Talk Fantasy Football

So here's a question for anybody who's spent a lot of time setting up their defensive drives with a skilled kicker: where on the field do you kick to?

As far as I can see, there are two options:
1) kick into a deep corner
2) kick it as close to the line of scrimmage as you dare.

If you're using a fast counterattacking team like Skaven or Elves, my intuition is that you'd normally try to kick it shallow to help pressure the ball and force a turn over quickly. But perhaps you'd kick it deep if playing against poor ball handlers or cagers?

With a slow and bashy team, my guess is that you'd kick it deep and give yourself a turn's grace to mashup the line. Then again, maybe the last thing a slow team wants is to be so far away from the ball and so you'd kick it short and force your opponent to play close to the line rather than pass over it?

Still, I've never made a commitment to taking Kick early in a team's development and was wondering what a coach who relies alot on kick would pick for optimum ball placement.

Where you kick depends on who you are facing.
Against slow teams you kick deep so they need a long time before they reach their cage. You can then hopefully use that long time to turn him over.

Against a fast team like Skaven and Elves you kick shallow. This forces them to take care of the ball early in their turn, because if they turnover too early it might be very easy for you to take the ball away from them. But by forcing them to take the ball early you also might force them to use a precious Reroll very early on, because those 1s do happen. If you instead kick deep to them, they can take the ball very late in their turn because they are fast enough to grap the ball and deliver it where they want it in 1 turn. That's why you kick shallow against them.

Against any style of team, I'll kick for one of the back corners early on. Count diagonally four spaces in (three spaces if you're feeling gutsy) and let fly. This forces a passing or handoff play for flashy teams who want to run up the score, or delays the progress of the ball for most bashy teams as they run back to pick it up.

If I'm a bashy team and it's late in the half, I'll kick shallow to one of the front corners, same distance in. This gets my players stuck in much quicker and hopefully they'll mess up any opposition attempts to score before the half. (If you roll Blitz for the kickoff in this scenario, so much the better. ) Otherwise, yes, kick it deep and start pounding on the opposition.

If I'm a flashy team, I'll still kick deep for either corner and use my speed to put pressure on the defense early and deep in their half of the pitch.

(EDIT: Darn, not fast enough... )

If you have a bashy team and you managed to reduce your opponents numbers it is very nice to kick short, too.

There will be large gaps in his deployment so potential blitzes can exploit that and you end up with the ball.

Or he will have to redeploy and the guy stuck in the back will be out of the game for a turn, ging you better blocks.

There are usually 8 squares you should kick to. The very center square, and then take the 4 corners of your zone and count in 4 squares (including the corner.) Then there are the squares in between the 4 corner squares, excluding the squares closest to the line.

Those are the (basically) risk free squares, where the ball is extremely unlikely to end up out of bounds. If it is key to put a ball in a location, feel free to move the ball further from the middle of the field by one or more squares.

As to when to use each square? That's a much more complicated choice

I'm with the others: kick deep vs. a slow team, kick shallow if your opponent is faster. I like 3 squares in each way (in the wide zone, next to the dotted line), so there's only a very small chance for touchback, if it scatters the maximum number of squares and bounces the same way. Move in another square and you won't touchback, but you might lose some of the value of the Kick skill.

Have a look at this site too


http://www.ee.oulu.fi/~ttokola/BB/kick/

I always kick deep. I like to put as many turns as possible between my opponent getting the ball and reaching their end zone. This allows plenty of opportunities for them to fumble, giving my DE's the chance to swoop in and regain possession.

Honestly, I seem to score more from my opponent fumbling the ball, then from my 'set' plays.

Mootaz has good advice, especially against Skaven and Wood Elves, who are super fast.

I usually aim to score in two turns, because defense is so much more fun (having possession is too stressful) and wins you games. With Skaven repositioning is not a big deal, so at the first turn you can just scatter your rats everywhere. This is made possible if the ball lies so far back that blitzing the ball-carrier is impossible because it's too far back. Getting the ball from my own end-zone to a GR in scoring range is usually no big deal because of that super speed. All I need is a GR somewhere close to the line of scrimmage. The blitz can be employed to free up the scoring rat.

If the ball is close to the line of scrimmage, the ball carrier will probably end up in blitzing range and therefore I have to build a cage around him. That ties up a lot of rats and gives the defending team a lot more leeway in his positioning as there's less rats that have to be put in TZ's all around the field. The Skaven also have the problem - especially if I'm shortratted -that the blitzers and especially the linerats are AG3 so dodging with them is not a good option, and at least three of them will be tied up in blocking the line of scrimmage.

With Skaven it really doesn't matter if the ball is far back, because bringing it forward really is no big deal. If I fumble it so badly that defenders can catch up with it, then - given the same fumbles - I'd be worse off if the ball was close to the line of scrimmage.

Want a race for the ball? Kick deep. Want a fight on the line? Kick shallow. Always kick to the weakside. What else is there to know?