Rerolled.org Blood Bowl League - Season 2.

I think I have said this before, but I have seen this kind of situation in table top leagues before. When everyone plays maximum full frontal male nudity bash, leagues disintegrate due to apathy. The reason is, if you are playing in a balanced league and losing all the time, you are likely still handling the ball, getting MVPs, and gradually building your roster. When everyone plays murderball, then anyone who even looks at the ball gets crippled and anyone who skills up at all gets fouled out of existence. The one or two guys winning are having some fun, but the guys who lose a lot have no hope of improvement and nothing to look forward to, as anyone who skills up gets either hopelessly crippled or ganked, with any money rapidly disappearing into replacing dead players. I have no problem losing, even to bad dice (and man did I have some in Stunty), but when your roster actually gets perpetually worse than when it began and the only thing you achieve by playing is one MVP and replacing one gimped/dead player every 3-5 games with the 20-30k you get, there is not much motivation to continue. In short, if games are going 3-1/2-2/ect, then both sides are getting SPP by moving the ball and everyone makes progress on their roster, giving even the perpetual losers motivation to continue. The game has more than enough attrition without having Orc teams with 6+ POMB guys on their roster, but that's the direction the RR main league is headed. Having a bout of bad rolls just magnifies the rage and despair.

TLDR Version: The main league has too much fucking bash and people get burned out facing it all the time.

I never said lets all play elf ball. But lets be fair here. Whenever someone asks in IRC what skill to take first, most people immediately say something along the lines of "MB unless you don't have a dirty player yet!" with me generally being the lone advocate of more general/ball handling skills like Sure Hands, Guard, Pro, Block, or Strip Ball. You don't have to be elves to play the ball. It does not even take Zons or Humans. Any roster can be worked towards scoring, it just requires a conscious choice to select something ball handling related instead of trying to skill up solely on casualties. The other thing about bash centric play is that teams that bash tend to expose themselves to injuries a lot more, as well, so it can start a huge snowball effect. Its not the injuries that burn people out, its seeing no improvement in their roster after multiple games. Its a lot more palatable to sit through a shit fest on the dice when you know that you will at least get a score and that the other guy is not trying to stab you in the balls when you are already on the ground. The frustration factor is a lot less when the guy on the other end of the double one fest knows he has something to look forward to at the end of the game for putting up with it.

Now don't get me wrong, the asshole who loads up on NoS + Safe Throw is just as big of a problem as the guy loading up on ClawMB or POMB/DP, just in the other direction. Every team should have one or two specialized hitters to keep that kind of bullshit in line. But there is a world of difference between putting tackle zones on guys and blitz blocking down key receivers versus constantly fouling and MB Blocking everything in sight while the ball lays on the ground until one side walks it in for a 1-0 win. Plus, realistically, finesse teams get shut down by controlling the ball for most of the game, which is something nearly every roster is capable of if they choose the relevant skills.

Again, I am not saying "Lets all play elves!" but even you have to have noticed the bitching about all the bash happy orcs being played and admit that its contributing to some people's burnout. I am not even really complaining for myself, because despite doing much worse than I did last season, I have had more fun in 2b thanks to the better variety in that division and most people's general willingness to play the ball. Well, aside from Funkor beating the living fuck out of me in game one, but even then he was mostly just playing the ball and I even got a skillup in that game. My concern is more about the long term health of the RR league, which I bring up because there have been comments about not wanting to play in D1 with all the bash floating around up there. Hell, I don't want to be in that division and I think I would do ok there. Any time there is more MB than block floating around, I have seen the league it was happening in crumble almost immediately. The only way to tank a league faster, in my personal experience, is for a bunch of people to suddenly decide to play Dwarves.