Of the more than 20 races in the Blood Bowl board game, Cyanide Studio only included eight in the initial PC release, and there were some grievous oversights. Where are the Dark Elves? That’s a question that will be answered next month, as the pointy-eared bastards arrive as part of a free update to the game. Not only will the team, which combines the trademark elven agility with sheer brutality, be available as a free download, some stores will be getting a special Blood Bowl Dark Elves Edition that comes with their evil packed right in. From the official description:

“Dark Elves combine Elven agility with a cruel brutality. They are perfectly at ease playing the ball or crushing skulls with their callous fists. Furthermore, their Witch Elves excel in that field, as long as they don’t get caught up in the euphoria of battle! Dark Elves are masters of deception and can also call upon deadly Assassins to instill fear (and the cold blade of a dagger!) in their adversaries’ heart.”

I don’t know how the game survived without the Dark Elves in the first place. Not sure how the other teams will survive once they’re included.

Visit the official Blood Bowl website for more pics and info on the Dark Elf team.

Yes, that’s right, we’re now publishing reader reviews here on Kotaku. This is your chance to deliver sensible game purchasing advice to the rest of the Kotaku community.

And thanks to the very kind chaps at Madman Entertainment, purveyor of all kinds of cool, indie and esoteric film, the best reader review we publish each month will win a prize pack containing ten of the latest Madman DVD releases.

This review was submitted by Mitch Alexander. If you’ve played Blood Bowl, or just want to ask Mitch more about it, leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Blood Bowl (PC)

Games Workshop’s tabletop miniatures game of ultra-violent fantasy football goes 3D on PC.

Loved

Turn-Based Mode: Blood Bowl’s turn-based mode is based on the latest rule-set and despite a few notable omissions, is a faithful recreation of the tabletop game. Veterans should be able to jump right in and feel at home though newcomers will probably be left scratching their heads over Dodge Rolls and Block Dice.

Multi-Player: While finding and connecting to an open game in the Public Leagues is a chore, once you do actually manage to connect to a game, multi-player is an absolute blast. The Hot Seat mode, allowing two players to battle it out on one PC is a welcome addition.

Look & Feel: While Blood Bowl isn’t going to win awards for graphics, Cyanide have done a good job bringing Games Workshop to life. The in-game models are all based directly on the existing Games Workshop miniatures and are immediately recognisable to players of the tabletop game.

Hated

Real-Time Mode: Real-time mode is clunky and too chaotic to be enjoyable. It feels rushed and tacked-on. It adds very little to the game on its own merits and will be of little interest to tabletop Blood Bowl players anyway.

Lack of Polish: The unintuitive and buggy UI, terrible load times, predictable AI and repetitive commentary detract from the experience. Tabletop favourite races like Dark Elves and Undead are noticeably absent.

Customisation: Half the fun of Games Workshop’s board games is personalising your team and/or army. Without mods, customisation options in Blood Bowl are limited to basic colour changes and emblem selection; a real missed opportunity.

Fans of the board game will love this but the bugs, lack of polish and learning curve make it difficult to recommend Blood Bowl to the uninitiated.

Reviewed by: Mitch Alexander

You can have your Reader Review published on Kotaku. Send your review to us at the usual address. Make sure it’s written in the same format as above and in under 300 words – yes, we’ve upped the word limit. We’ll publish the best ones we get and the best of the month will win a Madman DVD prize pack.

The PC version of Cyanide Studios’ adaptation of classic Games Workshop board game Blood Bowl is less than a week away, and all eight fantasy football teams are raring to go.

After a bit of legal wrangling over Cyanide’s last fantasy football release, Chaos League, the developer and Games Workshop settled their differences, and Blood Bowl here is the result of their newfound friendship. The game features eight teams of fantasy football players – humans, orcs, dwarves, lizardmen, skaven, goblins, chaos, and wood elves – each bringing their own particular style and special moves to the field, either in real-time mode or the turn-based strategy mode, the latter of which emulates actual board game play.

They’re now accepting pre-orders for the game in advance to its June 26th release, so if you are so inclined, head over to the official website for more info.

Cyanide Studios’ video game version of the classic tabletop fantasy football game Blood Bowl has a brand new website chock full of game information, along with a sign-up page for the multiplayer PC beta test.

Of course when I say fantasy football, I am talking real fantasy football based in the Warhammer universe, with dwarves, orcs, lizardmen, and elves all fighting for control of the football battlefield. The official website for the game has just launched, filed with information on the playable races, videos, and screenshots like the one above, showing off the amazing amount of detail going into the game’s arenas.

With the launch of the website comes the launch of multiplayer beta sign-ups. The beta is kicking off soon, giving players a chance to take control of human and orc teams, giving the code a good thrashing before it’s finalised. Simply follow the link below and successfully navigate the shiny new web page to sign up.

Blood Bowl [Official Website]

Enough with the teasing! Cyanide and Games Workshop are done showing off individual teams and ready to show off Blood Bowl in all its fury and splendour in this official trailer.

Rounding out a week filled with Blood Bowl team teases, Cyanide finally releases the full trailer for their video game adaptation of the classic Games Workshop fantasy football strategy board game Blood Bowl, and it looks simply glorious. Being able to customise your team and then play through an entire season either in the traditional turn-based strategy mode or in real time really elevates Blood Bowl from niche board game to something everyone can play.

I’d say I have incredibly high hopes for this game, but I don’t want to jinx it, so I’ll just toss out a “meh” to confuse the fates a little bit.

The Blood Bowl battle continues, as Cyanide brings us yet another video for the fantasy football board game adaptation, this time featuring the reptillian Lizardmen and the ratty Skaven.

Rats and lizards, living together, playing football. The giant, tough-as-nails Lizardmen might have the strength advantage, but no one can out-manuever the wily Skaven. Each new trailer makes me a little more excited about this adaptation of the Games Workshop board game classic for the Nintendo DS, PSP, and Xbox 360, but then I realise that the actual game will look nothing like these rendered cinematics and go back to my seat in the bleachers to wait patiently.

Following up yesterday’s clip of the Goblin team in action, today we get to see the forces of humanity square off against the legions of Chaos in Cyanide’s Blood Bowl.

Blood Bowl is the second adaptation of the classic Games Workshop fantasy football board game, pitting the creatures of myth and legend against each other on the gridiron battlefield. Today’s clip shows the forces of Chaos taking on humanity, and despite my own particular species, I’m not all that sure who I am rooting for. All I know is that when you combine football with magic and explosives, everybody wins.

The second video game adaptation of Game’s Workshop classic fantasy football board game Blood Bowl is coming soon, and developer Cyanide slowly introduces us to the game’s teams, starting with the Goblins.

When I say fantasy football, I don’t mean drafting real players to your dream team with the guys at the office. I mean dwarves versus goblins in a bloody fight to the finish. As you can see, the goblins are the kind of team that cares only about winning, no matter how many lives it takes to get the touchdown. My kind of team.

Blood Bowl is coming next quarter for the Nintendo DS, PSP, Xbox Live Arcade, and PC.

This is how you skirt the NFL licence, folks. Ogres, orcs, dwarves and humans settling their differences on the gridiron, an emphasis on violence, and cheerleaders that look Ren Faire appropriate. Blood Bowl may represent most of what I forcibly reject in my games — medieval fantasy, a turn-based dice game foundation, football — but if this teaser trailer is anything to go by, I may be picking up my first football game since NFL 2K1.