Starting Blood Bowl... with Dark Elves

[Asmoridin]

Hi guys!

Well, I'm finally getting into Blood Bowl (very cool looking game) after playing plenty other GW games. I'm starting with Dark Elves (I will be technically starting with humans to get a better understanding of the rules, for the record, but only for my first few games). But yeah, from what I understand, Dark Elves are quite tough to use.

So I was wondering if anyone could give me any advice? What type of players should I field, what type of strategy should I go for, etc. I'm looking to start playing in a league pretty soon (maybe before the end of the month) and I want to get started on getting what I need!

Anyway, anything you guys can tell me would be a great help. I did read the article on the Blood Bowl site about them, so at least I have a grasp about the basics of them.. just wanted some more expert opinions:)

Thanks guys!

Steve

[absent1]

all the elf teams are fairly tricky, but you can get the best league starting rosters and skill advancement advice at the stick at the top of the page. Dark elves should be fairly forgiving with their higher armour.

[Aksho]

I prefer playing Dark Elves and at my current leage I´m already in the Quaterfinals (playing today).

When you go for Dark Elves, you should keep in Mind that you have no Specialists. ST 4 will maybe never come to your Team, no Bigguy will help you at the Line and other Teams will start with hard Team looking unbeatable at the start becaus all of them already have skills.

Your chance that you are no spezialist! It depends on the Leage and the style you like to play, but you shouldn´t start on a normal leage with more then 2 Spezialists (on short leages maybe more). Most players will say take 2 Blitzers, I prefer 1 Blitzer and a Witchelf.
Dont take a Thrower at the start he is more expansiv then a High-Elf, and a normal Lineman can also do his Job quite well. Try to spread you SPP´s as good as possible around your Lineman you will need a good backbone of skilled Lineman for your Team.
Your Team advantage is that you can have 4 Blitzers, make Block/dodgers or spezialists out of them. If you have a Witch let her make 2 TD´s an make a Jump-Up, Frenzy, Block, Dodge hunter out of her, but always protect her, because the other Teams will foul like hell against her.

The Thrower should come after 7-10 games after some of your Linos have skilled up one time. I normally buy him after about 10 games because there is always a Lino who needs 1 more SPP to get 6

The skills you should take can you find at the stick at the top of the page like absent allready wrote.

After game 1 always buy the Apo if possible!!! with high expansive players you will often need very long to refill your Cockerel.

Normal Starting Cockerel:
2 Blitzers
9 Linos
2 Rerolls
7 FF

or (typical Linemanteam, I wouldnt do that trust me its no fun)
11 Lineman
3 Rerolls
FF 8

or (thats like I´m always starting, but If you want to be on the save side, take Cockerel 1 with 2 Blitzers )
1 Witch
1 Blitzer
2 Rerolls
6 FF

mfg Bernd

[Markus]

starting lineup depends on the environment you play in. in a very long term league starting with 11 linos is good as you can have ff 8 and 3 rr. additionally you'll have skilled linos when your pos-players enter the team. But for a rookie it can be somewhat challenging to play that team, because the sequence of moves and the knowledge of when to use rr's is crucial. the only advantage of de is their good armor (for elves) and the ag 4 on every pl. With this team you need lots of rr because of doubleskulls pow-skulls and getting/throwing/catching the ball and dodging.
I'd start a de-team either with 1 blitzer, 10 linos, 2rr, ff9, 10k cash.
In this lineup you have one reliable blitzer (block) and the best ff available. 10 k cash combined with high ff almost ensures that you'll be able to buy the most important apo after game 1. then go for the other 3 blitzers and skill up the linos and blitzer. after that get the witches. the thrower is very expensive an not that usefull as you should play an agile running cage with some quick passes to spread spp among the linos. The passing game is played by he/we/elves. Additionally this team is somewhat easier to play than all-linos.
Wiches are very good pl, but they break easily (av7) and are somewhat unreliable as long as they don't have block. frenzy is nice to have but you have to plan more carefully where the witch ends up if you get a pushback on the first block, so i wouldn't recommend witches for unexperienced players.
If the league is less then/or 5 games long i'd recommend 7 linos, 4 blitzers, ff 1 and 2 rr.

[Sharky2k]

i would also start with 11 linos then buy apo and blitzers. witchelves i would buy later in a long term league. the most important players are the blitzers

[Bonehead]

I'd start a de-team with 1 blitzer, 10 linos, 2rr, ff9, 10k cash.

This would be my starting team as well.

[kithor2002]

Depends on the lengh of your league if it's a short term league I would start with three blitzers; the rest linman.
If its a long term league I would start with 1 Blitzer and 10 Lineelf, 3 RR and FF 5.
First thing 1 would buy is an apo, then the 3 remaining blitzers and after that the witchelves

[Anthracis]

In long term leagues I tend to start with the 11 lino roster. First thing to buy is definitely the Apo.
After that get at least 3 Blitzers before you get your first witch (you'll need them to protect the fragile witches)

For the thrower. you can ignore them till you don't know where to spent your money on Every DE is capable of playing a decent pass game. Although, I prefer the running game.

Well, that's thoughts on starting with DE.

CIAO
Anthracis

[Sharky2k]

In long term leagues I tend to start with the 11 lino roster. First thing to buy is definitely the Apo.
After that get at least 3 Blitzers before you get your first witch (you'll need them to protect the fragile witches)

For the thrower. you can ignore them till you don't know where to spent your money on Every DE is capable of playing a decent pass game. Although, I prefer the running game.

Well, that's thoughts on starting with DE.

CIAO
Anthracis

thats right. a thrower isnt need maybe as 15th plyer or so

[TalonBay]

Taking a slightly different tack to most of the players here, who's opinions do conform to most things I read when I started my team. My approach was based on wanting to have the option of tailoring my game to exploit opponents weaknesses from the start and thus I wanted the different positional players available as tools early on. To enable me to try this I took fewer re-rolls than normal for a starting team and decided to make do with 6 FF.

My starting roster:

1 Thrower
2 Blitzers
1 Witch Elf
7 Linemen
1 RR
6 FF

This provides several skills out of the box and is (IMO) more fun to play than just linemen. The lack of re-rolls in compensated for by the extra skills to an extent. Unless it's a crucial moment in the game I try to pass as often as reasonably possible (small 1-2 square passes) and spread the completions out so that anyone getting the MVP stands a good chance of getting a skill. I took leader on the first lineman to get a double to offset the low starting RR.

So how has it turned out? I had a nightmare first game (WE died on first hit of the game, 2 other SI's and got 20K winnings) so was in trouble for the next couple of games too, but I focused on developing the team as well as trying to win each individual game and now (after 7 games) I've won 3 lost 4 (but over the 7 games I out-score and out-cas my opponents), I average about 4 completions per game, picked up the Apo, I've bought back the WE and added a second, bought a 3rd blitzer and the team is looking quite strong, with 80K in the bank too.

I've found that you can play with minimal RR as long as you try and use players with skills. With a better start to the season I could easily have been looking at a playoff spot in our league. Getting the position players early has meant that they are developing well (and still only 3 linemen have yet to gain a skill, and 2 of those are very close). My original blitzers are among the stars of the league as opposed to just starting to get them in the last few games (one looks a lot like a wardancer with better armour and the other picked up +1 ST and is a fantastic asset on a DE team).

One note: with my starting few games a roster of just linemen would be up to 3 position players by this point (vs my 6) and likely a worse record (without those extra few MA or the pass skill on the team at vital moments for example).

I'd definitely go against the accepted wisdom here and take the thrower every time, he adds an extra dimension to the team. First there's the obvious attacking pass options without relying on re-rolls. Second, and possibly more importantly, I've found he's great at securing loose balls. If a blitz manages to knock a ball free my passer is often able to dash in grab the ball and pass it out to safety, these are all potentially risky moves (pleeeease don't roll a one!) and knowing that if I've already used my re-roll grabbing the ball (or dodging, whatever) then I still get to use the pass skill for the all important pass out of the middle of the pack.

I think I've been pretty unlucky so far with the team but I've still managed to get an average record and have a ton of fun. Would the same be true of the minimal position player rosters? Obviously I don't know for sure but I doubt it.

Regards,
Gary

[Zyad]

Well, i find that a common misconception is that ag4 means you are not going to need many re rolls. You will roll ones, and need to compensate for that. IF you dont want to start with 11 lin elves, then i would recommend going with 2 blitzers at the most, since all those positionals early will inhibit the pregression of your line elves, which are the strength of an elven team. Once they are mostly blodgers, your opponent is going to have trouble taking them down. With elves are too much of a liability early on, with frenzy, no block, and av7. Especially for somone who is just learning the game. The thrower also takes SPP away from the linemen, and with only one re roll, a substantial amount of quick passes for SPP's will fail as well.

[TalonBay]

I'm not saying the Ag4 means you automatically don't need many re-rolls (more re-rolls would always be welcome). My point was that you can play to minimise the impact of those ones, so that failing a dodge isn't crucial every time. Of course you'll roll ones, but even with re-rolls you'll roll one-and-one again so it doesn't make you immune (though this is much less likely).

I've had chance to buy new re-rolls three times now and decided against it, I'm just not using enough of them to justify getting more than my current 2 right now (1 initial plus 1 from Leader skill).

WE are a liability early on? Surely later when you opposition is all buffed up a rookie WE is in more trouble? Discounting the initial disaster I had with my WE (that would've happened to whichever player was standing there) my experience with WE is that if you set up their strikes well then they can thrive when most opponents are also rookies and develop quickly.

"...and with only one re roll, a substantial amount of quick passes for SPP's will fail as well"

hmmm, and by using only linemen rather than a thrower you'll burn through your re-rolls on silly little passes for SPP and not have them for the big pass. The little passes should only be made for SPP where it's not vital that it's caught. The thrower will always have his pass skill for the crucial pass to break through a defence. Another place where I avoid wasting re-rolls I guess.

Sure the thrower gets a lot of completions, but there's plenty spread around the rest of the team as well (after 7 games only 2 of my starting 11 haven't passed the ball yet, that's because they've got their SPPs other ways, most have at least 2 completions).

There is a reason your method is the accepted "best practice" but I think that it's more aimed at very long term team development and is a real slog initially. In my experience my approach has proved enjoyable and reasonbly effective, obviously it might not work for everyone.

[TuernRedvenom]

There is a reason your method is the accepted "best practice" but I think that it's more aimed at very long term team development and is a real slog initially. In my experience my approach has proved enjoyable and reasonbly effective, obviously it might not work for everyone.

You're right. The "usual" method is aimed at very long leagues where your TR will go beyond 200. Then the difference between a great dark elf team and an ok one is the lineman development. The risk with your roster is letting all the positionals get all the spp's. Sure there are ways to work around it, but if you start with 10 lineman you're guaranteed to get a few good ones out of it. Building up rookie linemen once your team is duking it out with other 200+ TR teams is near impossible in my experience.
So basically if you're in a league with less then 15 matches, then your approach is indeed superior (and I've used it many times too).

[DwarfFanatic]

I would say that the key to any long term league, is linemen developement, reguardless of team race. Once a team has all of its positionals, the rest of the team (ie. Linemen) will make up the deciding factor on mid to high TR games. Most teams have between 5 and 11 positional players on the team rosters, and that includes a spot for a big guy.
Personally, I think all linemen or next to all linemen start-ups are boring. I would rather play with at least a few positional players to start with, just to add a little variety. Not to mention balance to a team. But if whatever floats your boat, more power to you.
Hey Talon I personallly like your starting set-up man! Good luck to you!

[Zyad]

I would say that the key to any long term league, is linemen developement, reguardless of team race.

Well, mostly thats true, but there are a few exceptions.

For instance any type of undead, or skaven. Their linemen are really there mainly to take punishment, and will not live to get more than one skill , normally. Also, orcs, since you will have about three linemen on your roster, even when you have 16 guys. true, theyre better developed than not, but you will put two on the field at most. Generally i think that lineman development is more important on an elf team than most other teams. (unless you count things like chaos/nurgle beastmen as linemen, in which case they would be important to develop too, but they arent linemen in name)

But playing any kind of elf, undeveloped linemen = losses. You cannot make it through a game with linemen down left and right. You will want a lot of blodgers to keep your players on their feet, and also to not waste re rolls. Linemen will have to dodge, pick up the ball, and maybe make a pass, so you want them to be as good as possible.