The latest in a growing line of new Blood Bowl fiction, Guy Haley’s short story Hoppo’s Pies focuses (perhaps unsurprisingly, considering Haley’s predilections) on the ‘Grotty Stealers’, a goblin team long past their prime. With an increasingly decrepit and ill-attended stadium, a team full of inept players, and rising debts, Coach Diglit mourns his days as a player even as he worries about how to keep the team going. Just as his fears seem about to come to fruition, a chance encounter leads him to a plan that might just save both the team and his own neck…involving pies.
Haley has form writing goblins and it shows, in a madcap story full of black humour, greenskin weirdness and sporting violence – only in the weird but endlessly entertaining world of Blood Bowl could you find interchangeable snotlings all named Ned, a dark elf money lender called Boris, and various scenes of pie-based carnage. Oh, and pocket squigs. All the daft stuff aside though this is a vivid, characterful, nicely structured story that fits perfectly with the tone of Blood Bowl without going too far into silliness. It treads the dark/funny line perfectly, and is a delight to read. More please!
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