Then it shoves you into the dungeon and cheerfully says, “Good luck!” It’s an idea that screams old school D&D, and it delivers it with precision and no apologies for being what it is.

The core game gives you four classes. Not forty-seven. Not a three-ring binder of subclasses. Four. The classic archetypes.

  • The Fighter. Your armored battering ram. They’ve got one job: take hits like a champ so everyone else doesn’t have to. Fighters are the heroic meat-shields we all need but never appreciate until they’re gone.
  • The Priest. Think of them as part-time warrior, full-time walking first-aid kit with divine customer service hours. They heal, they buff, they keep the rest of you standing long enough to make bad decisions.
  • The Thief. Not really meant for fighting so much as everything else. Locked doors, hidden traps, stolen wallets, the dungeon is their playground. In a dungeon, a thief is the difference between springing a deadly trap and dying horribly or walking out with bags of gold.
  • The Wizard. Wizards are the ultimate problem-solvers. The catch is they’re fragile. Like, “trip over a rock and die” fragile. But once you get past that whole being alive problem, they can bend reality, melt faces, or turn invisible just to mess with people. Basically, they’re children with nuclear launch codes.

On top of that, you pick an ancestry (what we crusty grognards used to call “race”). The usual Tolkien suspects are here: Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, Human, but Shadowdark spices it up with Goblins and Half-Orcs, which is a refreshing nod toward the “we know you want it, don’t lie” side of player choice. Each ancestry gives a small bonus, usually just enough to patch a weakness or flex a strength. These ancestries are also sufficient to act as a template for creating your own, which is generally kind of the point of games like Shadowdark. Every element in it is a blueprint for making your own stuff.

Importantly, unlike B/X, ancestry and class are separate. (Shocking, I know.) No more “Elf-as-a-class” nonsense. Also gone are the AD&D-style restrictions where, say, a Halfling couldn’t be a Wizard because… reasons. Here, it’s house-ruled freedom straight out of the box, I don’t know a person alive today who still plays with these sorts of restrictions. I’m sure they are out there; most of them hang out on the Dragonfoot forums, and I’m sure Kelsey has had to defend this decision more than once.

But that’s not all. You also get:

  • Backgrounds (modern flavor text so you can say you were a “Turnip Farmer” before all this).
  • Alignment (Lawful, Chaotic, or Neutral—nice and simple, like the good old days).
  • Talents. This is where things get spicy. Instead of cookie-cutter class abilities everyone optimizes to death, you get talents from a list, randomly stacked over time. No picking, no power-gaming. Just, “Congratulations, you rolled this weird perk, deal with it, make it work.” It’s very much in line with the “you get what you get” ethos of old-school gaming.

I’ve been running a house-ruled talent system myself for years, but I’ll admit it: Shadowdark’s version is smoother, fairer, and way more polished. Like, I brought a garage-built go-kart to the race, and Kelsey Dionne showed up with a Lamborghini. It’s the difference between someone who designs games professionally and amateurs like me.

This setup is perfect for a straight-to-it D&D game; it’s simple enough for character creation to be quick and easy, but interesting and diverse enough for each character to be unique. It’s kind of what old school B/X was trying to achieve, but I always recognized it didn’t quite nail it and ended up house ruling the crap out of it. Shadowdark effectively recognized the same thing and fixed it in an eerily familiar way, almost like Kelsey has access to my Google Drive.

Equipment and Magic

Here’s where Kelsey and I part ways a little. Shadowdark takes a very lean and mean approach to gear and spells: a short, functional list that covers the basics and nothing more. It’s clean, it’s efficient, and it absolutely works.

However, I’ve been running survival dungeon crawls long enough to know that equipment and spells are the only real currency players have. When you’re trudging through a dungeon, every ten-foot pole and flask of oil is the difference between “triumphant return” and “everyone dies in a pit trap.”

So while I respect Shadowdark’s minimalism, I can already hear my players asking: “Where’s the breastplate? What happened to Blink? Who stole my Bag of Holding?” To which the answer is: it’ll show up in supplements, or as is more often the case, I add in the stuff I think is missing. That’s how RPGs work, past and present. The core book is your foundation, and Shadowdark gives you a rock-solid one. The spice rack comes later or in the form of house rules and player-created content.

One of my favorite books of all time is the Arms and Equipment guide from 2nd edition AD&D. While largely it does not change the game in any significant way, I loved knowing stuff about all the wild medieval weapons, armor, and gear, both real and made up. This book remains a foundation for every type of fantasy campaign I ever run.

Now, magic. This is where Shadowdark got me grinning like a kid on Christmas morning. They use a mechanic I’ve been house-ruling for years: roll to cast.

See, in D&D, magic is basically an escalator that only goes up. Wizards get more spells, bigger spells, scarier spells, forever. No brakes, no consequences. Which is fun, sure, but eventually your wizard stops being “squishy scholar” and starts being “walking apocalypse with a staff.” It makes everyone else in the party feel like they are getting weaker and triggers classic conversations you will hear all the time among modern players like….for example, how to make martial classes more useful and comparatively powerful to a Wizard. This is the source of most power creep in D&D over the years; few think of ways to scale back mages rather than scale up martial classes.

Shadowdark fixes this with a brilliant twist: spell slots are gone. Instead, you roll to cast. If you succeed, great, the spell goes off, and you can cast it again later. If you fail, you don’t get to try that one again today. No tedious slot tracking, no Level 1 wizard crying in the corner because they already burned their single Magic Missile. It’s simple, it’s clever, and frankly, it makes me a little jealous. I’d been circling this idea for years, but Kelsey nailed it.

And then there’s the mishap table. Oh yes. Cast a spell, roll a natural 1, and magic slaps you upside the head for your arrogance. Fireball goes boom in your face. Illusions turn on you. Weird stuff happens. It’s delightful. Even better, clerics get their own version: instead of exploding mana, they get into an awkward theological argument with their god about “proper spell usage.” (“Really, Steve? You used divine power to impress barmaids again?!”) Chef’s kiss.

It’s elegant, it’s dangerous, and it makes magic feel like what it should be: a risky, volatile force that doesn’t always do what you want. And I love it.

Gameplay

When it comes to gameplay, Shadowdark isn’t here to reinvent the d20 wheel. If you’ve ever played Dungeons & Dragons, any edition, you’ll sit down at the table and immediately know what’s what. Roll a die, fight some monsters, loot the shiny stuff. It’s comfort food gaming, but with a few extra spices thrown in.

That said, Shadowdark doesn’t just photocopy D&D and call it a day. It sprinkles in house rules most old-school tables already use, and polishes them until they shine.

Take Advantage and Disadvantage from 5E. Elegant, simple, and a godsend compared to the days of juggling a dozen fiddly +2/-1 situational modifiers. I’ve been running with this mechanic since the moment Wizards of the Coast unleashed it, and Shadowdark agrees: it belongs everywhere.

The first article I ever wrote for this blog (From Mediocrity To Perfection: The Trials of D&D 2014) was an article about the 5th edition, namely the advantage and disadvantage mechanic. I still hold that it is the best mechanical contribution to the game of D&D that came out of the modern version. I use it for everything.

Then you’ve got critical hits and failures. Another fan favorite. Roll a natural 20 and something awesome happens. Roll a natural 1 and the universe laughs at you. Shadowdark makes sure both ends of the dice curve matter.

Need a quick ruling when you’re stuck? The 50/50 resolution rule has your back. Flip a mental coin (d2) whenever you can’t decide whether that dropped torch actually ignites the spilled oil or whether the surly innkeeper decides to punch the bard in the face. Simple, fun, done.

There are also Luck Tokens. Basically re-roll currency. Call them inspiration, hero points, light side/dark side chits, every system has its version. In Shadowdark, they work smoothly and give players a nice little “get out of jail free” moment when the dice go sour.

And when it comes to skills? Forget them. Gone. Instead, Shadowdark keeps things light with straight ability checks. Want to recall a trail, spot a goblin, or notice the barbarian is trying to cheat at dice? Roll your ability score and move on. It cuts down on bloat and keeps the game moving. Honestly, I’ve never been a fan of chunky skill systems either; they just overcomplicate what is, statistically, already a chaotic d20 toss. Kelsey clearly feels the same.

Initiative is simplified too, rolled once at the start of the session, not every combat. Nice and efficient, though personally I prefer Daggerheart’s “players choose” approach. Either way, Shadowdark doesn’t let bookkeeping drag the fun down.

Everything else, light sources, movement, hiding, surprise, resting, works exactly as you’d expect. Solid, reliable D&D bones. But the real fun is in Shadowdark’s quirks, the bits where it struts out on its own.

Carousing

Not new, but always a delight. Shadowdark bakes in carousing, spending your gold on wine, women, song, and general debauchery, in exchange for XP. It’s perfect for those characters (players) who don’t have lofty ambitions like “found a kingdom” or “uncover ancient truths.” Nope. They just want to party like rockstars, and Shadowdark says, “Sure, here’s some XP for your troubles.” A beautiful money sink and a role-playing excuse rolled into one.

The Real-Time Torch

And now, the poster child of Shadowdark: the real-time candle. Light an actual candle at the table, and when it burns out, so does your character’s torch. It’s atmospheric, I’ll give it that. You will get tension as you watch the flame sputter lower. But honestly, it’s more of a gimmick than a core mechanic. My players are usually prepared enough that the candle rarely does more than stress out the snack table.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of time pressure mechanics. I just think the execution works better in other systems, like Daggerheart’s use of timers and fear/hope points to tilt the spotlight between players and GM. That feels more interactive. The candle is a cool set dressing. But set dressing, all the same.

The DM Guide

So far, I’ve only skimmed the surface, roughly the first hundred pages of Shadowdark’s 300+ page tome. The rest of the book is the DM’s playground. Advice, tables, monsters, treasure, it’s essentially a lovingly crafted toolbox for running the kind of dangerous, seat-of-your-pants adventures old-school D&D is famous for.

I firmly believe that the best Dungeon Masters Guide ever written was done by Gary Gygax for 1st edition AD&D, but it’s not an easy read, it’s not convenient and it’s a horrific editing job compared to modern standards.

Now, I could spend three separate articles dissecting this section alone (believe me, I have opinions), but let’s keep it simple: if you’re new to being a Dungeon Master, you could not ask for a better teacher than Kelsey Dionne. Her guidance is sharp, practical, and rooted in that “fun first, but scary second” vibe that makes a great game.

Two parts stood out to me in particular:

Monsters That Want You Dead

Shadowdark monsters don’t exist to pad your XP bar. They exist to kill you. Brutally. Gleefully. They’re designed to remind players that being an adventurer isn’t glamorous; it’s like taking out life insurance in a world where goblins are the actuaries.

This isn’t a game where you kick down doors and expect a “balanced encounter” to be waiting. Shadowdark firmly plants its flag in the old-school camp: if you fight fair, you die. The odds are stacked against you. Survival depends on planning, creativity, and maybe just a smidge of cowardice. Frankly, I adore it.

Treasure Like a Slot Machine

Then there’s the way Shadowdark handles magic items, which is pure genius. Instead of handing out the usual +1 sword you’ve seen a thousand times, items are generated in a Diablo-style mix-and-match fashion. Random rolls create unique gear combinations, so you never know if that sword you just looted is going to be “pretty good” or “campaign-definingly insane.”

This approach does two things: it keeps DMs from drowning in prep, and it keeps players leaning forward at the table like gamblers feeding coins into a slot machine. Every treasure haul is a gamble. Sometimes you win big, sometimes you don’t, but either way, you’ll dive back into the dungeon for another pull on that loot chart.

The most addictive part of Diablo was (is) the dynamic loot system. It drives you to delve deeper and play longer, and coming back to town to identify everything to see what you got was pure joy. Having that as a core element to a table top RPG is brilliant.

And honestly, that’s perfect for a game like this. Because if monsters are going to chew you up, you should at least have the hope of finding a shiny toy worth dying for.

Conclusion

There’s a lot more I could say about Shadowdark, but here’s the thing: RPGs aren’t meant to be absorbed purely through reviews. They’re meant to be cracked open, rolled with, and tested in the wild. You’ve got to actually sit at the table, sling some dice, and see if it sings for you.

That said, let me be crystal clear: Shadowdark is one of those rare books that belongs on your shelf even if you never plan to run a grand, sweeping campaign with it. It’s the perfect “anytime RPG.”

Here’s a scenario I know you’ve lived: you’re hanging out with friends or family, and someone says, “Wouldn’t it be cool to play D&D?” Everyone nods enthusiastically… and then reality sets in. Fifth Edition? Character creation alone is a three-hour marathon of spreadsheets and spell lists. The evening’s already gone before you’ve even rolled initiative.

Shadowdark laughs at that problem. With this book, you can go from “should we play D&D?” to “roll for initiative” in about twenty minutes. It’s quick, it’s deadly, and it captures the heart of old-school dungeon crawling without burying you in prep.

And that’s the magic of it: Shadowdark isn’t just for grognards or OSR diehards. It’s for everyone. New players. Casual tables. Busy adults who miss the game but don’t have the time for a full-blown campaign commitment.

So yeah, spoiler alert confirmed. It’s a masterpiece. And more importantly, it’s an RPG you can get to the table very easily. It respects your time and doesn’t assume you have hours to spend on prepping your entertainment. It’s the RPG equivalent of saying “let’s go to the movies… right now”

I love this game; it nails the intended design goal with perfection.

Collectable Card Game

Star Wars Destiny vs. Star Wars Unlimited – The Battle of Star Wars CCG’s

I get a lot of questions from readers. Some are wild, some are insightful, and some are just thinly veiled excuses to argue about dice rolls. But none show up in my inbox more often than this one:

“Which is better, Star Wars: Destiny or Star Wars: Unlimited?”

Honestly, it’s such a common question that I feel like Obi-Wan being asked for the millionth time if the Force can help you win at sabacc. So fine. Today, we settle this. Lightsabers down, cards up, let’s talk Destiny vs. Unlimited.

Now, if we’re going strictly by canon, this fight is already over. Destiny was discontinued back in January 2020 with its swan song set, Covert Missions. Unlimited, on the other hand, is still very much alive, kicking, and racking up wins like a young Luke Skywalker.

I was sad to see Destiny get discontinued, but I was not terribly surprised by it. The game had a lot of business issues related to supply, and it was way too expensive.

But here’s the thing: every CCG veteran knows that just because something is “out of print” doesn’t mean it’s “out of the fight.” If history has taught us anything (besides never betting against Han in a tight spot), it’s that the old guard sometimes outshines the flashy new kid on the block.

Case in point: Legend of the Five Rings. The AEG original ran for a glorious twenty years, shaping stories, tournaments, and countless arguments about clan honor. The Fantasy Flight reboot barely limped to four years before being retired. By any metric, the classic run was the true Shogun of Rokugan.

Legend of the Five Rings was a complex and deep CCG with a dedicated following, an awesome community, and a very long history. I loved this game; one of my biggest regrets in life was selling off my collection many moons ago. What a fool I am!

But I digress. We’re not here to talk samurai, we’re here for blasters and dice. So let’s buckle in and jump to lightspeed: it’s Destiny vs. Unlimited, once and for all.

What Makes A CCG “good”

Before we can really pit these two games against each other, let’s get our bearings and talk about what actually makes a good CCG. I mean, sure, flashy art and cool tokens are nice, but if that’s all it took, every holochess set on the Millennium Falcon would be tournament-ready. In my book, there are three pillars that matter most.

First: the mechanics have to be balanced. No single meta should be the Death Star of the game, capable of blowing up entire tournaments just by existing. Winning and losing needs to happen on the battlefield (or playmat), not in the deckbuilding phase where whoever owns the shiniest, rarest card automatically wins.

Second: theme matters, a lot. Especially when we’re talking about a galaxy far, far away. If Jar Jar Binks somehow outmuscles Darth Vader in combat, then we’ve veered straight into “special edition” nonsense. A good CCG should feel like the universe it’s set in, so that both fans and players are immersed in the same story.

Third, and maybe most important: publisher support. Sets need to release on a steady cadence, playtesting has to be tighter than a stormtrooper’s helmet, and the collectible element has to actually feel… collectible. Publishers can’t be afraid to step in with bans, errata, or even mid-course corrections when something breaks the game. And when they do mess up (because they will mess up), they’ve got to fix it faster than the Millennium Falcon making the Kessel Run.

Now, sure, there are other things that make a great CCG, but without these three, the whole enterprise collapses. Get these wrong, and no amount of flashy marketing or movie tie-ins will save you.

Alright, let’s talk Destiny for a minute.

Back in April 2018, I wrote a review for Star Wars Destiny where I boldly proclaimed:

“The robust nature of CCGs combined with FFG’s commitment to the product means this game likely has a long and bright future ahead of it.”

Yeah… about that. Let’s just say that prediction aged about as well as Anakin’s relationship with sand.

The truth is, Destiny never really hit hyperspace on any of the three pillars that make a CCG thrive.

Balance – The game looked balanced at first, but cracks started showing up after the first set. These balance issues piled up, whole metas dominated by a handful of characters or combos by the 3rd set. By the end, they would have had to ban entire card types to straighten out the game. It was quite broken in the end.

Theme – They nailed the Star Wars feel, no argument there. Rolling those chunky dice and throwing Darth Vader into the fray felt amazing. But mechanically, a lot of cards just did variations of the same thing, and after the initial hype, the design space started to feel cramped. It was like being promised a galaxy of possibilities and then realizing most of the planets were just Tatooine with a different filter. By the 3rd set, you had dozens of cards that all did things so similar they were practically the same card, and the costs of cards could vary drastically, and rarely did any of it make thematic sense.

Publisher support – FFG wanted to back Destiny; you could sense that they thought they had a big winner on their hands, but the Force wasn’t with them on logistics. Supply shortages, constant delays, and radio silence for excessively long periods meant the community spent more hours speculating on forums than actually playing. By the time new sets arrived, the hype had often fizzled.

Here’s the thing: when Awakenings dropped, Destiny felt incredible. It had that fresh, lightsaber-sharp energy, and it was easy to see why so many of us believed it had a long future. But by the second and third sets, the cracks had become death-star-sized.

The final set of Destiny illustrates one of the key problems of the game: an inflexible design space. They ran out of ideas way too soon, and the games different sets became quite indistinguishable from each other. For the most part, they started to feel very repetitive.

And just to twist the vibroblade a little deeper, Destiny was stupidly expensive. Even by CCG standards, it was pretty ridiculous with a tough entry point for new players. If you wanted to be competitive, your wallet felt it. Big time.

Don’t get me wrong: I still love Destiny despite it all. I’ll happily crack it out for a casual game, and it’ll always have a special spot in my collection. It really is a one of a kind, a true diamond with rough edges.

As a long-term product, I don’t think there was much hope. This game pulled a Boba Fett, awesome in its debut, but swallowed by the Sarlacc pit way too soon.

Star Wars Unlimited

Star Wars: Unlimited landed in March 2024 with all the pomp and circumstance of a new Imperial Star Destroyer sliding out of drydock. The hype was real, the launch was smooth, and yes, it came from the same publisher that once gave us Destiny. Déjà vu, anyone?

But here’s the difference: Unlimited actually nailed the three pillars of CCG success. No gimmicky dice, no fiddly side mechanics, just a straight-up, classic collectible card game. FFG followed a tried-and-true model like they had a copy of The Jedi Path propped open on the table.

The result is a well-balanced, well-supported game that wears the Star Wars theme like a perfectly tailored robe. Every detail feels polished, every release has hit its mark, and the game hums along with the confidence of a Jedi Master. By all practical measures, Unlimited is CCG perfection.

Star Wars Unlimited knows its audience. If you are going to launch a starter set for a Star Wars Game, your opening play is a duel between the two most famous characters in the setting. This was a fantastic starter set, even if you don’t plan to collect Unlimited, its worth getting. It’s that good!

And yet… here’s where the holocron cracks. For all its precision, Unlimited doesn’t really have that wild spark of uniqueness that sets it apart in any way. There are no dice rolling across the table, no risky design choices, no “wow” factor that makes you stop and say, THIS is what makes this game special. Instead, it feels like Magic: The Gathering, just dressed in Star Wars robes.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fantastic design. I enjoy it, I collect it, and I’ll happily sit down for a game when the opportunity arises. But I don’t wake up at night plotting new deck builds like I did with Destiny or find myself agonizing over deck-building problems like in Lord of the Rings LCG. Unlimited is a reliable, polished, and thoroughly fun game, but it doesn’t break the mold in any way; in fact, it’s using the most traditional CCG mold there is.

Destinity vs. Unlimited

Alright, the cards are on the table, the dice have been rolled, and the time has come to declare a winner.

And the winner is… Star Wars: Destiny!

Now, hear me out. The logic is simple: if I’m reaching for a game right now, between these two, Destiny is the one I grab.

It’s flawed, no one’s denying that. But it’s also unique, risky, and downright fun. Destiny brought something to the table that no other CCG did: dice. Rolling those chunky, shiny dice, seeing what the Force decides… it’s unpredictable, it’s exciting, and it’s exactly the kind of chaos a Star Wars game should embrace.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Unlimited. It’s polished, dependable, and a joy to play. This isn’t a duel to the death between two CCGs, I’ve got at least a dozen on my shelf, and there’s room in this galaxy for all of them.

When I reach for a CCG, I want something special. Something that separates it from the cookie-cutter card games that populate the universe. Destiny has that spark, Unlimited I don’t thing does. There have been plenty of games like Unlimited, but there’s never been anything like Star Wars Destiny before, and there hasn’t been anything like it since. One of a kind. Risky. A little chaotic. That’s why, in my book, Destiny still rules the galaxy.

Gaming Articles, On The Table, Role-Player Game Reviews

In Theory: Critical Role, Daggerheart vs.Dungeons and Dragons

The biggest headline in the world of nerdy tabletop gaming just dropped like a fireball: Critical Role, the internet’s most famous troupe of voice actors turned dice-slinging legends, has made their choice, and it’s a big one!

For the upcoming Season 4, Critical Role won’t be rolling with their own shiny new system, Daggerheart, a game that exploded in popularity the moment it hit the scene. Instead, they’re doubling down on the freshly released 2024 edition of Dungeons & Dragons (what many of us are calling “5.5e”).

While Critical Role is famous for its D&D campaigns on YouTube, they have done a hell of a lot more than that as a business. The Legend of Vox Machina, for example, is reminiscent of the classic D&D cartoon from the 80’s (albeit obviously a hell of a lot better) is just one among a slew of entertainment offerings that have spawned from their success.

So what does this seismic decision mean for the RPG community? Should we be surprised, or was this move written in the stars like a prophecy from a high-level divination spell? That’s what we’re unpacking today, from the perspective of someone who’s both a die-hard Daggerheart player and a lifelong D&D fan.

The Short And Sweet Of It

First, a little disclosure: while I have a ton of love for Critical Role and all the incredible things they’ve done for the tabletop RPG community, I’m not what you’d call a dedicated viewer. Honestly, watching other people play D&D just isn’t my jam. I understand the appeal, and I respect it, but personally? I’d rather be rolling the dice myself.

That being said, there’s no denying that what Critical Role chooses to put on their table carries massive weight for the entire hobby. When Matt Mercer and crew pick a system for their main campaign, it doesn’t just shape their story, it shapes our tables, too. Critical Role is one of the biggest gateways into role-playing games. Quite simply, the game they play often becomes the game everyone else wants to play.

For their first three epic campaigns, that game was Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, and while D&D was already sitting on the throne as the most popular RPG in the world, Critical Role cemented it there with adamantine chains. Their endorsement wasn’t just influential; it was defining.

So when Daggerheart, Critical Role’s very own homegrown RPG, burst onto the scene with massive fanfare, there was an inevitable question hanging in the air: would they abandon the dragon-shaped juggernaut of D&D and ride their shiny new creation into the next campaign?

Personally, I wasn’t all that shocked when the answer turned out to be no. D&D was always the obvious choice, and for one clear reason: it’s the most universal, recognizable system in the hobby. Add to that a perfect storm, the unprecedented success of Baldur’s Gate 3 (arguably the best PC game ever made), Stranger Things barreling toward its final season (and bringing D&D references back into the spotlight), and Wizards of the Coast launching the new 2024 ruleset (the cleanest, most polished version of the game to date). All roads pointed back to D&D. Why fight gravity?

Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition is successful in ways that one could never have imagined back in the 80’s when we were playing in cellars and lying about it at school. It’s gone mainstream, we can where T-shirts with the D&D logo and get nods of approval walking down the street. It’s awesome!

That said, I can’t overstate how much I adore Daggerheart. I’ve been playing in a campaign with my local crew since its release, and it’s quickly become one of my favorite RPG experiences of all time. Its narrative-first design, elegant mechanics, and streamlined resolutions make storytelling feel effortless. Every session feels like a spark of creativity, and the game has inspired me to role-play and write in ways I haven’t in years. Simply put: I’m in love with it.

But D&D holds a different kind of magic. It’s the comfort food of RPGs, the game that’s just fun at the table. I always keep a couple of 5e campaigns running on the side, usually dungeon-crawling, monster-slaying, treasure-hunting romps. They’re especially perfect for younger players or folks newer to the hobby, where the focus is more on rolling dice and less on heavy narrative.

For me, D&D and Daggerheart aren’t competitors; they’re tools in the same creative toolbox. Sometimes you need the universal accessibility and classic adventuring vibe of D&D. Other times, you want the narrative spark and fresh mechanics of Daggerheart. The beauty is in knowing which tool fits the story you want to tell.

What Does The Future Look Like?

There’s always a debate simmering around Wizards of the Coast and their crown jewel, Dungeons & Dragons. And honestly, I sometimes ask myself, why?

At the end of the day, D&D is a beloved game. With anything that popular, there will always be an “anti-crowd” ready to pick it apart. That’s just the price of being the industry leader.

Now, to be fair, I’ve had my own frustrations with D&D, but never with the game itself. My gripes have always been with the company behind it. Case in point: during the infamous OGL scandal (if you don’t know about it, give it a quick Google), I actually banned 5th edition content from my blog as a show of solidarity with fellow creators and players. That was a messy chapter, but it blew over quickly, and in the end, the actions of Wizards of the Coast don’t define what the game itself is.

Because the truth is, D&D is still everything it’s always been: a monster-slaying, dungeon-crawling, dice-chucking blast. Sure, I could argue all day about which edition I personally prefer (and I do on this blog all the time), but for modern enthusiasts, especially those who don’t carry the decades of history that older grognards like me do, the smart move is simply to play the latest edition. That means 5th edition, and with the 2024 update, it’s clear this version is here to stay.

It’s unlikely to ever reach the popularity of D&D, but there is no question in my mind as a 40-year veteran in the hobby that Daggerheart is one of the best RPG’s to be released since Dungeons and Dragons, second only to perhaps Vampire The Masquerade.

So what does the future hold for tabletop RPGs? Honestly… more of the same. D&D will continue to reign as the most popular, most widely used system on the planet. Wizards will keep releasing books, people will keep buying them (myself included), and creators like me will keep making content for them. The cycle isn’t changing anytime soon.

And Critical Role knows this. No matter how much success Daggerheart has (and yes, I absolutely love the system), it’s not a universal game. It’s niche. It caters beautifully to a specific type of table and a specific style of play, but it’s not the catch-all, mass-market juggernaut that D&D is. If Critical Role had shifted to Daggerheart for Season 4, they’d risk cutting their audience in half. There was no upside to that gamble.

So in the end, their decision simply cements what many of us already knew: in tabletop RPGs, it’s business as usual. And honestly? I’m more than okay with that.

Best of List, Gaming Articles, On The Table

In Theory: Is Star Wars Shatterpoint A Good Miniature Game?

Shatterpoint, in my experience, is one of those games I orbit like a curious satellite, drawn in by proximity to someone who collects it, intrigued enough to play from time to time, but still waiting for that Force-tinged spark to pull me fully into the gravity well. I’ve danced around the edge of commitment more times than I can count. I’ve even had Shatterpoint boxes in my cart at Alphaspel.se, but each time, I’ve backed out at the final checkout like Admiral Akbar sensing a trap.

Don’t get me wrong: the miniatures are phenomenal, arguably the finest Star Wars sculpts on the market. The scale is just right, and it hits that sweet spot of the galaxy far, far away: up-close and personal lightsaber clashes, blaster duels, and cinematic showdowns between iconic characters. It’s Star Wars at its most visceral. And Shatterpoint nails that vibe.

And yet… I hesitate.

This isn’t the only game that puts me in this strange force dyad of admiration and ambivalence. Take Marvel: Crisis Protocol, I love the Marvel universe, truly, and Crisis Protocol delivers some of the most stunning superhero miniatures I’ve ever seen, wrapped in a concept that practically screams “perfect game night.” Super squads brawling across a cityscape? That’s pure comic book gold. And still, I find myself asking the same uncomfortable question.

I love all things Marvel, I feel literal pain that I don’t own these miniatures, but for me, a miniature game has to be more than just nice miniatures. Collection and gameplay have to be inseparable partners that live side by side as equals.

Are these actually good games?

In today’s In Theory article, we’re zeroing in on Star Wars: Shatterpoint. I want to break down why I think it might be a great game… and also why I suspect it might not be. Let’s get into it!

Star Wars: Shatterpoint as a premise

When Star Wars: Shatterpoint was first announced, it landed at a time when the Star Wars tabletop scene was, let’s be honest, already more crowded than the Mos Eisley cantina on a Saturday night. I’d spent years navigating asteroid fields with X-Wing, commanding fleets in Armada, and my Legion core box was still sitting half-painted like a forgotten protocol droid in a junkyard. And don’t even get me started on Star Wars: Destiny, that game was my cardboard crack, I was blowing money on it like I won the lottery. It was just… a lot. Too much Star Wars plastic, too many dice, too many rules bouncing around my head.

So when Shatterpoint came along, I made a decision, a prequel-style “this is how democracy dies” kind of decision, to skip it. Not because I thought it looked bad, but because I had officially hit Star Wars saturation. My shelves were already groaning under the weight of the galaxy far, far away. Even my wife, god love her, whose tolerance for my bullshit is significantly higher than I imagine most wives, gave me the stank eye as I was scrolling Star Wars Shatterpoint mini’s on my iPad.

Star Wars Shatterpoint is absolutely gorgeous; there is absolutely nothing in the market today that can compete, in my opinion. From a visual aesthetic perspective, it’s worth collecting these miniatures just for collecting’s sake.

My decision did not discourage my local gaming crew; several of my friends dove in headfirst, and that gave me plenty of chances to test the game out. And not at all that surprising, my first impression of the game was that it was quite brilliant.

Not perfect, but brilliant.

The core concept of Shatterpoint is rock solid. It leans into what makes Star Wars great: iconic characters in dynamic, cinematic combat. Each unit is asymmetrically powered, meaning Obi-Wan doesn’t feel like Maul, and Maul sure as hell doesn’t feel like Ahsoka. The gameplay itself is objective-driven, fast-paced, and surprisingly smooth, no mid-battle rulebook diving, just action.

Even early on, it felt like there was a ton of room for variety and growth baked into the system, a wide-open hyperspace lane for future expansions, modes, and narrative twists. As a premise, Shatterpoint struck me as one of the most clever designs to come out of the Star Wars gaming space in years.

Even as the game’s initial impression had me grinning from ear to ear, reconsidering my decision to pass on it, I could not shake the feeling that something was both familiar and ever so slightly off.

A Lack of Drama

To understand my hesitation, you have to know a bit about my gaming history, and one of my more cockamamie theories about why I love miniature games in the first place. This is important because if you’re interested in Shatterpoint (or any miniature game), you should know what kind of gamer you are. It’s not always just about reviews and opinions; style and preference should always be considered first and foremost when considering a game for your collection.

So, Marvel: Crisis Protocol came out a few years before Shatterpoint, and the two games share more than a few mechanical similarities. In fact, you could argue they’re essentially the same game wearing different thematic costumes. I wouldn’t entirely sign off on that claim; they do have key differences that give each its own identity, but they clearly spring from the same design philosophy: objective-based gameplay first, theme and setting a distant second.

Star Wars X-Wing didn’t really have objectives, and when they were added later, they didn’t really matter that much, but that was ok because X-Wing just tapped into the Star Wars universe feel with perfection. Feel is a real thing, and when you play enough games, you just know it when it’s there, it sometimes really is just that simple with games.

And that, right there, is where my main issue lies.

To explain that issue properly, I need to be clear about what I value most in a miniatures game. For me, theme, setting, and feel come first, not balance, not clean mechanics, not elegant game loops. I see miniature games as an extension of roleplaying; they should feel like small, tactical stories unfolding on the tabletop. If a game can reflect and bring to life its setting through its mechanics, not just its art and models, that’s when I really connect with it.

I’m not sure that makes perfect sense, but basically: I’d rather a game be thematically authentic than mechanically perfect. I want it to feel like the world it’s portraying, even if that means it’s a little clunky or chaotic. The game should simulate the soul of its universe.

That’s probably why I love games like The Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game, Warhammer 40,000, Blood Bowl, BattleTech, and Star Wars: X-Wing. These games may not be celebrated for their balance or cutting-edge design, but they ooze theme. They play like the worlds they represent. On the other hand, critically acclaimed games like Infinity, Malifaux, or Moonstone, as clever and well-designed as they are, just don’t light that same fire in me. Some I’ve tried. Others I haven’t, because I already know they don’t scratch the same itch.

Take BattleTech, for example. I know it’s not a brilliant design. It’s slow, it’s random, and sometimes it falls apart under its own weight. But it gives me exactly what I want: a messy, explosive mech brawl where missiles fly, limbs get blown off, and heat sinks explode. It’s unpredictable and thematic, and determining a winner is not nearly as important as creating a great memory of that time when X or Y happened. It lives and breathes its world unapologetically, catering to fans of the genre and the story behind the game.

Battletech is an odd mixture so far as games go because the details on a battlemech’s character sheet go further than most RPGs, the rules are thick with unique weaponry and tactics, and the game itself can be excessively long. Yet from a core mechanic perspective, it’s basically a Yatzee dice chucker. You have very limited control over the outcomes of a game, a single missile can ignite an ammo store on your mech and blow you up and it’s game over.

Now enter Shatterpoint, and here’s where my core issue kicks in.

Shatterpoint plays more like a game of chess. Yes, the characters have distinct powers and abilities connected to the Star Wars Universe, but at the end of the day, their job is the same: stand on an objective, push enemies off, and score struggle points to win. It’s a positioning puzzle, a tactical game of movement. Victory isn’t about winning an awesome duel between Vader and Skywalker or taking out the enemy Bounty Hunter or some story arc in the Star Wars universe; it’s about board control, and it’s exclusively and only about that.

The one thing Shatterpoint does well that brings it closer to its theme and makes up for some of the other failures to bring Star Wars to life is the characters. Every character’s powers are distinctly unique and very in tune with their on-screen personas. I think Shatterpoint nailed it in this department.

And that creates a disconnect. It’s supposed to be a game about epic, cinematic duels between legendary characters (that’s on the tin!), but that sense of drama just isn’t there and is often even discouraged. Instead, you get a sterile, tactical experience where the theme takes a back seat.

You may be tempted, for example, to have Obi-Wan descend upon Darth Maul to let them have an epic duel out in the open field because it’s awesome, but everything about that from a gameplay perspective is a mistake. You fight only when it serves the objective, you certainly don’t leave an objective for someone else to grab and it’s far better to send someone less powerful to face Darth Maul to keep him busy, rather than simply fight him for awesome fighting’s sake. That sort of decision-making is not only common but almost mandatory for success. The game doesn’t encourage or reward doing the cool stuff or taking risks; it encourages smart tactical play that serves the purpose of scoring objective points so you can win the struggle.

That might be fine if the struggle had some meaning or story behind it, but unfortunately, that is not the case.

The struggle is a sort of nameless, faceless, inanimate “thing” left undefined beyond the mechanical purpose it serves in the game to determine a winner. You’re not trying to disable the Death Star’s power or blow up the shield generator; you’re trying to score X points before the opponent does. That’s the whole game, every mission is the same, all that changes is some minor thing like which objectives you can score on this round or some quirky special power you might get when drawing a shatter card.

The Struggle Tracker, don’t get me wrong, is a very clever mechanic that builds tension and makes your goals in the game very clear, but it just doesn’t really represent or depict anything. It’s just this abstract thing that’s there to remind you if you’re winning or losing.

Don’t get me wrong, the mechanics are sharp. The game is well-designed. It’s an interesting, engaging system. But the Star Wars theme doesn’t matter to the gameplay itself, nor do the circumstances of the battle have any meaning, being indistinct “brawls” for positional control. Even the objective carries no thematic weight; being nothing more than a “spot” on the field, you need to be within 2 inches to control. It’s all very pragmatic, absent of any meaning, story, or connection to the Star Wars universe. A terrible missed opportunity!

I bring up Marvel: Crisis Protocol in the same conversation because it suffers from the exact same issue. For all the cool miniatures and superhero flair, the gameplay doesn’t reflect the universe it’s based on in any meaningful way. It’s not a battle between Dr. Strange and a multiverse demon to control the book of Vishanti; it’s a contest of who can hold objective A or B long enough to score enough points before the round ends. It’s just absent of the flavor that makes the Marvel Universe, its history, and setting special and fun.

Marvel Crisis Protocol, in a way, is a worse offender in the absence of theme, setting, and story connection as a game. There is literally an unlimited amount of story material on which to build events, missions, and stories for the game. For them to settle on abstract objectives, completely disconnecting the game from this potential, is, I would argue, inexcusable.

Both games, I don’t want to say, feel soulless, but lack a certain commitment to simulating and supporting the theme and the cinematic spectacle you hope to discover when you play them. That’s a harsh critique, I know, but it’s the one thing that keeps me from diving into either of them; no matter how good the sculpts look or how tight the mechanics are, these games more or less boils down to a game of positioning. There is no story, induction of Star Wars or Marvel events, or a meaningful way in which the setting’s epicness comes to the surface.

Is it a fun game? Is it a good game?

Those are relative questions, and when it comes to Star Wars: Shatterpoint, the answer depends entirely on what you think makes a miniature game fun or good in the first place. There’s no objective measure here. It’s all a matter of personal taste, and that’s the exact crossroads where I find myself.

From my perspective, Shatterpoint is a well-designed game. It’s streamlined, it runs cleanly, and there’s very little rules ambiguity. The tactical puzzle is real and rewarding, especially if that’s the kind of game you enjoy. And if you’re the type who thrives on smart plays, tight decisions, and clever planning, then yes, it’s fun. In that regard, it delivers.

And I do enjoy it, at least to a degree. There’s something undeniably satisfying about seeing iconic Star Wars characters brought to life on the tabletop. I’m not completely opposed to brainy, tactical games either. Shatterpoint challenges you to think ahead, adapt, and outmaneuver. It’s a solid mental workout.

But for me, the experience falls short in one crucial area: the connection between game and setting.

Yes, the game has objectives, but they are abstract, disconnected from the world they’re supposed to represent. I love a good mission-driven game, but only if those missions feel rooted in the narrative. If Shatterpoint had objectives that tied into iconic Star Wars moments or scenarios, or even just leaned harder into the drama of its duels, I think it would go from an “interesting game” to a great experience.

Instead, it stops just short. It teases greatness, but doesn’t quite land it. It’s missing something vital, and tragically, that something happens to be the only thing that truly matters to me. The one and pretty much only thing I care about when I play a miniature game.

A good story.

And so ends the anxiety over whether or not I will buy into Shatterpoint.

It’s just not meant to be.

Gaming Articles, On The Table

In Theory: Blood Bowl

Over the past year, I’ve scribbled my fair share of articles about the world of miniature gaming, dissecting battlelines, praising plastic warriors, and waxing poetic about the clash of dice and destiny. Most of these musings were met with nods of agreement and the occasional slow clap. But one article in particular, Miniature Game Theory: Picking The Right Game For You, drew a bit of well-deserved ire and blood.

You see, amidst my ramblings on tactical titans and strategic skirmishes, I made one glaring, unforgivable, pitch-cleat-to-the-face omission.

I forgot Blood Bowl.

Now, before the angry mobs of orc coaches and elf cheerleaders throw me into the dugout pit, let me offer a half-decent defense.

To me, miniature gaming has always meant clashing armies, measured movement, and the kind of tactical geometry that gives you flashbacks to high school math class. Blood Bowl, on the other hand, always felt like something… different. It straddles the line between board game and miniatures skirmish, with equal parts playbook planning and pure, glorious chaos. And let’s not forget, it’s a sports game. A violent, foul-heavy, ref-bribing sports game, but a sports game nonetheless.

Still, none of that excuses the omission. The critics were right. Blood Bowl deserves a seat at the table, preferably next to the Apothecary and the guy with the chainsaw. And that’s what we’re going to fix today.

So strap on your spiked shoulder pads, roll for kickoff, and prepare to finally give the neckbeards favorite pastime the column inches it deserves.

What Is Blood Bowl

Blood Bowl, for the uninitiated (or recently resurrected), is best described as a tactical miniatures game that takes the bones of American Football and Rugby, grinds them up, and feeds them to a Chaos Ogre. Then it tosses in a generous helping of gladiatorial carnage and calls it a sport. It’s a game where bribery is encouraged, fouls are strategic, and fatalities are not only possible, they’re frequent. And frankly, it’s glorious.

Blood Bowl is not your typical miniature game, in fact, there is nothing out there quite like it so when I describe it to people I don’t have that “its like X game” option.

But beneath the splattered turf and broken helmets lies something more: a legacy game in disguise. That’s right, while Blood Bowl thrives on short-term brutality, it’s also built for long-term storytelling. Using a term borrowed from the board game world, Blood Bowl has legacy elements baked in from the very start. The core design encourages players to form leagues where teams grow, change, and suffer (often hilariously) over time. A broken arm in Game 1 becomes a permanent stat penalty in Game 2. That rookie Goblin who miraculously scored a touchdown? He might become a local legend, until a Minotaur eats him.

Each coach manages a team roster, complete with gold to spend and experience to earn. You can hire new players, upgrade existing ones, or blow your hard-earned winnings on apothecaries, cheerleaders, assistant coaches, rerolls, and, let’s be honest, illegal enhancements. Managing a Blood Bowl team is as much about off-the-field decisions as it is about on-the-pitch mayhem.

And it’s this long-form play, the drama, the rivalries, the heartbreak of losing your star player to a troll’s critical hit, that gives Blood Bowl its soul. It’s also what fuels the thriving community around the game. Thanks to excellent digital versions of Blood Bowl (complete with online leagues and tournaments), the connection between tabletop and digital play is stronger than a Black Orc on protein powder. Online play allows coaches to test builds, strategies, and teams before diving into physical leagues, and sometimes, it even helps keep local scenes alive between game nights.

These days Blood Bowl is more commonly known as a PC game rather than a table-top game, but even the PC game is essentially a perfect replication of the table-top game.

Blood Bowl originally hit the pitch back in the mid-1980s, and while there was a brief two-decade hiatus in official support, the game is now back in full swing. Games Workshop has returned to the sport with renewed vigor, offering modern rules, fresh miniatures, and a starter box that’s actually worth its weight in warpstone.

One of the most charming aspects of Blood Bowl is its timeless design. Believe it or not, if you bought a team back in 1988, be it Elves, Dwarves, or Undead, you can still field them today. Try saying that about your 6th Edition Bretonnians. The rules are also mostly unchanged, amounting to minor improvements at best.

Like many of Games Workshop titles, its origin story takes us back to the 80’s when miniatures were more comedic and less detailed. Unlike most of of GW’s other titles, collecting classic Blood Bowl miniatures is considered prestigious. These guys hold a higher value than modern released versions, they are collectables.

Games Workshop offers a fantastic line of new miniatures (and they look great), and the barrier to entry remains blessedly low. In most cases, all you need is a team box and a willingness to watch your star player trip over his own feet in front of the endzone. It’s affordable, accessible, and hilarious, even when it hurts, which is a lot more than you can say about most miniature games.

Does Classic Mean Old?

When it comes to the preservation of classic tabletop games, think Dungeons & Dragons, Battletech, and other old-school titans, you’ll often find that the rules carry the unmistakable scent of their era: crunchy, clunky, and sometimes downright arcane. And hey, there’s charm in that… for some.

Take Battletech, for instance. A glorious monument to heat sinks and hex maps, sure, but its ruleset has remained largely untouched since the ’80s, and it shows. For modern gamers raised on sleek mechanics and intuitive design, jumping into Battletech can feel a bit like learning a programming language written on punch cards. There’s depth, yes, but also baggage. I would best describe it as fun, but slow and inefficient. It’s not the sort of game that someone would design and release today.

I love my Battletech! But despite the modern miniatures updates that give the game the appearance of a new game, these old rules have not held up particularly well.

Now here’s where Blood Bowl laces up its cleats and punts expectations right off the pitch.

Despite its age, Blood Bowl was surprisingly streamlined even in its earliest incarnations. The rules were (and still are) built for speed and clarity. Sure, a few tweaks and refinements have improved component handling and smoothed out some edges, but the core mechanics have endured with little change, and they still hold up. In fact, if Blood Bowl: Season 2 (the latest edition) dropped today with no prior legacy attached, most gamers would likely assume it was a brand-new design. That’s how ahead of its time it was.

Where many games of its era are now museum pieces dusted off by nostalgics in denim jackets, Blood Bowl feels fully at home on the modern tabletop. It’s not a crusty relic propped up by rose-tinted memories. It’s a lean, mean, dice-fueled machine that still delivers tight gameplay and absurd fun.

That said… who’s it actually for?

Well, not everyone, I think.

I wouldn’t say Blood Bowl is for the “typical miniature gamer”, especially not the ones who take their grimdark lore and optimized builds very seriously. This isn’t a game about carefully measured movement and flawless tactical control. Blood Bowl is a chaotic, violence-riddled sports comedy with rules, where Nuffle (the in-game god of dice) laughs at your plans and your best-laid strategies are one skull roll away from disaster.

It’s a game that knows it’s silly, and leans hard into it, but it’s also definitely a sports game and loving competative sports, especially any variation on football, is kind of a must.

Yes, long-time coaches will rightly tell you that there’s deep strategy involved. And they’re not wrong. But that strategy is built on risk management, not total control. Blood Bowl is as much about gambling as it is about game theory. You’re constantly calculating odds: “Should I go for it on a 2+ with a reroll?” “Is that 33% dodge worth it to get the ball loose?” Every turn is a little bet, a tiny act of defiance against the statistical gods.

Blood Bowl Leagues are serious business for fans, there are leagues that have been ongoing for years to such a degree that some of them had to introduce character ages to force star players to retire. There is a lot of love that goes into these things.

The critical mechanic of this game, The Turnover, is why these calculations are so critical. You have to know your odds because a single failed roll during your turn can results in your turn ending and being turned over to your opponent. This unpredictable element is key to the game and what makes it such a chaotic and unpredictable monster players struggle to wrangle in. It’s in part, a push your luck game.

This is part of what makes the game so addictive. It creates a shared language among coaches, a constant mental flowchart of odds, modifiers, and dice probabilities. It’s part sports simulator, part board game, part bad day at the office for your troll. This is also what makes it such a niche product that isn’t comparable to anything else out there. You can’t say that Blood Bowl is like X or Y game, there is no equivalent, the only way to know if Blood Bowl will work for you is to play it a few times and see.

Blood Bowls blend of humor, stats, and drama is why the community around Blood Bowl is so strong, and so enduring. Despite being a niche within a niche, it boasts one of the most active organized play scenes in all of miniature gaming. Leagues flourish, tournaments abound (both online and offline), and new players are constantly drawn into the mayhem.

To put it plainly: Blood Bowl isn’t some dusty throwback clung to by aging grognards in spiked shoulder pads. It’s a vibrant, living game that continues to thrive because it’s fun, smart, and brutally entertaining.

Getting Into The Game

Like most miniature games, the best way to get into Blood Bowl is the old-fashioned way: find a friend who already plays. Nothing beats seeing two fully painted teams clash on the pitch, dice flying and players dying, while someone explains the rules mid-chaos. A quick exhibition match on a proper tabletop is still the most natural, and frankly, the most Blood Bowlian, way to get started.

Now, technically, there’s another option: the digital version.

And while I admit it’s tempting, especially when it’s sitting right there on Steam, promising instant games and zero glue fumes, I do not recommend starting your Blood Bowl journey digitally.

Here’s why.

There’s nothing more damaging to the tabletop experience than discovering the ultimate life-hack shortcut: a fully automated app that plays the game for you. Suddenly, you start asking dangerous questions like, “Why would I buy a $100 box set, spend hours assembling miniatures, then weeks painting them, just to play something I can click through in five minutes?”

The new starter set revitalized Blood Bowl as a table top game, but the digital version (Blood Bowl 3) is still considered the premiere way to run leagues with a larger audience.

And just like that, the magic dies.

For me, trying a game digitally before ever touching it physically almost always kills my interest in buying in. I can’t explain it entirely, but something about the immediacy, the convenience, the cleanliness of digital versions just flattens the anticipation and wonder that comes with setting up a real tabletop game.

That said, and here’s the kicker, Blood Bowl’s digital version is fantastic.

Blood Bowl 3, the latest digital edition, is a faithful, pitch-perfect adaptation of the tabletop experience. Every rule, every team, every hilarious misstep is there. Team management? Yep. League play? Absolutely. Injuries, star player points, stat tracking? All of it. It’s not a watered-down spin-off, it’s the same game, just rendered in shiny 3D with animations that let you see a goblin get punted halfway across the pitch.

Most miniature games wish they had a digital version this good. Many don’t have one at all, or rely on awkward virtual tabletops that take hours to set up and feel like spreadsheets with dice rollers.

But even with Blood Bowl 3 being that good, I still say: don’t start there.

Why? Because you only get one “first” experience. And Blood Bowl is a game meant to be played in-person, across a board, preferably while yelling at your opponent and shaking your dice like they owe you money. Once you’ve played the real thing, the digital version becomes a brilliant complement, letting you dive into more matches, meet other coaches, and explore league play without sacrificing the charm of the tabletop.

So where should you start?

The Season Two Starter Set. Yeah, it’s a cliché answer, but clichés exist for a reason.

Games Workshop nailed it with this one. The box includes two excellent beginner-friendly teams: the tough-as-nails Orcs and the well-rounded Imperial Nobility. You also get a high-quality cardboard pitch, all the templates and tokens you need, a full set of dice, and most importantly, the hardcover core rulebook, which alone is worth more than half the price of the box.

These aren’t watered-down beginner teams, either. Ask any Blood Bowl veteran what teams are great for new coaches, and these two will come up nearly every time.

What makes Blood Bowl especially refreshing is that unlike most miniatures games, you’re usually one or two purchases away from a full collection. A single team box is, in most cases, all you need. No sprawling codex collections. No dozens of units. No plastic terrain filling your closet like you’re prepping for diorama doomsday. Just a team, a pitch, and some dice.

Yes, there are extras you can buy, alternate star players, fancy dice, deluxe pitches, custom dugouts, but they’re exactly that: extras. Optional bling. The hobby equivalent of end-zone dances. You don’t need them to enjoy the game.

Lets Talk About The Game

Okay, weird header, I know. I’ve spent most of this article already raving about Blood Bowl’s rules, gameplay, and culture. But now I want to get a bit more practical. Let’s talk about the experience: what actually happens when you sit down to play? What should a new coach expect?

Blood Bowl is a game drenched in chaos, yes, but beyond the fumbled balls and crushed skulls, there are some real-world considerations players always ask about:

  • How long does it take?
  • How complex is it?
  • Is it balanced?
  • How often do the rules change?

Let’s tackle those one by one, starting with the most common question:

How Long Does a Game of Blood Bowl Take?

Simple question. Not-so-simple answer.

On average, a game takes around 2 to 2.5 hours. A fast match between experienced coaches might clock in at 90 minutes, while a slow-paced or rule-heavy game (especially with new players or heavy league play) can stretch up to 4 hours.

Why the wide range? Blame it on one of Blood Bowl’s most iconic mechanics: the Turnover rule.

In Blood Bowl, each player gets 8 turns per half, 16 total. But here’s the twist, your turn ends the moment you fail a key action. That failed dodge, botched handoff, or mistimed block? Boom. Turn over. Your opponent’s turn starts immediately.

This is pretty much everything you need to play. Two teams, the pitch and some dice. The modern starter set comes with various cheat sheets, templates and of course the book which just makes the game easier to manage on the table, but even these things most would consider unnecessary extras, bonus bling!

That means some turns might see a coach moving and acting with every player on their team, setting up clever plays and scoring touchdowns. Other turns might end after the very first roll. So the game’s pace is wildly variable, equal parts strategy, suspense, and slapstick comedy.

You don’t always have to play every turn.

In casual games, especially one-off exhibition matches, it’s common to call the game early if the score’s out of reach and the outcome is inevitable. This isn’t something you’d do in a league (where every touchdown and casualty could affect the standings or your team’s progression), but for friendly matches, early concessions can easily shave an hour off the game.

Blood Bowl isn’t exactly a “quick lunchtime skirmish” kind of game, but for what you get, the time investment is more than worth it. Every game is a full-blown story, packed with dramatic comebacks, heartbreaking dice rolls, and more than a few moments of “Did that really just happen?”

Complexity

From the perspective of your average miniature wargamer, Blood Bowl sits comfortably in the low to mid-range of complexity, depending entirely on how deep you dive.

If you’re just dabbling, grabbing some stock teams and playing casual one-off exhibition matches, then Blood Bowl is a low-complexity game. The core rules are intuitive, clearly written, and easy to pick up. Most players find that after a single match, they no longer need to reference the rulebook for basic play. It’s a streamlined, fast-flowing system that gets out of your way and lets the carnage happen.

But if you step into league play, where Blood Bowl truly shines, then complexity ramps up over time.

As your players gain experience, develop new skills, suffer injuries, and maybe even get maimed or eaten, the rules begin to expand. You’ll deal with special abilities, team development strategies, inducements, sponsorships, star players, and more, all layered on top of the core mechanics. The gameplay stays fast, but your decisions off the pitch start to carry more weight.

To be clear: this isn’t complexity for complexity’s sake. This is earned depth, the kind of slow-burn growth that makes you feel invested in your team. It’s part RPG, part sports sim, part beautiful mess.

Complexity is a judgement call, but by any standards that I’m aware, Blood Bowl is a relatively simple game. Most of the complexity of Blood Bowl is optional.

And even then, if you break it down, most of the advanced rules are tucked neatly into team management and league play. If you’re just playing a one-off match? You’re using maybe 30–40% of the full rulebook, tops. The rest lives in the realm of long-term campaign play, where the true flavor of Blood Bowl emerges.

Is The Game Balanced?

It’s a widely accepted consensus that Blood Bowl is the most balanced game in Games Workshop’s arsenal, but, as with most things, this comes with a few caveats. Some aspects that may initially appear as imbalances tend to fade as player knowledge and experience increase.

The first thing to understand about balance in Blood Bowl is that teams are definitively not “equal” to each other, but that’s by design. The game doesn’t aim for symmetry. Instead, it uses mechanics to compensate for inequality between teams.

When two teams meet for a match, they compare Team Value (TV), a number that reflects the total value of the team, including players, rerolls, staff, and other assets. The team with the lower TV receives inducement gold, which can be spent on temporary, one-match bonuses.

These inducements can include:

  • Star Players (mercenaries who join just for the match)
  • Bribes to influence referees
  • Wizards who cast spells from the stands
  • Extra coaching staff
  • Additional rerolls
  • And other quirky, strategic upgrades

This system is intentionally designed to level the playing field when teams of different strengths clash, especially in long-term leagues where team values diverge.

However, inducements are only as effective as the player using them. Knowing your team’s strengths and understanding your opponent’s weaknesses is critical to making the most of these one-off advantages. This kind of strategic decision-making can’t be “balanced” in the traditional sense, player skill is always a factor, and as expected, more experienced coaches tend to win regardless of built-in mechanics.

Another layer of balance comes from team design itself. While you might hear arguments that Team A is “better” than Team B, the reality is more nuanced. Every team in Blood Bowl has distinct strengths and weaknesses:

Some teams excel are running the ball, others passing, some use gimmicks and tricks, while others still go for pure brutality. Their various hybrids as well.

There are currently 24 teams in Blood Bowl, so there is more than a fair share to collect and most Blood Bowl players are not satisfied to simply own one team. The nice thing about Blood Bowl is that’s its one of those games where you don’t have to build armies. Any team box comes with pretty much everything you need.

There are many teams in the game, and each has its own internal logic and playstyle. Part of the strategic depth of Blood Bowl is learning how to counter those styles, choose the right players for the matchup, and build your team to thrive over time.

In league play, things get even more dynamic. As teams grow, injuries mount, and players improve, team values can vary wildly. It’s not uncommon to see dominant teams rise and others falter, but that’s part of the point. Leagues are about long-term management as much as on-the-pitch performance. Winning the league isn’t just about winning individual matches, it’s about managing your team’s growth, budget, and roster across the whole season.

Leagues usually start with an even playing field, but as they progress, natural rises and falls occur, and that ebb and flow is a core part of the Blood Bowl experience.

Rules Changes and Errata

As mentioned already, Games Workshop has largely maintained a consistent ruleset since the original release of the game. Barring an occasional rules addition, clarification or minor streamlining the game remains pretty much the same.

Most Errata comes in the form of rules clarifications, actual rules changes are quite rare. This is a game that if you learned it 5 years ago, is not going to feel different today. You might come across some minor adaptation to a team here and there, but this is mostly done out of community demand or as a response to things that transpire at major Blood Bowl events to help improve the play experience.

In short, rules changes are quite rare, additions are more common, new star players for example.

Conclusion

Personally, I think Blood Bowl is one of those unique staple games that I love having in my collection. I tend to play it most often with friends who are sports fans and dabble in tabletop gaming, people who appreciate the chaos and strategy but might not be full-time wargamers. In a way, I think it’s a bit more niche than it deserves to be.

In my core gaming group, most folks lean more toward traditional miniature wargames than sports-themed games, and that’s totally fine. Blood Bowl has become something of a personal secret weapon in my collection. It doesn’t hit the table very often, and I mostly play it in online leagues these days, but when I do engage with it, I always have a blast.

It’s a fun, chaotic sports game with deep strategy and a sense of humor that’s uniquely Warhammer. It definitely earns its place in my collection, and I highly recommend it to anyone who loves American football in particular and wants a tabletop experience that captures that competitive, unpredictable energy with a twist.

Ok, I hope that is sufficient to quiet the trolls out there. Blood Bowl!

Dedicated To All Things Gaming