1841

There’s a couple of points to note here.

Firstly, Cyanide fell foul of GW when they ripped off Blood Bowl with whatever that mediocre BB copy was (Ah yes, Chaos League).

Secondly, Blood Bowl is a game that earns GW very little money yet has a massive online following thanks to the Java client and FUMBBL et al. It was an untapped market and GW knew that in order to get those people paying for their game they’d have to make it a faithful adaptation.

1842

There is a pretty good description of the various races here.

In general, I’d always recommend going with a team you think is fun, but there are 3-4 teams which are pure gimmicks, and will therefore tend to be very frustrating to play.

1843

Thanks Idrisz!

The LoL group collectively got Blood Bowl and played a few matches yesterday in the qt3 open league, many playing BB for the first time at all, and a few for the first time in a long while.

Outer Rim Rifters (Skaven) 3- 0 Gothic Lolitas (Chaos)

I started with a game against max, with him never having played before. While my extensive knowledge from playing the AI gave me an advantage it was a very tough fight.
The second block max threw was a dead rat lineman, making me use my apothecary (I started with 3 rerolls, 11 players, an apo and without a rat ogre). I mean the chance of getting another dead roll on a gutter runner or blitzer were low right? Right?
While I did not get another dead roll Max got two more injuries and several K.O.s in the first half.

I had scored two quick touchdowns making use of Skaven speed and max’ limited experience in the first half. While he moved more than half of my team off the pitch by turn 8 and got the ball earlier he just was too far away from the touchdown line to score in the first half.

Two K.O. rats woke up again and the second half continued like the first. Max injured and K.O.ed my players, while I managed to knock down his ball carrier and run away with the ball for a third TD.

In the end Max managed to get four injuries and seven K.O.s (2 Waking up on half time) in the whole game on my team, leaving me with two players at the very last turn, one of which scored the final TD.
Three miss next game results and one -1 Agility on my thrower. Sadly, that ended the carrier of the late Zoid, being replaced by Zoid the Eater of Zoid.

I don’t know how to look at replay stats yet, but the amount of injuries and K.O.s was pretty crazy. I think I threw two blocks in that game, both against ball carriers.

Outer Rim Rifters 3-0 Is Legendary!!! (Chaos)

My second game was against Idrisz who ALSO played Chaos. Sigh. Luckily his last game of Blood Bowl was a while ago (with two or so practise games against AI right before we started.)

I had three Linemen missing that game and got three free mercs. The game proceeded quite a bit like the first one, except that Idriz got far fewer injuries and K.O.s. His stated contempt for cages (compared to Max’ lacking experience in creating one) allowed me to grab the ball though and get the very same end result, this time with only one injury and a few K.O.s on my side despite him being just as block happy as Max.
Of course one of the Lineman mercs got the MVP… and with only 20k in the bank I was unable to hire him (apparently you get the money from a match after you get the chance to hire those…)

But I can’t complain too much. Despite the untimely end of the late Zoid I got 3 level ups and feature two blodging Gutter Runners and a mighty blow Blitzer now.

1844

Nice to see you guys joining up! New blood for the blood god.

1845

Welcome to a great game. The in-game stats, unfortunately, are shit. The solution is this nifty little database program, which I added as a link of its own in my clearinghouse post of BB qt3 info.

The instructions in the download page say almost all of it; you create an account with the same name you have in BB and a different password, and you can submit to “The Qt3 Open League” data pool for teams in that league or create your own private data pool for leagues of your own or submit to the big public ones. It also allows you to download and watch other people’s replays to your copy of BB, while allowing you to disseminate yours effortlessly. Which is pretty cool for league play.

1846

Wish I’d had that for the game I just played against HoneyBunny. He fucking rocked me first half, but then in second I had a ludicrious breakaway that looked like it was going to fail twice, but horns and blitzing led to success. Then when I kicked off he failed the pickup twice and, well, I was in a pretty good position to score when the game ended. A draw, which I’m pretty happy with.

As well, that match gave me a second warrior with block, which is great.

1847

Well, you can still do it. Blood Bowl automatically saves your replays (visible under the single player/load/replays option from the main menu). So what you do is open BBmanager, log in. Make sure you are playing Blood Bowl in windowed mode, as it is much more stable for alt-tabbing that way. Then play the replay, using + to speed it up (you can speed it up a number of times, just keep hitting it).

The replay will be done in ten minutes or so at max speed, and then bbmanager will pop up a tooltip asking to click it to submit it to the database. You can then select the league you want to submit it to, and look at your precious data. Then you curse Nuffle for your luck, or alternatively slink away realizing it wasn’t that bad and only felt that bad.

1848

You can also just open bbmanager without BB being open, select the last replay and submit it. This is what I do since I have never remembered to open bbmanager before playing a game.

1849

Outer Rim Rifters (Skaven) 1 - 1 Adorable Bunnies (Undead)

Just finished my first match, a game with Therlun in which he taught me the ropes. I was Undead, he was Skaven. I had absurdly good dice rolls, resulting in something ridiculous like three injuries and two or three KOs, and scored the first touchdown in a single drive that took up most of the first half of the game. In the second half, however, despite being down several players, Skaven mobility got him a quick touchdown early that I wasn’t able to offset. I was able to keep him from scoring again.

1850

Glad there will be more guys in the Open League! All y’all should join the Qt3 Steam BB group for game finding.

1851

Gothic Lolitas (Chaos) 3 - 0 Adorable Bunnies (Undead)

I was really worried about that fucking mummy as the game started, but I managed to get him down and then KO him roughly two turns into the game. He didn’t get back up until turn 14 or 15. Which meant I had a clear advantage in bashing, and did all I could to exploit that advantage. I’m loving the mobility of beastmen, combined with their ability to get a double roll while charging a str 3 target. Also loving block on warriors.

I was much too foul-happy, so while I KO’d two and injured four, I had four players ejected from the game, including two warriors (although the second warrior was ejected in the closing turns, when it didn’t matter).

One of my touchdowns was at least partly attributable to Guppy being even less experienced than I am, as I got an interception(!) when I had his ball-carrying ghoul surrounded and outnumbered near his end of the pitch. He threw, not realizing interception was a game mechanic, and I was able to bash the two guys in my runner’s way to the side, so that was that.

1852

I would never foul with a CW, just for the record. That’s what beastmen are for!

1853

Yeah, it’s a terrible choice, and one I should stop making.

Lizard, Lazy, thanks for the help with the replay program.

1854

That fucking game :p I only had one mummy, not really knowing what I was doing, and once mx put him down it was very uncommon to be in a position to make a favorable block. Just not enough Strength compared to mx’s team. He also had several leveled players, which I did not, with Block, making it even harder to accomplish anything, too much armor to injure, and far better luck. I had a couple ghouls but i could never get them away from his players to take advantage of their mobility, and even with their excellent Agility they kept failing dodge rolls.

1855

Right. The key thing is not to re-open Blood Bowl after playing a game or watching a replay if you do quit. BBmanager can only read the game if it’s “fresh” in the temporary cache, which gets cleared when you start the program again. From what I gather.

I always remember to open BBmanager halfway through a game because there’s always a moment where I’m asking “man what the hell were the odds of that?” and then I’m reminded that there’s an answer for that question.

If you haven’t had a chance to already, the only absolutely vital site to check before playing is bbtactics.com’s starting roster options. Even if you choose to deviate from them (as I have for next season in the Euro league) it gives you a good idea of what the trade-offs are for each starting line-up.

Also, with respect to fouling, maxle just reminded me of the thread Reldan started detailing the odds of a successful foul relative to assists (remember, foul assists have to be free of enemy tackle zones and guard does not work for fouls). It really helped me recover from being either an overaggressive fouler with half his team on the bench or someone who never takes strategic foul risks. I added it to the clearinghouse post of qt3 Blood Bowl info.

1856

Well… I knew MP is different from AI stomps, but I am kind of surprised at the amount of casualties my Skaven have to sustain.
Averaging out 3.3 casualties per game I just had two games in a row with 5 wounded within the first half.

Those games were against bashy teams (no mighty blow though), but getting 5 wounds out of 8 armour breaks seems kind of nasty and really fun killing. No sacrifices for Nuffle from me.

1857

Skaven is one of the most vulnerable teams though. Balanced out by the gutter runners being so awesome at scoring. Elven teams are actually more durable than skaven because their linemen can dodge out reliably where skaven linemen cannot. So if you like being fast and slippery but want some more survivability you can try wood elves. You lose the access to strength skills that your stormvermin give though and mutation access on double skill rolls.

1858

So how is one meant to deal with Deathrollers?

1859
  1. Stay far away from them to ensure that any block he does with them requires that he use a blitz. He will often want or need to use that blitz elsewhere. In general, if you are not a bashy team yourself, this is what you should be doing against Dwarves anyway.
  2. Hurry up and score. It’s a secret weapon, so will get sent off after the drive.
1860

Make sure the drive ends as fast as possible so they will get sent off by the ref. They are extremely hard to deal with but since they’re secret weapons they will only be able to set up once (unless the ref gets bribed to look the other way)

Other than that there are few players that can deal with them on the pitch. Goblin chainsaws and fanatics, ST6 star players, and Treemen are the only ones that come to mind. Dauntless players can work but if your player is ST3 then the Dauntless roll is a 5+.