1601

It depends on the team.

Generic advice: Basically you want to ensure you have a bit of cover for injuries, and to squeeze in as many rerolls as you can, because they cost twice as much after the first game. Fan Factor is nowhere near as important as it used to be.

While the individual skills you collect are really dependent on the team you’re playing with, there’s a few things to bear in mind. Firstly, consider what roles your players have. Linemen of all types love Block and Guard. Dodge makes them harder to knock down. Stand Firm makes them hard to budge. Wrestle can be useful to take down tough opponents.

Heavy hitters are easy enough - things like Mighty Blow, Tackle, maybe even Piling On. Consider a player used for “backline defence” - a fairly mobile character with the skills required to reach and take down a dodge-equipped ball carrier.

Try and spread your skillpoints around. On some teams - like Lizardmen - this is crucial. When you can do it without torpedoing your results, give scoring passes to underskilled players to give them a chance of levelling up.

1602

One thing that’s important to know is how to develop someone who can reliably sack the ball carrier and get the ball loose. The important skills to build towards there are Tackle to counter Dodge, Wrestle to counter Block (you won’t do damage but the ball will come loose) and Strip Ball which will knock the ball loose even when you roll an arrow. Not necessarily in that order, mind you. Otherwise, if the ball carrier has Block and Dodge which is the default survivability combo you’re only going to have a 1/6 chance of knocking them down. Ideally you want these skills on a blitzer or similar player type, someone who is fast enough to get where he needs to be and strong enough to make a difference when he gets there.

1603

I’d never take an apothacary for the big public league, because I feel it inflates your TR without making your team really any better. Plus in that setting if you lose expensive players early you can just make a new team. However in a private league that’s going to run for a while, it’s a handy way to help ensure that you don’t take losses that are going to gut your team.

1604

In the public leagues I often use my Apothecary on the first injured player, so that they are just sent off the pitch – rather than losing a player for the rest of the game.

It helps prevent you having to play short of players, which in turn helps prevent further players from getting injured.

At 50k it’s well worth the price, considering the extra player you’ll effectively be getting is typically worth more than 50k. Especially if you’re playing a team with low AV and/or high cost players, such as Skaven or Elves.

1605

Taking an Apothecary is insurance against the time when your best player gets injured or killed. All those SPP’s aren’t easy to replace.

1606

Having played in ~15 leagues in the 1st version, I suggest changing the league to a private open league, where any team can any other team at any time. Why? Leagues almost always fail, rarely completing a single season. Of all of the leagues I played and ran, only 1 has completed a season and that’s in the hugely popular Orca-Cola Championship league where 100s of teams participate and every division has it’s own admin. Even the QT3 league from the previous version died out after only a few games.

It’s just human nature. A coach can’t play their game in some week and they lose interest due to the default loss. Teams that are doing poorly do not feeling like playing so they don’t show up for games. People get tired of the game and don’t play their games. After 1/2 a season your left with about 1/2 your players who play their games. It’s going to happen.

open leagues allow teams to play any other team in the league, at any time, without a set schedule. They also have no problem with drop-out teams, late to arrive teams, and coaches that wish to reroll their team. If you need to have a “season” champ you can say that after a fixed date (real date) the team with the highest rating (function of wins/losses) wins that “season”, or something similar.

1607

So I got the LE in preparation for our upcoming antics, and had fun trying Necro vs. Norse and Khemri vs. Vampire.

The AI absolutely is as dumb as before, and seemed oblivious to the Vampires’ special needs. I’m leaving those two idiots’ voices on for now to hear some of the new material. I like watching the Flesh Golems and Tomb Guardians kick people. And Throw-Ra and Blitz-Ra remind me of Thundercats, which has to be a good thing.

1608

I’d prefer to at least try to make an effort to run my cup style league. If it fails, it fails, but I’ll give it a go. Part of it is that it’s a level playing field where everyone starts with the same TR and everyone gets the same number of games in.

1609

You can always replace quitters with new players.

1610

Is there even an option for an open league? Don’t see it in the League setup window.

I’ve run on-line leagues before (not Blood Bowl), and the phenomena you describe is fairly normal. How does BB handle people dropping out/games not being played? Can you “kick out” a team? How is the winner of a game where one player doesn’t show up determined?

I’m thinking that an alternative solution (for 12 players), might be to run with a 2-pool Cup format + with 4 or 2 team playoffs. The advantage of this is that the season is a relatively short - 5-7 matches, which makes it easier to play through the season. The downside, of course, is that you don’t get a lot of chances to recover from initial bad results.

I also wonder how much of an advantage the extra 1-2 matches will give the playoff teams if one tries to continue with a second season (though given the inducement system and how random BB can be in terms of fatalities, etc., perhaps it doesn’t really matter?). Ideally, I’d like to have set up a format similar to the Handball Championships, where all the teams below the finalists face off in a one-off playoff match to determine the final positions below the league (i.e., the two teams in third place in each pool play a match to determine 5-6th placing, the fourth place teams play to determine 7-8th placing, etc).

Anyone knows how multi-season leagues work in Cyanide’s current setup?

1611

z22: to all of our understanding there is no such thing as an open league in BB. I wish there were!

1612

Hmm, this will cost £20 given that I have the original. Is it truly worth it? I’d like to participate in the tournament/league but if it’s going to be a false starter or die one week in it doesn’t seem worth it.

Are there any recommended AI mods, if they exist?

1613

Forget the AI. The offline play is only marginally better due to the opposition having higher team values than you.

1614

Crap. I was told private leagues could be in an open format. I didn’t verify this so it may not be true. Oh well. :(

1615

While that might be true in the Legendary edition, it definitely wasn’t true in the previous version. You couldn’t add players during a season, even though they could quit.

1616

The more I’ve played BB the more one thing does annoy me. The need to boost XP on certain players with certain teams to have a fighting chance. I find it just leads to gaming the system. For instance early on in the league (playing Khermi) versus the elves. I spend the first half killing their team, and the second half trying to give the ball to a big guy so he scores.

I really dig the RPG aspects of the game, but experience being dolled out in this way just doesn’t sit right with me for fair play. I could see someone who is a BB vet playing a team in our league and really racking up the PPs in the first two matches, just because they know how to exploit the system.

1617

Its hard to exploit the system against a real player.

Even if you get a huge edge its not easy to pull off, since the chances of turn overs burning rerolls and the like can quickly bite you in the ass.

I mean it can be done, but only if you completely dominate the other guy, which is pretty rare. And then its still risky cause you might drop the ball and never pick it up again.

1618

Nobody makes you play Khemri – the absolute worst team at ball handling.

Sounds like you might like a team where at least some players have more than 2 Agility.

1619

Although it’s definitely odd (especially the completely random MVP award), the experience system is definitely one of the features of Blood Bowl. Do you give the ball to your star catcher/blitzer with dodge+nerves of steel+catch and let them walk in a certain touchdown or take a slightly higher risk pass to one of your rookies? Short-term versus long-term decisions + the way star players easily become SPP hogs (they’re the ones always left standing) - it all adds a nice additional layer of strategy to the game. Blood Bowl is a game about team development, IMO.

And I’d definitely echo JP’s sentiment - find a team that plays the way you would like, rather than trying to fit a team to the style you would like.

1620

Hows this for bad luck: I’ve raised my entire team to level 3 and still haven’t rolled a single doubles or stat increase for any of my 13 players (15 if you count the 2 who died and also had no doubles).

I’m only playing single player, so its not that big a deal, but still, the odds have to be fairly low of that happening. Whats more frustrating, is that I had good luck on my level ups with my Chaos and Orc teams, two teams that play very well without any doubles. Whereas I had the bad luck with my Dark Elf team, a team that badly needs some doubles for the Guard skill (they have no natural access to the Strength tree).

I had average luck on my Necromatic team, so I guess overall I’m ahead.

Tony