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Blood bowl will dodge the 'only what is in the box' no longer.

GW has confirmed the new exciting change is you get to not use the models you have bought and painted. Which always excites me.

Seems 9 teams are affected, why they couldn't make the small booster sprues they do for kill team or similar with the requisite 2-4 players on will never be known. Instead teams are getting more skills and stat boosts to compensate for losing them. While more skills are good coming out of the gate and for replacing dead players, it does break the very good (I think) design template of minimal skills and development. Indeed the rookie mistake with designing new teams was this desire to load on skills to define teams.

Skaven - lose two gutter runners, get boosted blitzers (+1ma and strip ball)

Dark Elves - lose two blitzers, Runners gain Punt (kick the ball forward without causing turn over), Assassins gain Hit and Run which now works with Stab

Undead - lose two Ghouls, remaining ones gain regen (no idea if this affects necro), Zombies gain Eye Gouge (turns off guard)

Orcs - lose 2 blitzers and 2 black orcs

Humans - lose two blitzers and two catchers

Wood elves - lose two catchers
Elven Union - lose two catchers
The irony of a worse passing game for elves given the other changes isn’t lost on me

Nurgle - lose two pestigors

Khorne - lose 2 Khornigor

Ogres - arguably should have changed if this is the brave new world but I guess buffed ogres was too much even for GW

Other rules changes that have been claimed in leaks are

Orc
Lose animosity
Biguns gain mighty blow, thick skull, taunt
Blitzer gain break tackle
Thrower goes up to mv6
Lineman gain access to strength skills strength

Orc special rule cas are 3spps, td 2spp. Presumably team special rules are now all the rage.

Humans
Blitzers gain tackle
Catchers st3 pass on 4+

Dwarves
Lose ag access
Gain bribery and corruption 50k bribes 0-6
Lineman lose tackle, gain defensive lose access to strength skills

Nobility changes
Thrower 2+ pass added pro

Body guards -1 mv to 5 pass +1 to 5+

I'd agree on preferring players having less starting skills. As more starting skills on players can force a development path on them or else wasting a skill and team value.

The Orc Thrower and Human Catcher do seem like the obvious previously divisive postionals to boost to help the Orc and Human teams with these changes. Orcs look like the Troll and Throwers will be more popular but if that Strength access is being added to their Linemen, they should stay as a viable bash team. If Human Catchers do go to strength 3, they are going to be made in blodgers a lot but the drop from 5 strength access players to 3 is a big loss for the Humans.

It will be interesting to see if any changes to Human and Skaven positional changes carry through to the Old World Alliance and Underworld teams. Could be a nice buff for Old World Alliance. It's also possible the Underworld team loses the Snotlings.