The Blood Bowl world lit up tonight with what's supposedly images from the BB2020 ruleset. Given that a lot of people will probably have seen these, and have questions as to how this affects the site, I figured I might as well write something here. Here's a quick rundown of my thoughts at this time (which can change over time as more information is made available to me):

First off, are the images real?
Naturally, I can't know for sure. However, the quality of the images and the truly amazing artwork on display makes me very confident that these are indeed real. We've been shown a hard cover 130+ page version of the book in three languages (English, German and French). This, alone, makes me excited as I've been wanting a "proper" rulebook for years. In addition to my belief that they're real comes the fact that I believe these are also final. There is no reason for GW to push a publication to a fully printed book if it's not completed. They have decades of experience printing books of this exact type (AoS Battletomes, 40k Codices, more recently Adeptus Titanicus rule books and more). They know the process and would be sticking to digital form until they're done. I truly believe these images are representative of what is going to be shipped.

Second, what do I think are the big changes in what's been shown?
There are three things that stand out to me:

1. Passing changes.
Big change in how passing works with a new, dedicated, stat for it. This has the potential to change the way the game is played, and will certainly affect certain rosters more than others. Gutter runners, as an example that was shown in the images, are equivalent to agility 3 for passing purposes. Skaven Throwers, on the other hand, get the equivalent of agility 4 for passing. There are also more changes here: Interception after the accuracy test, pass block seems to allow arbitrary movement rather than forcing the player to move towards "interfere" range, "deflect" and "intercept" are referenced to interfere the pass and more pass outcomes to name a few. We'll see how it plays out in reality, but I have a feeling the threat of passing plays can result in "opening up" the game a bit and coaches needing to defend more deeply.

2. Skills and levels.
This is potentially huge. We didn't see the full rules for this, but there's a bunch of stuff hinting at a completely different way of leveling up your players. "Normal" and "Double" skill rolls are named "Primary" and "Secondary" and appear to be "purchased" with "Unspent SPP" rather than having fixed SPP thresholds for skillups. There is also references to "random" and "chosen" skills at different TV "costs". Notably, +ST is listed as 80k, which will make it less of an automatic choice for players. Could we be getting a salary cap system to prevent monster players?

3. Seasons version 2.
Nothing concrete shown in this set of images. However, there are hints of some kind of season system. The team roster sheet is called a "Team Draft List" and there are references to "Temporary Retirements", implying that players can be returned to the teams somehow. With this, the injury table is also somewhat changed with less deaths. Having less attrition on the pitch means there needs to be something to prevent teams from ballooning to endless TV. While Expensive mistakes is still there, I believe we'll see an updated seasons redrafting system and is potentially a huge change in the meta of the game.

Other changes
While I won't go through every little change I've seen while looking at these images, my overall impression is that the rules have been cleaned up (for example, an agility 4 gutter runner is now shown as agility 2+; skipping the need to look up what agility 4 means) without "dumbing down" the game. In fact, there are hints of more complexity (passing stat, skills having "levels" such as 3+ loner or 4+ loner, etc). One change that I will reserve my judgement on is the random skill TV "discount" which seems strange to me (leading to two identical teams having different TVs at the extreme).

Impact on FUMBBL
Now, the question a lot of you probably have by now is "How will FUMBBL handle these changes?". I'm personally not too worried about these changes. The things I've seen so far is certainly a lot of work on my end, but it's all absolutely doable.

My (admittedly very early) rough order of things is as follows, with later milestones more uncertain because of lack of information at this point:
Milestone 1:
* Get the pass statistic implemented
* Modify agility and armour to the new format (2+ instead of 4 as in the example above)
* Update rosters as appropriate

Milestone 2:
* New skills
* General rules changes, such as the kickoff event table

Milestone 3:
* New skill and level-up system
* "Re-drafting"

At some point along the line, I will need to consider how these changes affect existing teams and how they interact with the divisional structure of the site. Depending on how "seasons version 2" work, it could be that the current set of teams are mostly incompatible with the new system and there would be the need to significantly "convert" these teams to fit the new structure. This is of course highly dependant on how the SPP system and the skill levels will function. I am truly hoping there will be a reasonable way to convert existing teams into this new format.

Overall thoughts
To me, the most important thing to me is that these rules aren't fundamentally changing the game. The game on the pitch is mostly going to be the same, but you may have some other plays available to you (or to defend against). The meta-game will certainly change which means some of you will see your favourite teams be relatively weaker while others will have their teams be relatively stronger. This is very natural to games of this nature and shouldn't be too surprising to anyone.

The complete set of rules will also have a full list of "official" rosters with 22 pages allocated in the rulebook for this. Assuming we'll get two new races, imperial humans (certainly not bretonnians) and some kind of orc variant seems probable, there is a strong possibility that some races are going to be removed. This becomes complicated for the site, as you may imagine, and I will consider this in more detail as we get more information about the new rules. I'd love to be able to say I had connections within Games Workshop that could send me a "review-copy" of the rules but unfortunately that's not the case.

From what I've seen so far, I'm very positive about these changes as a whole and I'm very happy GW puts time and effort into a new release like this. The overall polish of the rulebook makes it feel like the game has "grown up" to a point where it deserves a proper high-quality rulebook for the first time. There are certainly going to be things with the new ruleset that are broken or that certain people get unhappy about; that's inevitable with any kind of change. To me, however, this is super exciting and I'm very much looking forward to my copy, which I will certainly pre-order as soon as it becomes an option.

Hopefully that will happen soon; I can't wait!