FUMBBL :: Online Blood Bowl League

How many blocks must a dancer take
Before she falls on her face?
How many times must a lineman dodge,
Before he screens off the space?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take 'till coach knows,
that too many players are based?
The answer, my friend, is rollin' lots of pows
The answer is rollin' lots of pows

So goes the original version of the Bob Dylan classic Blowin' In The Wind, according to one time friend and mentor Joan Baez. "It was so infuriating, I had gone unbeaten for three years with my woodies and I was top of the NAF rankings. Then this vagabond turns up and starts trouncing everyone” Baez referring to Dylan bursting onto the blossoming New York blood bowl scene in the early 60's. Many folk singers took up the game during this period, but with a strict ethical code that shunned anyone that didn't play Elves.

“Bobby just came in a blew us all way, he played H'Elves in a way that nobody had ever played them before. He did these strange moves that we all use now, but back then no one had heard of diagonal blocking, or intentional space cadetting. I just got so mad in that quarter final, that I flipped the table, and screamed ‘How am I supposed to beat you?!!’. Bobby went to ground for a couple of days and then turned up with this song, I think I’m the friend he mentions'.

It was Bob’s manager at the time, Albert Grossman, who convinced Dylan to change the words to make the song more commercially viable. Grossman, a well known blood bowl ‘shark’, would often be seen offering new coaches ‘training games’ with wildly unfair matchups. “Albert was awful”, Baez recalls. "He’d like to think he was good at the game because his win rate was 86% or something, but he wasn’t, he’d just find new coaches and Jump on them.’

In 1965 Dylan would go on to shock the blood bowl world when he turned up to the Newport Folk Bowl playing Dwarves with 'at least' 6 mighty blow. The casualty count was off the scale, 28 in 5 games including 6 fatalities. Dylan said about peoples reaction to that switch. "They certainly booed, I'll tell you that. You could hear it all over the place...they must be pretty rich, to be able to go someplace and boo." Baez added "Back then you played elves or 'flings, and no one played 'flings. I was disgusted with him, how could he betray us like that? Everything we stood for... the whole Elf movement... shattered with a one die block.' Baez has softened her view on Dylan slightly over the years. "I suppose him switching like that kicked the door open for people to play any team they wanted, I only play Nurgle now, and I have him to thank for that." Before adding, "I still don't speak to him though, the Dwarf loving shitbag.”

What happed to Dylans' blood bowl after this period is less well known. Some think around 1966 that he introduced the game to the Beatles, a theory which which could explain Ringo, and also the breakup of the band. Lennon unable to deal with Macartney’s ‘smug face’ whenever they played. Some believe he kicked the habit in the late 70’s and became a born again Christian, claiming, 'God was the only thing strong enough to break the hold it had on me.' In 2016 He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Blood bowl but never turned up to the ceremony.

Dylanologists maintain that there is strong evidence for number of later Dylan classics being about the game. The first take of 'Blind Willy McTell' is often cited, where Dylan sings.

“Now Nuffle is in his heaven, and we all want what’s his,
but ones and skulls and failed re rolls seem to be all that there is,
I’m gazin’ out the window of the St James Hotel,
and I know no one can play the game like Blind Willy McTell"

"If it's true I don't know what it means." mused Baez, "Is he saying that you can play the game with a sort of 6th sense? Like you don't need to see the board to play? C'mon man that's whacked. Anyhow these days I just stick to his original advice. I just roll lots of pows, I find that works best of all."

If you have been affected by any of the issues in this true story you can contact the 145 Learning league where we will explain;

what diagonal blocking & intentional space cadetting are
where we will try to protect you from sharks
where you will be free to play any team you want to,
where we can help you to play the game with a sixth sense

but we can't guarantee yet that we can teach you how to roll pows that's proving more difficult .

Join us at the 145 discord

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