True! I guess I consider that more of a private league, even though it’s technically open.
Jarmo
1942
I’ve gotten reasonable matches in the FOL by having an evenly developed team. I haven’t had to resort to having a few level 4-5 guys and the rest rookies. After 22 matches my 12-player Orc team is TV1420. That’s 3x Level 1, 4x L2, 4x L3 and 1x L4 (the ball-carrying thrower). My only +stat is a +MA on the thrower.
We’ll see what the situation is in the higher TVs should I ever get there. +STs seem to be really essential, though. I’m wondering whether I should recycle players until I get one or two blitzers or black orcs with one. On the other hand, natural attrition takes care of the recycling.
I started encountering the pure killer teams at around TV1550. It’ll be interesting to see whether I’ll be better equipped to deal with them with a more optimally developed team. The game seems to devolve to being solely about the injury rolls with them. That is very boring as it’s just random chance.
I have a TV1520-1600 ish dwarf team in the FOL. Every player on the team is Level 2, with the exception of the runners and one troll slayer who are level 3, and a troll slayer who is level 1 because one died* and had to be replaced. Basically every blocker/blitzer was given guard, the runners were given block, dump-off, strip ball (need to be able to take the ball away from streaking players in the backfield, that was one of my biggest defensive issues), the troll slayer got mighty blow and then guard, and the death roller got multiple block. Next up is every blocker/blitzer is going to take mighty blow after guard, the deathroller is going to take grab (15/16SPPs!) to keep people near him, and I’m praying to finally get doubles on a runner to take dodge, otherwise I guess I’ll give one kick-off return and one pass block. The troll slayers will get tackle as their third skill.
*I was going to fire him anyways, he suffered 2 -MV injuries and a -AG injury. The AG wasn’t a big deal but a player who is designed to blitz and needs to be mobile (frenzy!!!) can’t have 3MV, just useless.
Jarmo
1945
Yeah, I meant FOL (the Forum Open League), I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote that. I’m starting to write like I play Blood Bowl…
Jarmo
1946
Sounds like a nicely developed team! Are you happy with the opponents you’ve been getting with them? Have you seen any cheesed teams?
I’m not familiar with Dwarf leveling, is dump-off an exotic choice for the runners or is it a commonly picked skill? I don’t have any experience with it in any of my teams so far so I don’t know how good it is in practise.
Jarmo
1947
Hey, I just noticed something in the game UI for the first time. In the Replay view of the after-match Results screen, if you click on the icons on the blue match timeline you will see what happened, to whom and on which turn. Who got injured, who scored etc. Neat!
Sorry only one runner has dump-off, block, and strip ball. The other one has block, strip ball. I actually think dump-off was kind of a dumb choice. It does make it harder for elves to nail my ball carrier and pick the ball up just by virtue of the fact that I can chuck the ball to a dwarf near other dwarves and hope the ball lands somewhere covered better then it would have had I just let it fall out of the runners hands.
The problem is that with an all-guard team I generally have every dwarf in contact with other players, and the only players I’d ever throw to are runners and blitzers. Even still in about ten games with dump-off I have yet to have it actually let me retain posession. It’s been helpful for keeping the ball covered by dwarves when a wardancer might have just picked it up and blown past me but the pass has never been successfully recieved.
On my khemri team my level 4 thro-ra was recently killed. I actually forget what skills I even gave him… obviously block was first but I don’t know what else. I’m thinking about giving him dump-off as well though. While again, I’m very rarely going to have a stupid khemri recieve a pass, the amount of times I have had a wood elf team score on me with only 4 players on the pitch simply because a wardancer leapt over to the ball, picked it up (because even though it’s 75% to pick up the ball with a thro-ra it fails all the time) and ran away is getting frustrating.
Jarmo
1949
Thanks for elaborating! I can get that, the wardancers can be a real pain in the keister.
Bill
1950
I think this problem was posted earlier but I couldn’t find it (on here or elsewhere): in single player, not all of my players are available for placement before the kick. There will be 11 players on the field and none in the end zone where the extras normally would be. Is there a fix for this? I’m tired of not being able to use one of my black orcs…
Not sure since the bug varies sometimes by team and exact dimensions of your roster (I know goblins on orc teams are particularly difficult to replace with other players), but typically I rely on the text list of extra players in the upper right of your screen. Click one name, and then swap him in for someone on the pitch by clicking on the already placed player. The end zone appearance is very unreliable.
Bill
1952
That works, thanks! I never noticed the nameplates before.
Took me a while as well. Good luck! I finally got a team to number one in singleplayer campaign, a TV 2800 dwarf team (surprise!). It’s funny when the game decides that one of these tournaments is time to send me up against halflings or something.
Blood Bowl is cheap as hell in the current steam sale.
This probably would have been more impressive withthe correct link, although the above is surely an awesome blind date clip.
Jarmo
1955
13,59 euros in Europe, how much is it in the New World? Well worth the price, anyway.
14 dollars in the New World.
Yes, 14$. That Euro price sucks, and I think there’d be a substantial window for trusted members of the qt3 community to receive a rain of BB-related gifts from Americans that had coincidentally received 14$ in their paypal accounts.
Bill
1958
As more or less an experiment in bad ai I decided to see how viable a halfling team is in single-player. After 6 matches (the first bowl series in the campaign) my team is not only undefeated, but has completely shut out every team, usually scoring twice per game. Surprisingly, casualties were fairly light with just a single death and no permanent injuries.
So I guess they are viable; however, it’s ultimately unsatisfying because there’s no good way to level up your players unless you get very luck with the dice. But really, a ST3 halfling really isn’t much more fun than a ST2 one, and I guess +AG would be nice, but is it really worth the TV? And how long are they going to survive anyway?
I would say that halfling teams are viable in multiplayer (the only real measure, anyway) if they stick to the low TV approach to inducements, which generally needs about 400k for the discounted chef and the treeman star player. This is demonstrated practically by Reldan’s success with the Dwarven Defenders making it to the playoffs here and now becoming a pain in the ass in a league where the strength of the average team (1400+) makes their 980 TV very manageable. Keep in mind that for a team with small, stunty players an AG 4 or 5 player is far easier to throw successfully, and then think about the potential of a blocking, pro-rerolling tree in addition to the formidable star player, and then take a look at his current roster. Killing players, it seems, only makes him stronger. I think he likes winning more than leveling, though, so ymmv.
As far as single player goes, it gets noticeably tougher about three or four tourneys in when the layers of unlikely skill-ups combine with the AI’s seemingly endless supply of additional linemen at kickoffs give it a good chance of at least hurting your team if not actually scoring or coming close to winning a game. Low AV teams tend to do relatively poorly as you approach TV 2000 in the singleplayer due to the AI’s confrontational gameplay, but I’m sure it’s beatable with halflings.
If anyone’s interested, the Blood Bowl board/card game, put out by Fantasy Flight Games, will be out in September definitely, and maybe even make GenCon.
http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp?eidm=130&esem=2
