Discuss Fantasy football-style board games - GW's Blood Bowl, Impact!'s Elfball, Privateer Press' Grind, Heresy's Deathball, etc. THIS IS NOT AN NFL FANTASY FOOTBALL SITE!
In 3rd Ed, I had a wood elf team with 8 rerolls, and often used every one of them. Of course, you could reroll a few more things now than you used to. It was really liberating in your tactics, you never had to worry if you were "wasting" a reroll that might be better used later in the game.
I also often started undead teams with 6 or 7 rerolls (along with 2 mummies, 1 wight, and a bunch of skeletons and zombies). Those teams tended to start off poorly, but they were really awesome after about 10 games because they had so much solid infrastructure though. Of course, that was ALSO back when you could use rerolls on fouling, which that team did on a VERY consistent basis. Dirty Player was the first skill given to EVERY zombie and skeleton.
Ahh, the good ole days...
Reason:''
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Chinese Relativity Axiom: No matter how great your achievements, or how miserable your failures, there will always be about 1 Billion people in China who won't give a damn.
Stats a cool player does not make. Thralls just rock hard.
As for Vampires, I tend to go with Block, Mighty Blow, Guard, Side Step, Tackle in some combination, varies depending on the vampire. Often build 1 of utility vampires like a Frenzy, Juggernaut crowd pusher and a Block, Tackle, MB, PO killer - Pro is considered as skill #5 if I get there.
I tend not to take Dodge as there are often multiple tackle players on the opposing team just waiting and I'd rather not hand out the targets.
Thralls are Block, Fend, Dirty Player with Guard on doubles.
Surprised at the lack of Pro love in here. I found Pro to be essential to any sort of reliability. Often I burned Pro and RR in a turn with no more than three vamps on pitch.
I sort of like Fen's all thrall team to start off with. However, it could get very very ugly if AV7 starts, well, being AV7.
Agreed on Hypno Gaze. It's a fantastic skill.
Reason:''
No one should be honored for doing what is expected.
Is there anyone who has tried to play with 6 vamps on the pitch at the same time?
Would be interesting if someone could tell us what happend.
An all thrall team takes away the fun (IMHO). They're called Vampire Team.
I think it's a good part of the game to play so your specialist get as much done as possible and your opponents specialist get as little done as possible.
Do you guys play with a sacrifical Thrall? One that's bound to be eaten if there is a failed Bloodlust role.
sgtspiff wrote:An all thrall team takes away the fun (IMHO). They're called Vampire Team.
Not the point. It's not an all Thrall team, instead you're gradually increasing the numbers of Vampires in the team so you can get used to using them and also improve/understand your Thralls correctly. As the Thralls will always be doing the backbone of the work.
You can do something similar but start with 1 Vampire if there has to be Vampires on the team.
This thread has been great, i've never attempted to coach a vamp team and until I saw them played well never gave them much thought. I'm now looking forward to getting into a new team. How is this for a starting roster
2 Vamps
10 Thralls
5 Rerolls
3 Fans
First purchase being an apoth.
Do you guys try and skill one of the thralls up to be a ball retriever/thrower?
Assuming that's 5 Rerolls and 3 FF it's a fine starting line up.
Not a Thrower as such, more a Runner. Because the Vampires are so much more naturally talented with handling the ball that there isn't a lot of point trying to create an AG3 thrower when you've got AG4 ones. Later on the Runner works to protect the ball when facing Strip Ballers and can always threaten to hand off the ball to a Vampire. Thrall runners also work quite well in that Vampires are amazing at creating pathways to run through without dodging.
So Block, Sure Hands, Fend is normally enough for a Thrall Runner (I never plan beyond 3 skills on a Thrall as that's just too optimistic)
Overall, I think the key skills on Thralls are Block and Fend. Block for obvious reasons and Fend because it frees up the Thralls to move on their own turn without dodging/hypno gazing (as well as protecting them from Piling On).
(It's always nice to have a kicker and a couple of dirty players.)
fen wrote:
Fend because it frees up the Thralls to move on their own turn without dodging/hypno gazing (as well as protecting them from Piling On).
And Frenzy as well (but I know you knew that).
Just interested on whether anyone has got any experience with Wrestle on Thralls. Doesn't effect them being Blood Lust targets and might be useful on a couple of them to frustrate caging teams whiile your Vamps get into position.
I would also suggest one thrall with kick and at least one (maybe 2) with kickoff return and sure hands to make sure you can get to the ball right away.
Otherwise the Block Fend Thrall template is solid IMO. Guard on Doubles most of the time, and they make a solid backbone as a compliment to the Vamps.
Reason:''
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Chinese Relativity Axiom: No matter how great your achievements, or how miserable your failures, there will always be about 1 Billion people in China who won't give a damn.
Well I have a reputation (of lossing) to keep up, so don't look at my Vamp team. But I would say Fen has it right. Thralls are dependable, once you know how to use them. If you are serious about playing to win, Thralls are very much more than blood banks. If you just want to have fun and lose 60% of your matches, then start with 4 or 5 Vamps and almost no rerolls.
The only thing I feel bad with my team is that 2 of the Vamps now have Pro (as the frist skill). I play to play, winning happens sometimes, but with dice rolls like mine, thats a rare occasion.
I am shown that Nuffle is a sadist god and as such showers his sadistic love on my teams quite often, not just my Vamps.
Reason:''
If at first one doesn't succeed, and doesn't try again, then he will never succeed.
So far quite a double edged team. As in i cant seem to win with them (same reason as above) and the onetime they won, was against my own Khemri team, with another coach playing the Vamps.
The team got of on a bad start with two vamps missing the second game due to injury (one losing 1Ag).
The team is going good in development i think, the thralls are soaking up the spp's nicely with 4 skills so far (Pass, Kick, Block, Dodge).
The vamps are not that important to the team but got two skills (Block, MB).
This amount of skills may seem low and it is, the stats are 6 games played, 5TD's for, 14 against, 6 Cas for, 20 against, 1 dead for, 2 dead against.
From the TD's 4 were against my Khemri team so i scored only one TD myself.
The line up was Norse, Orc, Khemri, Nurgle, Dark elf, Wood elf.
Investments were 2 Thralls (bought after game 3) which got killed in the next game (stupid appothecary), and a reroll (now 4) still got 60k in the bank
Learned not to use more than 3 vamps on pitch at atime the hard way. (27 failed Bloodlust rolls in one match against Nurgle, and yes all three deads were caused by the vamp team in that match). The next match was bad too due to 4 yourney thralls and again 4 vamps on pitch.
On the upside with only 3 vamps on pitch only 2 or 3 failed bloodlust rolls max seems quite good, but need to remember that u can reroll them with the team rerolls therefore got a 4th one.
After 6 games the team can now still play with 4 vamps and 7 thralls but after the hard lessons will start with 10 usable players, 1 vamp will have to just stand around and not do a thing because i can not have him dining on the thralls again.
This is it for now will post more after couple of games.
wesleytj wrote:I would also suggest one thrall with kick and at least one (maybe 2) with kickoff return and sure hands to make sure you can get to the ball right away.
I forgot about Kick Off Return. I'd probably take that on at least one Runner Thrall before Fend. Thanks for the reminder as that extra 3 squares can make a lot of difference, especially in the face of Elf teams.
