Talk Fantasy Football

Whelp, since I painted up my Ogre team I've had around a dozen matches to get to grips with them and I had the first match of our newest league last night. I think I'm in trouble already because it turns out the league so far consists of 1 Human team, 1 of each of the Elf teams, myself and a Goblin team. That's not exactly a favourable enviroment for winning matches in.

I was paired against the High Elf team last night, which is coached by the most experienced player apart from myself, he won this group's previous season with Orcs (when I played Nurgle).

I took 5 Ogres and 6 Snots for my starting line up as I was less concerned about turning over and more concerned about hemorrhaging so many players I couldn't cope on pitch. Having 2 Rerolls has never been a problem for me, I'm able to play for 3D blocks and the like with ease.

But I had literally no defense against his team, despite hitting and fouling his men as much as possible. I didn't manage even a single KO in the first half and as such ended up 1-0 down at the end of it. Meanwhile he managed to KO and CAS 4 of my snots so I started the second half with only 7 players. A number which promptly dropped to 4 Ogres and a Snotling when a lucky 1D block took out one of my Ogres. I was fortunate enough that it was nothing more than a BH because the loss of an Ogre at that stage would have been an immediate do-over for the team. I literally had 4 Ogres on the pitch and nothing else for about 5 turns, I could barely hang onto the ball at that stage.

I ended up losing the match 3-1 and I had only 4 Ogres and 1 Snotling left on the pitch at the end. I do now own an apoth, so hopefully I can weather the storm until I reach Ogre #6 (50K atm)

Now I don't need to know what skills to take to develop the team, I know exactly what to do on that front as there have been plenty of threads on it in the past. But thoughts from people who've played Ogres on pitch positioning, avoiding player loss, scoring TDs, dealing with Elves and starting set ups would be nice.

I'd be interested in reading anything from people who've experienced playing with Ogres or even against them. I'd like to hear about what worked and what didn't.

My (admittedly limited) experience of playing against Ogres is to get the snotlings off the board (I foul more of them than anyone else) and separate the ogres so that they can't support each other.

Then wait for the bone heads to fail.

Not much help I'm sure but it might be a start...

There was a good thread on NAF about this a while back, plus other ones on here. Galak has some sensible things to say about Stand Firm, I tend to emphasise Break Tackle, then Stand Firm, and work my way down the sidelines. Piling On for max damage, but only on the injury roll.

One strong arm ogre for TTM actions, and one Sure Feet/Sprint snot to go with him, and hope for AG increases (I have an AG5 snot).

DT as a 1st skill on snots seems to be standard. Hail Mary on a double for snots is good.

Just a quick brain dump from me!

Mike

I hear Prayer is normally a good option.

Never actually played them with before, but had a few games against. Snots, get used to the idea, if they go down, they're probably off. You will lose players unless your opponent is unlucky and just keeps pushing them around. But they dodge anywhere on 2's, so use them to create dodge rolls for you opponent. And use the ogres to reduce the opponent, or inundant the downfield with snots to get the ball.

PubBowler wrote:My (admittedly limited) experience of playing against Ogres is to get the snotlings off the board (I foul more of them than anyone else).

Fouling Snotlings? I've yet to see more than one stay on the pitch when it goes down so I can't see why fouling those little guys is worthwhile under any circumstances.

Anyway, so far my experiences with the team have been hugely disappointing. I knew they weren't going to be easy to play with, but after some experience with the LRB4 team and a 70% win rate with Vampires I thought I'd at least be able to put up a fight. If I can't handle vanilla skillless High Elves I don't think I have a hope against the Dark Elves (with their 4 Blitzers) or Woodies (with Wardancers).

I'll play at least half a dozen more matches, but I'm pretty damn disappointed with what's happened to the team between LRB4 and 5.

Believe me, they don't always fly off the pitch. It depends on the dice. Lucifer played a 16 snot lineup at the Albabowl, and i think in a few games, he only had 1 or 2 cas. The dice are a big factor when playing with them.

fen wrote:

PubBowler wrote:My (admittedly limited) experience of playing against Ogres is to get the snotlings off the board (I foul more of them than anyone else).

Fouling Snotlings? I've yet to see more than one stay on the pitch when it goes down so I can't see why fouling those little guys is worthwhile under any circumstances.

They do go off the pitch often but the odds are so far in your favour when fouling it's useful to ensure they're not getting back up.

I really cannot agree with that at all, they're worth 20K a piece and you have a near 1/6 chance of being sent of yourself when fouling them (because odds are heavily in favour of an AV break). That's a ridiculous risk because as at best your player is worth 30K minimum and more likely is worth 40K+, so you're better off marking them if they're prone and then chasing and blitzing them down the following turn if they get away. Self-eliminating your own players through sending offs while kicking a snotling is not really a productive way to keep an Ogre team outnumbered and only other stunty teams should even consider it. (Also if you look at the teams in my league, 4 of them are Elf teams, so it's even dafter to worry about fouls on snotlings. 70K for 20K? Almost never worth the risk.)

Frankly if I'm playing against someone who's fouling snotlings I really shouldn't be worried about them winning as they're attempting to increase my elimination rate with their own actions. In short, they're helping me more than they're helping themselves.

The elf point is well taken, although I'm sure the gobbos will be using this tactic pretty hard. Maybe even the humans as in that league I'd want a Dirty Player/Sneaky Git catcher to punish elves on the floor.

And I think that the odds of getting sent off are likely to be nearer to 1/4 as they have such low armour.

Maybe I've been playing too much with skeles and gobbos against them but with a Dirty Player you're going to remove them from the pitch over 60% of the time. And that's without any extra assists.

The 20k is only part of the story when you're limited to 11 players. Removing the snots makes the Ogres look pretty lonely and very easy to isolate or beat on.

Anyhow, all I can offer is my opinion from my experience.
And I did say it was limited...

Firstly I dont have any experience of using the ogres on a LRB5 ogre team... I've used LRB4 ogres and I've used a LRB5 all snotling team (no stars, they arent snotlings) so hopefully I know roughly what I'm talking about although I cant recomend anything precise.

Right, I notice that you like having plenty of ogres, I'd probably go for 4 but 5 is fine and it certainly is fun. The key problem with your roster at the moment is that it has bum all snotlings in it. Snotlings break easily so you oght to get plenty of reserves, they're also dirt cheap so you've got almost no reason not to... 80k for 4 extra bodies is a totally sweet deal. Your focus for the team might be on the ogres but you need to be able to fill the rest of the pitch up with snotlings or your ogres just arent going to function. I have to agree with PubBowler when he says that you're going to get them fouled, with no chance of them being replaced it suddenly becomes alot more worthwhile to foul them.
Think about what you do with vampires. The vampires are fantastic and win you your games but if they arent supported by enough thralls then you dont stand a chance.

Hence the first thing you should do is to buy some more snotlings which leaves you to spend your enducements on other stuff. Bloodwiser babes are a great investment when you see how many KO rolls you'll have to make. The miscellaneous mayhem deck is pretty handy too because it usually gives you something to help spring the ball free, chainsaws are nice too.

Numbers is just part of a larger task: controling the pitch. Controlling the pitch is very very tricky with ogres, being able to get a (proper) block on the ball carrier is part of that. Scoring is ok because your ogres can afford to bunch up but they just cant do that if you want to defend effectively. I know you didnt want skill suggestions but I think that diving tackle is probably an ogre essential. Some break tackle ogres is another essential that helps you control/threaten a much larger part of the pitch.

Well fouling can work in another way to an opponant's favour. If he's got a deep bench and it's near the end of a drive, there's no reason not to foul a Snotling since they are essential to an Ogre team. Not to mention if that player is sent off, that's one less possibly casualty that the Ogres can return.

But in general, yeah. Fouling Snotlings is pointless, and any and all fouls should be directed at Ogres.

As for tactics, try using the normal bash gameplay at the start and just slam all your Ogres on the LOS. Forget even trying to stop your opponant getting down the sidelines, and put all your Snotlings far, far back down the line safely away from being bashed themselves. And if the opposing team sends a runner down to score, swarm him with Snotlings.

Maybe not the best of tactics, and the other team will probably score on turn 2 or 3 still, but that's 2 or 3 turns of your Ogres crushing whatever was unfortunate enough to start on the LOS. Which leaves you in a much better position to score later in the half.

~Andromidius

I'm definately not purchasing more Snotlings at this point because I already have 3 Journeyman snotlings and I've only played one match. So I'd have to effectively waste 60K before I could even get back up to a full normal roster and spending additional 80K on snotlings makes a total of 140K. That's an Ogre, meaning I'd only have 5 Snots on pitch per drive. That's really a no-brainer situation for me now. I have to go for the Ogre, spending the money on Snotlings is just going to create a treadmill situation.

I got my team up to 14 players (starting with 4 ogres) before buying more ogres. Most of the snots on the team have now got DT, plus a couple with stat increases and other skills, and they are winning games.

If you run out of snots, you lose.

Like I said, it's not going to happen. I'm already down to 3 'on roster' snotlings as three died. Buying more snotlings is not an option for the team now as my first three purchases of snotlings aren't going to help the team because I'd just be buying players I already have as journeymen who are just as effective here.

Roster is like this:

5 Ogres
3 Snotlings
3 Journeymen Snotlings

50K in bank.

Complete waste of time buying those snotlings as it doesn't improve my numbers next match. So I have to save, the following match I'll probably get between 30K and 50K. Which puts me within striking distance of the Ogre. If I spent (say) 100K on snotlings after the next match I'd end up with a 13 player team, which is basically spending 100K to get +2 players (who are snotlings). That's a terrible and inefficient process that's just going to keep the team in a death spiral. The final Ogre is the only way out of this without throwing approx 200K into snotlings.

I'm open to any other suggestions though. Especially anyone who's up for sharing about on pitch experiences. I don't need advice on how to develop the team at all.

I have heaps of LRB5 Ogre experience.

First off, you need numbers yes, but are going the right way for starting out. You need 6 Ogres ASAP, preferably 3-4 RRs too. After that, fill out the team. That is really going to make things hard for you. Those three deaths were a rough bit o luck for a first game. Getting outnumbered is a death sentence for the Ogre team, and having three journeymen means that you are a long ways off getting the numbers back in your favour.

As far as skills and advancement are concerned, I’ve made some good summaries recently in this thread
viewtopic.php?t=25024
You mentioned that you don’t really want advice there so I’ll leave that one alone.

Strategy:
First things first, forget snotlings… This is an Ogre team. Any reliance on snltlings will result in failure and loss. I considered my snotlings as little more than Speed Bumps and Missiles. You really need to think about getting them out of opposition TZs so they can’t get blocked. Each turn you need to ensure that all snotlings are in ‘Blitz Only’ positions. It’s pointless crowding people since they don’t add TZs together for a dodge penalty. Crowd the ball for sure, but don’t try to surround players. If a snotling ends up with the ball, try to surround him but that’s not likely so your best bet is to give the ball to an ogre.

Ogres are a different story, you need them in the soup as fast as possible. If you blitz with an ogre, don’t stop running… Get one in a scoring position if you can. If you can get a snotling to stand next to him, then you have a potential TTM play in the opponents mid field. Which will attract a lot of attention. The other Ogres need to hurt people fast! Bash people up as much as possible and take the skills to do so.

Now your biggest problem will be the Low MA on the team. It’s really easy to get isolated and removed. You want to run snotlings in packs but that means you leave huge gaps in the field. (This is why I tried to get Snotlings MA6. It apparently still fits the 20K price tag and is really needed for the team) If you can get the ball into a cage, you won’t need to spread out so much. Easy in Offence, A nightmare in Defence. Getting the ball back from your opponent is the biggest challenge for Ogre teams. You kind of need to rely on errors.

Which Brings me to Elves…
Elf teams rarely make errors, on top of that they get cheap as chips RRs. So there goes that. The next problem is Blodge. No G access means that you have no effective and reliable ways to neutralize Blodge players. Even if you roll the odd doubles and make a wrestle or tackle type player, they are only available after development. Which means that your elf opponent will have developed many, many blodgers by then. More than you can handle with your single guy. The final and biggest problem is 2+ Dodges… Even with a snotling trying to tie people up, it’s still a 2+ dodge to get away from an Ogre… So your Strength Advantage is Gone!

Elf teams are the hardest opponent to play against for an Ogre team. Full Stop. Get the Casualties or lose. If you can’t get your blitz on the ball carrier, Don’t be afraid to throw a snotling at that player. It may scare your opponent into spreading out his team a little more and make some gaps to exploit. Inducements that offer knock downs without Blocks are good, but not exactly reliable… Bombs and Wizards are just about it… After that, take lots of cards and hope for some unpredictable mayhem that will throw the opposing team off balance.