Blood Bowl - Leagues and Tournaments

Leagues and Tournaments

League play is the foundation upon which Blood Bowl games are based. There are many kinds of league activity, but they all tie in to a general campaign where teams battle each other over a period of time, developing new abilities and suffering injuries or worse while attempting to earn the crown of league champion.

Tournaments are one-off events where large numbers of Blood Bowl teams gather to play against each other and try to become the tournament champion. This form of play differs from a recreational league. Games Workshop holds four major tournaments across the world each year. The Blood Bowl was held at Warhammer World from 2003 until 2010 at Games Workshop's HQ in Nottingham, England in the spring and attracted around 200 players to play in the two-day event. The Dungeonbowl is held in Germany, the Spike! Magazine Trophy is held in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada in early September, and the Chaos Cup is held in Chicago, Illinois, USA in late September. Numerous other events are held throughout the world at Games Workshop stores and events or independently. In January 2003, a website was opened for the purpose of helping people organize their own Blood Bowl tournaments, to promote Blood Bowl to the wargaming world, and to rank players' performance at tournaments. The organization took the name NAF, after the fictional rules body in the Blood Bowl history.

In October 2007, the NAF held a "World Cup" Tournament in Nottingham, England over three days, with teams coming from as far afield as the United States and Australia. 272 players attended, making it not only the largest Blood Bowl event ever held, but the largest Games Workshop related event in history. In the end, victory was awarded to a team from France, whilst a German coach won the individual coaching award.

In 2010, GW announced they were going to stop running the Blood Bowl tournament, but allowed the NAF to take over the running of the event, renamed as the NAF Championship.