By Kieron Gillen on April 2nd, 2010 at 4:30 pm.
Showing that a failure to understand human brains isn’t limited to their UI-team, Cyanide’s marketing folk decided it’d be a good idea to announce their Blood Bowl Legendary Edition on April 1st. But no! It’s for reals and everything. Basically, it appears to be an expandalone expansion to the game – and while it’s possible they’ll do an reduced price upgrade or even a Witcher-esque free thing, I suspect you’ll have to pay full-whack for what it offers. Luckily, what it offers is really quite exciting. Mainly, adding twelve new team types to the eight already in the game. This includes such joys as the Undead, Amazon, Norse and Ogres. They’re also promising new arenas, a story-lead single-player game and rules tweaks to keep it up to date with the Living Rulebook. Let’s hope they manage to work in some polish to the league systems (i.e. Any polish) and UI before its released near the end of the year. That said, the Vampire player in the shades above really is splendid. I fear the Skavenblighters will be coming out of retirement.
The sheer volume of new stuff (teams, modes etc) sounds sufficient to justify “expandalone” pricing. That said I do wish they’d released Undead as a free thing for current Blood Bowl owners, as they were originally promised alongside Dark Elves.
The main thing I need to see, though, is better AI. I’m a bit concerned that the best SP modder Blood Bowl has (Stw402) seems to have disappeared since November and is no longer updating his projects. Without him to around fix the new game’s single player, Cyanide is going to have to do it themselves.
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Vin: Having a quick nose I couldn’t actually find where they actively promised it*. If anyone finds the actual thing, I’ll edit the story to include that.
KG
*A very quick nose. We’re abstractly not updating today.
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@Kieron
Hmm, maybe it was just an erroneous word of mouth thing. I confess I don’t think I ever heard it direct from the source. If I run across a source I’ll send it your way, in the absence of that I suppose I’ll withdraw what minor complaint I had. Realistically, even if it were “only” 11 new teams and a huge pile of other stuff, it’d still be more than worth picking up in my opinion. The AI is by far the bigger concern for me.
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I was more concerned that approximately one rule was properly implemented. Though I’m sure much of that must be fixed by now.
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First Mount and Blade: Warband, then the new version of Dwarf Fortress, and now Blood Bowl?
Help me out here guys, time and money are two things I do not have.
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Lucky DF is free then!
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Interesting. I never took the plunge with the original release, as I didn’t think the single player experience alone justified the price. This is very tempting though.
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Neither did I, actually. Nothing to do with single-player only (my local gaming group started a league), everything to do with my PC not being able to support it.
By the time it’s out, however, I should have a very nice machine ready for it. Here’s hoping!
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Heh, I picked up Blood Bowl not two days ago, and I’m really enjoying it despite not really knowing what I’m doing. Definitely looking forward to this. Expansion is always welcome :)
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Been umming and ahhing over whether to pick up the original. I was waiting for a price drop or Steam sale, think I’ll just wait for this instead now.
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Noooooo Wood Elf catchers will have MA 8 =(
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I’ve been waiting for the Undead team to be released before getting this. I just want to replicate my lovingly painted minitures team of skellys from 20 years ago. Jeesh, getting old…………….
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More Blood Bowl Diaries. Moooooore i say!
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I just picked it up on tuesday myself and ‘m learning it slowly. This announcement has me excited as it might mean that I’ll be able to play as Halflings. Hooray.
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Oh and Kieron, should the Blighters come out of retirement perhaps a rematch? You never know, you might score more than 7 – 1.
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Sounds promising, though If they charge the full 50 euro for the download again with no cheaper boxed copies until months and months later, they can go die in a ditch.
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In passing, my code I brought from a code-reseller was never actually canceled.
KG
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Likewise. As far as I can tell, the publsher made a bit of noise about going after key resellers, and then quietly forgetting about it about a week later. So long as you didn’t brag on the official site about having one, you were fine.
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Mine was, sadly. =( Key-seller refunded me, though, as they didn’t have any more keys for ages after that.
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Oo… I’ve been looking for something to treat myself with when I finally break this sticky period of unemployment. This has just moved right up with this many new teams- the team diversity is one of the things that has had me staying with FUMBBL.
Still, I’ll wait and see if they do a release with both team sets for a price I consider reasonable.
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There better be High Elves.
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Drewski: I have it on good authority that they will be totally wasted, never fear.
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Well, as long as they don’t eat all the fairy bread.
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Kieron – while I hesitate to defend the developer responsible for The Worst Netcode, I feel that I ought to at least point out that they have a fair excuse for not understanding the cynicism that April 1st brings to us anglophones, as in France there is no April fool’s day (clearly an attempt to woo John). Rather, the French use the day as an excuse try to stick paper fish to each other’s backs. Don’t ask.
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They’re a developer on the Internet, man.
KG
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I don’t think that makes it particularly damning. Even with the vastness of the web at your fingertips, it’s easy to miss out on aspects of cultures other than your own, especially when said cultures communicate in a language different to your own first language, and so are likely to spend less time absorbing their texts.
It’s also very easy to be aware of a certain custom, but just forget that it’s happening – even when immersed in the culture that practices it, but especially when outside of it. And even more so when your country on that date is busy sticking fishes to backs, and in this year’s case is also busy contemplating The Last Supper (what with France being the most Catholic secular country around).
But yes, what it mostly tells me is that they really need a decent PR person. Ideally to be added at the same time they add some new netcode specialists, rules lawyers and UI designers to the team.
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@wiper : “as in France there is no April fool’s day”
Hmm, yes there is.
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Hmm, perhaps I’ve been misled by my family and students here. Now that /would/ be a good prank… (alternatively, perhaps it’s different in this region [Rhone-Alpes, specifically around Saint-Etienne]). The fish thing at least is true, right? I’d rather not discover that my childhood was a lie…
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April Fools started in France, didn’t it?
That’s where Poisson d’Avril comes from in the first pla(i)ce (ah ha).
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@Taillefer : I do believe that the first known reference to the holiday as we know it nowadays comes from a French writer or poet. The holiday itself might however be far more ancient and could come from somewhere else.
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@wiper : The “fish thing” is indeed true in France, but it is also customary to play pranks and create hoaxes like in every other country practicing this holiday.
The “fish thing” actually extends to the pranks, since you’re supposed to say “Poisson d’Avril” (literally “April’s Fish”) after your prank/hoax to reveal it was a joke.
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Well, thanks for the info. Clearly my family and students fail at fully living up to the tradition (I currently teach and work in France, and my family are French), and I failed to pick up on said tradition elsewhere. Presumably I should read more French newspapers/websites :(
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Twelve new races is great, but have they fixed the ones they already have? I.e. have they finally added the Goblin bombardier?
Sure, gobbos are supposed to be hard to play, but they’re supposed to have some fun secret weapons to partially offset that (with mayhem). And from looks of it, nothing would cause more fun and mayhem than lobbing bombs into the enemy’s cage.
Right now, they’re nothing more than a punching bag in SP, or a true test of how masochistic a coach you are.
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Ohh this looks very nice.
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I still hold it’s an April fool’s (yes we have those in the Netherlands).. at least until I get more information. But I’d be very pleasantly surprised to find if it’s true.
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Some Focus dude confirmed it wasn’t an April Fool’s on the French forums yesterday.
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I want to see a team of vampires (called Team Edward) vs. a team of warewolves (team Jacob).
DO THIS!
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Mm. I’ll probably eventually wind up picking it up, despite having done really very little with my extant copy of Blood Bowl and not understanding the strategy of the game at all.
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twelve races? that probably means halflings, so i think we need a RPS stunty cup after the release
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I do so want to play Blood Bowl on the PC but I will not buy it until they Dungeon Bowl rules have been implemented. I guess I will have to stay optimistic for future DLC.
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I really hope they release a Relic-style megapatch so that people who bought vanilla/Dark Elves edition can at least play against people that have Legendary Edition (plus the rule changes). The player-base split will be pretty devastating if they don’t.
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smaller devs really have to be careful about player base splits… it can be the kiss of death.
Yet it rarely seems to be something they consider at all.
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Why is vampire not on fire???
Also, I’ll buy it if I hear the single player AI is worth it.
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Because he’s wearing shades.
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ah…. so that is why Blade is ok in sunlight?
Good thing the other vampires never figured that out!
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Unless they fix the ‘port’ errors that multiplayer leagues pointless, there’s no way I’m buying this.
Also, Steam Play support would be nice…
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I hope they polish up the UI, but regardless I’ll be picking this up as soon as it slinks into the US; I never played BB before, but even with all its problems the first one’s got me hooked bad. As long as this leads to more RPS leagues and diaries, I’ll be a happy guy.
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Please, by all means, tell us more on this gaming site about GHD HAIR STRAIGHTENERS. I have so many questions! Can GHD HAIR STRAIGHTENERS straighten pubic hair? If I use GHD HAIR STRAIGHTENER on my already-straight hair, will it somehow become straighter, or simply conform itself into a brittle, unbendable sheet? TELL ME MORE ABOUT GHD HAIR STRAIGHTENER, I MUST KNOW!
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calm down, keep your UGG BOOTS on!
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