Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition

• Hit 'g' to turn on the grid and show enemy tackle zones. This is especially important for new players.

• Each of your players can either move or throw a block each turn, not both - to do both is called a Blitz. You get one Blitz per turn to use on the player of your choosing. A Blitz must be declared before the player you want to use to Blitz does anything else, so be careful not to move or stand a fallen player up until you're sure you won't be using them to Blitz. Also, as long as you've got movement to spare, the Blitzing player can still move after throwing a block.

• The first action you perform that fails (if you fail an attempt to pick up the ball, botch a pass or handoff, have a player fall over, or get called on a foul) causes you to lose the rest of your turn. So have a general idea of what you want to accomplish each turn and do actions that involve no risk first (like safe moves and standing up players that have been knocked down). That way, even if you screw up the first thing that requires a roll, you haven't completely wasted the turn. From there, do actions in order of risk and importance - low risk and high importance first and so on.

• The exception to the above is if you need to do something to create an opportunity, like if you need to hit a defender to open up a path for your receiver to run through.

• When you have a player selected and hover your mouse over an enemy that the player is eligible to block, the cursor will show how risky that block is - one white die shown means one block die will be rolled, meaning a moderate risk. Two or three white dice means the block is in your favor - two or three block dice will be rolled and you get to choose the result you want. Two or three red dice means it's in your opponent's favor - two or three block dice will be rolled, but THEY get to choose the result. Which means you'll want to avoid throwing that block unless it's your only option in a last-ditch attempt to score or prevent a touchdown. Whether or not a block is in your favor is determined by your player's ST +1 for each valid supporter vs. the opposing player's ST +1 for each of their valid supporters. If both sides are even, it's a one-die-block. If one side is greater, it's a two-die-block chosen by the victor, and if one side is twice as high as the other, it's a three-die-block.

• Don't use single player for anything beyond getting introduced to the rules a bit, as the AI is crap and will teach you bad habits.

• Be careful what you use your apothecary on. Low-level linemen (or whatever the basic unit for the team you're using is called) are expendable. Save it for when your stars and key positionals suffer permanent injuries or death.

• I wouldn't start a team with fewer than 2 rerolls, and it's fine to forego an apothecary for the first game or two to buy another reroll. After all, rerolls double in price after your first game, apothecaries do not. And if you get your key positionals killed or permanently injured in the game or two before you can afford an apothecary, you can just delete and recreate the team. Just the same, you really shouldn't need more than 4 rerolls. Most teams are good with 3.

• If you have fewer than 11 players that are up for play (not dead or missing a game due to injury), at the start of a game you automatically get enough temporary journeymen lineman-type units to make up the difference. These temp units will all have the "loner" attribute (50% chance to waste rerolls used on them), so it's not a good idea rely too much on them as anything but meat for a grinder.

• The skill Block is your best friend - it keeps your character standing on a "Both Down" result both when attacking (negating a turnover) and defending. You'll want it ASAP on damn near everything that doesn't come with it, with the exception of your passers.

• The combination of Block + Dodge is nicknamed "Blodge" is even more potent. Anything with Blodge can be an utter pain in the ass to knock over unless you've got units with the skill Tackle. Blodge is used to greatest effect on high agility players/teams (and it's a good chunk of what makes the elf teams so good), but it's pretty handy to have a few blodgers on just about every team.

• The edges of the field are dangerous - players can be shoved off the field (often called "crowdsurfing"), and when they are, they get their asses kicked by angry fans - and thier armor won't protect them. Any player that gets crowdsurfed has to skip the roll vs. their armor and goes right into rolling vs. injury. Plus, even if they do avoid injury, they're still gone until the next kickoff. The only drawback is that injuries due to crowdsurfing do not award SPP to the player that shoved another off the field, but an easy removal of an enemy from the field is worth it.

• Big guys (anything that starts with 5 Strength or higher) are hard to use and can end up being liabilities because they all have a few of drawbacks. For one, none of them have access to General skills except on doubles, which means unless you get lucky, they won't have access to Block. Combine that with the fact that they also tend to be loners (50% chance to waste rerolls), it means they can end up causing you a lot of turnovers. Apart from Tomb Guardians and Mummies, they've also all got negative traits that'll sometimes cause them to ignore your orders and stare blankly into space (Beasts of Nurgle, Ogres, and Trolls), stand around snarling (Minotaurs, Snow Trolls, and Rat Ogres), or get rooted into place for the rest of a drive (Tree Men). They CAN be fun to use and a good source of hilarity, but until you know what you're doing, they can cause you more grief than is neccesary.

• Naming theme is KEY.