Talk Fantasy Football

I have a DE team that 9 games into a local leage is running away with TV and a 7-2-0 record. Sitting @ 149TV. Next highest in the league is a 136TV, with everyone else still <120TV.

I'm getting a little paranoid about getting an outrageous TV and just giving away huge piles of inducements, but is that silly thinking of me?

Here's what I have:
Blitzer, 43SPP, +AG, Dodge, Leap
Blitzer, 16SPP, Dodge, Pass Block
Blitzer, 14SPP, Dodge
Runner, 37SPP, Dodge, NOS, Pass
Runner, 17SPP, Dodge, NOS
Witch, 8SPP, Block
Assassin, 16SPP, Block, Guard
Lino, 8SPP, KOR
Lino, 9SPP, Kick
Lino, 3SPP
Lino, 2SPP
RR=3, Apoth=Y
Cash=$240K

So its not like I'm strapped for cash. I have plenty right now. I'd like to have another Blitzer, the 2nd Witch, and another Lino to put the team to 14 playas (currently at 11).

Two schools of thought compete in my mind:
1. TV is better than Inducements. Buy 'em now, get 'em skilled, and let the TV crank to the roof. I can add a Blitzer and Witch right now, have 30K leftover, and still won't bust the 175TV bubble until after 1-2 more games. Thats long enough to save the cash to buy the 5th Lino to finish the team. Basically: the advantage of having the extra players is worth more than whatever my opponents might gain in Inducements, so get the players and don't worry.
2. Careful on overvaluing the TV. Inducements may be less valuable than actual players and TV, but enough Inducements can hurt. I've had a couple games where I gave away ~400K in Inducements already and in the right hands they can make a difference. Both of my Draws and my only dead player occured in games where I gave away huge piles of Inducements.

Hows this for a compromise: I'll play one more game with 11 players, and if that leaves me with enough cash to buy all 3 additional players simultaneously then bugger the TV and go for it (+28TV plus skills would put me in the ~180TV range and giving away 500K-600K). But with 14 players, a solid line, and plenty of flexibility I should be in good shape for a while. Until everyone starts chainsawing my players.

The Star Players can work both for me and against me. On one hand, some of those guys are nasty. But you can only have 2 on your roster, they eat MVPs from your team, and the cool things they do don't earn SPPs either. Plus they're overpriced and hard to get full value out of each of them. So there appears to be a point at which the hurt of giving away Inducements appears to taper off.

I say, don't sweat it. Hire up to 14 with a suite of positionals, and let the chips fall where they may. Remember, the cheap inducements tend to be the gamier ones, and they hit diminishing returns pretty fast.

I think the one more match at 11 players route may be the way to go.

Then buy all 3 and move from there.

You'll hopefully then be able to pro-actively cut players that are injured and replace them to keep your TV down. And maybe even be able to afford to lose a player dropping the TV and lowering SE to raise the cash to replace him.

Not worried about SE until I hit 220TV. At that point the effect of SE is to flatten out team expansion. Thats the point where I'd have to consider dropping player to hire someone new.

I like the idea of hiring everyone at once and then just sitting on top of the TV heap. So far nobody has objected to taking heaps of Inducements.

Assassin, 16SPP, Block, Guard

On this guy I would have picked Multiple Block instead of Guard any day of the week. Multiple Stab is awesome and rather safe to do!

I understand, stashman. Maybe in a tournament.

But consider this: I have never passed on a Doubles or Stat roll, yet how many of those do you see I've rolled in 16 attempts?

If my luck were a little better, I'd have Guard on Linos and Multiple Block on an Assassin. But with only one Doubles roll in 16 tries I felt that the TEAM needed Guard more than the PLAYER needed Multiple Block (which doesn't generate SPP with Stab).

The whole trick with team building in the post inducement world is to build up your team efficiently. Having a higher TV than your opponent is not a problem if your upgrades help the team. To keep that working you also need to be able to replace players whose TV has exceeded their worth to the team.

You need a lean TV with Dark Elves, because you pay for so many good positionals. Your best 11 is more expensive than almost any other team's best 11...

So I recommend the following:

1) Ditch any and all assassins. Not worth the TV in my mind

2) Plan out your blitzers. Do you need 4 Dodge, Leap, Side Step, Dauntless players? Of course not. Cycle through your blitzers before the 4th skill. Try to always have one blitzer with only one skill, or use get lucky on doubles rolls and stat increases to build 4 unique blitzers.

3) Line elves are your key for keeping TV down. Don't build awesome line elves. 2 skills max, maybe 3 if you roll a doubles. Only take + STR here... even AG 5 probably isn't worth it.

I'm draconian with Dark Elf TV, but in our last league I got caught a bit. Dark Elves can't afford to face a chainsaw every game... or mercs full of mighty blow. Keep the TV down.

I hear you, Jural, but your advice is a hard pill to swallow.

I am not eager to drop my Assassin as he is the only player with Guard. On the other hand, if an opponent cripples him for me then I won't have trouble dropping him. Maybe he's not worth every point of TV that he costs me, but he has Block/Guard for only +10K over what a Lino with the same would cost me. And I don't have anyone else with Guard. If I had someone else with Guard, I think it would be much easier to justify canning the Assassin. Okay, I admit he sucks and a AV7 Lino would be fired already but he is still the only guy I have with Guard.

When you suggest "cycle through the Blitzers", do you mean to fire them when they get too many skills and rehire a rookie to keep the TV down? That is hard for me to swallow also. But it would keep my TV down. On the other hand, that Blitzer with AG/Dodge/Leap is a big pile of TV by himself. So I see your point.

I'm working on a theoretical plan to deal with the chainsaw. So far nobody has bothered to take one, but they're cheap. Some combination of stabbing it, smashing it with Linos, and then fouling it while it is down to keep it from being used would seem good. Once it hits the pitch it can only be used on one drive, so if I avoid it and score fast it should be harmless.

I'm surprised by a lot of your skill choices, frankly. Pass Block and KOR (on an elf) don't exactly say "I'm concerned about TV."

That's exactly what I mean by cycling through blitzers, but it imagines you don't have too many deaths and you get decent winnings.

My problem is that Dark Elves as a squad really aren't that great as they advance if they don't get stat increases or doubles.

Would you rather face 4 blitzers, 2 with Dodge and 2 with Side Step, or 4 blitzers like this:

Blitzer 1 Dodge, Side Step, Leap, Kick
Blitzer 2 Dodge, Leap, Strip Ball,
Blitzer 3 Side Step, Dauntless, Dodge, Leap
Blitzer 4 Dodge, Side Step, Dauntless

I contend that both teams have nearly equal performance on the pitch in the hands of a good Dark Elf coach. but the skilled team carries around 200k in extra skills. If that second team also has 3 blodge linemen and an AG 5 linemen with a skill, that's 130k more in TV... but no extra players on the pitch!

At the end of the day, you need 13 or 14 Dark Elves, and your TV can't be at the top of your league. You need to manage that somehow. Consider cutting skilled players, and consider 2 re-roll or 3 re-roll rosters.

One more reason to cycle through blitzers- Doubles skills. If you cut after 2 or three normal skills, you'll have more doubles skills on your roster longterm. A few guard or Mighty Blow blitzers and you'll feel different about them. Nerves of Steel can also be a great skill if you have a runner who needs a Dump Off target... but I prefer Guard or Mighty Blow.

Okay, I understand now.

The only way I'm going to manage the "not the highest TV in the league" is if I can manage to get everyone else to play as many games as me. I've been trying to manage my TV, and at 9 games to only have 149 I feel pretty good when the next highest (136) only has 5 or 6 games on his team and several teams have only 2-3 games max. We don't have a schedule with X number of games per week/month, so the only limit for me has been not playing the same opponent more than twice in a row and being able to schedule games. Thats 9 games since Oct 25th when we started this league and I'll get at least 2 more games this weekend. Three if I'm willing to play my wife's Amazons.

I can see hiring another Blitzer and Witch, then seeing how the mix does after a couple more players get to 3-4 skills. Fire the ones who have only normal skills and start over with some rookies. Thats affordable, and as long as I'm not trying to build early SPP on more than 2 positionals at a time it seems low risk.

With AV 8 and some Blodge Line Elves you can probably get away with 13 Players on the team.
Assassins are situational, if your League has a lot of AV 7 Teams (Norse, 'Zons, other Elves) they can do well. Most of the time though they are just overpriced Line Elves with less Armour!

One suggestion is to draw up your Dream Team with a TV of 220 and that may help you see which players to keep and which are expendable. For example a Blitzer with Strip Ball can be great early in the League, but once everyone else takes Sure Hands to counter he becomes useless and might as well be fired.

In our League my Elf team has just hit 199 TV, and most of the other teams are in the 130-160 range so I am facing one or two star players every game!

My primary opposition includes some AV7, but not exclusively. We have a couple Human teams, a couple Orc teams, Dwarfs, Undead, Wood Elfs, Amazons, and a couple other teams I'm not thinking of right now. I don't see the Assassin as exclusively a Stab machine. Shadowing is useful against slower teams, and with Guard he is awesome regardless of either starting skill. He is, for me, a Block/Guard Lineman with -AV who happens to have a couple other skills.