Talk Fantasy Football

Long time no see! How have you all been?

Sorry for the disappearing act. I got a new job, and it's been taking all my time. It's really just the last two weeks that have gotten me back to BB. I figured I'd try something new and fun while I kicked the rust off, so I ran a Ranked FUMBBL Human team with no Apothecary! The theory was that the damage accumulated would keep my TV down until my FF ran out of control, and in Ranked FUMBBL, that meant I'd be paired up against softer teams with fewer skills. Kind of like those hunter-teams in the 'box, except you'd see me coming....

It went okay, but I let it go too long. The first several matches, my no-Apo approach just meant I was tighter on TV, like I hoped. I suffered a lot of deaths (in my first 9 matches, I took 11 Cas with 7 deaths or retirements, all on skilled players), and I learned that I played on without an Apo too long when I suffered my worst loss ever (0-4!), only the second time I've allowed 4 TDs (the other time I got on board, at least). Still, they made it to 6-1-1 at one point (all opponents but one were ranked in the 140s and 150s, but a few were newer coaches and the first match was a TT buddy of mine's first FUMBBL venture). I finally bought an Apo when I got enough guys up above 50k that the Apo itself seems worthwhile.

http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=team& ... _id=697374

The upshot of all this is the interesting part. This run taught me something really valuable about new BB and gave me a new perspective, which I will now call the Aztec Philosophy.

P1) The best ones die first. The enemy goes after them. You use them for a lot. They get fouled. Nuffle plays tricks on you.

P2) In LRB6, nothing matters. It doesn't matter who lives and who dies, so long as you've got the elements you need to keep your strategy intact.

If you're playing a team like Humans, where anybody can do anything, don't sweat deaths and lost players, no matter how killer the lost guys were. Take an Apothecary if you want, but don't use him on deaths or retirements, unless it's pretty much the end of the match (or in the first half, on a good player, and you've induced an extra Apoth). Use him on KOs or first-half BHs on key players.

If a really cool player dies, cheer. You got cheaper. If a player suffers a permanent injury, retire him. Don't do a cost-benefit analysis; don't try to figure out whether the statloss is important. Unless you know that it's completely irrelevant (-1AG on a Saurus... heck, even on a BOB), cut the guy, or at least build to replace him and then cut him as soon as you can. Easy come, easy go. Hard-to-come-by, easy go.

What do you think?

"If you're playing a team like Humans, where anybody can do anything"
I would be cautious saying that Humans can do anything.
On the paper: yes; actually: no.
AG 3 is mediocre and unreliable, they can't pass and dodge well, they can bash agile teams, but struggle with proper basher and hybrid teams.
I find dark elves more versatile, thanks to AG 4 which has lots of uses.

I ran an Orc team without an apoth for a while in one of Cyanide's open leagues.

It worked pretty well.

Outside of a few teams that depend on individual players like say perhaps Skaven, I think it works. Losing players doesn't matter from game to game.

MattDakka wrote:"If you're playing a team like Humans, where anybody can do anything"
I would be cautious saying that Humans can do anything.
On the paper: yes; actually: no.
AG 3 is mediocre and unreliable, they can't pass and dodge well, they can bash agile teams, but struggle with proper basher and hybrid teams.
I find dark elves more versatile, thanks to AG 4 which has lots of uses.

What I mean is that any player can do anything any other player can do.

Oh, and my record against bashers is very good....

Welcome back. It has been a bit quiet around here

Nice win with your humans, but as you say the opponents has mostly been lower CR guys. I also faced Madvig's dark elves, he's a good coach: https://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=matc ... id=3307998 But something is wrong with the CR displayed, his are 167 now and wasn't much below when I played him.

I can see your point reg. the apo, I've also switched from using him for protection against SI/KILL on key players (LRB4) to using him on KO/BH to keep good players in the game.

That’s an interesting philosophy with the apothecary and I think it’s certainly a good thing to not get too attached to players. In open leagues such as [R]anked I have always focused on short term success and will happily sacrifice great players if it wins me games.

In tournaments or leagues then I fell you do need to consider longer term ramifications when using the apoth. Humans in particular struggle when they are low on players and benefit less from journeymen than elves. It can be hard to skill up rookie Blitzers and linemen as catchers and throwers have a habit of hogging spp’s. Other teams usually focus a lot of attention on your expensive blitzers, I have lost almost as many of them as I have linemen and linemen rarely get apoth attention.

Humans are also hampered by having their blisters, catchers and the ogre being overcosted so losing a blitzer and ogre in 1 game takes 230K to replace which is a lot. I don’t think humans benefit that greatly from being the underdog either due to their poor stats.

Humans have some REALLY good inducement options... they're fast enough to take optimal advantage from a Wizard, and while their stars are expensive they are mostly good values. Since you never have any business taking a Human team above about 1.5M or 1.6M, you'll get to take them all the time in tourneys.

mattgslater wrote:

MattDakka wrote:"If you're playing a team like Humans, where anybody can do anything"
I would be cautious saying that Humans can do anything.
On the paper: yes; actually: no.
AG 3 is mediocre and unreliable, they can't pass and dodge well, they can bash agile teams, but struggle with proper basher and hybrid teams.
I find dark elves more versatile, thanks to AG 4 which has lots of uses.

What I mean is that any player can do anything any other player can do.

Oh, and my record against bashers is very good....

Ah, I see now.


In Ranked bashers are less bashy than in the Box.
Play Humans in the Box, that's a real challenge!
Ranked is full of noobs, cherry pickers and farmers.

MattDakka wrote:Ah, I see now.

In Ranked bashers are less bashy than in the Box.
Play Humans in the Box, that's a real challenge!
Ranked is full of noobs, cherry pickers and farmers.

Bah, that’s a myth spread by blackbox coaches. That division is filled with 1 dimensional bash heavy teams that don’t have a clue how to score unless they clear the pitch. There is as much lameness in that division as in ranked, it just takes a different form.

In ranked you can at least avoid coaches you don’t want to face and choose to not play the same few races over and over again. Plus there are smacks and other tournaments if you want to play take all comers games.

If you are an above average coach with a spine then you’ll get far tougher games in R than B.

spubbbba wrote: In ranked you can at least avoid coaches you don’t want to face and choose to not play the same few races over and over again.

This helps a lot to get easy matches!
I played in Ranked and I currently play in the Box, and Box has more bash, that's a fact.
Given that you can avoid the bash teams in R, R coaches tend to build them "bash-light" and, if you have a bash team yourself, you struggle to find a match.
I have more than 20 R teams: my bash teams were rarely chosen by my opponents, and I can't count how many cherry picking offers I had to refuse.

Lets not get into divisional wars.

In both divisions, if you don't want to challenge yourself, it's easy. Really really easy. I'm a very poor orc coach, and I'm currently at 12/9/1 with my orcs in the Box, just because most coaches there don't have a clue how to play against someone that doesn't let himself get clawbombed regularly. Similarly, in R, I'm 19/2/3 with my HE, by virtue of accepting the match-up every time a bash coach tries to cherry pick me. I don't regard those records as worth anything, because if you just want to find a quick game in both divisions, the odds are, you'll end up against a weakish player.

I do use Matt's philosophy generally though. I found playing Khemri really helped me get into the attitude, having no apo, and they are really fun to play as. Generally, I have two modes of play: "weak opponent" and "challenging opponent", and I decide which they fall into either before (if I know them as strong), or after the first 3-4 turns. If I'm playing a challenging opponent, I use the apo on the first important KO, or the first BH. If I happen to suffer an important perm/RIP before it, I'll use the apo there too. If I'm playing a weaker opponent, I play to preserve the team and win 2-0 (or 2-1), including saving the apo for important damage. Challenging isn't that high a bar for me, it just needs to be a player who won't give me the game for free with a stupid move, or leave their ball carrier exposed nicely for me.

No offense Hito, but you're currently ranked 57 out of 2000 coaches on Fumbbl so I doubt you're a "poor" coach at any race! I for one would love to hear your tips on how to manage against a CPOMB team -- is it simply not following up on pushes, leading with your Fend Linos, going after the killers early, spreading their offense, and screening for the score?

I find mattgslater's revelation interesting as well, since it seems really just about coming to terms with what a perpetual league is. I recently re-started Oblivion and it's the same concept: you can play to the end as a Level 1 character and have more or less the same experience as if you advanced to 40. Similarly, in a perpetual league the point is playing the game in the moment, not achieving domination or winning the prize -- because domination earns you more dominant opponents, and there is no prize. So the ways to enhance each individual game experience reduce down to three main goals that I can think of: efficiency, character, and killing. Efficiency = min/maxing (take block/dodge/guard/MB/PO, big guys are bloat, cull the weak, cycle non-doubles, etc etc); Character = role-playing, fun skills, cool names, underdog status/challenge, etc; Killing = personal CAS records, pitch-clearing, etc. One may add social interaction to the list I suppose, although camping the IRC channel will get you that, minus the dice frustration.

MattDakka is right in my experience. If you are still learning the game, and accept all comers, you will get pwn'd by cherrypickers, and if you're at all competitive, or even just prefer winning to losing, this will get old quick. So you adjust and start accepting games only from coaches with less than say 500 games and 150 CR to their name. Meanwhile you find the only people willing to play your "bash" team are top-ranked coaches, or other bash teams. Give your Khemri team a name like "Silent But Violent" (I'll let you guess the player theme) and you're guaranteed to sit on the Gamefinder alone like an overweight acne-prone trombone-playing AV kid with a gluten allergy at the freshman sock-hop.

Still, and this must be said, for all the criticism, it's still the best free internet entertainment experience going -- for those of us who like to keep both hands on the keyboard anyway.

Fidius

Yeah, it's quite simple, and relies on the fact the 'all clawbomb' builds that are so common actually need a 3-4 man advantage to do anything constructive with the ball (as they don't have any non-killer skills to play with). Basically, I keep a bench (shock horror), and I hit a squishy(defined as av 8 or below, preferably without block and me having MB) with my blitz every turn except a ball steal/cagebreak turn. Given the well known figure that clawbomb has about a 75% chance of depitching you once you are down, they can expect to put out 5ish players by halftime. About 3 of those statistically will be KO's, of which hopefully 1-2 will come back. With a bench of 2 reserves at higher TV, that gives you 10 players again for the second half....considering clawbomb coaches usually run 11 players and save the apo for important people, you can frequently even be men up on them starting the second! I just play the numbers game, and minimise the amount of incoming blocks, hopefully reducing them to just a blitz. Apart from that, I play normally. It's not really rocket science, and it's quite effective. It's quite amusing how often they complain about how shocking their cas dice have been...

Have you tried the LFG 2? I gave it a go the other day, and I loved it. It changed the psychological imperative for me, from "Hmm, do I really want to play that team, will it be fun", to "Hmm, is there a good reason not to take this matchup?".

Yeah, my lack of a bench cost me a wacky game against Arktoris last night. But now I'm at 12, with 11 skilled guys. Only rookie is the Thrower, with 5 SPP. 9x Block, 5x Guard, 2x positioning skills, 1 each T, MB, F. No-frills development is the order of the day.

Oh, and people still think Humans are weak. This makes it easier to get games.

My ogre is pretty close to skilling. He's got Guard and SF. If he doubles, he'll get Block, and will no longer be subject to culling for TV. If not, then Piling On or retire? I won't have any other POMB (this team has all the MB it's going to get, and the other guy will probably take longer to hit PO).

The plan originally was Guard-(F/SF/SS) on 3 Blitzers and MB-T-PO on the other one, with no Catchers and no Dodge under any circumstances. I feel like I've screwed a few things up, but mostly done a good job on development. I doubled on my #4 Blitzer, and between SS and JU, I picked SS because I see it as better in the moment and this is a team for the moment. That means all my Blitzers will have Guard by 16 SPP, so my intended T-POMBer will need 51 SPP to finish the combo. OTOH, it looks like I'll have my 2x Tackle shortly (1x with Frenzy), so I can still get him POMB by 31 SPP.

Where I'm a bit concerned is my LOS vs heavy teams. Light or short-handed opponents I can tie down by throwing the Ogre out there, but against the big guys I have to put meaningful value on the line. Vs. Dodge-free opponents, that can be the Tackle guy. But against others, it's harder to say. I don't have any rookie linos. Soon, I'll start getting some Fend....

mattgslater wrote:Oh, and people still think Humans are weak. This makes it easier to get games.

Humans are weak, they are amongst the weakest tier 1 teams when playing in a perpetual league.
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=36026&start=75
Their win rate is around 49%.