Secret weapons are an added element of madness to the already mad game of BB. They’re fun while they are on the pitch and add a high variance but potentially powerful option to your team.
For most teams, secret weapons are carried by star players, so aren’t rostered members of the team and only become available as an option when you are down team value in a match up.
The exceptions are Goblins, Snotlings and, weirdly, Dwarfs, who can roster specific positional players in their team with weapons.
Below, we will talk about how to play with and against these players.
The big thing about secret weapons it that the ref will send them off at the end of the drive. You can argue the call on these decisions and use bribes, so often when considering a weapon, you should aim to take a bribe and/or biased ref if you can.
Playing against a weapon, one option that is always available is to score quickly and force the Bribe/Argue rolls. A secret weapon can’t hurt you if it has been sent off. But scoring early might be playing into your opponent’s hands…
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Chainsaws
Chainsaws are devastating* block, blitz, or fouling weapons. *Sometimes.
When you use a Chainsaw for block or blitz you roll an armour roll with +3 modifier, if you break AV, the target goes down, and you roll for injury. This makes Chainsaws perfect for cutting down elusive Block + Dodge players where you would otherwise be “Pow-fishing” or for having a shot at S5+ pieces when you lack strength in your team and can’t muster enough assists. There’s something special about chopping down a Mummy or Wardancer using a Goblin with a saw.
Alternatively, you can apply that same +3 to a foul. With just a couple of friends, the saw-foul can be a good way to guarantee an armour break in a way that doesn’t give up as much field position as a big gang-foul might need.
Those two options both sound super powerful and that’s why there’s a caveat…
In both cases, before you roll, you must check for a kickback (2+ on a D6). On a 1 (rerollable, although Star Player saws may also need to pass Loner rolls), the user gets Knocked Down and that juicy +3 is added to their armour roll. This causes a Turnover. The 1/6 Turnover risk is important to plan into your turn ordering, and often it’s wise to reserve the saw for a late-turn action if you aren’t willing to put a RR in.
So, to make informed decisions we need to know what the risk vs payoff odds are. Let’s have a quick look at Saw odds for different targets wrapping the 2+ and AV break together.
| Target AV | Saw success (2+ & AV break) |
| 8+ | 69% |
| 9+ | 60% |
| 10+ | 49% |
| 11+ | 35% |
Cutting down a tree about 1/3 goes isn’t too bad. Although, why the Tree is letting you have a second shot after failing the first is a whole different question! (Seriously though, you might try a saw hit on the LOS and but be set up to hit with a Troll if the saw fails).
Usually, saws are best used on offence to get ahead in numbers early in a drive. However, remember that the numbers in the table above are to knockdown + armour break… the saw is a viable sacking tool to get the ball on the floor, it’s just a bonus that you’ve cut the player’s head off!
When facing a Chainsaw, make it a high priority hit target. Effective Chainsaws can cut (literally) through your team if left unmolested.
When you Knock Down the saw piece you get the +3 bonus on their armour roll, meaning it is usually at least a stun (83% to AV break on a Goblin saw), which gives you some respite at very least. This also means Saws can be quite a good source for gaining some Star Player Points for team progression.
In terms of levelling up the saw piece, there aren’t too many skills where the cost to your Team Value (TV) is worth the benefit to your chance of winning. Saw attacks don’t earn SPP anyway, so you aren’t likely to level them up very quickly.
The Goblin saws only have access to Devious skill tree. Quick Foul might be an option to get them back safe after a foul, but mostly your fouling piece should be your Ooligan. The one skill you really want (Dodge) is 50k, and even “nice-to-have” skills like Side Step or Hit-and-Run are 40k… the same cost as the the base player. The new skill Saboteur, discussed below, is perhaps interesting if you do level up the saw, but I’m not convinced.
Bombardiers
Bombardiers hurl bombs exactly like making a pass, except their payload can splatter your opponent’s pieces caught in the blast. Bombardiers can be pretty awesome, and can be game-winning, but can also blow up your own team! Classic.
A successful bomb toss can be used to break open a cage and knockdown the ball carrier, giving you the opportunity to dive in and scoop up the loose ball. For this reason, usually a Bomber is best used on defensive drives.
An important point to appreciate with bombers is that you can’t move or stand up before your throw. This immediately tells you some tactical considerations; you need to think ahead about where your opponent will be next turn. You will want to tuck your Bombardier into a protected pocket, often near the middle of the field, ready for the perfect moment. This pocket will also serve to control your opponent; they won’t want to get too close.
Just like Chainsaws, throwing a bomb is not risk free. The bomb throw follows the same rules as passing although you are limited to quick and short passes (range 6). Rolling a 1 on the pass fumbles the bomb back onto the thrower (turnover + blows them up), while an inaccurate throw scatters three times in D8 directions. This isn’t usually terrible as it is still about 80% to land within 2 squares of the target, and chucking into a crowd of opponents means you are likely to hit someone! However, if the bomb knocks over a teammate then it is a turnover – as per the NAF Recommendations and Clarifications for BB2025 – The NAF
Foes can also catch or intercept your bomb and lob it right back, so if throwing toward a player with decent Agility and Passing stats, it can be a good idea to aim at the square in front of your true target so they can’t catch it.
Note that some players don’t even have hands (No Ball skill); chucking a bomb directly at a Wraith, for example, can be particularly effective… “I’ve just blown a hole in your bed-sheet!”
Countering a Bombardier is first about range and then about pressure. Keep your important pieces and ball carrier out of reach until you have cleared away guarding players so you can blitz the Bomber. If you can’t knock them down but must get the ball beyond them and downfield, then aim to put TZs onto the little terror, each TZ chips away at his pass roll, shifting the odds of his bomb throws from potential game-winning explosives into more likely to hurt himself. He’ll still chuck them, of course, otherwise what’s the point in playing Goblins / Snotlings?!
Levelling up a Bomber in league play is all about making them better at bombing. Goblin Bomma’s and Snotling Fungus Flingas both have a pretty poor base pass stat of 4+, so Accurate and Pass are the two obvious options. But which is best?
The consideration I would have here is that; fumbles are bad, inaccurate passes could be bad. So, I’d rather optimise to not fumble.
If we assume that most bomb throws will be at a little bit of range and will attract a -1 modifier, a fumble happens on a 1 or 2. Accurate will bring that down to only a 1, whereas Pass means you will have a built in reroll for 1s and 2s. Even if you do have Pass, you are unlikely to want to reroll inaccurate passes very often, owing to the fumble risk.
At this point you should self-reflect a little and consider how you play, what your RR burn rate is and how likely you would be willing to put one into a bomb toss.
If you are conservative in your playstyle* go with Pass, if Bombs are your route to glory go Accurate first.
*I know, I know, Goblin and Snotling coaches can’t usually afford to be conservative!
Ball and Chain
Ball and chain seems like pure chaos, but when you get used to using them they become… well actually they stay chaotic but you can play into that chaos.
All the weapons are fun. But a Strength 7 Secret Weapon that moves semi-randomly, shoving or smashing everything it hits with, usually, a three-dice block, or even getting a free armour roll against already downed players is pretty amazing. Of course, the moves aren’t in full control, so are potentially frustrating, but Fanatics can be potentially devastatingly effective.
Some strategic considerations.
B&C are great at cage-breaking. It is the only way in the game that you can effectively move and hit multiple times in one turn. Even though the movement is imprecise, taking out one or more cage corners or screening pieces can open up a route to the ball carrier, and you might even get the carrier down too if you are lucky.
On offence, a different use for B&C is as your own cage corner, where its S7 bulk means that specific corner isn’t usually the optimal blitz target. In this role, you don’t have to move it on any specific turn. However, as they are likely to be rolling 3D blocks they are often one of your safest first actions, so you could choose to use it first, work out where it ends up and then reposition the rest of your cage to where the whirling dervish can contribute.
I probably wouldn’t use him in that role on all turns of the drive, but once stabilised and struggling to push forward in the middle turns it can be effective.
One other important point. Friendly fire from a B&C hitting a Goblin isn’t usually all that bad. A 3D hit into a Dodge piece is 87% to get a Push or Defender Stumbles, 98% with RR. This means there are situations where you can use the B&C to advance your players downfield into scoring range, or so that they are closer to opposing ball carriers, or just into a better spot. It’s a somewhat edge-case use but can be a difference maker on the rare occasion it comes up.
The big downside of B&C is that the first time it’s knocked down or otherwise hits the deck, it is automatically KO’d. This means you shouldn’t let it stray off alone, especially early in the drive. Keep it backed up by a teammate or two to avoid it getting surrounded and banged-out.
Conversely, when you’re up against a ball and chain, treat it like low-hanging fruit. Any hit you can, even an uphill -2D attempt if you’ve got Block or Wrestle, is likely worth the dice to get it off the pitch rather than risk a 3+ dodge.
In terms of levelling up, B&C has Strength and Devious access as Primaries. Randoming skills on the Strength tree is quite viable as a quick way to make them more effective.
There are limitations on what a B&C can take and the remaining options are mostly good. Specifically, Mighty Blow is great as a first choice for making your hits count, but Brawler can be good to increase safety and the chance of getting players onto the ground, Guard can be useful, especially if this piece ends up near the ball on your or your opponent’s possession. The only other skills they can get are Arm Bar, which is not great.
The rest of the tree is irrelevant: Thick Skull, they can’t use as they are automatically KO’d at minimum anyway, they can’t use Juggernaut as they can’t do Blitz actions, they can’t use Bullseye or Strong Arm as they don’t have Throw Team Mate, and they are banned from Grab and Multiple Block.
Dwarf Deathroller
The Dwarf Deathroller can be quite horrible to play against. S7, Juggernaut, Mighty Blow, Stand Firm, Break Tackle. It can dodge into space on a 2+ and hit you with 3D, and you’re not going to like it.
A Roller doesn’t have a Negatrait other than Secret Weapon and therefore will reliably activate, although it does have Loner 4+ and doesn’t have Block so will occasionally let you down. However, with S7 it is easy to get 3D blocks to reduce the risk. It does have No Ball, but that doesn’t really matter as you will be too busy killing with it to worry about silly things like the ball.
It also has Dirty Player, which makes it a fouling piece as well as a big lump. In the 2025 rules, that DP skill went from +2 to the standard +1, so those fouls are much less threatening than they used to be, and likely aren’t the best use of the Roller early in a drive . They do perhaps become relevant later on in a drive, when it is about to be sent off anyway.
With the rest of the Dwarves being S3, the Roller gives the team an additional option; it can be jammed into positions to soak up activations and force dodges from your opponents. Indeed, against a weak team it usually makes sense to have it in contact most turns; get it in there and make your opponent dodge away, then smash them if they fail.
Playing against Deathrollers is about minimising their impact. One option is to score early and force the Secret Weapon to be sent off. If your opponent has a bribe (50k for Dwarfs), or gets lucky on Argue the Call, that strategy suddenly isn’t great. Indeed, even if you do score early you are playing into the rest of the Dwarf team with the prospect of a quite long drive.
If you want to extend the drive vs the Roller, then aim to control where the contact points are likely to be, such that the Roller isn’t very relevant.
It is M5, so you can get past it and away quite easily for most teams.
Don’t let it jam into your cage and onto your ball carrier as you’ll not be able to get it off and won’t find it easy to get it down if the rest of the dwarves have jammed in too. You’re suddenly in a world of hurt if a Diving Tackle Blitzer has also jammed in and you can’t spring your carrier out.
If you have possession in the first half and your opponent has a 12-player roster + a Bribe, then during your drive you should aim to chip (remove) one of their other players before you score, so that they then have to set up the Roller on the resulting short drive, and then get it sent off before the second half.
Chipping a piece is easier said than done vs high AV Dwarfs but is worth considering stalling an extra turn to take a few extra pot shots or a foul.
Snotling Pump Wagons
Pump Wagons are NOT Secret Weapons (they were in the previous edition) but I’ve included them here as one of the “toys” you can field and it felt incomplete without them!
As standard positionals on a Snotling team, they are actually good; S5, Juggernaut, Stand Firm, Mighty Blow and Dirty Player which combine to make them blitzers and superb gap-openers or immovable cage anchors. They do have the Really Stupid Negatrait, like Trolls, so need a babysitter to be more reliable but usually that’s not too hard to play around when you have Snotlings dodging around on 2+ to go anywhere.
Because of Juggernaut, they are often Snotlings’ best blitzing option, as even a 2D hit is only 1/36 for failure.
A Pump Wagon does only have AV9+ so it is a little bit fragile compared with the Trolls on a Snotling team, but S5 plus some big friends can let you play around that fragility.
Previously they weren’t really good value for cash, but now we recommend that most rosters field at least one and probably two.
Playing against a Pump Wagon is just like playing any other Big Guy, really. Ideally avoid getting hit too often. Or at least try to control who can be hit.
It’s not very fast, so you can play “keep away” easily enough. When you need to, tagging it out with a dispensable Lineman could be all you need to get down the other side of the pitch. This also has the benefit of encouraging the block rather than blitz action, which is more risky for the Snotlings as Juggernaut won’t kick in. Don’t do that too often though, as Mighty Blow will eventually hurt you, and Snotling teams crave getting multiple hits per turn to have good foul options and thereby thin out an opponent’s numbers.
Secret Weapon Skills: Saboteur and Violent Innovator
Two new skills were added to the game in the 2025 edition that specifically affect Secret Weapons.
Saboteur is a fun little skill where if a player with a Secret Weapon is knocked down, they can take one final swing at their opponent. On a 4+ the hitting piece is automatically knocked down too (but this does not cause a turnover unless they have the ball). The Saboteur is also automatically Knocked Out if this happens.
It is quite a niche skill with an obvious benefit that it might remove an opponent’s piece in the same hit as removing your Weapon. It could also have some benefits that aren’t immediately obvious.
The first is that your opponent might choose either to not hit your Weapon or to not risk one of their better pieces for the action. That in turn might mean that the hitting player doesn’t have Tackle or Block skills, so your weapon might have a better chance of surviving the hit in the first place.
Secondly, if it works, but the hitting piece is not removed, you automatically have your first potential foul target lined up for the next turn.
Third, the KO of the blowing up Weapon happens before the block armour dice. In progression play, this could save your levelled up weapon from suffering an Injury/Death. It’s also a KO, they might not get sent off and might come back for the next drive if you can argue/bribe.
Violent Innovator simply means that your Secret Weapon can gain SPP through their Special Action. This is not relevant for Rollers as they don’t have a special action, and we believe it is irrelevant for Ball and Chain too as although they perform a Special Action, the actual hits involved are all Block Actions and would pick up SPP as normal. That leaves Chainsaws and Bombers.
It is hard to level-up ‘Saws as they have No Ball so can’t score TDs, they don’t stay on the pitch long, and you want to use their Saw to hit people; otherwise, why even bring a saw to a Blood Bowl match?! This leaves only your MVP to give them SPP, and usually that would perhaps be better spent on some of your other pieces (Trolls, Bomber, diver, Ball and Chain). The reason to take VI would be if you wanted to level them quite far in a long-format multi-redraft league. However, as discussed above, there aren’t many skills you would actually want AND it’s quite unlikely that they will live very long!
For Bombers you have a slightly different thought process. They can pick-up SPP by scoring or by passing (the ball). They can take skills like Pass and Accurate as Primary skills to make them better Bombers. As chucking bombs is one of the best ways to break up opposition formations, making a better Bomber is probably a good use of TV. However, taking many more skills is overkill. Again, I’m not not convinced that Violent Innovator will really speed up your development to a finished piece (Pass, Accurate, +PA would likely be my standard progression). Chuck them into your 6 pieces for MVP and level them that way.
Next week we will start looking at Dodges and movement, then on to Screening, Caging and Cage Breaking.
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The text here originally came from our book – Blood Bowl Strategy: Third Season Unofficial Strategy Guide — I’ve made some edits to make it more suitable for online posts. The book is a complete guide to positioning, tempo, drive planning, defensive structures, offensive patterns, league development, inducements, and tournament preparation. 266 pages, ~74,000 words of our collective wisdom designed to take you from a beginner to a >50% win rate coach.
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