Blood Bowl 2 asks you to coach the Reikland Reavers, a human team in disgrace, back to something like respectability. It came out on 22 September 2015 for Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, with an OS X version following in May 2016. Cyanide Studios developed it; Focus Home Interactive published it. It is a sequel to the 2009 Blood Bowl, itself an adaptation of Games Workshop’s board game, and it sets Warhammer and American football against each other in a turn-based cocktail of strategy, humor and brutality.
Trailer, via IGDBcom.
The Reikland Reavers and a Helicopter
The solo campaign is the headline addition, and it is built around a single premise: the player is the coach, the Reikland Reavers are the project. The team starts in disgrace. The job is to raise them back to their former glory.
That framing is thin, but the campaign does more than a league season would. It includes scripted, one-time events that interrupt the match in progress. A goblin crashes a helicopter in the middle of the field. The player does not get a cutscene and a reset; the game continues around the wreckage, and the coach has to keep playing.
That is the best idea in Blood Bowl 2. A turn-based sports game lives or dies on whether its matches produce stories, and a helicopter on the pitch produces one. It is a shame the campaign leans on the Reikland Reavers alone, because the human team is the least interesting roster in the box.
Eight Races, Then Some More
At launch, eight races are playable. The Bretonnian is the new addition, and its origin is the most interesting thing about it: the race was developed out of a fan-developed rulebook. That is a real compliment to the community that kept the board game alive, and it is the kind of move a sequel should make.
The rest of the roster arrived through preorder bonuses, downloadable content, and the Legendary Edition. That is a lot of the game’s variety sitting outside the base purchase.
Blood Bowl 2 also uses a new engine and cuts the real-time mode that the 2009 game offered. The game is now purely turn-based. That is the correct call. The previous game’s real-time option was a compromise, and a compromise is the last thing a rules-heavy adaptation needs.
Five Stadiums, Four Tiers, Twenty Designs
Stadium customization is the feature that will quietly eat the most hours. The base game includes five stadiums, drawn from the Human, Orc, Dwarf, Dark Elf and Skaven. As a team grows, so does its stadium. Each can be raised through four tiers, and excluding 10 add-ons, the game offers a total of 20 unique stadium designs.
The structure is simple, and that is the point. Progression in Blood Bowl 2 is not only about the players on the field. It is also about the ground they play on.
Jim Johnson and Bob Bifford on Cabalvision
Cabalvision is Blood Bowl 2’s version of sports commentary, and it is the game’s best piece of theater. Play-by-play announcer Jim Johnson is an immortal vampire who injects witty commentary. Analyst Bob Bifford brings a forthright preference for sheer violence. Together they produce colorful commentary based on the teams, the players, and the action happening on the field.
Play-by-play announcer (and immortal vampire) Jim Johnson injects his witty commentary alongside analyst Bob Bifford’s forthright preference to sheer violence
That pairing does real work. Blood Bowl is a comedy about violence, and a booth that treats the violence as the main attraction is funnier than any joke the campaign could script.
Buying and Selling Players
The Player Marketplace exists because Blood Bowl is brutal. Teams often have to find more players to field, whether through death, injury or retirement, or they need to make some extra money. The marketplace lets players be bought and sold between coaches, both AI and human.
This is where Blood Bowl 2 becomes a management game as much as a sports game, and it is the feature most likely to decide whether a long league holds together. A roster that can be traded is a roster with a market, and a market gives every injury a price.
The parallel systems stack up like this:
- Campaign mode, following the Reikland Reavers through scripted events
- Stadium customization, five base stadiums across four tiers and 20 designs
- Cabalvision, with Jim Johnson and Bob Bifford calling the action
- The Player Marketplace, where coaches buy and sell players
- League and multiplayer modes, carrying the standard game
What the 6.8 Actually Measures
Blood Bowl 2 lands at 6.8 out of 10, matching the published critical aggregate across 10 outlets. That number is fair, and it is fair for a specific reason: the game’s best ideas and its thinnest ones sit right next to each other.
The turn-based commitment is right. Dropping the real-time mode makes Blood Bowl 2 a cleaner adaptation of the board game, and the new engine gives Cyanide room to build on. The Bretonnian, pulled from a fan rulebook, shows the studio knows where its audience lives. Cabalvision gives the matches a voice, and the Player Marketplace gives a long league a spine. The helicopter is a genuinely good bit.
The problems are structural, not cosmetic. The campaign gives the player one team, the Reikland Reavers, and asks them to care about a roster that is not the most interesting one available. Eight races at launch is thin for a game whose whole appeal is variety, and the additional races arriving as preorder bonuses, downloadable content and a Legendary Edition means the box is selling you a smaller game than the one you will eventually want.
A 6.8 is not a dismissal. Blood Bowl 2 is the sequel the 2009 game needed to be: it picks a lane, commits to turn-based play, and builds out the systems around the match instead of the match itself. It is also a game that expects you to buy in twice.
The verdict is simple. If you want the board game’s rules with a booth that enjoys the carnage, Blood Bowl 2 delivers. If you want the full roster on day one, wait for the Legendary Edition, or wait longer — Blood Bowl 3 arrived in February 2023, and the sequel question is already settled.
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