Guild Ball

**Guild Ball** is a tabletop medieval mob football game, set in a pseudo-historical fantasy world. Mat Hart and Richard Loxam developed the game, which was officially crowdfunded through the Kickstarter website on March 22, 2014. They licensed and published the game under their company name, Steamforged Games Ltd.

# Gameplay

Players form their team roster by choosing six characters from among the various guilds. These teams are represented by miniatures, with the character's statistics and abilities appearing on the cards that come packaged with them.

Gameplay takes place on a board or mat which is detailed to look like a football or soccer field, known as the pitch. Players take turns moving their team members and taking actions. Decisions are resolved by dice roll, using a number of 6-sided dice.

Compared to other tabletop miniatures games, Guild Ball has a relatively low buy-in price, particularly when coupled with the fact that Steamforged Games provides printable rules, paper game tokens, and character cards for free on their official website. Games take anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours, depending on the players' knowledge of the game and decision-making speed.

# Lore

The lore of the game takes place in a fantasy world, primarily focused on the Empire of the Free Cities. According to the game's Kickstarter page, the background for the game's story is thus:

> Mob football is a game generally played between neighbouring towns and villages on feast days (hence the popularity). The game was originally played in the middle of towns and villages where the objective was to take the ball to the opposing side of town. But to prevent the inevitable collateral damage it rapidly evolved into being played in the surrounding countryside, often in a special field set aside for the purpose. At its core, players on opposing teams, clash and struggle to control leather wrapped inflated pig's bladder and attempt to kick it into the opponent’s goal. Over the years, rudimentary leagues and tournaments have sprung up, there have even been some national level games between city states.
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> The Guilds have taken advantage of the huge popularity of the sport and have invested vast sums of money, creating professional teams and structured leagues. The public went crazy as the game was elevated to new heights of spectacle. Guild Ball was born amidst a blaze of interest and publicity and with it, a whole new business and revenue stream for the Guilds. Games are now played out in front of vast crowds of fans, whilst behind the scenes the results can mean fortunes are won or lost on the kick of a ball.
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Sherwin Matthews is the lead writer for Steamforged Games and has developed much of the official lore behind the Guild Ball game.

As seasons progress, new lore is revealed through entries in the seasonal rulebooks, posts on the official Steamforged Games blog, and podcasts. While the lore is not required to play the game, it can drastically change the meta of the game, as story events cause characters to change guilds, alter character statistics, or even kill off certain characters.

# Current state of the game

On August 10, 2020 Steamforged Games announced that they would no longer be selling or producing new products for Guild Ball, starting September 1, 2020.  In their announcement, they stated that season 5 was meant to be the last season of the Guild Ball story arc, however season 4 was the last season to be officially released for the game. Sherwin Matthews stated that he was still working on the season 5 story finale and that, when completed, it would be available on the Steamforged Games website. The free, printable resources for Guild Ball are still available for download from their website, as well.

# References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1248312770/guild-ball-a-tabletop-medieval-football-game
2. ↑ https://rowangroup.uk.com/steamforged-games-rowan-case-study/
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 https://web.archive.org/web/20200929232032/https://steamforged.com/sfg-news-blog/10-8-2020-announcing-the-end-of-guild-ball