Players, we're back, and hotter than ever!

It's Prerelease weekend for Magic: The Gathering's core set, M19, and we're having a great time! It's not too late to preorder yourself a box full of dragons (may vary!), or a planeswalker deck. Don't forget, while stocks last you get a free Nexus of Fate with every booster box bought! 

Speaking of awesome prereleases, the Final Fantasy trading card game gets its latest addition this month! OPUS VI is here at last. We have a prerelease event this weekend, and we'd love to see you there. 

You might have noticed some stuff about football going around lately. Certain catchy songs being played, or just bellowed in the street. Well players, I'm here to tell you that Blood Bowl is coming home! The Naggaroth Nightmares are the latest team to take to the pitch in the game of Fantasy Football, and there's no question they're the absolute best team ever. One of the spikiest, anyway, and that counts for a lot in my book. 

So much for the Old World. In the Age of Sigmar, the battle for the silent city of Shadespire is heating up again with a whole lot of new cards! The Leaders pack features a ton of ploys, upgrades and objectives based around playing to your Leader's strengths or bolstering their weaknesses. 

While Shadespire is being shaken up, why stop with cards? At long last we have new tiles in the form of the Shattered City pack, featuring lethal terrain to avoid, or use to your own ends! 

Whatever you're playing this summer, enjoy, remember to get some sun, and remember our fridge is always well stocked! See you soon, players. 

Welcome to another feast of new gaming things, players! I hope you're well. I've been thinking about you. 

There's plenty to look at today: we've got pre-, mid- and post-apocalyptic goodies, and some that aren't anything to do with the end of the world at all! Let's get into it.

The unstoppable hype train that is Games Workshop pulls into town again, carrying even more Idoneth Deepkin for Age of Sigmar. The mysterious deep-aelves bring their Isharann Agents to battle: the Soulrender, Soulscryer and Tidecaster. Command the tides of magic and steal your enemies' souls with the power of the abyss! 

Not to be outdone by the Mortal Realms, the grim darkness of the far future gets its own new addition as the Van Saars stride into the turf wars of Necromunda. Accompanying them is Gang War III, with all you need to take your gang wars to the next level (figuratively of course - nobody escapse the Underhive!) with expanded campaign rules, scenery tutorials and more.

From one industrially-ruined planet to another now, as we approach Earth, in a hellish alternate 2018. The Martian corporations run everything, Earth is a ghetto, and the mob is kept entertained by the most extreme and violent of gasoline-powered blood sports.

Players, GASLANDS is here! Osprey Games' most famous work, GASLANDS is a tabletop racing game filled with outrageous mods, burning rubber and utter carnage. All you need is the rulebook, a selection of toy cars and a twisted imagination! Keep an eye out for our Gaslands organised play series, coming soon!

In another, slightly more pleasant world, Blood Bowl gets a new team and a new publication. In the first issue of Spike! journal you'll find tons of advice on coaching your Chaos Chosen to victory on the pitch, star player profiles, a misty-eyed career retrospective on Lord Borak the Despoiler, and even rules for how to proceed if one of your players is turned into a frog! Magical moments indeed...

The aforementioned Chaos Chosen team are also out this week. The Doom Lords, a motley collection of Chaos Blockers and Beastmen, are sure to carve themselves a niche in your local league... One way or another... 

Now let me hear those engines revving, players, and we'll see each other very soon!

Bob: "Welcome sports fans, to our special piece on the little known Eirie Downs League, coming to you live from the Ostermark Province of the Empire. Stuck next to both Kislev and Sylvania, a dreary land of fog and rain on the best of days...why would anyone want to live here?"

Jim: "Well Bob, I asked the same thing when the sponsors, JustSwords, dragged us all the way here -  but all that makes for some great football and some diverse teams! One local story is that of Teebald Guymar, former pride of Reikland University and College Football. After a unfortunate incident involving a Halfling and minor Princess who's father had some pull with the league, he ended up banished to this backwater. We'll be following his progress with interest!

Our special correspondent, Richard Von Macanov, will be introducing the teams and following the league for us all whilst the Colleges of Magic broadcast the games to the civilized world, so stay tuned folks!"

In this blog series I will be reporting on our first Blood Bowl league. The league will be held in JustPlay throughout Winter 2016/2017, and is expected to run for around 8-12 weeks depending on numbers and Christmas/New Year.

I need to consume the new rule book and Death Zone to check for any major changes but we expect to run a standard league; each entrant should take on every opposing team twice, with a schedule we'll publish beforehand and a few weeks to play the currently scheduled block of games (to make sure everyone has ample time and opportunity to get their games in). At the end, there will be a Grand Finals to finish it all off; stay tuned to this blog series for more details on this!

So get your new copy of Blood Bowl, get painting, dust of your old teams and get involved! The league is COMPLETELY FREE to join so get ready and get set!

In addition, Richard Von Macanov is looking for teams to highlight for his league coverage, as he tries make it big and bag a major coverage job! So if you want to get involved, be thinking about your team, its history, and the story you can tell as your players develop. If they're from the Eirie Downs area check out the above map for ideas, or come up with your own! We'll be running league coverage articles right here on the blog so this is your chance to get featured!

If you haven't preordered your copy of Blood Bowl yet (and Death Zone, or the Skavenblight Scramblers), you can find it here at a special discounted pre-order price of just £55!

Don't forget to sign into the Blood Bowl event on Facebook!

Thanks sports fans!

Richard Von Macanov 

“Welcome sports fans to the new season of everyone’s favorite sport, Blood Bowl! It's back bigger and better than ever and we are looking forward to meeting all of the new coaches can vying to lead their team to victory!”

To celebrate the launch of Blood Bowl, we will be holding a number of events over the launch period, starting with us staying open through Thursday night until 1am Friday morning on the 25th so that you can grab your game and teams ready for the weekend!

Blood Bowl is just £55 at JustPlay if you preorder, or £58.50 on launch weekend - 10% off Games Workshop prices (available for preorder on our website on 12th November!)

In addition, we'll be running Blood Bowl intros all night on Thursday night with our classic Blood Bowl sets so you can learn to play whilst you wait to pick up your toys!

All events over the weekend will award raffle tickets in varying amounts for taking part, performing well and more, as well as simply for picking up your copy of Blood Bowl at JustPlay. Then, on Saturday evening we will hold the raffle for £25 worth of store credit!

Friday (Store Opens 12pm)

• Dungeon Bowl 2016

Saturday (Special early opening at 9am!)

• Dungeon Bowl continues - the same rules as Friday!
• Free Play Blood Bowl all day; bring your team, grab one of our pitches and score some goals (or some heads!)
• Display Your Colours - Painting Contest

(Bring your own paints and brushes!)

Sunday (Doors open 10.30am)

• The Victory Doughnut Autumn Cup

Cheers, and we look forward to seeing you for some Blood Bowl!
Jim, Bob and Ritchie