How many skaven does it take...

grampyseer · Post by **grampyseer** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:06 pm

...to not get down 4 men on a drive?

How many skaven are people generally playing on a team..(bashy..ish league)

I'm finding it hard to resist maxing my roster with the fragile little fellas.

Meradanis · Post by **Meradanis** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:22 pm

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.

whitetiger · Post by **whitetiger** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:45 pm

I don't like rats and a skaven team is a pain in the butt, so my goal is to kill every one of them every game. So, I don't see the problem with skaven being down by 4 players every drive.

But, you'll find a lot of coaches like that. So, you need all of them you can get.

grampyseer · Post by **grampyseer** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 9:18 pm

full roster eh.....I geuss the extra 2 players are only a base TV of 100k,
makes sense...the little buggers die in droves

whitetiger · Post by **whitetiger** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 10:22 pm

Yep. To be honest, when I play my Dark Elves or Humans against Skaven, my goal is to knock 4 or 5 of them off the pitch in the first half. I don't care how I do it. Blocks, crowd pushes, fouls. Whatever. The more of them I get off the pitch, the easier it is to get more of them off the pitch. I can gang up on them then. That's how Dark Elves and Humans win against other agility teams. In fact, that's how any bash team wins against them. You're going to want to replace nailed players for as long as you can during a game. Protection in numbers.

mattgslater · Post by **mattgslater** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 1:20 am

Score score score. If the opponent is trying to beat you up, he'll want to corral you to do it. If you score, it upsets that effort. Also, scores turn into SPP, which turns into skills like Block, Wrestle and Guard, in turn making your players less vulnerable.

whitetiger · Post by **whitetiger** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 2:15 am

mattgslater wrote:Score score score. If the opponent is trying to beat you up, he'll want to corral you to do it. If you score, it upsets that effort. Also, scores turn into SPP, which turns into skills like Block, Wrestle and Guard, in turn making your players less vulnerable.

True. Scoring does help. But if I kick to him in the first half, he scores in 2 or 3 turns and kicks to me, I can take the rest of the half to score and just kick the crap out of his team for 5 or 6 turns. Then, in the second half, he gets to kick off to me again. oooooo waaaaa haaaa haaa haaa

If he's playing a Chaos team or Orcs, with a coach worth his salt, you know that's exactly what he is going to do. And some, uh, Dark Elf coaches I know as well.

Better load up on linemen.

mattgslater · Post by **mattgslater** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 2:25 am

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.

After all, if you can't score on defense, you can't run up the score. In the first half, a 2-0 lead by turn 5 is all you need to stop your oppo from fouling for the rest of the half. After that, running up the score is about earning SPPs and resetting the board.

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

whitetiger · Post by **whitetiger** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 4:35 am

Yep, I agree. That's why on both my humans and my Dark Elves, I play defense almost the same way I play offense. I get as many of my guys into his backfield as he has. If its a slow team, I'll put half my team into his backfield.

Against Skaven and Wood Elves, I may hang back a little, but that's just to set up Gutter runners and catchers for blitzs and fouls. If they score the first time, that's fine. They won't score again this half, and I'm hunting them. Sounds brutal and perhaps unsportsmanlike and I don't always do it, but if I'm playing a coach that like, beat a rookie 6-0 and laughs at him. Oh, yea, let me play those skaven.

Warpstone · Post by **Warpstone** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 5:30 am

mattgslater wrote: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.

grampyseer · Post by **grampyseer** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 5:43 am

I like the way you guys are thinking....hit me with alink to play a better defensive skaven game.......

juggler434 · Post by **juggler434** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 9:19 am

Kick is great for putting pressure on the defense with a fast team like skaven. It has gotten me many points for my wood elf team.

thechosengobbo · Post by **thechosengobbo** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 10:43 am

Yeah, kick is a fantastic skill on them. I've always found strip ball to be fun too, as skaven are GREAT at capitalising off a dropped ball.

whitetiger · Post by **whitetiger** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 7:03 pm

On the specialist site, we put together a list of rules for agility teams when they play, especially against bash teams. I'll list a few:

#1. Get into their backfield and screw up their offense. The slower their team, the deeper you kick. Then race them to the ball. Don't allow them the ability to form a cage. Get your guys into their backfield and if you can't get to the ball or ball carrier on your first turn of the drive, then build a fence of players/tackle zones so they can't easily build a cage.

#2. Put pressure on the ball and ball carrier. If you can't get to the ball and pick it up, get as many tackle zones on one or both as you can. They aren't as agile as you and they'll fail to pick up the ball. Once they drop it, you score.

#3. Don't get in a fist fight on the line. You can't win it. If you have a Big Guy, say a Rat Ogre, then you can fight more, but mostly use him to occupy the other guy's big guy, or take out the other guy's linemen. You are better served by tying up their guys in tackle zones, getting in the way of their movement and not by fighting with them.

#4. If they do get across the LOS, leave at least one of your players deep in their side, that way if you can pop the ball loose, you can score on your next turn.

There's about 10 more guidelines. But this will get you started thinking in the right direction.

mattgslater · Post by **mattgslater** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 7:27 pm

With an agility team against a bash team, I'd say always set up a shallow defense when you can afford to, and a deep defense when you can't: a shallow D means more guys able to go downfield, no matter where the opponent locks in (this is even more true of elves than Skaven). This improves your odds for a 2T Turnover. This is especially good if the opponent is not a lot bashier, like Humans or DE: your mediocre WZ protection is mitigated by the awesomeness of your safety action, so they have this big temptation to cage up on you, but don't really have the tools to hold it (little +ST, mostly AV8). These teams do have a better recovery mechanism than a lot of heavy teams (faster players to get the ball back -- DE are particularly frightening here), so you need to be able to turn any recovery into a TD. A shallow defense facilitates this.

Conversely, a deep D means you're less likely to give up the farm right away, which is nice if you're missing key positionals and just don't want to die, or if your drive starts on the bottom of turn 7 and you have no chance of a D score (this will happen a lot if you're doing well -- since you should never hold back on a scoring opportunity, you'll often score at inconvenient times by comparison to a masher team, which can control the clock when things are going right).