Just a fast guide for getting started. Players often think about models and tactics and rules about playing, but the setup steps can be easily mixed up sometimes.
There’s an even quicker tldr list at the bottom below. 😉
If you are playing on a surface that don’t have the typical Guild Ball lines and markings have a look here as well.
- When you have the play area managed, place some terrain on the pitch. There are some rules regarding this, but for a quickstart just place a few terrain pieces and get going. If you don’t have any thematic terrain you can use any handful of small objects, or skip this step.
- Deal the Gameplan Cards. Major guilds get 7 and minor guilds get 8, then discard 2 each and keep the rest. Don’t play gameplans for turn one, the first is played on turn two.
If you’re playing without these cards, just skip this step. - Decide “who goes first” by determine who is kicking and who is recieving. The kicker starts by kicking the ball to the opponents half of the pitch, so in general terms you can say that the reciever is the player who starts with the ball.
- If you are playing with drafting your models, this is when you do that. First pick Captains and Mascots, then alternate picking one squaddie from your respective guilds each until both have teams of 6 models.
If you both have decided on models beforehand, just skip this step. - Kicking player selects table edge (only relevant if you are playing with terrain) and the recieving player takes this opposite side.
- Kicking player deploys his/her models completely within the deployment zone (behind the deployment line) on his/her side of the pitch. Then the recieving player deploys his/her models the same way on the other side.
- Kicking player gives the ball to one model, then makes a jog, and kicks the ball across the halfway line.
- Recieving player allocates influence to all his/her models.
Then the kicking player does the same. - Recieving player goes first, and now the game is ON. 😀
TL;DR
- Terrain on pitch
- Gameplan cards
- Roll for kicking/receiving
- Captains and Mascots
- Squaddies
- Table edge (Pick side)
- Deploy Kicking
- Deploy Receiving
- Kick Off
- Receiving influence
- Kicking influence
- First activation begins
