My Custom Blood Bowl Pitch Pt. I: The Concept

So I had the great fortune last Thursday night to finish my very first in person game of Blood Bowl! I have played online using FUMBBL before, but never have I played an entire game sitting in the same room as the people I was playing with. And man we had a blast!

It was actually four of us-- my roommate, two friends, and me-- with my roommate Rob playing humans against my friend Dan as orcs, while Eric gave recommendations for both sides and I provided guidance with the rules. It was a long game since I was teaching while we played and we didn't really enforce the four minutes per turn rule, but those 3.5 hours just flew by.

It really surprised me just how into it my friends got. I'm used to getting strange looks when I explain the game to people, and the rules are more complicated than most people have the patience for. But once the game got rolling, my friends could not get enough of the sheer personality of Blood Bowl. It just goes to show what a well-crafted and entertaining game it is.

This got me even more excited for designing and building my own pitch. Having friends to impress really helps with motivation. I first got the idea for a foamcore pitch here.

So as promised, here are the plans for my own custom pitch:

Rough sketch, not even close to scale. Sorry for the drawing.

I am making the pitch from two pieces of 22 x 28 x 3/4" foamcore. I am making each half of the board 16" long, which will give me an extra couple of inches to add to the end zones. As you can see, I'm incorporating the dugouts and the score and turn boards into the board itself, as I feel the separate ones which come with the game take up too much room. I am not, however, going to model them for realism. Instead I'm going to use what I like to call (to myself) 'selective texturing,' so that I can 'draw' whatever I need on the board with flock or sand. That way it will add somewhat to the verisimilitude of the game, but not to the extent that it becomes hard to use. Similarly, I don't like the idea of carving lines into the board--especially with such thin material--so I'm going to use the ground texture to mark out the squares. It's hard to describe, but you'll see what I mean when I start posting WIPs.


The logo in the middle (the version in the sketch is crappy) will be a version of the University of Chicago Phoenix. Got to honor the ole Alma Mater:

The Maroon. I mean Phoenix. Used without permission.

I still haven't decided on the color scheme yet, though I'm leaning towards blue for the home team, and orange for the away. For flocking, I'll be using my own home-made grass flock (tutorial coming soon!) and either sand or coffee grounds (probably coffee--less paint required). For the logo and the endzones, I will make masks/ stencils and spray diluted paint onto the grass with a spray bottle, or if that doesn't work, an old toothbrush. Again, you'll see.

So until then, Peace!