Blood Bowl

DeLLy_sl said:

Is the single player campaign any good? Any tips for the settings of the campaign?

I played the legendary edition for nearly 40 hours, but I just did different single player modes and tried a bunch of different teams. I don't feel like I ever learned all of the do's and don'ts except skills on the field.

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There's potentially up to 3 ways to play single player, depending on which edition you have. Competition, Campaign and World Cup (Chaos Edition only). There's also Story mode, but honestly, it sucks.

Competition is a one time deal..you set up how many teams you want in the cup, how many brackets you want, and what kind of elimination you want, and then you play it. When you lose or when you win the cup, it's over. World cup is kind of the same way, but it's set up kinda fucking weird, and I don't think too many people have messed around with enough to figure out exactly what's going on. It's similar in the sense that when you lose, or win the cup, it's over, but it starts out with a lot of really rough mirror matches that most people are probably not gonna make it through.

Campaign is therefore the defacto single player mode. There's a dozen or so different tournaments scattered across the map, and you just go from one to the next, in a neverending cycle of games. It's what most people will play when they play single player. You make a team, and then win or lose, there's always another game available for you to play. Most everyone plays on classic rules because the blitz rules can be really unbalancing depending on what you're playing with. They introduce a lot of things that aren't in the rulebook, and were poorly tested for balance. I guarantee you that you will at some point during Blitz mode have half of your team quit, and you will have no money to replace them. So play blitz mode at your own risk. The AI is bottled with 3 difficulty settings, easy, medium, and hard, but they actually do not correspond to those labels at all. For the AI, "Hard" means taking less risks, which you think would make it harder, but it doesn't. It is generally accepted that the Easy setting is the most difficult setting to play on, because you will see agility teams do some fucking crazy shit when the risk tolerance is raised, and they will score on you.

That being said, with a little bit of time under your belt, you will be able to destroy the AI pretty reliably. It's a decent challenge to a newcomer, but it takes some pretty unlucky rolls to beat someone who knows how to play. For that, multiplayer is the way to go, and there are a number of public leagues you can play in with no effort, and there's also a lot of private leagues around that you can join to game once a week or something like that, if that's your cup of tea.

This is an excellent resource for learning how to play particular races, once you actually figure out how to play the game.

http://www.plasmoids.dk/bbowl/LRB6Playbooks.htm

Gavinrad_sl said:

Listening to the shit Ronne says is going wrong in his Blood Bowl games is epic. Like a black orc blocking a halfling and rolling 3 attacker downs

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That'll happen man, all part of the game. The goal is to minimize it as much as possible, but not much you can do when your opponent keeps rolling blitzes after he kicks off, or you get a nifty rock throw on turn 1.

My very first player to ever hit level 7 was a Claw/MB/PO/Tackle Beastman. I picked Foul Appearance for his last skill, figuring that it would increase his lifespan. He died on the very first turn of the very next game he played, apoth rerolled to dead. Can't get too attached to guys in this game

This game has so many little details that matter. I am struggling to pick a race I want to stick with, right now I have it narrowed down to Vampires, Orcs, Lizardmen or Dark Elfs. I am probably leaning toward either Vamps or DE.

Vampires are a tier 3 race (as in, worst). They're very difficult to play correctly because thrall positioning is extremely important. You also can't field all of your vamps at any given time, or you run into trouble with too many bloodlust rolls hosing your game plan. Lizardmen are one of the best races out there, but you need to be a very good coach in order to play them correctly. Their strength is tempo -- they can score very fast, or they can beat you into a pulp and grind you down. They need to be very good at both, or their saurus' get split off and isolated, and the skinks get killed. Dark Elves are the hardest elf race to play correctly because they start with the least amount of ball handling skills and are the slowest elves, and to compensate they have extremely good bash, with the blitzers and the witch elves. They primarily play a running game, which you need to be very good at, or you're very likely to go negative on funds very quickly. Replacing DE positionals is very expensive...you need to know how to protect your key players, or you'll find yourself in games without blitzers in a hurry.

Orcs are a great team to learn on, then graduate to the other races. AV 9 across the board (because no one plays with goblins) means your roster will be very stable for a good long while. Their blitzers are among the best in the game, and you get 4 of them, which is really powerful. Black orcs provide the muscle necessary to compete with any team, and you have enough built in ball handling on a thrower to make a great running game, or even have the passing option if a blitzer rolls +agi. Linemen are about the best value in the game...5/3/3/9 for 50k means you're only gonna need 2 or 3 tops, and those guys are never gonna die, unlike lineman of almost all other races. The Troll is pretty good to add later too..he's a good starter big guy, to teach you about what the purpose is of them. They're capable of winning you games or losing you games, depending on what kind of decisions you make with them.

A lot of your comments mirror what I have been reading on other boards. I like the idea of the DE and the Vamps because they seem to be abe to take some hits and deliver some hits, yet they aren't as slow as Dwarves. I guess I need to just quit reading and start playing and decide for myself.

In an ideal situation i would just pick one team and stick with them. Basically learn all they offer good and bad and then master them, however I keep reading that i should start with a certain type of team and then graduate on to others. Perhaps I will give Orcs a try.

Gavinrad_sl said:

I'm going to put together a rerolled league for online play, just gotta find the time to finish exploring it and then i'll post again to see who all is interested. For those interested it wouldn't be super fast paced, probably no more than one game a week.

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I was thinking of doing the same, I'd love to see if we could put together an 8 or 16 man league here. Sure be a lot more enjoyable than playing with randoms in matchmaking

Oblio_sl said:

A lot of your comments mirror what I have been reading on other boards. I like the idea of the DE and the Vamps because they seem to be abe to take some hits and deliver some hits, yet they aren't as slow as Dwarves.

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Well, you gotta understand that the majority of the vamp team is AV 7. That's as squishy as it comes. Thralls are the ultimate disposable garbage -- and the problem is that you need them on the field to keep playing. Fail a BL roll out of range of a usable thrall, and you lose your turn.

DE stands slightly better chances, they're mostly AV 8 (assassin is 7, but no one takes him, Runner is 7, but most people field only one runner, and Witch Elves are 7, but are the best players on the team), but like I said, if you lose a few positionals in a game, you're down to linemen, and they're pretty average as far as elves go. If you know what's going on in the game, you can probably do fine with DE's, but I wouldn't recommend Vamps until after you've got some good experience under your belt.

Thanks Cutlery, I will mess around with some teams tonight and try to make a decision.

@ Gavin, assuming you wait a few weeks (to let us noobs learn) to start the league you can count me in.