I told a friend and fellow Blood Bowler that I may be too nice to play Blood Bowl.

Do I always feel bad when killing an opposing player? Yep.

Do I always feel bad causing a Serious Injury that has lasting effect? Yep.

Do I feel bad about fouling even when it makes good tactical sense? Kinda.

Do I feel bad about taking a large lead? Yep.

Do I feel bad about pushing a player into the crowd? Nope.

Did I feel rotten when I found out that you can’t use an apothecary on a player that’s been pushed into the crowd? Yep.

So why do I play? The short answer is because despite all those yeps I enjoy it. I love the outlandishness of it all. I laughed out loud when my troll ate the goblin it was supposed to be throwing. I laughed until I had tears in my eyes when my treeman, instead of throwing the fling into the open, horribly bungled the pass and hit the opposing player’s High Elf causing a Strained Groin injury. I love the ups and downs and the sideways and the silly violence. How can you not laugh when a player kills themselves on a GFI?

Does being nice mean I won’t foul? Nope. I will foul if it makes tactical sense to. When my opponent's Beast of Nurgle went down my happy violent band of flings surrounded him and pounced. I’ve no idea how they figured out where to kick the thing. After my Amazons were decimated by a Norse team I made sure the next time they played the Norse that once the Norse Blitzers went down that they stayed down. I still would’ve felt bad had any of the fouls resulted in death though.

I must mention that in one game in a fit of pique I did completely ignore the ball and gang foul an opposing player. I justified it by claiming that I had no real chance of stopping the opponent and that I was making sure that he didn’t stall or that at least the game would hurt him some. At that point I think I had one player that had been killed, one seriously injured and two or three KO’d.

Perhaps the Mr. Nice Guy thing is already wearing off.

I think it’s possible to enjoy Blood Bowl in the spirit it’s intended to be enjoyed in and still be a Mr. Nice Guy. I simply won’t (or at least try to resist) fouling just for the heck of it. I won’t cherrypick (blatantly). I will NEVER intentionally disconnect from a game that I’m losing or one where my best player dies a painful horrible death. I won’t call my opponent names and I will have fun even if I’m losing. I will play to enjoy the game and try to make sure that my opponent has fun too. It’s not about winning. It’s about playing the game and marveling at the amount of blood on the field at the end of the day.

Please forgive me though if I tend to apologize after killing your players. :-)

Part of the reason for this blog entry is so that in a year or so when I’ve become a complete bastard I can look back and laugh at how naive I once was.