Wembley finals are ok, but sometimes with all the theatrics and diving you are missing out on real football. Sometimes you just want jumpers for goalposts, rookie players, no ref and the opportunity for barging the opposition into a sewer when things start to go sideways…

In Gutter Bowl, up for pre order today we get all the thrills of an amateur 7 a side match in the close confines of the backstreets or the filth of a sewer. Your players will dodge and weave past food stalls, smash other players into walls and take advantage of secret weapons since there’s no ref to adjudicate!

In this review we’ll be taking a look at the Gutter Bowl expansion and checking out what is inside the pack, and what changes it brings to Blood Bowl. We’ll also be taking a look at the Underworld Denizens and Old World Alliance team sets that are also up for pre order alongside the Gutter Bowl set

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us over a free review copy to check out on the site. If you would like to support the site then why not pick up your Blood Bowl goodies through our affiliate Element Games and save yourselves some money too?

We also have done a full unboxing which you can see just below or over on YouTube

So grab your replica Blood Bowl kit, and make sure to hide some weapons in the pockets, as it’s time for Gutter Bowl!

Gutter Bowl Unboxing and Review

So what is Gutter Bowl? Well, it’s basically a supplement for Blood Bowl that allows you to play sevens games with an amateur team who are just playing in the street or in a dank sewer. There are no star players or elite teams here, simply 7 average people off the street ready to smash people into the street. I love this concept, as it sets it apart from Blood Bowl proper for a nice change of paste between leagues for example

In the set you get a double sided Gutter Bowl pitch – one side showing the mean streets, with stalls and barricades scattered around, and on the reverse is a sewer with some rather unpleasant looking pits for any unlucky players to fall into.

Also included is a pair of dugouts (again double sided to reflect both pitches)

Finally in the sleeve you get the Gutter Bowl rulebook itself, clocking in at 36 pages this gives you all the additional info you need in order to play games of Gutter Bowl (It’s worth noting here that you still need the core Blood Bowl rules, as this is more an expansion than a stand alone game.)

So how do things change up in a game of Gutter Bowl? Well for a start while the pitch is the same size as a standard Blood Bowl pitch, it is actually smaller due to the fact that there are four 6×4 sections on the pitch that you cannot move into which makes the playing area much smaller. On top of this there are two barricades on each side near the line of scrimmage – while these can be traversed, they are more difficult to get over taking 2 movement as you carefully climb over. Players can opt to recklessly vault over them, but on a roll of 1 you fall, much like a Go For It test!

The team makeup is also quite different in games of Gutter Bowl – you start with much less gold (750k to be precise) and can only have 5 players who are not linesmen! This is not professional Blood Bowl, but a scrum on the streets with youngsters or fans who want a bit of a kick around! As such re-rolls are also much more expensive at 100k per reroll. You also have no staff, as again a game of Gutter Bowl is far from a “proper” match. You only need a handful of players though, with a game having seven players each side – but you’re going to have to be careful when picking your non-linemen to make sure you either have all bases cover, or lean so heavily into one area that you are praying to Nuffle that nothing goes wrong!

A game of Gutter Bowl is also shorter at just 6 turns a half to represent the fact that these players are not professional athletes and as such tire much sooner than pros. This leads to a shorter punchier game of Blood Bowl that is perfect for a bit of a palette cleanser or an option for games night that isnt going to take hours and hours.

One of the big changes is the fact that there is no ref in a game of Gutter Bowl and as such no one can be sent off – you can foul without consequence, but from a gameplay mechanic you are still limited to a single foul per turn. Likewise, secret weapons are much more powerful in a game of Gutter Bowl – after using one you roll a d6, with a 4+ letting you continue using it, but a roll of 1-3 meaning you get dragged off the pitch by any watching fans (And there’s a chance of a casualty as they “convince” you to stop using it)

The fans also are not fans of people running down the clock – with them throwing bottles at any player deemed to be stalling!

As you can imagine, these games are played in the tight confines of city streets, and as such the sides of the pitch are actually walls, allowing you to do things such as purposely throw the ball at a wall in order to bounce it further down the pitch or around some obstacles. Likewise, players can simply smash their opponents into the walls too to try and force an injury roll. With lots more potential for pain, games will be quicker and much more brutal than the “clean” game of a proper Blood Bowl match!

We get a meaty rules section with variant rules for streets or sewers with lots of gameplay differences between the two such as being able to knock people into pits, with them having a chance of drowning in the murky filth and getting eaten by whatever horrors live in them! Each pitch also has its own Kick Off chart and Weather table that changes up the theme between the two sides of the board, which is really cool!

With games of Gutter Bowl being a little more bargain bin than the big leagues, the options for inducements are a little different – you can buy “magic potions” from shady dealers, that have an alarmingly high chance of being harmful to the player that drinks them with things such as manticore venom immediately killing whoever drinks it. Equally though the flask might contain Warpstone Whiskey giving the player Jump Up and Leap – these lesser potions cost 50k and are pretty funny if risk to drink – you roll on a D8 chart to see which one you get!

If you opt for a superior potion you get rid of the chance of negative effects with a much better D8 table to roll on, but these cost 100k each.

There’s a couple more things you can buy such as Sawbones (Shady black market healers), Snack Stands (The chance to make rerolls not be lost when using on a roll of 6) or novice wizards (Extremely risky wizards that have a 1 in 3 chance of hitting the closest player rather than the target!) which gives you some fun things to use in your games.

If you are looking for some more teams then I have some good news and bad news. We get two new boxed teams released alongside this set, the Underworld Denizens and the Old World Alliance – but sadly these are not new sculpts but reboxed frames from their parent teams. It’s cool that we get these as a set you can pick up, but its a shame we have not had any brand new teams for a while – I’d love to see us get Khemri or Chaos Dwarfs for example

Both of these are fun options for both Gutter Bowl and Blood Bowl, and the variety in models makes them a nice painting project

In summary, Gutter Bowl is a really fun addition to Blood Bowl and gives fans the chance to play a very different type of game to the main line sport! I really fancy doing a mini Gutter Bowl League with any players that get too good perhaps getting drafted for a Blood Bowl team and leaving their Gutter Bowl teammates behind! At a cost of £35 I also think this is great value considering it contains the pitch and dugouts too.

Gutter Bowl (and the two new teams) is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 8th July

Games Workshop sent Sprues & Brews a free copy for review purposes.

Published by Matt Crowther

View all posts by Matt Crowther