Rerolled.org Blood Bowl League - Season 2.

Cyrus - bbmanager.

Phaz, I'm going to respond and clear up some misconceptions and clarify a few things, but I've had about 4 hours of sleep a day all week and I'm pretty fucking cranky. So after I get a nap or a decent night, I'll address your post, I just don't wanna do it in my overly antagonistic asshole manner when I get this tired.

WaxedWolf_sl said:

I do believe I am against Cutlery this week, I will hop on IRC this evening and see if you are available if not PM me or something I will do my best to be available around your timezones

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I'm free all day Thurs, Fri, Sat. Plenty of time during the Euro midday/evening available for me. We'll get it in.

CyrusReij_sl said:

My 1s rolls for that game, lolllll

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See, now that's some shit luck.

WhatsAmmataU_sl said:

Fuck it. I'm back in for this and stunty if it isn't too late. Sorry for raging. Won't happen again.

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Everyone's allowed to rage in Blood Bowl. Think nothing of it. If I were you, I'd play the next game vs Kragg with a couple of Journeymen, put those shitheads on the line so you don't lose anyone important, and then when you're done with that match, buy 2 (or 3 if you get lucky with cash) more Beasts and you're gonna be in great shape. You've got a lot of level 2/3 players, and that's where Chaos gets fun. Just ask Ronne.

Okay, Phaz. I got your PM, but I still wanna clarify shit publicly because I think it's important for anyone else who might be feeling similar things.

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.

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Okay, so the first thing to say is that FOH/Rerolled is a community of powergamers. We all came together because we powergamed in EQ or powergamed in WoW and we weren't there to play My Little Pony dressup on shit. Well, most of us, anyway. From that, we can deduce that there's a large portion of us who are really interested in optimal skill path for what we're doing because wasting time in our games isn't what we do. I understand that's a lot different from the TT environment you played in, where camaraderie and shit was important, but we also have a high amount of camaraderie in this game too. We've basically taken over an IRC channel and use it to help out the noobs and get everyone up to speed in this game.

That being said, I think that everyone can agree that the 2 most important things you do every single turn are 1) Blitz, and 2) move the ball. Since you only have the ball (on average) for half the game, it's safe to say that the blitz is therefore the most important thing you do in this game, since you're going to blitz twice as much as you move the ball. With that in mind, I absolutely, 100% advocate to everyone to build a blitzer first, with injury skills because that's what blitzers are for. Also, when people ask in IRC what they should skill up a specific player with, they're usually asking for players that are getting SPP - IE : blitzing and ball carrying type players. So of course a large portion of the chat is going to be "What should I get for my blitzer?" Well, in that case, I advocate pitch removal skills, because that's going to be the path to victory.

Of course, I don't always recommend that, and I think there are plenty of people around to prove it. Gav has exactly 1 MB/PO player. So do I. We've both talked about our rosters extensively, so there's a lot of mutual agreement in what we're doing, and it does not involve loading up on killers on every character. His other wight is Dodge/Guard, and that's exactly what I would have done with him (and recommended to other people, like Sean too). I have a Guard blitzer, and a Tackle/Diving Tackle blitzer, who has created plenty of grief (ask Oblio about "lol, fuck that guy").

The reason I don't recommend Sure Hands to most people is that most of these rosters are rosters which already have a dedicated ball handler. There's no point in taking Sure Hands on a human, orc, 'zon, skaven, etc team, because they already start with it, and only one guy can hold the ball at a time. There's also no point in taking sure hands on most agi 4 players right away either, since they only fail pickups on a 1. It's the same with with Strip Ball, if you're holding the ball, strip ball is fucking useless. If you're not hitting the ball carrier, Strip Ball is useless. If the ball carrier has Sure Hands, Strip Ball is useless. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Strip Ball, but our league is 13 games in. There's not a lot of high level players yet. Strip Ball is a great 4th or 5th skill on certain players -- but we're not there yet. Strip Ball as a 1st skill is inefficient and sub optimal, you're far better off going with Tackle, or even Wrestle instead if you plan on using the player for that purpose, because both of those will work against a ball carrier with Sure Hands.

Pro is again, a 4th or 5th skill. There's almost always something better to take (unless you've got a big guy and already have block, but to my knowledge, there's no one in the league with 2 doubles rolls on a big guy). I love Pro as my last skill on a blitzer, it lets me reroll pushes without burning a TRR. But again, no one is there yet, so there's no discussion to be had about it. I also have to take issue with no one recommending block. We always recommend block as a first skill in IRC if players don't start with it, the only thing that even comes close is dodge, and that's generally only for Elf teams. It's the best skill in the game, and it gets the respect it deserves from us, no doubt.

Guard gets mass respect from us, and we recommend it to everyone once they get their basic block covered. I don't think there's anyone who hangs in IRC who wouldn't agree with that. We talk quite a bit about Morenfin's fucking Duke Rape Squad who pretty much Guards their way to victory every game. It's a very effective strategy, and he's used it to great effect, and gets a lot of respect from us for it.

The other thing to remember is that powergaming this game involves taking as few risks as possible. I've said repeatedly that I fucking hate that my thrower is hogging all my SPP. I only use my thrower on offense, and in general, he's the most useless guy on my roster, but I can't justify taking the risk of passing the ball when I could run it in and get the guaranteed score. 90% of my games have been very close 1 score difference victories that could have very easily went either way. A lot of us feel the same way, there's absolutely no reason to get a bunch of flashy skills to hope for that 10% play when we can just play it safe and take it slow and sure. If I roll an 11 on a blitzer, that guy becomes my receiver, but I'm not there yet, and I may not get there with this team. I certainly am not about to pass the ball to agi 3 with no catching skills (doubles for me) unless I'm up shit creek or absolutely need the score on turn 8/16.

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.

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Haven't seen this happen yet. Sure, there's 1-0 games, but the ones I've seen are hard fought 1-0's that could have went either direction. This isn't the way the league is going, in general.

. 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.

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Well, I think we need to define bash, because there's a difference between an AV 9 roster and bash. Perception bias.

I have 2 MB players, not counting big guys who start with it. (Without getting too much into my overall strategy, I always build 2 killer blitzers, but they take different paths to get there. I will get MB on black orcs, but it will be after Block/Guard/Stand Firm, and feel free to see how long it takes me to get a black orc to level 5. You're gonna be here awhile).
Djay has 3 MB players, but he's Norse. He has to, his is the glass cannon roster. If he doesn't use his bash strength, he's just amazons without dodge.
Satael - no MB. He's got guard, tackle, strip ball.
Gav - 1 MB, again, not counting the mummies that start with it.
Oblio - no MB
Khalan - no MB
McCheese - no MB
Xannder - 1 MB

I don't know what to tell you, man. If you think there's more MB than block up here, that's pretty sadly mistaken. The rest of the divisions are very much the same. Norse is heavy bash (they have to be) and most of the rest of the rosters are very balanced, with the exception of Ronne, who, quite honestly, deserves to be king of the bash for awhile considering the bullshit he's had to endure to get to this point.

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

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I wanna touch on a couple things here. First, obviously blitzing skilled players is more effective than blitzing rookies or Journeymen. It's the powergamer thing, again. I always advocate taking the other coach's most useful player out of the game as fast as possible, because it increases your odds of winning. I don't see any fault with that logic, because if you're worried about it, you can protect your high value players (and should). I have probably only used Pile On maybe 50% of the time I've gotten the defender down, because I don't want to place that player prone and have him vulnerable.

Second, I don't want there to be any notion that "Fouling" in this game is a bad thing. It's not. It isn't like basketball where you're elbowing a dude in the groin while he's going for a dunk. Fouling is not only a legal move in BB, it's the only legitimate tactic that evens the score between bash and ball handling. When I (or we) recommend Dirty Player to people, we do so because they have cheap linemen with a shitty skillset that can be the most useful by single-handedly taking out high value players. You want to Pile On my guys? Fuck you, you better have 2 guys protecting your pile on guy, or I'm going to gang foul the shit outta him until I don't have to worry about him killing my guys anymore. That's not only a valid tactic, but it should absolutelybe encouragedfor the new guys who might not know how powerful that is for evening the odds. We were talking about this in IRC -

(12:48:35 PM) skids: there really is only three situations when you should foul
(12:49:02 PM) skids: when you have more players than opponent - to create even bigger lead in players, when you have less players than opponent - to catch up in players, or when you have same amount of players
(12:49:10 PM) Me: lol

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and that's basically the way it should be. It's not a "Foul" in the commonly used meaning, it's just a method to give every team, regardless of starting skillset or player strength, a way to remove troublesome opponents. I certainly haven't seen anyone use fouling excessively and doing it just to rub in a victory, but I also haven't watched every single game. I do know that Makkon was down 2-0 to me in the stunty quarterfinals and he fouled me on turn 14, 15, and 16 and ignored the ball. I don't fault him at all for that, guy deserves to blow off some steam and try to hurt my rookies. I generally only foul to get rid of high value players in the first half, and if I need to make sure someone stays on the ground so they can't get up and blitz me. Remember that 50% of all injuries are badly hurt, which means that guy gets to play next game, no problems. Of the 50% remaining, 1/3 of those are just MNG's, and of what's left, a good quarter of those are stat decreases that won't bother most players. Look at Oblio's fucking team of Broken Neck'd saurii.

The long and the short of it is that I don't think this league is nearly as bashy as you think, I don't think that this community is nearly as unforgiving and bloodthirsty towards each other as you think, I don't think that the league is being directed in a way that puts kill skills on 13 players on each roster, and although dice fuck people on injury rolls all the time, by and large, no one is getting crippled and unable to grow their team. However, it is BLOOD Bowl, and guys are gonna get hurt, and nothing's gonna change that.

Khalan_sl said:

Hey Cutlery, Im pretty much available only before 1 or after 11 PST until Tuesday. Tuesday I can play anytime after 5pm PST otherwise Im working all week. Let me know if you can work around my crazy schedule.

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Ah, fucking missed this somehow.

If you've got time today, I'm here. Should be around early tomorrow too. Just pop into IRC whenever.