Slaughterball Review

There’s nothing quite like rolling a big handful of dice. Slaughterball knows this, and so it has players roll a ton of them. In this multi-player fantasy sports game, you roll dice to see if you pick up the ball, if you catch it successfully, if your shot went into the goal, and if you can successfully wing the ball at another player. Oh, and if any of those things fail you roll the die to see where the ball scatters. For that matter, you also roll it if you successfully score a goal, since the ball comes out elsewhere on the board. It’s safe to assume that if you want to do something in this game, you will roll for it.

Let me be perfectly clear, this is not a bad thing. It is also entirely expected, as fans of older games like Blood Bowl will attest. Sports are a lot more random than most people like to admit, and although Slaughterball is less based on American football than was Blood Bowl, it clearly has the Games Workshop classic in its DNA. The players all control a team of genetically-modified superhumans, bred to play the barbaric game of slaughterball for howling fans. Each team consists of six athletes in four different positions, and each athlete has their own stats. The stat numbers usually represent how many dice that athlete rolls in a skill check. Those skill checks are used to do pretty much everything, like passing the ball, picking it up, and taking a shot on one of the multiple goals on the board.

Slaughterball makes some terrific design decisions when it comes to offense. Goals are worth points equal to your distance from the goal. That means if you are down you can take tougher shots to score more points. It allows for games to be more dramatic, and also encourages players to play aggressively. The other wonderful factor here is that when a goal is scored the board doesn’t reset. The ball simply pops out at roughly the opposite side of the board, and play continues. This helps tremendously with the flow of the game, and it makes player positioning a big element in tactical planning.

Of course, it’s not called Slaughterball for nothing. Players can also score points by injuring opponents. Indeed, at least one of the teams in the box uses this as their key strategy. Similar to shooting, players are given more points for taking down tougher opponents. Given all of the recent controversy surrounded head injuries in professional football, this aspect of Slaughterball might play as a little tacky to some people. I’m not sure this game is thinking that hard, but to me it feels more satirical, in an “are you not entertained” kind of way.

As mentioned before, this game revolves around rolling dice. Skill checks that should succeed will often fail, and long odds will sometimes succeed, making opponents want to break something tasteful. Whether this sounds like fun will vary wildly by person, though it cannot be denied that it produces a dramatic experience. We often marveled at how action-packed every round felt. Since Slaughterball is mainly a four-player experience, it is loaded with mayhem as players frantically chuck the ball everywhere and maul opponents. Adding to the chaos is the cardplay, which is actually another smart design move. Rather than forcing the players to remember a lot of different penalties and injury statuses, it simply maps all of them to cards and gives each player a hand of them to play when appropriate. The cards do a good job of explaining themselves, which is nice, since players will be using them all the time.

If everything in the game was this polished Slaughterball might be an all-timer of dice-chucking sports games. The truth is that the players throw so many dice that the game actually ends up being a little cumbersome. Our players were glued to their player aids as they referenced stats. Remember, each athlete has five of them, and there are four positions on each team. The team powers, which are used in exhibition and league games, also make everything far more ungainly. It’s to be expected that players won’t know how best to use their special powers until they’ve had a little experience, but Slaughterball doesn’t know how to write special powers very well. Rather than boiling each team down to their essence, some of the teams have a laundry list of special abilities, making it much harder to play them effectively. That’s the kind of stuff that can fade into the background, and if the game offered more in the way of nuance it’d be fine. But Slaughterball is kind of a silly game, and it comes off as more overwrought than anything else.

Slaughterball also has a bad case of Kickstarter-itis. It has a ton of really nice miniatures, and a lot of future content in the pipe. Some of that content, such as extra mercenary players and team arenas, will be mostly exclusive to the convention circuit and backers. That’s bad for a game that needs to build a community to really make those nice-looking league rules pay off, but it’s unfortunately standard operating procedure for games like these.

Of course, you can play what’s in the box and have a fun four-player game. Thankfully it has some flexibility in how it can be played. You can do a scrimmage game without any team powers, or a full exhibition game with them. Then there are the league rules, which look promising, though I wasn’t able to play them since they really require a second copy. For those who enjoy dicey games with lots of drama, Slaughterball is a fine choice. It would have been nice if it could have carried some of its lean design philosophy further, but what’s there is still fun and dramatic.