Hi all,
thanks for your votes - keep 'em coming
As for the comments:
@Darkson:
Perhaps not the best wording or number of options. I suggest that anyone who think that the squires must be AV8 vote option 1 or 2, and then explain in the thread.
@Joemanji:
I promise that I have enough IQ to know that voting here doesn't equate to liking the team.
And I'm painfully aware that you personally do not like it.
I left the option out because I find it utterly pointless to tack on to every poll about the Brettonians (or indeed every poll, period).
If you think that Brettonians suck, then that doesn't prevent you (the generic you) from having an opinion about this issue. And in the hypothetical situation that your commish added the team to your league, even though you hate it, there might be a possible version that you'd hate less.
@Tritex:
The blitzers and the runners are the knights - or rather the nobles. I've used standard BB titles for these because knightly titles seem to bother some people (see below).
So you'll note that some of the knights do have "dauntless". They could have had stand firm too, but if I had to include every skill that could be concieved as knightly, then the players would become heavily overdescribed.
@Ironage_Man
I hope that you see that I'm trying to give honest replies to your objections, rather than just shrugging them off.
1) I've done polling on TBB in the past about whether a statline weaker than 6337 would still be percieved as human. The majority said yes, so that's what I'm sticking to.
The loner is to show that they are not just underlings like thralls, but that the feudal hierarchy at the core of the team (and culture) means that the nobles don't practice with the linemen.
2) The AG access isn't my idea. But it works fine in playtest. Without it, the linemen would probably have to be 30K - which they were in the past, and that caused (theorybowl) claims of abuse and brokenness. So it got changed.
3) Guard is powerful, but not powerful enough to break every team imaginable. I hope you agree. We've had some playtest with guard, and it worked out fine. Also, the team has a win percentage around 48 in the MBBL, which puts it smack in the middle of the power pyramid. If the squires lose wrestle and a point of AV, then I'm certain that they would have lost as much as they have gained from guard.
4) You're not the first to say that the team has too many positions, or that they should only have 1 specially named position.
About the 1st issue - that 5 positions are too many - I think it is worth noting that in LRB5, there are 6 such teams, so that is certainly not a big deal.
About the 2nd issue, it is true that 2 special positions is a rare thing on mono-race teams. But not unheard of.
Even though LRB5 deleted this from the high elf, dwarf and skaven team lists, it also added it to the dark elf team list - so I figure that it is OK if there is a reason for it.
And there is.
The first is the fluff:
It is at the very core of the team fluff that the team is a feudal hierarchy, and that each noble is served by his personal squire/yeoman, and as the nobles have different tasks, so do their helpers.
Secondly - the team balance:
If the squires and yeomen are merged into a single 0-4 position, then it would either mean that the team would have 8 players with access to S-skills (which some have suggested would be too much), or that the team would have 4 "throwers" which others have reported that they certainly don't like.
So, to me, yeoman + squire is the lesser of 2 evils.
We used to call them Runner's Squire and Blitzer's Squire, to use just 1 kind of special title, but some have found that to be cludgey, or simply found that an apostrophe is an ugly thing. That is why I went with yeoman + squire.
5) I don't find them over-described at all.With moderate statlines on the team, and only few players with 2 or 3 skills, I think that your criteria for overdescription are very harsh. And any fewer skills, and the teams performance would drop even further.
6) I'm glad you ask what new they bring to the table. A playtester in the MBBL wrote the following comment:
"I've now tried playing with all the experimental rosters on MBBL (except as Slann) and I find that the Brettonian roster is quite possibly the best of the bunch in terms of game balance. It's not a roster that's as competitive as the tier 1 teams, but you can certainly win games with them.
More important than all of that, this is a roster that's pretty fun and unique to play: I've found Brettonians' to have a distinctive 'screen' running game that's not cagey, certainly not bashy and not something I would try with normal humans (having linemen that are no better than your journeymen is actually quite liberating)"
IMO, they bring a special screen running game, which with low AV, low ST and unreliable linemen can not be cage-based, but has to be more spread out.
A charge based offense with a substandard defense.
And - of course - it brings Brettonians to the game, which fans of that particular species might like
Thanks all
Martin
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