1901

The important thing is that everyone more or less agrees that “not in the LOS” is a good start. The rest is situational.

1902

I have a number of strategies with Rat Ogre placement, and think they’re crucial to Skaven defense. A few of the variations:

  • On the line of Scrimmage against pansy teams that I don’t think can get 2d blocks on my line. This rarely comes up, but if I do it I put him on the outside, and not in the middle, as once the sides fall it’s easy for opponents to 2d block even a ST 5 piece.

  • Right behind the line as Kalle suggests, to threaten anyone who follows up on scrimmage. I don’t do this often either, as it risks him facing a 2d block, and he’d have to sprint to threaten the sidelines. Plus the followup Block you’re hoping to setup can be a risky one to make with Frenzy. It also leaves the wings easier to blow through than I like.

  • 1 space back from the front, denying assists against my line. Denying the assist rarely matters, and so this typically is not worth the risk of Quick Snap.

  • 2 spaces back, where he’s safe from Quick Snap, anchoring part of my defense. I’ll do this when I think an opponent isn’t strong enough to 2d blitz him.

  • 3 spaces back, shielded by my Kicker. This has become my standard formation. I rarely need to worry about him being dropped, and opponents can’t target my kicker and follow up without giving me a free block.

  • 2 spaces back right behind my 3 linerats, when I overload scrimmage to one side. I find this has some use against slow teams, in an effort to draw them to one side. The Rat Ogres job here is to prevent the opponent from easily caging forward.

Below are some formations that I’ve found (to varying degrees) useful. I’ve mixed in a bit of variation in the other positions as food for thought.


----|--XXO--|----
--X-|XX---X-|----
-X--|------X|-X--
----|-------|--X-

----|--XXX--|----
----|--O-X--|----
--X-|X-----X|-X--
-X--|-------|--X-

----|--XXX--|----
--X-|-O---X-|-X--
-X--|X-----X|--X-
----|-------|----

----|--XXX--|----
----|-------|----
--X-|X-----O|-X--
-X--|-X---X-|--X-

----|--XXX--|----
----|-------|----
-X--|X-----K|--X-
--X-|-X---O-|-X--

----|----XXX|----
----|-------|----
--X-|XXX--O-|-X--
-X--|-------|--X-
1903

This is always an issue, and a tricky one to resolve. You can lessen the risk somewhat by making your Rat Ogre blitzes not so key that a Wild Animal will wreck your defense, and then using other players for key blitzes.

The upside to having your Rat Ogre blitz is that you can more easily ensure he’s next to opponents so that Wild Animal is less painful. When I do blitz with other players, I try to have my Rat Ogre already in contact; this isn’t always possible of course, but the more you can set it up the better.

1904

I guess all this makes sense on defense, though what I really want is a cage breaker.

What I want from the ogre on offense is to tie up linemen so there’s more chance of holes for my gutter runners and cage guys to pass through. So I build 'em with Guard and Break Tackle.

1905

That was the concept I started with, but I think it only makes sense if you get lucky and are able to put block on him early (my guarding Rat Ogre was killed or eliminated for some other reason I can’t recall, and now replaced with a rookie). Otherwise, he’s simply too unreliable to be the axis of your offense or cagebreaking and almost requires an opponent to be thinly spread when they get to him. I think Stormvermin with Guard and gutter runners with block + dauntless or wrestle are far better suited to the task of penetrating a cage or making a hole in the flanks.

1906

Yeah…My previous one did get -1 ST from the beatings he took, which more or less ruined him.

I gave Block to my 3rd GR rather than Catch, with the intent of building him as a blitzer as suggested on bbtactics…But I doubt I’ll be developing any ideas further after my last New World Cup game this week. Maybe I’ll switch the Charlies to the Open League.

1907

Food for thought. With Juggernaut, the rat ogre turns into a good crowdpusher / cagebreaker.


   X X
L   O 
L  X X
   
   G

into


   X X
L   O 
L  X X
    G

into


   X X
L   O 
L XG X

into


   X X
L   O 
LXG  X

and, if you get a knockdown on the 2nd block, into


   X X
L  GO 
LX   X

Now you can get in contact with the ballcarrier without dodging, maybe you can block again on the isolated corner, and if you’re close enough to the sideline, you can seal off any escape route. You’re trading 3 players for his 5, and clearly you don’t need to use 2 linemen for this setup.

1908

A quick aside, and a question.

When I first got legendary (already owning an original) private leagues were structured in this bloody annoying fashion whereby the only games one could play were scheduled games. Being on the other side of the universe that would mean never being able to get many games in due to timezones etc etc.

I understand now that leagues allow you to play anyone else from within your league at any time? Is that correct? I am really hoping that leagues will now work like the good old fumbbl leagues where you could pool all your buddies and have teams devoted to playing with and against them, generating points and ratings using an ELO type system.

If this is so I might have to get the game up and running again.

Googling failed to answer this question for me.

1909

I’m sure I specifically pointed this out to you at the time, as I know it was a major thing for you. Check out the QT3 Open League as it’s set up in this way.

1910

Yeah - at the time it didn’t seem to work. Or the awesome UI confused the crap out of me. Or both. But I’m assured from a couple of people that my poor explanation of my BB wet-dream is now, actually real, so I can go ahead and make my teh awesome team and play you randoms!

edit

Should have read the other thread!

1911

Sigh. It seems all the coaches I draw in the Forum Open League (the Cyanide forum, not Qt3) have at least a hundred games on me. Except the one guy who had a thousand.

To quote Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss: I need some less experienced people :-)

1912

Yeah, I’ve noticed that too. It only makes sense though; like any RTS or FPS, available games tend to select for the interested dedicated players.

(The people are all very nice and helpful, but it has reached a core of pretty good players at this point.)

1913

Yeah! That’s what I’m talking about! I just won a Forum Open League (FOL) match 2-1 against a guy with over 1,500 matches played (me: 75). My new orcs against his new vampires.

I thought his team was recklessly built, five vamps and three rerolls. It was a simple matter to put down his six thralls and roll over the rest. My team: 4 black orcs, 4 blitzers, 1 thrower, 2 linemen and 3 rerolls.

I attacked first (his choice) and slowly ground out the first half to a TD. He got two chances to recover his KO’d thralls (his turn 8 and the beginning of the second half) and got all of them back for the second half. He had one Badly Hurt vamp, I had a Badly Hurt black orc.

The second half he quickly broke through but I was able to pressure him strongly for a two-turn TD leaving me ample time to grind out the winning TD. His guys dropped steadily and the match ended with a permanently injured thrall and a vampire plus four others out of the pitch. He deleted his team immediately after the match.

It’s nice to be on the other side of the equation every once in a while.

1914

Hell yeah man

1915

Yet more reason, to me, that every game should have a decent single player AI to support late buyers and sporadic players. That’s sort of a tangent, but I really get the BB urge now and then, but knowing how crappy the AI is means it stays unplayed.

1916

Ckessel, you could start a thread for new BB players and arrange games with them. There are many of them around now after the Limited Edition sale price. It’s not as convenient as a decent AI but it has its upsides, too.

1917

Blood bowl really doesn’t seem like a game it’d be easy to code a good AI for. It’s obscenely nondeterministic, the board is always wide open,and there isn’t a critical mass of well played games on record anywhere you could use as a basis for a learning algorithm.

That said, lots of people are available to play.

1918

Surely among the 91,462 matches currently in the BB Manager database there are many good ones? How many are needed to teach an AI?

1919

Anouther shout-out for this unique take on Blood Bowl AARs (with a ton of pictures). I’ve enjoyed the last two match reports by Katie quite a lot. The intentionally schmalzy denouements have been surprisingly affecting after following the fortunes of the plucky little ponies during a match in minute detail.

My Little Pony is a Chaos team with only ponies in it (Beastmen and a Minotaur) which uses no rerolls. They rely only on the power of friendship, hugs and love to win the day! They also have a lot of nice tea parties.

The stories of Princess Sparkle’s new glove and Truly’s wings interwoven in the AARs have been recent highlights. I’m glad Katie plays Blood Bowl and shares her games with us.

1920

A random thing happened to me in online Blood Bowl, specifically in the Forum Open League. FOL is the player organised and policed league where disconnecters, farmers and other abusers are kept out. It’s the place to get good games at practically any hour of the day.

So I was tooling along merrily with my Orc team Loud Green. I drew a Norse team much lower in value to mine. I guess the matchmaking algorithm widens the allowed TV gap as the search progresses, it took a few spins of the coin to get a game this time.

The opposing team got so much inducement money they were able to hire a monster of a Star Player, Icepelt Hammerblow, a ST6 Yeti without Wild Animal. He was really annoying especially when combined with the other Yeti the team already had.

The match was a bloody, frustrating bashfest and I eventually lost. Once a Norse player broke out of the scrum with the ball there was nothing the slow orcs could do. As frosting on the cake they injured my troll with -ST. I killed one of their linemen but that was scant compensation for a 110k player.

So far so business as usual on the pitch. Okay, so the next day I again had an opportunity to play. I spun the coin (this is the wait mode graphic for matchmaking) and lo and behold, who should I draw but the same coach and team! It was the very next match for both of us. What’s the likelihood of that with the hundreds of coaches and thousands of teams in FOL?

I had dropped the useless troll and bought a second thrower and third lineman. I had one blitzer and one black orc as MNG. My team value was now low enough that the Norse coach couldn’t get the bloody Star Yeti again.

His AV7 armor held until the second half, then they really started dropping. For the last three turns he did not any more try to stand up his three players remaining on the pitch. Payback was sweet.