Fixing Journeymen II: the poll

[voyagers_uk]

Matt, the way you see things now is different from how you acknowledge you used to view them, and you acknowledge that this is part down to the rules changes you have undergone throughout...

Now you want to change the rules to favour a proportion of teams, so do not be surprised if this changes again.

I would totally go all BASH in your league and make my opponents rely on Journeymen forever. Where would my competition come from... Why would I bother to run the ball more than once? your roster will be on crutches and I will have no opposition to a simple stroll up the pitch. Even better if you refuse to concede to me, I will clear the pitch again and again.

[mattgslater]

OK, but how does weakening Journeymen encourage it? I mean, it's one thing if it tremendously incentivizes fouling, but I can't see how it would. If you're saying that changing one rule might cause some coach to behave differently in some unrelated manner for some unknowable reason, you're probably right. You know, a butterfly flapping its wings in Japan... but I'm not worried about that sort of thing.

[Darkson]

What would you rather face (and I'm going to the extremes here)?

A LRB6 human team of 11 Journeymen TV 550

or A Matt v.1 11 Journeyman team of TV550 with Bonhead

or A Matt v.2 11 Journeyman team of TV800 (with the Merc tax)?


The worse you make Journeymen, the more incentive there is to try and make an opponent take more of them (especially if it's likely you'll face the team again).

[Rhyoth]

OK, but how does weakening Journeymen encourage it?

If journeymen sucks, then it's interresting to force your opponent to play men-down for several games. How ?
By an all-out bash, don't care about winning, don't care about caging, just bash, bash, bash (and foul of course).
Sure, you may lose this match, but if it makes your opponent lose 3-4 matches, it might worth it somehow (especially if you think you would have lost anyway) :
Lose a battle, Win the war
(It becomes even more nastier when several coaches gang up against one particular team)

Right now, this kind of strategy is not really effective, thanks to Journeymen.
But, if you weaken Journeymen, you make this strategy more effective, hence, more attractive.

Of course, you may not see such extreme strategy in your league (however, you may see your coaches taking more risks, just to throw more blocks than usual), but i think you should not ignore such a risk.

[mattgslater]

See, even in the days when it was quite possible to get 10+ casualties in a third or half your games, nobody ever did that on purpose down here. We wouldn't play with a coach who would play that way; we'd kick them out and make them go back to the kiddie pool at Game Empire. Besides, our league rules discourage that, except maybe in the playoffs, when it's too late to take out any team that belongs anyway.

Basically, the way we do it, the regular season is for development and pride: all you can earn is a better team and maybe a better seed in the postseason, with no fear of elimination. By bashing all the time and ignoring the ball, you get neither development nor pride. Besides, there's no reliable way to stop a team from developing, when you're maybe 20% of the games they play. You have very little control over how the casualties fall. Like I said, this is the least aggressive BB league I've ever seen or heard of: it's like the game is called Blo... Bl... Something Bowl. Since we abandoned our 3e variant, everyone just stopped fouling, cold turkey. Now, the only players who get fouled are the Ghouls, Weres and other scoring pieces on the matchup teams, and the only ones who foul them are the Zombies, Rotters and other value pieces on the same kinds of teams. My High Elves get fouled once in awhile, too, but that's because everybody thinks they need to get revenge after I start running up the score; the last time I had to field a Journeyman was game 4.

Also, our bashy coaches need help! Last regular season (the tournament got postponed), we had speeds team lose two games to bash teams (my Nurgle stunned the Skaven 4-1, and the Pro Elves got beat by the Necros 2-1). All of our speed teams had winning records, and all but two of our not-so-speedy teams had losing records. Those two teams were my Norse, who were a pale shadow of my High Elves, and an Undead team that somehow got two ST6 Mummies, a ST4 Zombie, a Guard Zombie and a ST4 Wight in its first three games (I watched two of those +ST rolls with my own eyes, too). Even so, his wins all came against the other basher teams; the High Elves and Skaven are just too much for anyone else, by an order of magnitude (the Pro Elves and Wood Elves were right with them, but the Woodie coach got booted for bad behavior and the PE coach quit after his first loss). Our Orc coach is what passes for average in the Empire League, but his combined score over the 5 games he played before he backed out was 3-16, with an 0-1-4 record (the tie being his last game, against my rookie Nurgle).

[Rhyoth]

See, even in the days when it was quite possible to get 10+ casualties in a third or half your games, nobody ever did that on purpose down here. We wouldn't play with a coach who would play that way; we'd kick them out and make them go back to the kiddie pool at Game Empire. Besides, our league rules discourage that, except maybe in the playoffs, when it's too late to take out any team that belongs anyway.

I don't have a problem with that kind of spirit, when it is part of a long term strategy : you can only use it occasionnaly if you want a shot at the finals, and the targeted coach deserved it most of the time (due to his High Winning Rate).
Besides, the current rules make it quite risky, and not really rewarding.

(of cours, if the guy just want to destroy other teams, and don't aim to win the championship, that's another story...)

Regarding the weakness of bashing teams, i wouldn't worry too much, since :
1) Bashy teams are more complicated and less intuitive to play : give bashy coaches some time
2) when agile teams run the league, bashy coaches just take more Tackle/Mighty Blow (and they take it earlier), untill they get back to the top of the league

If you want to make a house rule about it, i'm not convinced journeymen are the right target.
(since your league seems to be quite short, maybe a system to gain more SPP ?)

Whatever you choose, be sure you can easily reverse it when bashier teams take the lead.

[voyagers_uk]

hold on... you want to hold out a carrot that BASH minded coaches the world over would take as an invitation to Open Season and then you de-claw them by saying that if they act that way you will send them packing....


wow, I am not sure I would feel happy in as conflicted a league as this.

the challenge is to win the game, whilst maintaining fun but taking advantage of every advantage the rules and the teams in the league allow.

I am more inclined to play certain teams than to play this way, but my league would have usually featured 3-4 out of 12 who would.... those odds mean a lot of journeymen under your system or a lot fewer matches as you clear out coaches

[plasmoid]

I gotta say I find this a little weird.
You say that you're probably the most pacifistic league on the globe. Nobody can be bothered to play rough. Yet everybody sounds discontent that the finesse teams are winning. Sounds like an attitude change is needed, rather than a house rule.

Take some tackle?
Take some mighty blow?
Take some dirty player and use it?

Valuable suggestions if you dislike finesse teams walking all over the league.
Cheers
Martin

[mattgslater]

I guess I probably should have explicated my main problem.

We, like many leagues, have many different skill levels. Most of our coaches have a favorite race or two, except for me and one other guy. Maybe all our good coaches like speed, and all our bad coaches like bash. But whatever the case, I have a situation where the speed teams beat the bash teams consistently, season-over-season, since we a) switched to LRB5, and b) had a bunch of coaching turnover (those were related events). I have no idea if it's the new rules, the new coaching mix or both (I suspect both). There have been a pretty average number of casualties from what I can tell, maybe slightly below.

There hasn't been much fouling, but a lot of that is situational: if you're down 2TD and outnumbered, you won't be fouling, and if your cheapest guy is 110k you won't be fouling. But if you aren't the speedy team with the expensive guys, it seems almost to go hand-in-hand with being down 2TD and outnumbered by halftime. So most of the fouling is perpetrated on the hunters on the bash teams (well, other hunters, too... the Skaven are on Tackle Vermin #3). There is one Dirty Player Zombie among the league's six primary teams; there was a DP Linerat, but he died and wasn't replaced. I'm not at all used to this problem, by the way. In the old days it was the other way around. In fact, I played High Elves because all the veterans insisted I play a team from the list of what they thought were (and what used to be) weaker Tier 1 teams. Now they're getting in my face about playing such a cheeser of a team, and begging me to play Chaos next season.

There's lots of Tackle going around, thanks: my team got 9x Dodge pretty fast, and the rest had to keep up. There would be more, but Tackle guys have a way of getting marked for death, because even our heavy teams are mostly Dodge-driven (except the Orcs, but they're a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions — he lost three Throwers in five games, two with MVPs; even though his Winnings rolls have been awesome, he's gained 11 net points of TV in that time). I've only got one Tackle guy (Uncle Slam), but every other team has at least one, and most have two or three. There's not much Mighty Blow, but that's really attributable to the catastrophic development failure that has been the bash teams in our league (except for those Undead, who have been too busy rolling boxcars). These guys aren't dumb, and only a couple of them are rooks. There aren't any Dwarfs, but there won't be, until we get a Dwarf person (I have a Dwarf team, but I never use it because they're cheesy and don't fit my style).

[Warpstone]

Matt, it sounds like your league just needs a season or two to settle, adjust to the rules and play with teeth. I agree with Martin, it does sound like your league is not at the "the game is lost, so I'm going to beat the #$% out of you for later" stage.

Speedy teams will have an advantage in the early game and amongst coaches without much experience. But give it a season or two and the same teams should be routinely in fear of running into a basher who could retire half their side on a bad game. The agility teams in your league are not at fault, the bashers are. If they can't provide "population control" and work the grind, then maybe those coaches are just fundamentally not adapting their playstyle to a bashing game.

Seriously, it takes balls to play an agile team against senior TV bashers and stomach rebuilding from crippling game, not the other way around.

[mattgslater]

See, that jives with my past experience; for years and years I fouled every turn, even if the other guy was begging on the floor with tears in his eyes. But there's seriously zero incentive for trying to trim down opponents, if you can't get SPP for it. You're only competing against the guy to hand and the pool as a whole, and the only things that matter are the W and the SPP. Both come mostly from scoring. Way back in the '90s, that wasn't so true; you could foul for points. But now, fouling stunts a player's growth, rather than enhancing it. So why foul? Except of course against teams that can't win without certain players, and those are generally the bash teams.

I'm not lamenting the change, mind you. I'm just a little frustrated by the consequences.

[GalakStarscraper]

But there's seriously zero incentive for trying to trim down opponents, if you can't get SPP for it.

WHAT!!!????

How about:
1) The joy of watching your opponent's face as you snap the spine of their players
2) There is the hearty pats on the backs from the other players in your league for dealing with X problem player (which if this is not happening is whole different problem in the league)
3) (in a league that rolls teams) ... you have the pleasure of knowing you won't play against that annoyance in your next match

If all of your players are only playing each game saying "what can my team gain from this action" ... than you need to expand the enjoyment of the players to include "the good of the league" and "the joy of brutality for the sake of brutality"

Galak

[mattgslater]

1) The joy of watching your opponent's face as you snap the spine of their players
2) There is the hearty pats on the backs from the other players in your league for dealing with X problem player (which if this is not happening is whole different problem in the league)
3) (in a league that rolls teams) ... you have the pleasure of knowing you won't play against that annoyance in your next match

If all of your players are only playing each game saying "what can my team gain from this action" ... than you need to expand the enjoyment of the players to include "the good of the league" and "the joy of brutality for the sake of brutality"

Ah-ha. Okay. But don't you owe it to the other coaches to play for maximum gain?

1) I don't get to have that feeling. I used to, but then I couldn't find anybody to play with because I broke everybody's team. Now I have to make a point of playing for the score; they'll put up with a 5-0 spanking more readily than a couple deaths. The others mostly either don't have much of a mean streak or prefer to play speedsters.

2) There is this dynamic, at least. The guy who knocked an AV off of my ST4/MB/Tackle High Elf Blitzer late last season reminds me of it every time I beat him at cards. But on its own it's not enough.

3) We have a no-back-to-back rule, so usually you want the other guy's nasties to give their next opponent grief in the hopes that you'll play that guy afterwards. The major exception is on scoring pieces for bash teams; those guys suffer hard, except, for some reason, the Necros... somehow, those Weres and their cheaper buddies always walk away from it unscathed, even as the Zombies die all over the place. The same coach has an Undead team that has lost two Wights, three Ghouls and a Mummy in eight games. By contrast, my High Elves have replaced two players in twelve games, both of them rookie linemen (I do carry a few MA and AV losses).

[voyagers_uk]

it sounds as if you need to instill some real role playing into your league

Bounties may help, although I do not suggest excess cash prizes, more +1 to fame in their next match as a reputational fear thing.

that gives you back your win/win for fouling/bashing.

[Darkson]

Ah-ha. Okay. But don't you owe it to the other coaches to play for maximum gain?

A Strip Ball Tackle Wardancer is on the floor - I call fouling them "playing for the maximum gain", for every coach in the league (bar the WD coach of course ).
Just because it doesn't make a mark on the roster, doesn't make it not worthwhile.