Jarmo
1661
Not a bug, you have to actively hit them with your players to get SPP.
I then tried Skaven and found I could score decently well, but was even more squishy than the Norse were and was constantly loosing players as well.
Are you leaving them next to opponents? Don’t do that. Dodge them away or don’t put them next to opponents on your turn. They can only get one Blitz on you per turn this way.
Kalle
1662
If you want to learn the game I would suggest Orcs. Enough strength and armor to hit things and survive. Enough ball-handling skills to get the ball where you want it to go.
Norse are a bad team to start with because they get hurt easily and all that block can teach beginners bad habits. Chaos is also a bad team to start with because they really need a lot of team development before they get competitive, at which point enemies will start fearing you. But they are not very forgiving for beginners. Skaven are not a bad team if you learn how to make the most of your speed and agility.
If you’ve read the rule book I’d suggest you make a team and join the Qt3 Open League and play against a more experienced coach. That way you can get pointers on stuff you shouldn’t be doing and see what you ought to be doing.
Jarmo
1663
Quoted from the Competition Rules:
“HOW TO EARN STAR PLAYER POINTS
Star Player points are earned for performing the following
actions:
…
Casualties (CAS): If a player causes an opposing player to be
removed as a Casualty then they earn 2 Star Player points. The
points are only earned if the player blocks an opponent or is
blocked by an opponent himself. Casualties inflicted in any other
way (including injuries inflicted by the crowd or from attacks with
chainsaws, bombs, or the Stab skill) do not count for Star Player
points.”
I’m at a place where I at least understand why things go wrong for me when they do, and that’s almost entirely because I play a reasonable amount of multiplayer against people who’ve been doing it longer. Join the open league. Play 4 minute turns. Ask questions. For instance, I can’t claim to be able to tell you how to do things well, but I can at least pass on mistakes I’ve made in the past.
That was even less clear before the previous patch — now it shows two results and you select one, but before it showed only the apothecary result.
Kalle
1666
“Don’t form your cage with the cage corners in right next to two mummies” comes to mind.
The initial learning curve is surprisingly steep, and mistakes can be costly. From the number of casualties you’ve listed it sounds like you’re allowing your opponent too many blocks against you. Playing an AV 7 team like Skaven or even Norse you need to minimize ending your players in tackles zones, limiting your opponent as much as possible to one (Blitzing) block per turn.
For example, on defense with Skaven it’s really easy to be over aggressive and use your speed to attack Cages from behind while attempting to pin your opponent done elsewhere. This can be a potent tool, but use it sparingly! Marking players (especially catchers) can still be useful, but be wary of doing it where you’re offering a 2 die block.
Instead, try getting them to come to you. Pick a few specific battles where you have solid chances to knock your opponent down, setup the rest of your defense in two-player deep sections to prevent them easily plowing forward, then take the high percentage blocks you’ve setup. Ideally your opponent gets anxious and presses into you, giving you lots of good blocking opportunities.
After this you may have a few stragglers in opponent’s tackle zones who can’t get a solid 2die block that’ll leave them free of tackle zones; make sure where you intend them to go isn’t crucial to your defense, then dodge them away. Even at AG 3, the odds of them being hurt this way are considerably less than if you yield a 2-die block. Be stingy with rerolls if they fall over! It’s often better to let them bite the dust on non-pivotal failures.
AV 9 Orks are the classic way to learn Blood Bowl, but you can definitely learn the game playing an AV 7 team. You’ll want to have a grain of masochism though, and play thinking of your initial teams as disposable “practice” teams likely to be butchered! The caution you’re forced to learn will serve you in good stead later, and all the tricks you pickup for keeping your players alive benefit tougher teams too.
The only thing I’d avoid starting off are the teams with poor ball handling like Chaos or Khemri, and of course the schtick teams: Goblins, Halflings, Ogres, and Vampires.
Them mummies will fuck you right up
So I started an Ork team last night to give it a try and luck was not with me. First game, I kicked off against a goblin team. Troll 1 blocks one of my black orks, killing him outright and I didn’t have an apothecary yet. Second move by the goblins was Troll 2 blocking my second black ork, which you guessed it, the troll knocks me down and then used Pile On I believe, thereby killing my second black ork. I then proceeded to abandon the match and went back to reading tactics online.
For my opening lineup I had 3 of my black orks on the line of scrimmage in the middle, is that a bad move? I figured I would want some strength there up the middle.
It’s a little bit like Demon’s Souls in that if you immediately try to do the same game with the same approach and hope for better rolls, you might do better, but if you try it again simply doing something different you might come up with a more sound strategy. The nice thing about an Ork team (from the perspective on the receiving end as my recently clobbered skaven can tell you) is that you have a lot of middle range to swap in and out of spaces relative to their expendability and how necessary they are in other places. Against an AI goblin team it’s going to be a battle of extremes no matter what (usually watching extremely bad results for them) so you have some room to have a maneuver bashing flank, a rearguard, and a strong middle without having to gimp any of them. IIRC Black Orks are like your Saurials, in that they have a lot of potential but you want to play it safer until they at least have block on them. Either way, with AV9 that’s pretty lousy luck and I wouldn’t take it as a definitive pronouncement on your ability.
Bossman
1671
Against goblins you should put normal linemen on the LOS instead of black orcs because the extra strength doesn’t help against trolls and chainsaw guys.
There’s also a serious dose of bad luck in that encounter.
Ok, so clearly I need to look at my tactics for formations. I always thought I needed my strongest guys up the middle so that the other player didn’t march down the middle of the field.
And yeah, it was horrible luck, if I ran that match again I would think the likelihood of it happening again would be fairly low.
Generally you want strong guys there but it if won’t matter anyways then you shouldn’t bother. Same can be said when facing an undead team, 2 ST5 mummies are going to fuck up your BO line, so you might as well position them somewhere that they won’t just be knocked over every turn.
Kalle
1675
Strength is relative to what the other team can put up on the line. If he has players of equal strength or stronger then whatever you put on the line is likely going to be hit with a 2d block and in those cases you should just put a lineman up there. If he has nothing but ST3 players (and none of them have skills like Guard or Dauntless) then you can put your Black Orcs on the line and be confident that he has to use half his team to help block them and will most likely dodge away.
Kalle
1676
By the way, don’t get a Troll on the Orc team if you’re trying to learn the game. It will hurt you more than it will help you.
JM1
1677
And if you have defence that isn’t on the LoS, then they can only march downfield so far. Restrict them to blocks they don’t want to have to make and one blitz a turn, and you can truly bog teams down.
Tony_M
1678
Thats very bad luck you had. Orcs can really take a beating normally, especially once they get the apothecary.
The tactics the other posters are mentioning are fairly advanced but easy enough to understand in principle. Your Black Orcs are stronger and tougher than most other units. So putting them on the line of scrimmage is a good idea most of the time. But against a team with 2 or more strength 5 players (like mummies or trolls), the other team actually has the strength advantage.
In that case what you do is put your most unskilled, most disposable players on the line of scrimmage, cannon fodder style. Most Strength 5 players have one or more disadvantages. They are often slow (like mummies) or stupid (like trolls), but they cost alot of money. So the idea here is that you tie up the other teams most expensive players with cheap cannon fodder, while your best players are free to concentrate on getting the ball and scoring.
Its a lesson you need to learn early if you play a soft race like skaven or elves, but even the Orcs need to deploy this strategy on occasion. The good news is that your cannon fodder players are still very tough hombres with good armor.
Also note that you can turn the tables a bit when you are receiving the kickoff. You get to see where he deploys his trolls before you set up. So use the cannon fodder strategy against his trolls, but there should also be space to face off one or two of your Black Orcs against one of his goblins. Payback time.
Also, also, and this is getting fairly specific now. Trolls have the “very stupid” trait. Which means they often stand doing nothing and waste their turn. If they do that, run everyone away from the Troll next turn. Hopefully between the Trolls stupidity and slow speed he’ll never catch up to you. Again hes “wasting” a very expensive unit doing nothing useful.
Tony
What I’ve done when possible is to put Skaven with Dodge or +1 AG on the line against bruisers like Mummies. Then I retreat a square to “net” against their forward advances and force them to use blitzes if they want to bash.
But Dodge and +1 AG are rarely seen in Skaven linemen — it’s just that my current SP team has had good luck in level-up rolls. Another, Dodgier race (Amazons come to mind) can really do this consistently.
I saw this on BGG:
Blood Bowl Legendary Edition is currently on sale on Impulse for $9.99 (reg. $39.99).
