Every now and then I walk past the rows of miniatures at the FLGS and wonder about them. I like assembling and painting them, but committing to a game not called X-Wing has been tough because most of them haven’t appealed to me thematically. Enter Guild Ball, a miniature take on medieval mud ball. Mud ball is kind of like soccer. Except the rules were loose and people could get beaten up. Guild Ball pushes that to an extreme in a fantasy soccer-battle game that’s got me hooked.

This is the third part in a short series of articles I’ll write as I get into Guild Ball

______________________

Match day.

I was pretty excited. I’d gotten all the painting and stuff done in record time and convinced a friend to come try it out. I didn’t (still don’t) have much in the way of a board, so I scrawled some lines on an old tri-fold presentation board and laid all the models out. The rules were read, the teams picked, and it was time to play.

The Hunters set up on their side of the “pitch”.

“Now what?” we both said.

Whether you call them miniature games, wargames, or something different, games like Guild Ball are a little different than the board games we normally cover. The board is more of an arena and there are no zones, areas, or spaces. Movement is measured in inches, not points, and I can go in any direction rather than worrying about hex or square grids. It’s very free and offers great tactical opportunities, but it can also be a bit jarring.

My opponent, Tom, was playing the Masons; I was playing Hunters. We’d both read a little but weren’t really too sure what to do strategy wise. I kicked the ball up the left side of the field with Jaecar, and we were off. Round 1 was rather uneventful. He grabbed the ball, I moved up. We measured here, moved there and there and got ready for Round 2.

“Hmm. Feels like the game takes a while to get going” one of us said.

Tom tries to see if Brick can move in on Hearne

I’m laughing a little looking back on that, but at the time I didn’t know any better. Round 2 began with my activation. I sent Egret, a red-headed archer wildling huntress up the right side of the field and dropped an Area Attack on a cluster of Masons. It didn’t do much damage, but it poisoned 3 models thanks to her special ability. Tom retaliated by sending his mascot, Marbles the gorilla, charging into combat against Fahad, my jungle cat.

Across the field, his captain and my captain were trading blows for relatively low amounts of damage while he tried to break through for a goal. We each figured out a few combos; I sprouted a whole freaking forest in the middle of the pitch that one of my models used to teleport, and he used Mallet to engineer a situation where he could swing at me and I couldn’t swing back, but for the most part this first game was a slow slugfest where we traded blows whittling each other down.

And that wrapped up the first game. I don’t recall who won, but they won with an even split of take-outs and goals. And man…it was great. Neither of us knew what we were doing, and we hadn’t even scratched the surface of what we were capable of doing, but we liked it. My favorite aspect was the playbook. A successful attack means picking an option from a grid of circles. One success limits your options to the first column, four successes means one option from any of the first 4 columns. I liked how scoring additional hits didn’t necessarily mean more damage, it just meant more options. A player who is better at damage than soccer is always going to be able to swing a punch (or blade) but a particularly inspired attack can see them able to take the ball or reposition herself just when you need to.

Tapper (left) has early damage and knockdowns. Flint (right) will focus more on tackles and repositions.

It’s a really nice change from most games where things work linearly: rolling 10 successes usually means doing more damage than rolling 5. While it can feel counterintuitive to roll a pile of dice and only do low damage, it helps give your characters focus and a game plan. It also ensures that when you finally land a “wrap” it feels dramatic. If you have more successes than columns, you can make additional choices and have a potentially brutal attack.

So why did I laugh at the thought of the game taking a while to get going? Because I couldn’t have been more wrong. An adept coach can score a goal or take out an opponent on the first turn. This game does the opposite of start slow. If you aren’t prepared you might find yourself in a hole very quickly. While it does make the game dynamic, it can be rough going up against an experience player.

We immediately decided to play on Vassal, a quicker game with only 3 models to each side. He wanted to try the Butchers, a squad focused on bleeding your opponent out and I wanted to try the Masons. I’ll save that game for next week.

What the game can look like. Image from http://gmortschaotica.blogspot.com/2015/04/guild-ball-demo-day.html

Raf Reviews - Guild Ball: Match Day

Rafael Cordero

Raf Reviews - Cthulhu Wars

Calvin's Corner - Putting the Cape in Caper: Age of Thieves

Calvin's Corner - Fog of War: the Twilight Struggle Killer

Episode 47 - Other People's Fun

Charlie's Take - Gloom of Kilforth

Episode 46 - Wasteland Express Delivery Service Review

Raf Reviews - Spoils of War

Raf Reviews - Oaxaca

Bonus Episode - Warhammer 40k Dark Imperium