Well FFG took their sweet time about it.  But they have finally updated us on the Blood Bowl Team Manager card game.  I'm a fanboy, no denying it, primarily of Blood Bowl but also generally of FFG's production values at least and the fact that generally they also get it right.

FFG Blood Bowl Team Manager announcement

I'm getting overwhelmed by the wall of text. It sounds like it's not a deck building game like we were told a few months ago.

Reading through all of it, there are deck building elements to it, to me it seems like a deck building game primarily.  Which is what they initially started out creating.

So the gist of it seems to be this:
1) Each coach picks a race (currently there are 6, but I would imagine/hope they expand it to the 20+ available in Blood Bowl).
2) You get some cards made up of standard starter players/cards
3) You play a season that last for 5 turns.  During those turns you are playing cards to various highlight actions on the board.  Depending on where you play those cards you are trying to win various things.  So wining a highlight gains you the highlight reward.  But as well it may win you extra cash or more cards.
This phase seems to be the deck building portion of the game.
4) Once the season is over you play a tournament made up of the cards/deck/misc that you acquired.
5) The tournament sounds like it decides the winner of the game.

So it kinda sounds out like you start playing Dominion then finish up playing magic.  Which I have to say is awesome.  Because while I love Dominion and generally the DBG concept.  Many of them have this kinda feeling like the game ends right when your deck is getting cool (I find Ascension and Nightfall to be really bad for this).

Thanks for the summary. I've got a better idea of the gameplay now. It sounds like it could be a lot of fun. I'll look for reviews when it goes out.

While we are at it, does anyone play Blood Bowl online? I have the Legendary Edition (via Steam), and would love to have a few more opponents.

Here's my review

For simplicity if I say TM it's the Blood Bowl Team Manger game BB is traditional Blood Bowl.  I'll note now - I'm a huge BB Fan (and now a huge TM fan)

The basics are already covered pretty well in this thread.  I personally haven't played all the teams yet myself, but I've seen them all been played.

You pick a race and their starting cards contain 12 players, which cover the typical BB starting team build.  So the starting players for Orc's for example come with several line men, some black orcs, some blizters, some throwers and a troll (I don't have the game at hand for an exact count).

The races in TM are built around similar concepts to how they are built in BB.  (just 3 examples)

Orcs play slower, speed in this case relates to how fast you can cycle through your deck, But they are tough, block a lot, cheat a bit regularly and can handle the ball.

Wood Elves by contrast are quick (lots of deck cycling) really good at getting the ball but aren't as good at blocking and don't have as many strong players and don't cheat.

Skaven are kind of like Wood Elves in that they are really fast, good at getting the ball, not so tough but they cheat a lot.

The other teams all have similar balances to their BB heritage.

Personally I've played Orcs x3 , Skaven x2 and Chaos.  I found that each team felt very different and each required their own strategy.  I also had to adapt different strategies depending on who I was playing.  Much like you would in BB.

You play cards from your hand to try and have the most star power on a given highlight.  Whoever has the most wins the highlight reward and whoever still has players involved gets the side line bonus.   If you manage to win a highlight and no other team is involved, perhaps because no one chose to or you injured all their players you get all the rewards (rare in 4 player games more common in 2).

It's kind of a hybrid bidding/area control kind of balance.  You are committing your players, which really are your only resource, to capture the highlights - which are the area's of play.  But unlike most bidding games you can actually attack other players.  I really like the strategy here and there is a very interesting shift between being able to play first in a given round or last.  Playing first gives you the first pick of choice, but last card can be as powerful if not more in the right circumstances.

There are more rules to it then Dominion for example, but it's by no mean a steep learning curve and the rule book reads well.  However I have to caveat that by saying I had the luxury of playing the demo first.  But after the fact when we ran into some situations not covered in the demo it was easy enough to find the answers in the book.

There is a good amount of strategic decisions going on in this game.  But you also need to really keep track of what your opponents are doing.  It's not enough to just play your cards.  A good player needs to try and think of what cards other people have played and  may have left to play.  Not only during the current round, but also what they have played in the past rounds.

In terms of strategy you will probably have an overall goal for the round.  Usually based on which highlights and/or tournaments you want to win or just take part of.  However just planning that isn't enough because you will need to shift your plan around based on the actions of others.  I never found my turns to feel empty and I was definitely paying attention to what all the other players were doing, again much like BB.  The game never feels dry or like a shared game of Solitaire.

Play time once you know the rules will probably average about 20 minutes per player.  I can't say for sure as all the games I played were at Gencon and always were drawing interest from passer by's.

If you haven't gathered by now I really, really like this game.   I think there is a lot of longevity to the game and I'm hoping they expand the rest of the teams.  If you have played other deck building games before you'll notice some similarities.  But it definitely has it's own spin on the genre.  I think FFG did an amazing job of capturing the essence of Blood Bowl and creating a card game on it.  While there are similarities to a deck building game, I wouldn't call it one.  I think the difference is that in a true DBG you know what cards you can buy and the act of building your deck is the goal.  You generally never really use that purchased deck to do anything other then make a better deck.  At most you may play some cards to hinder an opponents ability to build their deck.  TM differs in that while you do build up your deck you draw random cards and the meat of the game isn't in building the best deck it's in playing your deck to win the highlights.  You could have the best deck built.  But if you don't play it well you can still lose.  TM is not a game where your deck starts to play itself.

In addition the art is great, the component are of typical FFG quality - which is to say good to great.  Setup time is minimal, the game looks good on the table and I found that both 2 and 4 player games were enjoyable.   Everyone I played with had a good time, all that had time wanted to play again.  Everyone that I played with at the demo bought it.  I asked the person running the event and they said was basically their experience the whole day (which they sold out the first day).  I played with other BB fans and they all really enjoyed it as well.

One final not is that if feels balance.  Again I have only played 6 games so I haven't mastered it or even seen every combination.  But other then some blow out victories I had over people that had never played before all the other scores where close, I even lost a couple times to Wood Elves no less.

A final note before I give the rating, is that I think you could easily manipulate the length of the game.  Shortening it probably isn't needed but I'd be all for running a longer season.  It would be a simple matter of just adding more seasons which would see the teams getting better and better and nastier and nastier.
Yeah I really love Blood Bowl and I now really love Blood Bowl Team Manger.  it gets 4 busted skulls out of 5.   I'll up this to 5 out of 5 once they start pumping out some expansion teams.

P.S.  One question I was asked and kinda got passed around between BB fans is that given the choice would you play BB or TM.  The answer to that is simple.  BB - always and for ever.  However TM has it's advantages, 2 - 4 players, it's cheaper, it plays faster and it does scratch a different itch.