Removing A From Elf Linos

[mattgslater]

Gimme a break. Elves have a major advantage and a whole lot of significant downsides. There's only one broken elf team, and it's broken because it has too many assets. At some point, big ups/big downs become hard to balance. You can have one or two, but the balance window, wide though it may be in the big picture of games, gets pretty tight when you start adding more and more stuff.

High Elves, say, are kind of fast, all AG4, have expensive linemen, and lack any bash potential. That's not such a big deal. Wood Elves are very fast and start with Leaping Blodgers. You can't counter that just by making them fragile and pricey; what you end up with is a team that is more likely to either tromp all over you, or die horribly and never rebuild.

[Asperon Thorn]

What's funny is I have always thought the HE were the easiest team to play in a league. . .

Positionals are cheaper, 4 MA 8 str 3 players. . . Essentially you can run with 6 fast blitzers. 4 with MA 8 and 2 with MA 7.

Asperon Thorn

[mattgslater]

You don't even need all those Catchers. I've found that I only need to field 2 Catchers and 1 Thrower most of the time; I keep one on the bench unless I'm up against speed or have a short clock.

[Asperon Thorn]

No, not for catching you don't. But I buy them all, give them block, tackle, shadowing. . and use them as defensive players. . .toss one of those guys on a WE catcher and see how far he gets.

Asperon Thorn

[mattgslater]

Oh, totally agreed. But you still don't need many of them. I like to run a big line rotation, getting Dodge and either SS or Guard (or both) on about half a dozen linemen. That means fielding them on defense. One Catcher for coverage, one to blitz, and sometimes a third one for coverage if I'm up against Wood Elves or Skaven. That leaves me Linemen open as targets on the recovery score, which makes everybody tougher and tougher.

But it's not overpowered. I've had just as much success with Orcs and Chaos (more, even; my Chaos have never lost, though that's probably a sample size issue), and nearly as much with Humans. I don't know where y'all get off thinking that the elf teams don't pay a steep price in compensation for that major advantage. It only becomes a problem when you pile on too many advantages, and the compensatory mechanics start to lose their sting unless they become simply awful (like Khemri).

[SillySod]

The burden of dis-proof is on you, should you like....

I'll stick by my 35+ years of gaming, and 20 years of BB, experience and mathematical sensibilities... they've served me well....

And, after all, we are stuck with the 24 teams... design flaws and all....

Timmy(s) rejoice!

I have enough #1 rankings to say that my opinions about elves are backed up by results. I'm pretty confident that other top players dont think that elves are overpowered (far from it). FUMBBL has plenty of stats that suggest elves are ok. I cant even remember the last time elves did especially well in the White Isle League and thats basicly the pinacle of BB league experience.

My problem is that you are making massive claims which disagree quite heavily with most other players... but without giving us reason to believe that you play against any sort of serious opposition. Sadly I dont think you will be able to because you are basing your arguments on games played between quite a limited number of people. Your opinions appear to be bias by not having played against any "real" opposition. Since you live in the land of aus, FUMBBL is the most obvious place for you to demonstrate that you know what you are talking about.

I would genuinely love it if you came to FUMBBL and kicked arse with elves - demonstrating how powerful they are. It'd be controversial, provoke alot of thought, and generally be rocking. Even if the win streak doesnt work out then maybe you will see why we dont think that elves are broken.

[Alamar]

Digger, please play on FUMBBL and dominate the rankings with your elves. It'd be interesting to watch and it'd give your arguments some weight.

Apologies for being slightly off topic ...

Where can we easily see stats for FUMBBL and other leagues?? Any URLs would be appreciated.

EDIT: Nevermind ... I posted this before your other post came down ... oops

[Digger Goreman]

I have enough #1 rankings to say....

[mattgslater]

See, I think the major advantages that prompted this thread are very real, and that the Sod is totally right anyway. There really is a tendency for well-run, well-managed elf teams (of any stripe) to embarrass any opponent and rocket their TV out of control. These teams assemble massive records and huge TVs, but one really bad game, and they're back down to Earth. If these same coaches were playing other T1 teams instead, they'd be beating everybody up, winning about as many games, and instead of winning 5-2 games that leave the loser sputtering but better off, they'll win 2-1 games that leave the loser gasping on the pitch, wondering if he should reset.

Wood Elf teams have a pair of advantages and corresponding disadvantages, which gives them a slight edge that seems quite significant in a carefully-balanced game, but isn't totally world-beating. This same set of ups and downs happens also not to be much fun: they're too good unless/until they get wrecked, and then they suck. That's not amazingly fun.

The other elf teams are just good, in the pack with a lot of teams. A good elf coach will kick butt, and a poor one will struggle. In some places, some elf teams amass good records, but don't sweat that; this is because up-and-coming coaches are often drawn to elf teams, and these coaches would win with anything decent they play, while the bottom-feeders and newbies are generally discouraged from playing elves in favor of teams with fewer management concerns.

This is a very minor criticism in a pretty well-established framework, so I think the proper course of action is no action at all. Or maybe take Sprint off the WE Catcher, and make them 0-2 at 80k?

Ooh, ooh... even better... split the teams up along two axes by speed/weight and cheese/tier, and then tell coaches that every season they have to play a team in a different spot on both axes? So, say, you couldn't play elves every season, and you couldn't play Dwarfs then Wood Elves.

[Purplegoo]

I have enough #1 rankings to say....

It's been quite the journey from total newbie to veteran forum savvy winder upper. There's a tear in my eye. Evoke rankings, evoke!

And the last time that Elves did really well in the WIL was infact, last Season, as Woodies are reigning Champs.

But shh, you were doing so well!

We live in a World where Khemri (yes! Khemri!) were once accused of being too good. Yes. Khemri. Any team can be banded about as 'broken' on the internet and from your own personal frame of reference. Some stuff is good, some bad, some is in-between; but from my frame of reference, nothing is broken good in BB. Personally I find FUMBBL, a good RL LRB6 league and Tournament play to be a good frame of reference, but I'd like to see some all powerful unstoppable Elves. I'll be online later for someone to kick my ass?

If it's an issue in your league, houserule them, by all means. It's supposed to be fun, after all, so make damn sure it is for you.

[Alamar]

These teams assemble massive records and huge TVs, but one really bad game, and they're back down to Earth.

This is a big part of the issue is the wild swings in performance. The "unbeatable" until ground into the dust syndrom isn't terribly fun for anyone involved.

Another thing is possibly playstyle & league makeup. If you're in a smallish league that isn't particularly cut-throat [I.E. not the normal amounts of MB/PO/Claw/Dirty Player/Fouling/etc.] then it's especially easy for the Elves to spiral out of control because a lot of the natural checks & balances don't exist anymore.

EDIT: Another factor could be that in small leagues I've seen times where most coaches just wouldn't run any of the power teams. So when Elves go against Necros, starting Khemri, starting Chaos, stunties, etc. they seem like the most broken things ever

[mattgslater]

Another factor could be that in small leagues I've seen times where most coaches just wouldn't run any of the power teams. So when Elves go against Necros, starting Khemri, starting Chaos, stunties, etc. they seem like the most broken things ever

This might be an issue. If one guy is playing a T1 team and the other guys are playing "T1" teams, that only works if the one guy isn't as good a coach. The solution to that is to make everybody play a couple races or change races once in awhile.

Oh, and "unbeatable" doesn't exist. There's a counter for everything in this game. Any team can win any game against any other team without so much as a single Cas.

[Asperon Thorn]

I think it is just a matter of letting elves get amazing. . . My advice. . don't.

It goes with Chaos as well. An eperienced Chaos team is incredibly scary. . so in my experience I don't let them get that way. . .Early on in that teams career I crush them, foul, knock off the pitch, block, basically get in their face and cripple the team. . . (And this is ussually with my darkies) I do the same thing with my darkies vs WE. I huddle up like dwarves and just grind them to dust. .

The fact that any team can take the time to grind elves to dust. . balances out all of their finesse, in my opinion. Choosing not to take that time, the opponents fault.

Asperon Thorn

[mattgslater]

Tempo, baby, tempo. From an elf team's perspective, the proper response to that is to try to go into the half up by one if receiving, or two if kicking, to force the opponent to game for the score rather than stalling out for the beatdown.

But even if it works, once more, no team is unbeatable. Elves who spam ridiculous skills across the board are tough to take on, but it's not like you can't spam ridiculous skills on Orcs or Dwarfs. There are quite a lot of teams that start with broad multi-category access and either a mechanism to skill every player or a good set of starting skills on the non-scoring guys.

* Amazons start with a non-access power skill across the board, and the linos don't run out of good selections until very late.
* Chaos, you mentioned. Ditto Chaos Pact.
* Dwarfs have skill-monger players and guys who start with Block + good skill + GS access. Yes, they pay a fairly steep price for that, but it's huge.
* Orcs have 0-10 guys with multicategory access, and most Orc teams run at least 9 of them. Of the other 0-21 players, they have three different access categories. BOBs don't look like receivers, but the Orcs have 0-9 guys who can do a BOB's job, and they have Throwers, so BOBs are about as easy to skill on a per-game basis as Ulfs.

What's the difference?
* A rookie Amazon is almost as good as a skilled one. No 'Zon without a stat increase is anything more than a really skillful Hobgoblin.
* You can't (okay, shouldn't) game to kill Dwarfs and Orcs, at least not if you have anything to fear from that Dwarf or Orc coach.

[Alamar]

The idea that there are few things that you can do other than be totally merciless and grind the team into dust [IMHO] can be a problem in itself.

Of course by design the greatest weakness of the Elves is that they are relatively [compared to Orcs & Dwarves at least] fragile. By playing to this weakness the Elves can [within reason] be held in check.

On the other hand having a concerted league-wide effort to "grief" Elf players [to keep them in check] may work counter to having a nice friendly, relaxed, casual league.

EDIT: Unbeatable was in quotes ... Of course any team is beatable. A few dice rolls going one way or another can easily turn a sweet 3-0 victory into a costly 1-2 loss.

Another EDIT: Don't forget that if you play a low tier 1 team by the time you spam your first set of skills the Elves have beaten you to the punch and have plenty of folks on their second skills so you're often one skill behind [unless attrition can take its toll]