Talk Fantasy Football

Hi All!

My dwarf team (Hot Fury) took on an elf team last night. While the game was mostly pretty good for me, I did run into a problem that I haven't seen before. Elves dodging. Ok, I've seen elves dodging, but let me explain. :)

Near the end of the game (second half, around turn 6, I think). I had a nice box (actually, a nasty box) with the ball carrier almost completely surrounded and covered. On the first turn of this, I hammered a bunch of elves all sitting "on" the box. I then managed to advance about 5 spaces, putting me with 2 turns of scoring (runner moves 6, was 11 away) and 2 turns left.

The elves then got up and dodged away from my box, stopping about 1 move away.

I was now able to move INTO contact again, but could only pull off one blitz (per the rules, duh!) and did manage to hammer an elf, but I was unable to open a sufficient hole to be able to move my runner without dodging. Dwarves don't like dodging.

Any advice? I know I'll run into this again...

Oh, I lost 3-2 but scored 3 Cas to the elves 0. :)

J

Keep crowding them until they roll Snake Eyes. Eventualy an Elf will fall down leaving you some to hit or the half ends and you have to do it all again!

It is a standard Elf Tacktic, scorean then all jump back one square and wait for the enemy to make a mistake.

That late in the game, you can hope that you've already built up a numerical advantage. That may allow you to get spare dwarves behind the elves, preventing them from dodging.

You can try a pass if you're only two turns from the end. With the probable advantage in numbers, you may be able to set that up on the far side of the field.

Finally, build two or three players for dealing with this strategy, as it is the best strategy against the rolling cage. Give your trollslayers Juggernaut, and give a couple of other players Grab, and every round, blitz one elf into a position where they can't dodge away (e.g. into the cage (though not next to the ball carrier, obviously)). Preferably into the crowd, but given that they're the ones dictating the direct initially, anywhere behind your front line will do. If the elves in question have Side Step, you'll either have to crowd them before blitzing, or use your Grab player instead.

Bad (can only push elf back): Good (can push elf left, then towards your own EZ, keeping them away from dodging back to in front of your cage):

Thanks! That late in the game, I didn't come up with anything good. Tried, but only bounced an elf around. My setup at the time was something like this:

E E E

E BBB E
TRB
E B E
TB

GIve or take. I managed to push forward some, but wasn't able to hit enough to make a real hole. Fun game despite this. Given that my team started with 11 players, one of which was the Deathroller (1 drive only!) and the elves had a pretty full team and had a 250k inducement bonus, I don't at all feel bad about how I did.

One of his incentives was to be allowed to use one of my players for one of his turns. He used my Deathroller and took down a dwarf, but didn't do any real damage. I don't recall what the other one was.

Thanks for the advice!

Well, against a full elf squad and 3 turns left, if the Elf coach knows what he is doing, it should be almost impossible for you to score.

An Elf coach can setup such that even with a blitz on an Elf, there are no holes to run through.

How to beat that? Well, clock control. Try to kick first, then play real aggressively on them. Hit all that you can. They will either lose the ball or score. That's fine.

If they scored in 2 turns, you have 7 turns left to score. So take the 7 turns to score. You can only advance one square per turn? OK. Hit them, and hit them again, until they make a mistake or roll bad dice, and then you can move forward by more than 1 square. Try to score in the last turn of the half.

Hopefully by then you outnumber them. But you receive now. Take the 8 turns to score, bashing them as much as you can along the way.

If you start receiving, to the above, but obviously in reverse order.

Do be aware that the Elf coach may (and should) have some tricks in his sleeves. Leaps, Strip Ball, Side Step, Diving Tackle, Fend, Wrestle, Kick are all enemy skills that you need to be careful about (well, if you have a runner with the ball, Strip Ball ain't an issue). Kick is probably the worst skill for you. If you don't setup right and he kicks deep, then you can be in deep trouble. He'll either steal the ball, or cause you to waste a few turns to cage-up and start rolling. Then you may run out of time to score.

The above ain't pretty, but it often works. Don't panic. Constant, slow progression up the field.

I can't believe that I just explained how to beat Elves with Dwarves. I hate playing against Dwarves

That is how it's done, though, Cramy. The elves have to steal the ball from dwarves, so they are going to kick deep and try to keep you from forming the cage in the first place. That's one of the reasons I always get a couple of leapers for my Dark Elves. Just to get into the backfield of slower teams and mess with their offense. After that, I'm working on pealing a corner of the cage to get to the ball carrier.

Put as much guard on your dwarves as you can get, if you get +MA on your runners take it. Form the cage as quickly as you can, and then just beat on every elf you get hold of. That's how you win.

Remember you have Tackle. Those Elves will roll 1's to dodge eventually, and then have no Dodge reroll. They really, really don't like that.

Then again, Pro Elves don't tend to do Dodge spamming as much as Wood Elves, so it's not a huge advantage.

~Andromidius

Good advice folks, and I thank you for it. My runner, BTW is up to MA 7!
I hit the elves aggressively as much as possible, but just wasn't getting many casualties.
I started the game, essentially a player down, and managed to even that up pretty well. There were typically at least 2 elves in the casualty box, and 2 in the KO box for most of the game.

My opponent, Tom, doesn't roll 1s often on dodging, and only seems to do so on plays where it doesn't matter - like on an elf in the backfield trying to go deeper to get into scoring position while I move my box.

I also have Guard on 4 of the blockers, one slayer has pro while the other has juggernaught. Those guys are pretty useful. One f my blitzers (currently at 13 SPP) has Dodge, and the other is at 5 SPP with a Niggling injury.

Overall, I don't think that these guys are doing badly. And I don't mind losing games as this is a team that just hits things. This was just the first time that I saw my opponent just dodge them all away like that. It was interesting. He thought so too, having never done this before.

From now on, dwarves smash. :)

J

didn't realize you had that many skill ups. start putting mighty blow on your players. guard and mighty blow on every other dwarf. you'll start creating casualties.

also get kickoff return on one of your runners, thats the closest you will get to counter kick.

Yeah. I've been buying Guard as often as possible. It's just nasty on dwarves. :) I only have 1 player (other than the deathroller) with Mighty Blow right now, but that will change too. The slayers have been doing pretty well with one having Pro and the other having Juggernaught.

The regular season is over for them, but they're in first place (there are a few more matches between other teams that have to be played) by a good spread, and will either be in first or second going into the playoffs.

Fun team to play. Just have to learn to kill elves faster. :)

Thanks for all of the advice!

If you get the opportunity, put grab on a couple of your players. Elves hate that.

And really, the best defense elves have against a formed cage is to stay one square away from you, force you to come to them, make your cage break down a bit from your own movement and then attack a corner of it. Just peel one player, maybe two, and a dedicated elf, strip ball and other skills along those lines, can attack your ball carrier and knock the ball loose. Wardancers excell at that sort of thing. So, the elf coach should only be allowing you one or two blocks per turn, and that includes your blitz. Dodging away from you is the basis of it. So, don't let him. Pin him into multiple tackle zones as much as you can. Then nail that elf. If you take 6 turns to score, that's at least 6 elves that you've firmly planted. With Mighty Blow, you should get at least 2 or 3 of them off the pitch.

Haven't tried Grab yet, but after the last game, one took Diving Tackle. Yeah, I know, dwarves on the ground aren't the best thing in the world, but OTOH, he gets to make a dodger fail, and get to get up first. :)

Grab's a good idea. We'll see how the post-season goes.

For the front Blocker in a rolling cage, DT is great. When combined with Tackle, you can be pretty sure that there won't be a re-roll (unless he uses Pro or TRR), and he's going to be the back-marker on the cage next turn, so it's OK to have only 1 move afterwards. It does mean that you want to have a guy with 5+ MA or Sure Feet as back marker on the round you DT, so that you can go at least 5 squares forward with him (so that your ball carrier advances 3 squares).

I can see DT on one or two, but no more than that. Guard, Mighty Blow and Grab are the skills you will find that will help you the most with your linemen.