Advice for a bunch of noobies starting a league?

[mehjbmeh]

Hi, A couple of friends and I recently purchased the Cyanide games Blood Bowl and loved it so much we purchased a couple of 3rd edition boxes and teams to start our own league. We'll be starting soon and I felt it'd be a good idea to just ask for heads up and tips from some vets.

For example, I printed out a copy of the living rule book and the extra teams (slann, pact, underworld) and put them in a binder so we could reference rules, I also printed the inducements cheat sheet from the general topic on game aids. But, what comes to mind on something we'd need on the table or elsewhere to manage a six person league?

[Hegel]

Hi, I´m definitely not a vet, but I´ve been in the same poition last year. Six guys starting a league (three of them being vets, the others rookies). Just some remarks what worked well for us.

Everybody should have : pitch, markers (reroll, turn, score), a ball and most obviously a team.

A variety of teams will be good for the league, don´t just all play humies and orcs. We started with humans, orcs, nurgle, chaos dwarves, high elves and necromantics ( a bit bash heavy, I would have preferred another agility team, but for some of us there was no choice, others wanted teams becaus of the miniatures and so on).

Paint your teams ! It´s so much more fun to have two painted teams on the pitch. It also helps distinguishing (sp?) the different positions, which can be tricky with an all-silver team. During the league we all got skill rings from Impact! to mark players with additional skills. And have the player number written on the base or elsewhere to keep track of SPP of your players.

You must decide whether this will be a casual gaming meeting or a scheduled league. For us the scheduled approach worked well, we defined a plan and allowed two weeks per round. Most of the time we finished early. Our first Season was twelve matches for everyone : first playing all others twice, then play offs (1st vs 4th, 2nd vs 3rd, winners to the final, losers playing for 3rd and 4th place, 5th and 6th playing two matches to keep up with the number of games and SPP).

All of us have internet access, we are using an own forum I created to organise dates, post results and match reports, sort out rules questions and house rules (no ClawPOMB in our league and for general chat. We also use a file sharing system (DropBox) to share team rosters, rules and stuff and an write protected excel sheet with all the results (google for "halfling scribe league", this is the perfect template for league organisation). You´ll need someone to be the league comissioner / webmaster, depending on how much you all trust each other. It´s not like being the super chef, but having the responsibility to keep track of results and so on.

If you have more questions don´t hesitate to ask ! A league is much more rewarding than casual games every now and then, it adds the role playing / player development element which I wouldn´t want to miss.

[mehjbmeh]

Awesome and thanks.

With the league we're doing the scheduled approach though how many matches would you recommend per a "season"? We're thinking we'll go around 12 or so with only having 6 teams, but I'm slightly worried that even that might go too long.

[Itchen Masack]

I reckon only play each other once (especially as this is your first try) and then maybe final game between 1st and 2nd placed teams? You can always carry on the same teams for another season afterwards.

12 games would mean its likely at least one player will not like their team enough and will either stick it out grumpily or more likely, not play anymore.

And one thing, dont get too attached to your team, be prepared to have fun and start over with fresh teams as you get used to what works for your group. Even with a group of 6 its likely that rl with mess up even the best of plans.

[Axtklinge]

The length of the league depends a bit on the ability of keeping the players interested in the league.
With this in mind it may be better to start with shorter leagues (like 5 or 6 games + play-offs), and in the end see if that works for you and your mates or if you could use shorter or longer leagues.

One problem I've found (as comish) was the "fixed scheduling" of games.
In our first couple of seasons, we had an "every team plays each other (at least) once" approach, but real life and other issues (like loss of interest from a couple of coaches), resulted in a very prolonged* league (*read dragged down...), that eventually had to be cut short to be able to actually "end".
From that point on, we stopped having a fixed game schedule, to have a more flexible "whoever shows up, plays" kind of approach, according beforehand on the minimum number games necessary before the play-offs begin.

Have fun and keep us posted!
A.

[Smurf]

Where are you playing this league?

There maybe another league near by...

[dsavillian]

Awesome and thanks.

With the league we're doing the scheduled approach though how many matches would you recommend per a "season"? We're thinking we'll go around 12 or so with only having 6 teams, but I'm slightly worried that even that might go too long.

For your first season, I'd suggest fewer games just to get people used to it. This gives people a chance to try a couple of teams out in the span of 1-2 months and learn what they like and don't like. The suggestion of a 5 game round-robin and a playoff is a pretty good one.

If you do that twice, that'll be 10-12 games for everyone which will give you lots of time to work out the bugs and make sure everyone is ready to get locked in for a longer season. After that, it's pretty easy to just double the # of games and play everyone twice or do up a different schedule if you have picked up more players.

[mehjbmeh]

There's a league at a brick and mortar about an hour away from us that's mostly old vets, so we wanted to do our own league before hand just to not be too much trouble on them, just out of the thought that a noobie that's played a few games with other noobies may get some rules wrong but they'll at least have the basics down and not require a full on tutoring session each week :p

You know, possibly save us a little embarrassment and save them a little time.

As for scheduling I'm leaning towards "a set number of games with whoever shows up" plan and then just a straight tourney by seeding with maybe the top two teams getting a first round bye. I feel like we could wrap that up in about two months or less depending on how many games we play. The upside is everyone playing likes the computer game so most of us have a team we already know and love, I'm hopeful we'll have the painting done soon and i'll be able to report back to you all on how it goes once we start

[spubbbba]

You could allow coaches to make 2nd teams.

They can use these to try out other races or if their scheduled opponent fails to show they can play someone with that team. Maybe keep all the 2nd teams in their own division otherwise you’d risk someone making a killer team and using it to destroy main teams before big games.

I’d echo what others have said about maintaining flexibility. Scheduled leagues are great if everyone is committed. But coaches will lose interest in their team or the game as a whole, someone new will want to join, plus illness, holidays and other issues will prevent games from happening. So it’s good to have back up ideas so those who do turn up can get their regular dose of BB.

[Afroman]

My Experience tells me to only go with schedules games. None of the Uncheduled leagues I've been on have ever managed to finished.

We have the following rules in our league:
- Everyone plays against eachother once(twice if we are few)
- Roughly one game in a two week period(We use milestones like "play 2 games before 1 januari" and so on to keep the league going forward.)
- You can play whoever you want, in any order you want, whenever you want as long as you manage the milestones.


Remember that chances are that some of your players will get bored with the game/race/team and loose interest in playing. That's why you keep the league short. Give everyone a chance to start anew.


My 2 cents

[Zagadoo]

I recently set up a league in my city after playing in another league in a near by city. Most of the scheduling and league design I used from that league because I enjoyed playing in that league and felt it was a good format.

Here is the format we use: 1 game every 3 weeks with the play date set between the opponents, with a ten game schedule, and then playoffs based on participation.

I would encourage you to put up information in the local game stores or other types of establishments to expand your player base. I would also check in with people you work with, you might be surprised who's up for blood bowl.

Also if everyone has a spare $20 I would definitely recommend using the Aros blood bowl website/software. It's reasonably priced worth every "penny."(Micro-Euro? Baby Euro? It's priced in euros. What does the Euro use for change?)

Here is the the website: http://www.arosbb.dk/

Here is our version: http://www.battlezone.bloodbowlleague.com/

It tracks everything you would want to track, and has a lot of great features. It takes a bit of tinkering to get things "right" but I have absolutely no coding experience and can use it just fine.

[Heff]

What does the Euro use for change?)

Greek children

[Hegel]

You actually do not need to pay for a league management system. Google for "halfling scribe league" and you´ll find an excellent excel sheet to manage your league. It holds up to 25 teams, records results and creates some statistics. We are using that in our local tabletop BB league and it works well. For the organisation, setting up dates etc we use a bulletin board, for storing the team rosters DropBox.

[Nuffle_Hate_Me]

We use a Yahoo Group that has lots of file storage, each coach has their own folder. And there is a very basic data base for keeping track of standings plus the chat board. We gave up on the fixed schedule long ago due to no shows, drop outs and hard to reach coaches. Here is the out line of our rules for an open league:

Our league meets once a week a local game shop, the best chance to get a game in, but you can play anywhere any time. Our Seasons usually run ~15 weeks not including holiday weeks ending in a single elimination playoff that all coaches can only take one of their teams to participate in it. If needed we use a "Play In"/"Wildcard" round to get to an even number for a playoff bracket.

Playoffs Qualification - A coach may use as many teams as he chooses during the regular season but may only take one team to the playoffs. The team has to have played a minimum of 4 games in that season and a maximum of 10 games in that season to qualify for the playoffs. Only games played after a team is out of the previous seasons playoffs count towards this number, those played before are just more experience for the team. This also allows for a team reset for a rookie or young team that gets demolished past the point of recovering.

Multiple Same Team Match Ups – Two Coaches cannot play the same two teams in consecutive games during the regular season. No one team can play the same team more than twice in the course of a single regular season.

[Cartercaine]

Hey, did the league ever get off the ground? Is it still going. What problems did you experience? Will you even read this?