The odds aren’t actually all that bad, slightly less than 1%. Count all the players in this thread, and all the teams that they’ve made, and the odds of someone having this specific (mild) outlier are substantial.
You want bad luck? I went an entire game failing to pickup the ball – with Elves; I’d knock it out, and fail the 2+ pickup (with rerolls, until I ran out). Or take the time I rolled triple skulls, then rerolled it too – that’s a roughly 1 in 10,000 chance.
In general, the odds of any particular statistical event in Blood Bowl can be low, but considering how many dice are thrown around the odds of seeing some sort of “strange” seeming 1 in 10,000 “outlier” are actually pretty high once you play more than a few games.
Wolff
1622
I’ve actually spent the most time as Orcs, and have also gone pretty far with humans and elves. My Khermi example was just an example, not this is my only experience and this is how it must be. Just my opinion, we can agree to disagree, but I still think the PP system leads to “gaming” the system, which the more difficult a game makes it to do I tend to enjoy.
SlyFrog
1623
If you were absolutely killing the other team, why wasn’t your big guy getting his points through casualties and such?
Scoring isn’t the only way to get points.
Actually, using binomial distribution for 0 successes in 30 trials (15 players leveled up twice), with a probability of rolling doubles at each time of 0.17, the chance of never getting any doubles whatsoever is 0.0037 or 0.37% (1 in 270), which is pretty unlikely.
Maybe all this useless statistical analysis I now know will make me suck less at blood bowl.
EDIT: I might have done this wrong but my calculation for the odds of rolling 6 skulls (6 failures, 6 trials, 0.17 chance of failure) gives me odds of about 1 in 40000. Now that’s bad luck.
There used to be a bug where if you hit re-roll too quickly the same result would come up. I always count to 2 before hitting ‘re-roll’ now, just in case.
Plus you can have Loner cancel your reroll, which looks at first glance as if you rolled exactly the same thing (did I mention the UI in this game is mediocre?)
Generally, I pause to think about whether I should reroll, as very often it’s better to hoard it for later. I might well have clicked fast enough to trigger the bug that time though… Hard to judge random events when the dice roller is borked!
I’ve seen similarly outlandish dice in other circumstances. Well, once anyway, when I failed to pickup the ball with Elves every time, which was even more unlikely. Nothing but 1s!
z22
1627
How’s this for “gaming” the system. I’m playing my orcs vs a Lizardmen team in league play. I pummel the crap out of his team, leaving ONE skink left on the pitch, early in 2nd half. The greed in me, to you know game the system, decides that my troll is in desperate need of experience so I decide to hand the ball to him near mid field. Of course he drops it, as do the other 5 or 6 players on my team that surround him at various distances. The sole skink left on the other team runs straight into my pack of orcs, grabs the ball, runs out of my pack, going for it twice, and heads for the end zone. I triple-die blitz-block the skink with a blocking/tackling orc and, even with a reroll, only get a push result. I then surround the skink on 7 of 8 sides. Guess what he did his next turn? Ran out of my prison and scored, giving his team the victory.
NOW THAT’S ME “GAMING THE SYSTEM” FOR YOU! It’s part of Blood Bowl bro, get used to it.
strategy
1628
Brilliant tale.
I can understand people not liking the system (it was not until v4 or v5 that I felt Blood Bowl was actually a good game myself), but it’s part of the way the game is screwed together.
In PC Blood Bowl you can easily see the skills and stats of your and your opponent’s units, and the program directly compares them for you when you have to make decisions. How does that work in tabletop Blood Bowl? Are there unit sheets both players are constantly checking?
Jarmo
1631
Did you know a Blood Bowl graphic novel exists? Killer Contract is a tale of the human team Bad Bay Hackers who have been infiltrated by a contract killer. The general level of match carnage is so high it’s difficult to see why anyone would bother but his trajectory in the brutal matches depicted makes for appropriately black comedy.
The comic is drawn in a very distorted style. These sample pages are from the more normal-looking end of the artist’s spectrum. The book was originally a five-issue miniseries from 2008.
It’s no work of genius but it did provide me with several chuckles at the changing fortunes of the increasingly sympathetic killer, the ruthless, Captain Hook-like manager and the various team members. There’s enough bashing and squishing on and off the pitch to satisfy all but the outright psychotic for quite a while. I’m not sure whether all game rules were followed (some opposing teams seemed irregular, for example) but the spirit of the sport was captured well.
I’ve had a skink with catch and ag 4 fail to pick up a ball 4 times in a row (including two rerolls) before it accidentally rolled into my kroxigor, who picked it up on his first try. There’s definitely something strange with the rolling at times. The UI barely informing you when loner or some other factor kicks in can be really confusing early on.
Still very happy with it, even though other than getting pummeled by Kalle occasionally (to his halfling team, even!) I’ve been mainly playing the singleplayer as a sort of puzzle game. The AI only does a few things well, but it keeps me entertained and occasionally hands me a crushing defeat when I don’t plan for something (getting a little too close to a bashing team on the first play, for instance…in one instance by halftime I was down 1-0 and had 3 skinks and a saurial left on the field after sweltering heat doubled my losses).
Kalle
1633
Catch doesn’t actually help you pick up the ball from the ground. For that you want Sure Hands.
If you have rerolls handy Sure Hands won’t help your odds of picking the ball up either – it’ll just save you from having to use a reroll if you fail the first roll.
And yeah, sometimes the dice are bad, but I think that stems from the number of dice rolled – 1 in 50k odds (i.e. 6 straight 1s) just aren’t that long. Randomness is spikey, not evenly distributed, and so the odds of getting no “1 in 50k” events over your blood bowl career is quite small.
I do still suspect the bug where team-rerolls yield the same result has returned though, ever since the patch to avoid the peeking-at-the-next-roll hack, and now habitually wait a few seconds before rerolling.
And welcome to Blood Bowl, LK. It’s a great game! Subtle, sharp, and surprisingly skill-based given how much luck is involved. Hindsight kicks my ass in this game more than any other I play these days.
If you can find the time, join the next season of the Qt3 Block league!
drteeth
1635
I think with sure hands you don’t get to use a reroll. You get the automatic roll that sure hands grants you but if you fail that roll as well your turn is done.
Kalle
1636
Yes, you can only use one re-roll on a failed roll, and if you fail the re-roll as well it’s a turnover. If you have a skill that grants you a re-roll then that is used automatically. If you don’t have a skill then you can use a team re-roll, assuming you have one left.
I can’t seem to add cash from my treasury to my petty cash. Anyone else seen this problem?
I’m experimenting within the campaign to be able to save/reload to try different methods.
Let’s say I’m to play a team with a TR of 1210 and that my team has a TR of 1070. Anyone can see why I would like to add 10k from my treasury under those circumstances. My treasury contains 30k.
I get to the screen where there’s a box where I can write a number and a Yes and a No button. The most obvious thing would of course be to put 10000 in the box and click Yes.
I think I’ve tried every (obviously not) combination of writing/not writing a number and clicking Yes/No.
No matter what I do I still only get 140k to buy inducements.
Could someone please tell me what I’m doing wrong?
Or, rather, never mind what I’m doing wrong, just tell me how to make it right. :)
Adding petty cash does you no good when your team is worth less than your opponent’s, as doing so adds directly to your team value for the match, and thus reduces your inducements by exactly as much as you spend.
Adding petty cash is only useful if your team is worth more, but realize that it will mean increased inducement cash for your opponent.
This setup seems counter intuitive at first, but exists to prevent players simply buying matches.
AHA! Thanks.
So when is it ever useful to add cash then? I mean, if it never alters the difference in TV between the two teams, what’s the use?
Jarmo
1640
It’s useful when you can add just enough gold for yourself to get something nice but still keep the opponent from getting anything in return. This is a rare situtation but it can sometimes be manufactured by judicisiously kicking someone from the team or dropping some cheerleaders etc. In an important match this might be worthwhile.
