High death rate on DE team - is this "normal"?

[Smeborg]

I have thoroughly enjoyed playing the Dark Elves for the first time in a long while (15 games in an open league).

In that time the team has suffered 6 Deaths and 3 Permanent Injuries. Luckily there has been some duplication, in that 2 of the Dead already had Permanent Injuries. And there was a strong element of Apothecary abuse - 2 of the Deaths were Apoth'd to Death, and a Niggling Injury was Apoth'd to a -1AG. Only 25 SPPs were lost with the Dead players. But that's still quite a lot of damage to take on an expensive team (the Dead were 2 skilled Witch Elves, 2 rookie Blitzers, a rookie Assassin and rookie Lino for 580,000 of losses, or about 40,000 per game). Skill gain and retention by the team is good, but maintaining numbers is proving to be difficult.

Looking around at team rosters on the net suggests that the DEs are a bit prone to this type of damage (compared to other teams). Is this what other DE coaches find?

[Storch]

It sounds like you are playing a bit too aggressively with them.

I have found the DE to be a team that needs to know when it can dig in and go toe to toe hitting and also when it needs to run away as fast as possible.

Unless your opponents have been rolling particularly well, the numbers you gave seem to indicate that you are still getting the hang of that. If you stick in when you should run, you will most certainly lose players as you have seen.

To drop into Math-bowl for a second, you have taken 9 casualties resulting in death of stat loss. To make life easier, let's just ignore he niggles and say that represents rolling a 5 or 6 on the casualty. Statistically, that means you have had roughly 27 casualties total. Since a casualty is a 10+ after they break armor, that is about 162 armor breaks. In 15 games that comes out to just shy of 11 breaks per game which indicates you are getting hit too much.

If I had to guess, I would say that you are probably leaving line elves to mark low agility players which leaves free hits for your opponent. Remember Dark Elves are AG4 and can dodge back a square and still deny the field while only giving your opponent only the single blitz.

If that is what you are doing already, your opponents are just doing some spectacular rolling and there isn't much you can do about that other than wait for it to stop.

[Smeborg]

Thanks, Storch.

The stats of the team are as follows:
9 wins, 2 draws, 4 losses
TDs 29:17
CAS 29:39

3 games stand out as inflicting unusually high CAS (more than 3) on the DEs:
a game against rookie Chaos (CAS 1:6)
a game against well-developed Skaven (CAS 3:5)
a game against High Elves (CAS 1:5)
Of these, only the Skaven had any damage-causing skills (M-Blow, Claw, Frenzy).

In 2 games against Pro-Elves, the DEs suffered 0:3 and 0:3 CAS (!). So it may be partly down to "luck".

The Linos have been outstanding. 5 of the 6 starters have survived from the initial roster, and they have a lovely spread of SPPs (12-11-24-15-11). Survival rates on the defensive LoS have been excellent (one Death before I had an Apoth, otherwise no permanent injuries).

The CAS stats indicate that I am suffering one armour break per turn, on average. assuming regular "luck". However, some of these are self-inflicted (e.g. failed GFIs and dodges), some are from fouls. My playing style in general (regardless of team) is probably more concerned with the ball than with protecting my players (in the same league, my Nurgle team suffered 28 deaths and permanent injuries in 43 games, but that's another story...).

I have been playing with 2 Assassins from the outset, to find out what they are about (and no Runners). This undoubtedly leads to a more clumsy playing style than without Assassins (I plan to do without them next season). But I have to say that the DEs seem to want to play in a more "in your face" style than the other Elven teams (independently of my preferred playing style).

Thanks for your suggestions.

[DoubleSkulls]

One is an accident, twice a co-incidence, three times ....

Without watching I think you might be playing like I often do - too aggressively. Attacking the ball carrier almost every turn and commiting players to the fray. That tends to mean you get hit a lot so get cas'd more. Once you start getting numbers down you actually can easily enter a negative sprial and suffer more and more cas.

Maybe try standing off a lot more - doing the whole dodge back one square. Then commit late in the half if nuffle hasn't already gifted you an opening.

[Storch]

Ok, so you are pretty close to giving as good as you get looking at the total CAS numbers.

I think Doubleskulls nailed it. You are likely getting locked in when you don't need to be. Only leave a man in a tackle zone if you have to and only if you are sure you are getting something out of it.

Despite being the bashier elves, they are still elves and, given the right situations, will break like dry twigs.

To try to answer your original qustion, I looked up my team. After 12 games, they are 10 wins, 2 losses (Norse and Amazons, so understandable), and casualties are 17 for, 13 against and only 1 death and no stat losses yet. <That's about 1 CAS per game compared to what you had for your team.>

I started 4 blitzers, 7 line and haven't added anyone yet due to TV in the league. I have the cash and will be putting to witches in soon. All three blitzers have two skills each, except for the one that rolled an AG+ as his first skill and has understandably jumped ahead of the others a bit. SPPs are 22, 22, 24, 42 for the blitzers. As for linemen, SPPs are at 16, 17, 19, 17, 7, 17, 17. I have two guys with Guard + Block and two with Wrestle + Tackle. The only other standout is one guys has Block and ST+.

I hope that gives you something to measure against.

[Smeborg]

Thanks, guys, for your comments, which make a lot of sense.

[Digger Goreman]

Would that all elves had a high death rate....

(sorry your guys are getting beat up though....)

And, yes, for some reason the last delf coach I suffered against liked to go toe-to-toe with my Necros and it cost him in manpower... so the guys are probably right about the aggressive style....

[Smeborg]

I made an error in the stats. 3 Deaths in total have been Apoth'd to Death, and 1 from SI to SI. Considering that I have used the Apoth about once every two games (say 7 or 8 times at most) that's quite a high Apoth failure rate. Without that, I would be happy with where the team is.

[Darkson]

On apos in general, sonds like you're at the wrong end of a string of bad apo dice. I went 20 games where my apo turned a death/SI into a BH. In the same period of time, a friend had his apo turn 3 deaths to deaths, and 6 SIs to a SI equal or worse.

[Smeborg]

Yes, the Apoth rolls seem to have had a disproportionate influence.

Plus I have been doing a lot of stabbing with rookie Assassins (just to see what Stab was like in practice on an otherwise weak player). The Assassins probably account for around a quarter of the armour breaks I have suffered.

[Storch]

OK, sounds like your team is actually under control.
Stick with them and I am sure they will make you proud.

[Smeborg]

Thanks, Storch. Unfortunately they may never play again as our season ends with the calendar year. But I was keen to learn from the experience in preparation for next season.

I have a question for you. Your DE team shows what (to me) are unusually low CAS stats (both for and against). For example, I would expect around half of your CAS to have occurred just on the first turns of defense on the LoS. This implies extremely low CAS rates outside of the set piece. Would you be able to help me understand what factors in your league environment are contributing to the low CAS rate? Team mix, for example.

All the best.

[Storch]

You are right, the CAS count is probably low and there are a couple of reasons for that.

First, this season followed a pretty bashy season, so a couple players were trying out newer, less kill-y teams.

Also, I tend to play with an eye to long term development so don't tend to lose players in general. Here, I managed to hit two doubles on linemen fairly early so I had a pair of mobile Guards and the first two players I got skills on took wrestle to mess with my opponent's plan. Against other relatively unskilled teams, the idea of having a key player on the ground was actually enough of a threat to their overall strategy that my guys weren't hit right off and sometimes bad rolls on their part meant they didn't get hit at all.

Finally, I had plans for how I wanted to develop the team long term. That helps keep you from taking skills that may seem cool at the time, but make your team weaker overall. I had read up on what others had posted about team development and recognized the need to keep the DE lean. It's why I still only have the two re-rolls and haven't bought witches yet. Doing so would push me out in front of the league and give my opponent a lot of inducements.

As for my CAS rate being a bit low, I think that is a result of playing more defensively that I probably should. In prior seasons we had a dark elf player who got mauled early on and it took him solidly over a dozen games just to recover. I have been careful to only attack when I have a clear advantage and to not leave players in the line of fire as much as possible. I could probably have a few more CAS if I played a bit more aggressively, but I think I would also have taken more, so I am happy where things are. The fun for me is developing real standout players while also keepign the team together. My Chaos team had 7 of 12 players all within 5 SPPs each other and I though tthat was one of he3 contributing factors to them doing so well. Being 12 games in with the Dark Elves and having at least 2 skills on all but a single player and having spread the SPPs out pretty evenly (save the AG5, leaping blodging Blitzer who will naturally accumulates them a bit faster), I think I am doing pretty well and am very much looking forward to what this team could be when everyone has 3-4 skills.