This teaser trailer goes along with yesterday's announcement that SouthPeak is bringing Blood Bowl to retail next year, though I highly doubt the action in the PSP, PC, and Xbox 360 versions will be quite as entertaining as the video clip. After spending the better part of a decade fighting alongside elves of various shapes and colors in assorted MMO titles, it's sort of cathartic to see one get punched in the gut and stomped flat. Go orcs!

Blood Bowl is a game of real fantasy football, with races from the Warhammer universe taking on each other in brutal football action. The game is already available for digital download on the PC, but we've been waiting for word of the Xbox 360 and PSP release for quite some time. Now the waiting is over.

"We're thrilled to have a part in bringing a proper retail version of Blood Bowl to North American gamers on Windows PC, Xbox 360 and PSP." said Aubrey Norris, Manager of Human-Orc Relations at SouthPeak. "It's never easy to get all these races to agree on something – but if there's one thing they love its good competition with a lot of bloodshed!"

The PC and Xbox 360 version will be hitting store shelves next month, with the portable version dropping sometime this spring.

Of the more than 20 races in the Blood Bowl board game, Cyanide Studio only included 8 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.

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.

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 finalized. Simply follow the link below and successfully navigate the shiny new web page to sign up.

Blood Bowl [Official Website]

Or is that the other way around? Do the cheerleaders make the team, or do they simply look better when their side is winning? Either way, we can judge the qualities of the cheerleaders for the battle between the Wood Elves and the forces of Chaos objectively, seeing as we aren't sure which side is winning in this set of 10 new screens for Blood Bowl, the fantasy football game based on the classic board game from Games Workshop.

I'm probably going to have to go Chaos on this one. While the Wood Elves are sporting the ever-tasteful under-bottom revealing miniskirts, there's just something about a girl in a giant orange mohawk.

Update: The real answer, as it has been pointed out to us, is the Wood Elves, as the one on the left is a Wood Elven wardancer, who just looks rather chaotic. Thanks Abriael! We'll reactivate your commenting rights as soon as you stop making us feel silly on Friday afternoon.

Blood Bowl is due for release in Q2 2009 for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation Portable, and Nintendo DS.

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 customize 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.

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 realize that the actual game will look nothing like these rendered cinematics and go back to my seat in the bleachers to wait patiently.

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.

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 license, 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.

Many dawns were witnessed by my bloodshot eyes after a night of playing Cyanide's Mutant League Football for the Genesis with my best friend. I didn't know it at the time, but it was a game almost entirely ripped-off from the Games Workshop property Blood Bowl. Over the past few years, I've often wondered why Cyanide never deigned to release a sequel to Mutant League Football. I suppose the definition of intellectual theft can only be legalistically stretched so thin.

But good news for Cyanide and good news for me. They are now working on an official game based on Blood Bowl:

This all goes to show what a girl I really am: it takes toxic waste mutants in jetpacks ripping one another's heads off to get me interested in America's favorite sport. Florian Eckhardt

Cyanide Now Plays In Blood Bowl