I'm skipping over Blood Bowl because I know nothing about it. I'm thinking about this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_ballgame Do the lizardmen play ball? Do they have ball courts? Have they got game? Does all work and no play make Itza'chotl a dull skink? The great plan plays a lot into the lives of them but do they actually get some down time to relax and enjoy something?
personal canon was that skinks used to play something similar to the meso american ball game before the rest of the old world arived and introdused them to bloodbowl. They then let saurus and kroxigors join as they needed some muscle in there teams. years ago i had wrote rules for a 5 a side table top game based on the american ball game where each model would have just 3 stats for movement and passing/intercepting and shooting skill there was no tackleling as each time you model moved to the ball they would have to imidiately hit it somewhere. You would role based on your passing or shooting stat and there would be a angle guage that would determin where the ball went if you roled too low. the board didnt have a grid like blood bowl instead you measured distance like a wargame and the board had triangular zones that increased your odds of scoring if your model took a shot, and a diamond shaped central zone where you could only pass from. it was all just drwaings on bits of paper. I had plans to make a whole board and make 10 skinks with out weapons as the players but other projects that would actually lead to getting games in would always come first. thank you for making this thread and reminding me of this game idea. i'll follow up if i ever do anything with it.
Thanks for sharing that! It sounds super interesting tbh. I should probably read up on Bloodbowl at some point. I always assumed it was a side-thing that didn't really fit into any of the continuous Warhammer narrative at all. Adding more to the ideas, a separate competitive game for Saurus sounds like a cool idea too. Teams being made up of representatives from different cohorts or regiments in the city. Maybe some grand winners of each cities own leagues going up against each other like the UEFA Champions league.
yeah you could definitely have some fun coming up with some team colours for the different temple cities of lustria. A saurus verion could be cool maybe something a little more like dodge ball so as to utalise there strength? could lead to another version with skinks and saurus where the skinks are trying to score points through the hoopes and the saurus whack the ball at the skinks on the opposing team to try and knock them out for a turn. i'm fairly sure that the mesoamerican ball game was a none contact sport so wouldnt have the same contact knock outs as bloodbowl so having saurus tail slap the ball at the opposing skinks to try and knock them out for a turn might add the voilence table top wargamers gamers crave.
Just throwing another idea out there- in the original ball game, I think players had to hit the ball with their hips. Maybe the more saurian take is that the ball has to be tail slapped. Helps encourage the kind of strong and accurate tails that can crush a mans ribcage in war