Review by: William Abner

In the summer of 2009, Focus Home and developer Cyanide released Blood Bowl, a PC conversion of the brilliant sports-strategy boardgame of the same name from Game Workshop; a slick mix of American rules football, rugby, and war, Blood Bowl is one of the very best games GW has ever produced. I have been an avid fan of the game for 20 years, and waited with great anticipation for the PC release, which turned out to be a decent effort, marred by horrendous artificial intelligence and frustratingly weak online tools despite getting most of the game rules effectively translated to the PC.

So here we are a little over a year later and Focus Home has released the shiny new Legendary Edition, which adds the rest of the Blood Bowl retinue including player favorites like the Undead, High Elves, and Norse and everyone’s favorite punching bag – the Halflings. The only race missing in action is the Chaos Dwarfs. The new edition also fixes some of the online matchmaking and commissioner league tools, yet fails to address the game’s core problem: the computer opponent still plays as dumb as a rotted stump.

The basic issue remains the same as it was in the base game – the AI simply doesn’t know how to play, particularly when it has possession of the ball. It knows one basic tactic: form a “cage” around the ball carrier, send a few players deep down the pitch for a potential pass, and then basically do nothing until you crush whoever has the ball. The AI is so bad that at times it will literally stand still with the ball for consecutive turns. It does this exact same thing whether it’s using dwarfs, elves, ogres, or undead.

Every team uses the same tactics, which includes risky “dodge rolls” which no moderately experienced human Blood Bowl coach would ever attempt. Dodging with an elf team isn’t too big of a deal, but when you see the AI trying to dodge with slow footed dwarfs – you know it simply doesn’t understand the rules to its own game. It doesn’t even comprehend that a game is played in two “eight turn” halves; it doesn’t recognize that there is one turn left in a game and it needs to score immediately or lose – it will continue doing what it’s doing as if it’s the opening move of a match.