How many skaven does it take...

[IronAge_Man]

Any speed team is exactly as good as its takeaway. If you play well, you can keep 80% of drives to 3 turns or less, kicking or receiving, against any opponent.

...

But this is exactly why defense is more important as a coaching skill than is offense.

Bingo. I've found that the only way to play rats (or any agile team for that matter), is with a "Sack or Die" mentality on defence. That's where the un-sexy skills like kick and shadowing are especially useful for making the most of your post-kick positioning.

In fact, with Skaven and elves, I really think it makes sense to focus almost exclusively on defensive skills in the early phase of team development as the ability to constantly pressure the ball (and thereby force your opponent to pass up bashing for ball playing) is the only way you can both stay alive and win.

Agreed - I contributed to the FUMBBL Skaven strategy guide, and it says more or less the same thing:

http://fumbbl.com/help:SkavenStrategy

For teams with genuine weaknesses, such as Skaven, most team development must be aimed at mitigating them. They can score on offence with nothing more than their stock skills, meaning they need to focus everything on improving defence - a Skaven team that sits back and waits for the opposition to come to them is asking to be pulped.

[whitetiger]

Yep, for an agility team the name of the game is score. there are very few times an agility team should stall. Maybe if you're playing a slow team and steal the ball from them deep in your own end of the field, and then get it quickly deep into his end of the field, you can stall for a turn or two. Other than that, never.

When my Dark Elves are playing a slow team, all my guys are within a couple of squares of the LOS. That way, if I get a blitz or after his first turn, I can crash his line and get into his backfield. Then it's a fight over the ball. Send a couple directly as the ball/ballcarrier, use the rest to set up a static line to keep his reenforcements from getting to the play.

[frogbear]

All I would add to this discussion is to make sure your key positional players are not on the LOS. That is the space for linemen.

Too many times I have seen a player place a blitzer on a line of scrimage to use the block skill. Personally, I feel the name blitzer gets confused with blocker. Maybe if you see your blitzer as 'ball sacker' you may see the truth in playing an offence in defence.

[whitetiger]

Yep, on the high agility teams, you never waste that power on the LOS. That's what linemen are for, to tie up their power guys while your best power is going after the ball/ballcarrier. When I see a DE coach, any elf coach, put a blitzer on the line, I know he doesn't know what he's doing. And then I really tee off on his ballcarriers.

[PubBowler]

I'm trying to aim for a full 16 man squad, because normally with Skaven I have multiple missings or dead players. In the rare case of a full squad, you can still foul like mad with them.

This sums it up IMO.