Slowing down play...A valid tactic.

[Skummy]

With some teams stalling is not a possiblility. Halflings, goblins, wood elves, or skaven would have problems with this strategy, however these teams are all capable of 1 turn/2 turn scoring so for them it is not a true problem.

Skaven can actually be quite good at stalling, if the opponent gives any room at all to manuver. I've done 7 turn stalls with Skaven against Undead, simply becasue I knew that if they got the ball back I couldn't break their cage. Speed lets you play keep-away if your opponent doesn't think about all the options.

[leblanc13]

I never thought about that.

That could be pretty devastating....I mean frustrating.

Keep away! What a concept!

While it may be fun to play keep away with fast team, I wouldn't rely on that tactic on a regular basis. All it takes is a lucky turn for your opposition to tear through your defenses and place alot of tackle zones on the ball.

With a fast team I would rather score and let my opposition try to grind the clock down. Then I would put pressure on him with the players that I build to strip the ball and allow me to score again.

Pressure is what it is all about. Don't let your bashing opponent build up a full cage. Unless they are really lucky, they will require two full turns to build the cage and then a couple of turns to roll down for the TD.

My strategy is to break up the cage before it can get formed. place tacklezones on the low AG players and hit the corners of the cage before it can form.

In response to Redvenom:

I don't think that encouraging a Dwarf team to play deep is a good idea. If they have good coverage in the backfield it will cause you to have to work harder to get that TD. I would want to encourage them to put everyone on the line. If I could get behind them, then there would be no way for them to stop me. They're too slow!

A spread out defense of dwarves can really slow down your chances of scoring. Especially with half or more of them with the tackle skill.

I'm not saying that it won't work, but it could definitely backfire on you.

[TuernRedvenom]

In response to Redvenom:

I don't think that encouraging a Dwarf team to play deep is a good idea. If they have good coverage in the backfield it will cause you to have to work harder to get that TD. I would want to encourage them to put everyone on the line. If I could get behind them, then there would be no way for them to stop me. They're too slow!

A spread out defense of dwarves can really slow down your chances of scoring. Especially with half or more of them with the tackle skill.

I'm not saying that it won't work, but it could definitely backfire on you.

Never really had it backfire on me. And the local dwarf player isn't really bad either, he plays tourneys regularly and ended 4th place in the last one.
If you can't score with Dark Elves, especially against dwarves (but basically any team) then something is wrong. If they play deep defence I just send a bunch of players 6-7 squares away from the end zone, spreaded out over the width of the pitch. He'll usually respond by putting TZ's on your "receivers". This leaves him spread out too. Then you have a few options:
1) quick score: dodge, blitz to open up a receiver, pass the ball in there and score
2) stall from backfield: keep the ball in the back but mix it up up front using your superior AG to break away and gang up on them if possible (works really well against slow teams).
3) just run the ball from the backfield into any weak zones that might develop

As long as you don't get yourself surrounded (keep those guys at the line of scrimmage busy!) this works like a charm.
IMHO offense with dark elves is really easy. You just have to know when to run the ball and when to pass it. Defense is more problematic. I use the tactics you describe, using kick and fast strip-balling players to gang up on his receiver asap before he can form a tank and putting blodgers against his low AG players. But defense is still the elven weak point so all my acquired skills are defense-oriented.

[leblanc13]

That's not a bad set of tactics Redvenom. I'll have to give that a try.

I have yet to play an elf team in league play so I'm still not confindent about how they would play with a stalling game. Your tactics make sense.

From what you described though I would assume that you are talking about a 2 turn/3 turn scoring drive. The problem with that is that you would be give dwarves a full five turns to score though.

I don't see how you can prevent the dwarves from knocking all of your players on the ground and stripping the ball from you if you allow them to catch up to while you are stalling. Would you keep throwing the ball back and forth to players deep in the dwarf zone and pray that you still have players standing on the field to score after you stall for a few turns?

After reading your options I think that option 2 would be the best, but you would have to give your thrower really good protection in order to avoid getting trounced by your opposition. Eventually a good player is going to put pressure on your thrower and force you to lob the ball to someone.

If I was an elf player I would be confident that I could score in two turns and then give the ball to the opposition. I would then allow my players to disrupt the dwarf (bashy team) drive before it could be formed so I could try to get the ball and score again.

I think that the best defense is a screen for the elf teams. Don't put yourself in base to base with anyone on defense. Force the other team to try and break through. When they do, you hammer the player that makes it through.

Another option is to do what I suggested previously. Break up the cage/scoring drive before it starts. Build a good defense by taking the offense away from your opponents. With the fastest players in the game, the elf teams can put pressure on their opposition on turn 1 of their opponents scoring drive. Use blitzers and catchers to try and take the ball away from your opponent. Isolate your opponents thrower and force him to pass. Elves are better at intercepting than most other teams and have a pretty good chance of getting the ball if they use someone with the catch skill (5+ with a free reroll for catch skill.)

I really need to put these theories into practice and see what I can do with an elf team. I've currently got a wood elf and a pro-elf team that are painted and ready to play....Hmmm.

[Mad Banker]

I must say I completely agree with Redvenom here...
This is Blood Bowl! When you read the background, it seems more a game about crippling the opposition than scoring touchdowns... Well, at least in the philosophy of some teams...
And as I've always played with Chaos (Khorne), Dark Elves and Norse for years...

[TuernRedvenom]

That's not a bad set of tactics Redvenom. I'll have to give that a try.

I have yet to play an elf team in league play so I'm still not confindent about how they would play with a stalling game. Your tactics make sense.

From what you described though I would assume that you are talking about a 2 turn/3 turn scoring drive. The problem with that is that you would be give dwarves a full five turns to score though.

I usually try to go for 4th/5th turn touchdown, but this is often impossible. Most bashy teams will struggle to score back in 4 turns.

I don't see how you can prevent the dwarves from knocking all of your players on the ground and stripping the ball from you if you allow them to catch up to while you are stalling. Would you keep throwing the ball back and forth to players deep in the dwarf zone and pray that you still have players standing on the field to score after you stall for a few turns?

Actually that often works rather well. With your superior movement you can often find spots that are out of blitz reach (bashy teams tend to clump together), not much passing: handoffs work well too. If they do stay spread out you can overwhelm them locally.
Anything goes really, sometimes I keep the ball back a long time sometimes I keep running it near his endzone until I have no choice but to score.
Of course it does inevitably go wrong sometime. But that's really a rather rare occasion and most of the times you can gain back the ball real quick.
If I'm taking a lot of KO's or it looks like next turn my team is going to get hit hard I just score.

After reading your options I think that option 2 would be the best, but you would have to give your thrower really good protection in order to avoid getting trounced by your opposition. Eventually a good player is going to put pressure on your thrower and force you to lob the ball to someone.

Make sure you take down any threats to your thrower first. Bashy teams often have a lot of trouble putting pressure on your thrower. That break tackling bull centaur excluded.

If I was an elf player I would be confident that I could score in two turns and then give the ball to the opposition. I would then allow my players to disrupt the dwarf (bashy team) drive before it could be formed so I could try to get the ball and score again.

This doesn't change whether you score in turn 2 or turn 4. You can still swamp his backfield in an attempt to get the ball.
With my dwarf team (I play dwarves as well) I always try to "encourage" my opponent to score in 2 turns. I usually try setting up a certain knockdown of his best player (or a bunch of players) with a dirty player hanging around. Then I'll make a remark like: 'oh yeah, that guy is going to die horribly next turn!' after wich my opponent scores to prevent that from happening. Doesn't work with everyone tough.

I think that the best defense is a screen for the elf teams. Don't put yourself in base to base with anyone on defense. Force the other team to try and break through. When they do, you hammer the player that makes it through.

You'll have to set up your screen real close to the line of scrimmage then. Else I'll just choose the right moment to blitz a hole and send someone in for the score. Besides if I send someone 7-8 squares past a dwarven screen it's as good as a TD anyway.
Defending against elves is just plain hard to do, unless you have a lot of players with pass block/shadow/tentacles.

Another option is to do what I suggested previously. Break up the cage/scoring drive before it starts. Build a good defense by taking the offense away from your opponents. With the fastest players in the game, the elf teams can put pressure on their opposition on turn 1 of their opponents scoring drive. Use blitzers and catchers to try and take the ball away from your opponent. Isolate your opponents thrower and force him to pass. Elves are better at intercepting than most other teams and have a pretty good chance of getting the ball if they use someone with the catch skill (5+ with a free reroll for catch skill.)

I do that too. But if you give your opponent only a limited number of turns to score back they start taking risks which makes these kind of plays often easier.

I really need to put these theories into practice and see what I can do with an elf team. I've currently got a wood elf and a pro-elf team that are painted and ready to play....Hmmm.

Stalling with AV7 might be a bit more risky of course. But with AG 4 you can really play keep-away. Change flanks often, keep the ball moving and occasionally gang up on them and whack 'em down. But if the risk becomes too great just make the score...

[Heiper]

I find this tactic to be totally valid. To control the speed of play is important many sports, BB is an other one. I have my own ways to break up a cage, but when I played Dwarfs myself, it helped me to be better with WE's at breaking those cages. You learn what the cage teams fear most. To sit the game out infront of the EZ depends on who you're playing against. WE's for example can score easy in 2 rounds even with 6 players so you need to do everything you can to stop them. I usually like to play defense tho, so I score if I can with no dice rolls.

One of the most effective ways to break a cage is to go for the back of the cage IMHO. They usually put their best players up front, to take those you put infront of them so they can go forward. If you get tacklezones on the ones back, they have to either block or dodge, or make a hole in the cage to go forward. If you get that pressure on the cage from the start, they will sooner or later get very frustrated and do risky moves (hopefully ). Actually, if they can they will often go for the score as soon as they can, so they know they will at least get one TD. The key is, if they try to slow the game down, try to do the opposite and speed them up by getting a pressure on or around the ball carrier. The really good ones tho rarely get frustrated, those are the scary ones.

[leblanc13]

Heiper,

That's a good idea to go for the back of a cage. I admit that most cages I've faced are front-loaded. All the blitzers up front.

The one cage I have a hard time with breaking up is the 4 post Khemrian Mummy cage. The four corners are anchored with mummies.

I can't break this cage once it is formed, but I have found that waiting this cage out is a pretty good tactic. The mummies move only MV3 so eventually the ball carrier has to break out of the cage. If you surround the cage 1 space distant, you can move with the cage and keep them from trekking too far down field. Eventually they will attempt to blitz their way free. That's when you nail them.

Redvenom,

I agree that your tactics probably work better with DE/HE rather than WE/PE. Perhaps I should avoid trying to stall with my more fragile AV7 teams.

It does give me an excuse however to go out and get a DE team. I really like the look of the models and while a slow starting team, they start to pick up steam pretty quickly if they don't suffer too many injuries early on. I've got a few friends that have played DE in our league and they do very well towards the end of the season once they bulk up their roster with position players.