Grifball. Normally we scorn the use of hyperbole, but in this case, we’re making an exception: It’s a sports phenomenon sweeping the nation. Created by Rooster Teeth’s (makers of RvB) wunderkind Burnie Burns, Grifball is a lot less Halo and more like a sport. Srsly.

The Grifball stadium takes place on a Forged version of Foundry, on a modified Neutral Bomb Assault gametype.  Each team is trying to get the ball from the center of the map to their opponents goal. Players wield Hammers as their primary tool of destruction and Swords as the secondary weapon. The guy “toting the rock” – the Grifball carrier – has increased speed and overshields and there are no weapons on the map. Being on the receiving end of a melee from the Grifball carrier is assured death.

Here’s Rooster Teeth’s official description of How to Play Grifball:

Grifball is an extremely fast paced sport game type that's played on an open court between two teams of four players. Each team has a goal and each player carries a gravity hammer and an energy sword. In the center of the arena is a single ball that can be picked up by anyone on the field. Each match consists of 5 rounds, with each round ending when someone slams the ball into their opponent's goal. The team with the most goals wins.

It's a very simple game by design, but it's an enormous amount of non-stop action. At any point in time, you are either on defense with your 3 teammates guarding your goal or you are on offense as the ball carrier with three blockers. In a second, the game can turn and you have to be ready to seamlessly change roles.

In the little over a month since hatching from Burnie Burns and the Rooster Teeth fellas' brains, Rooster Teeth has already started a Web site devoted to this very different kind of Halo. In fact, they are now running the first ever Official Grifball Season and they’ve had 99 five-man teams sign up for Season One.

There’s been a handful of Bungie guys who’ve messed round with Grifball, certainly enough to field a Humpday team against a group of Grifball league veterans, professionals and ringers. Frankie will maintain that all the language needed to fill Grifball chatter is “go left,” “go right,” “go score” – but Sketch, our resident Coach on the Field will tell you something different altogether. We put together a Glossary of terms that we heard and used while playing.

Grifball Glossary

• Taking it to the Hole – The act of carrying the Grifball toward the Goal
• Shockwave/Riding the Wave – When a player travels  along the wave of energy created by Gravity Hammers
• Swords are out – Usually defenders will switch to Swords to increase their angle of pursuit on a Grifball carrier
• Cleaner – A player positioned deep on an opponent’s side, killing players as they spawn
• Tanking – When the Grifball carrier is following behind one of his teammates, the player in front is “tanking”
• Floater – When an opposing player is airborne and heading toward your team’s goal he’s a Floater
• Aggressive Negotiations – When the ball carrier attempts to leap over
• He’s Sweeping – When a ball carrier changes directions, usually moving away from his teammates who are trying to get into position to Clean.
• Coast to Coast – Taking the ball from your goal all the way to the other team’s goal and scoring without dying.
• Barrystyle – Named after Bungie Art Director Christopher Barrett, the act of picking up the ball at the beginning of the round and riding the wave all the way to the opponent’s goal.

Ballers

• GavinoFree
• andrew panton
• BurnieBurns
• KrozeGG
• Paladin1221
• KrozeGG
• Phoenixrage

Ball washers

• TJ Scoot
• Swah
• Dmiller360
• New0001
• Ske7ch

Game 1

Grifball on Grifcourt
Tone of Game: Rusty

To be fair, we just got back from our respective holidays. To be even fairer, we hadn’t been playing much Grifball and our particular four/fivesome hadn’t ever played together. Plus, these guys invented the game and play it all the time. Wait a second… that’s not a good excuse for failure.

Kidding and excuse-making aside, Sketch is basically Bungie’s Coach-on-the-Field with Grifball. He’s constantly directing, calling out locations and making plays – and he was unavailable. I’d even go so far as to say beating Bungie at Grifball without Sketch playing is like beating the 80s-era Celtics without Larry Bird (someone wanted me to make it a Jordan and the Bulls reference, but I’m just not ready to go that far with Sketch’s abilities).

DMiller, New, Swah and I didn’t really gel. When I've played in the past, New is typically a cleaner with Sketch playing both-ways, I do a lot of ball holding and trash talking. Having never really played with Swah or DMiller on the Grifball court, New and I didn't know how they played. We got beat, but this was far from the worst beating we were going to take.

Final Score: 8-1 Team BurnieBurns

Game 2

Grifball on Grifcourt
Tone of Game: Needs more Sketch

With Sketch still gone, the second game was supposed to be the “B-team” according to Burnie Burns. Burnie, while both a scholar and a gentleman for his creation of this fine game, is a hideous and despicable liar who should be cast into the Lake of Fire for the untruths he spoke before leaving the party for Game Zwei.

Calling it a massacre only begins to describe it. The outcome is like imagining would what happen if six Delta Force soldiers took on the entire army from the American Civil War (yes, people think about this stuff). 

Final Score: 9-0 TeamBurnieBurns sans Burnie

Game 3

Grifball on Grifcourt
Tone of Game: Finally, he arrives!

These guys don’t even TALK when they play. Burnie and his guys are all quiet; they know what they have to do and they execute. On the contrary, New, DMiller, Sketch and I are a bunch of motor mouths. We talk trash constantly, hooting, yelling, and mocking, but oddly enough, those three abilities don't contribute to our ability to score.

As soon as Sketch joined he had an immediate impact on moral, not to mention an immediate score for Bungie. He doubled our output from our first two games all by himself. In the end, the result was the still the same. Bungie bungles it up.

Final Score: 6-3 Team BurnieBurns



To see what happens when Bungie's Grifball team finally gets warmed up, check out this week's Bungie Favorites or download the film in the 14th share slot in Ske7ch's fileshare.

To download Grifball visit the official Grifball fileshare.
Game Variant: GBWL08 Rules
Map Variant: GBWL08 Court