Well, thanks to the Holiday madness, this post is going up about a week later than I originally planned. Life happens… at least it’s finally getting posted. So far we have looked at the new Elven Union team, all the new pitches, and the Team Card Packs. Now we’re going to take a look at the Inaugural Blood Bowl Almanac. The Almanac is a collection of Blood Bowl rules and information from Death Zone Season One and Two and White Dwarf articles, as well as a few other tidbits. the material may be familiar to anyone who has been keeping up with releases, but the Almanac sure does do a good job of pretty up the presentation.

This post is going to be a little different than most unboxings in that there won’t be many pictures. Unfortunately, there isn’t any new content in the Almanac, so there are only some features to show. Let’s start with the the cover of the Almanac.

The Almanac is a nice hardback book that reminds me of the old days of the 2nd edition Blood Bowl Companion and Star Players books. Is the Almanac likely to be as collectible in the future as those two fine volumes? Who knows, but it certainly is a well put together piece of printing.

The pages are printed on nice, thick, shiny paper. The Almanac has a nice silk book mark and has binding that is definitely a step up from books that come inside game boxes.

The biggest question for people is probably, “should I buy it?” Well, that really depends on whether you already have the Death Zone books or not. There isn’t a ton of info outside of those books, so if you’re only looking for the White Dwarf articles, then spending the $50 for the Almanac may be a little overboard. On the other hand, if you don’t already have the Death Zone books, picking up just the Almanac would be the wise move financially, as Death Zone Season One and Two are $25 and $32, respectively.

Another upside to the Almanac is that it includes corrected data from the Death Zone Season One mishap, where the wrong version of the book made it to the printers and we ended up with a brand new book with a number of errors in it. It also contains the alternate Weather tables from the Winter and Underground (Skaven & Dwarf) pitches, however due to printing lead times, the custom rules for the new Elven Union and Goblin pitches are not included in the Almanac. Oh well, there’s always next year’s Almanac.

If you’re a fan of some of the other, “non-official” teams for Blood Bowl, then you might also be happy to know that the “Teams of Legend” document that was previously only available via download from the official Blood Bowl website has been included in the Almanac as well. Games Workshop has been criticized by some for not making that document more widely available. Hoping those people will be satisfied with it’s inclusion in the Almanac.

I do have one small gripe with the Almanac. I really wish the information from the core rule book had been included as well. It’s not a huge deal, and I can understand why it isn’t, but it would have been nice to have one book with everything you need, and almost all of the extras that have been added, to play the game. Since it doesn’t include that info, the Human and Orc teams don’t get the same flashy treatment as the other “official teams.” They do get included in the team reference section in the back along with the others, but it feels a little weird to not see them listed in the front with the others.

Well, that’s about all I have to say about the Almanac. As I’ve said, it’s a well made volume containing material that has already been printed. It will have limited value if you already have the corresponding books and White Dwarf articles, but if not, it’s a cost effective way to get caught up on available rules outside of the core rule book.

As a bonus, like many of you, I was able to pick up a few extra cards for games this month.

The Hive Tremors card was a free bonus for pre-ordering the new Necromunda boxed set. The other two came packaged with the December issue of White Dwarf. The Naughty or Nice card is a new Special Play card for Blood Bowl, and the Healing Potion card is a Ploy Power Card for Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire. Now Jeff is actually our resident Shadespire player, but last weekend I brought an unplayed game in for trade at my FLGS, and left with my own copy of Shadespire. I played a few rounds with my brother-in-law this weekend, I have to say that I enjoyed the game. I’ll hopefully be playing more of it in the near future.

Abruptly switching topics… I have decided that it’s time to finally get some painting done. I haven’t completely settled on an official next project yet, but to help my get into the swing of things, I have decided to finally finish a couple of minis that have been sitting around half painted for a while now.

First on the painting table are two Blood Bowl minis. My rookie Ogre was started not long after it’s release earlier this year, while the 5th edition Human Thrower was started before the release of the Blood Bowl 2016 set. I figured that if I concentrate on these two minis, I should be able to finish them up relatively quickly. I still haven’t decided if I am going to use my Blood Bowl 2016 Human team or the 5th edition Human team when it’s time to paint the full team, but at the very least, it’s time to finish this mini. A new Under the Brush post will be coming soon for these minis, so stay tuned!