Free-to-play Blood Bowl: Star Coach announced

If you like the team-management side of Blood Bowl but not the turn-based strategy of matches, and would rather games were free than costing money, then, er, hey! Cyanide is working on a free-to-play version of the Games Workshop tabletop game which focuses purely on management, aiming for release on PC, Mac and tablets some time from April to June.

Blood Bowl: Star Coach will have you building a team for the violent American football-ish sport, hiring and training players, and building playbooks, but not actually directing the matches. Instead, you simply send your team off into battle and the server resolves it all. You can watch a playback of the game, but not affect it at all once the kick-off whistle's blown. Curious!

Cyanide somehow neglected to mention what sort of monetary transactions will finance Star Coach. There's a hint in one screenshot that players can choose one race to play for free, but will then need to pay for others. Hopefully monetisation's limited to things like this.

Whatever shape it takes, though, free-to-play may prove more palatable than Cyanide's previous model for Blood Bowl. Cyanide released three full-price editions of its slightly wonky Blood Bowl game from 2009 to 2012, chiefly adding new teams and making a few tweaks with each. It's a shame Cyanide didn't consider free-to-play for a full Blood Bowl experience, really.

Manage 'em up