would you turn down Stats if you had too many?

[Greyhound]

Ok so I'll stick my TV, keep the stats and man-up when facing the wizard and Morg..

[Smurf]

I gave my minotaur +1AG, now 'she' has AG3 like the rest of the team... equally good at ball handling. Kind of nice.

[Carnis]

I gave my minotaur +1AG, now 'she' has AG3 like the rest of the team... equally good at ball handling. Kind of nice.

Except she needs to blitz every time she wants to move, and to pass/hand off she needs to pass a 4+ WA check.

Are you for real? Skip +ST on woodies, but take +AG on minos?? Where's the advantage in minotaur AG?

[Smurf]

If you lack guard for WE then a single ST4 over guard is not much and you can use more guard.

When 'daisy' blitzes and the ball carrier is sent sprawling then the chance of handing the ball is better (note she has multiblock and claws too).

I have been inventive with a mino and the ball, lack pushing a player nearer to the mino rather than knocking it down. The suddenly 'daisy smash' a blitz action and a dash. Now it doesn't happen all the time but it's nice to have an AG3 big guy.

[TuernRedvenom]

If you lack guard for WE then a single ST4 over guard is not much and you can use more guard.

When 'daisy' blitzes and the ball carrier is sent sprawling then the chance of handing the ball is better (note she has multiblock and claws too).

I have been inventive with a mino and the ball, lack pushing a player nearer to the mino rather than knocking it down. The suddenly 'daisy smash' a blitz action and a dash. Now it doesn't happen all the time but it's nice to have an AG3 big guy.

Surely +STR is better then guard, especially on wood elves! A +str player doesn't need an assist, it's built into his statline. Only thing guard has going for it compared to +STR is that it can assist multiple players. But this means tight scrums which is not where woodies excel.
Guard is an excellent skill on wood elves, but I'd never, ever pick it over +STR.

And +AG on a Minotaur certainly is fun. But all in all it's a very, very poor pick TV/actual gain wise IMO. Any agility roll is still a 3+, combine that with loner and it's almost never a good idea. Handoff actions require a 4+.

[dines]

If you lack guard for WE then a single ST4 over guard is not much and you can use more guard.

When 'daisy' blitzes and the ball carrier is sent sprawling then the chance of handing the ball is better (note she has multiblock and claws too).

I have been inventive with a mino and the ball, lack pushing a player nearer to the mino rather than knocking it down. The suddenly 'daisy smash' a blitz action and a dash. Now it doesn't happen all the time but it's nice to have an AG3 big guy.

Surely +STR is better then guard, especially on wood elves! A +str player doesn't need an assist, it's built into his statline. Only thing guard has going for it compared to +STR is that it can assist multiple players. But this means tight scrums which is not where woodies excel.
Guard is an excellent skill on wood elves, but I'd never, ever pick it over +STR.

And +AG on a Minotaur certainly is fun. But all in all it's a very, very poor pick TV/actual gain wise IMO. Any agility roll is still a 3+, combine that with loner and it's almost never a good idea. Handoff actions require a 4+.

Couldn't agree more.

Regarding the original question, I have turned down +MA/AV for dark elves (both on blitzers and lineelves) in favor of even normal skills as there are so many nice skills to choose, especially early in development. That said, I have later missed a MA 8 piece on the team for a 1-turn td option. +STR on all and +AG on most of dark elves is a sure thing. I have a ST 4 witch elf and man does she rock!

[Funksultan]

I gave my minotaur +1AG, now 'she' has AG3 like the rest of the team... equally good at ball handling. Kind of nice.

Except she needs to blitz every time she wants to move, and to pass/hand off she needs to pass a 4+ WA check.

Are you for real? Skip +ST on woodies, but take +AG on minos?? Where's the advantage in minotaur AG?

Agree. Smurf, you gotta be kidding. Block is not equal to +ST. It's not even remotely close.

+AG on a mino is close to worthless. WA severely limits your ability to run for a TD, pass, hand off, pick up, or just about do anything else that would make the AG useful.

The only time I could remotely see it was if your mino already had Guard, Claws, Jugg, Tentacles, Stand Firm and break tackle, and THEN you rolled an 11.

Yikes.

[Smurf]

You mean ST4 is not equal to guard... I said guard.

To get around the ST defiecit I use a few dauntless players too. This seems to even the game up a bit but guard would be a helpful addition.

[Carnis]

You mean ST4 is not equal to guard... I said guard.

You're still wrong, though .

[narg]

Smurf - I'd say that everything you've said in this thread is 100% against common wisdom (don't take +ST; no TRR with wood elves; take +AG on minotaurs).

To go back on topic I think that yes at some point you've got to stop with the stat increases although it's hard to make a general rule as it's different for every race. With orcs my opinion is that you should take all the +ST you can get, +MA on the thrower only (to get him to MA6 so that he can keep up with the blitzers to move the ball), and +AG on one player only and preferrably on the thrower to decrease the chances of turnover when picking up the ball - as you saw for yourself orcs don't have access to the dodge skill and it will therefore always be harder for them to dodge even with AG4 and therefore the other +AG won't be as useful and will probably just be TV bloat. So if I had been in your situation I would probably have refused all the other +AG. Now that I think about it +AG on a goblin can be great as well but mine never have the time to skill up...

As an aside I think that taking +ST on ST2 players is suboptimal. I've seen a skaven team with four +ST including three on gutter runners and while in theory it looks good, the issue is that the team's TV was extremely high while only two players (the rat-ogre and a +ST thrower) had a strength higher than 3 and it therefore gave lots of inducements to its opponents. I personally think that the team would have won more games with no +ST gutter runners, a lower TV and therefore no opponent-induced wizard.

[Smurf]

That was some of my thoughts too. The 50K or 20k extra to make a ST2 player 'average' imo is daft.

The ST2 player is not supposed to be in a fight.

ST5 players with extra ST is kind of moot, they won't use this benefit as much as taking a double.

And many of these 'top tier team' suffer from runaway TV, so why make it worse. Higher the TV and you begin to watch the chainsaws come out to cut you down!

[TuernRedvenom]

That was some of my thoughts too. The 50K or 20k extra to make a ST2 player 'average' imo is daft.

The ST2 player is not supposed to be in a fight.

Granted, there is a shred of truth in this: they shouldn't be in a close scrum.
But most of the STR 2 players are fast and agile and as such will often be:
1) carrying the ball -> going from str 2 to 3 is great in this case as the average player will have to bring an assist to get 2 die (needing 2 actions instead of 1) and STR 5 players no longer automatically get 3 dice on you.
2) be blitzing "loose" players (throwers, runners, catchers) in both yours as the opponent's backfield. A str 2 player needs 2 assists to get 2 die on an average player. A str 3 player needs just 1.
3) be marking loose and key players -> see 1

basically the +str makes your opponent use more actions to engage you (move in assists) and makes you take less actions to engage key targets on the opposition. If you don't see the advantage in that...

And many of these 'top tier team' suffer from runaway TV, so why make it worse. Higher the TV and you begin to watch the chainsaws come out to cut you down!

Yes you may give away inducements, but I wouldn't be concerned with that, in my experience inducements never make up well spent on-roster TV. A chainsaw is pretty easy to take out after all, especially with +STR elves.

Teams can be weaker in the short run by taking stat increases, because a team needs some basic skills to perform (block, sure hands, guard,...) but in the long run those skills will come and the +STR will really start paying off.

[narg]

That was some of my thoughts too. The 50K or 20k extra to make a ST2 player 'average' imo is daft.

The ST2 player is not supposed to be in a fight.

Granted, there is a shred of truth in this: they shouldn't be in a close scrum.
But most of the STR 2 players are fast and agile and as such will often be:
1) carrying the ball -> going from str 2 to 3 is great in this case as the average player will have to bring an assist to get 2 die (needing 2 actions instead of 1) and STR 5 players no longer automatically get 3 dice on you.
2) be blitzing "loose" players (throwers, runners, catchers) in both yours as the opponent's backfield. A str 2 player needs 2 assists to get 2 die on an average player. A str 3 player needs just 1.
3) be marking loose and key players -> see 1

basically the +str makes your opponent use more actions to engage you (move in assists) and makes you take less actions to engage key targets on the opposition. If you don't see the advantage in that...

Re ST2 players I'm not affirming that my position is eternal truth - I personally don't like teams with ST2 players and I avoid playing them so I don't have first-hand experience on the matter. However like I said I had the opportunity of seeing a team with three +ST gutter runners and after getting them the coach lost the next six games or something, and he's a good player. I'm sure that a lot of bad luck was involved as well but in at least one game the wizard clearly made the difference, and in the other games, well, apparently all these +ST didn't prevent him from losing. At the end of the day, gutter runners still have only AV7 and ST3 still isn't enough against a bashy team with mass guard and mighty blow. Two of these +ST gutter runners are now dead by the way.

In answer to your above points, usually any team would have a better blitzer than the +ST catcher (war dancer, storm vermin etc); in my experience it's a bad idea to mark players with AV7 catchers, if I had the choice I'd prefer to do that with tougher or cheaper players; and the +ST catcher isn't supposed to be the ball carrier in the first place. In terms of number of players that you force your opponent to use it's regularly irrelevant as well, because of mass guard or just because the opponent is blitzing with a ST4 player anyway. If such a team plays against a mass guard chaos team, chances are that the chaos coach wouldn't even notice once in the whole game.

So I'd say that the difference between ST3 and ST4 is massive, but the difference between ST2 and ST3 isn't that big and it might be better to take something else. But like I said, this is just my personal opinion and I'm not pretending to be a Blood Bowl greatmaster.

[edit: everybody agrees that going from ST3 to ST4 is great and everybody agrees that going from ST1 to ST2 as for snotlings is useless - logically it would then follow that an increase from ST2 to ST3 should have an intermediate effect so I think that my position makes sense...]

[duckwing]

I haven't taken the time to read the whole thread, only the first post, but I think that someone who would turn down having AG4 on all his beastmen in a chaos team is the same kind of person who would never play goblins or halflings
TV efficiency be damned, how can you ever turn down AG/ST 4???

[mattgslater]

Narg, you and I have diametrically opposite thinking on Orcs. Here's what I do.
BOB, Troll: Ignore 10-11. ST5 BOBs and ST6 Trolls on an Orc team are awesome, because assists are so easy to get.
Blitzer: Take it all, all the time. Stat increases on Blitzers are always awesome. +MA on 10 (even double 5 if it's not the first double on a Blitzer). MA7 is huge, the one drawback on the team. I'd definitely take two +AGs on different Blitzers, though that might be the point of diminishing returns. +ST always welcome!
Thrower: Take everything, but the best improvement the team can have is a +AG Thrower.
Goblin: Doubles on 12 (unless he already has Block), take everything else.

As far as turning down +ST on a Wood Elf Catcher, I think that's crazy talk. For 140k you have a third WD!