Vampire Teams?

sann0638 · Post by **sann0638** » Sat Mar 31, 2007 11:57 am

Can you use an apo on vampires in LRB5? One of the posts suggests you can, but I thought not.[/quote]

Grumbledook · Post by **Grumbledook** » Sat Mar 31, 2007 12:33 pm

yes you can

if a team can have an apo you can use it on any of the players, was decided to make things more consistant

think it only affects vamps and nurgle though ?

fen · Post by **fen** » Sat Mar 31, 2007 3:25 pm

Just Vamps (And Goblins/Orcs - Who have Trolls), Nurgle have the Igor as an inducement instead of any apoths.

sgtspiff · Post by **sgtspiff** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 7:46 pm

Many posts talk about the negative aspects of having many vampires at the pitch at the same time. But you get one extra st4 ag4 player with hypnogaze and regen. That means your team will hit harder handle the ball better and survive longer?
Can't the bonus of all this stand above the negative results of bloodlust?

Mad Jackal · Post by **Mad Jackal** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 9:04 pm

sgtspiff wrote:Many posts talk about the negative aspects of having many vampires at the pitch at the same time. But you get one extra st4 ag4 player with hypnogaze and regen. That means your team will hit harder handle the ball better and survive longer?
Can't the bonus of all this stand above the negative results of bloodlust?

No. In my experience Once you are out of thralls on the pitch, (or thralls you can reach) all the st 4 and ag4 or skills in the world can not help you. Each failed blood lust is then a turn -over and a turn over that makes a st 4 ag 4 hypnogaze player leave the pitch.

Sure not every roll is a failed blood lust roll - but it might be. and even if you do have a thrall for every vampire, your opponent will have a much easier time planning where you vampires will and won't be. And the smart opponent will target the thralls to force you to concentrate your players to maximize biting chances on minimal thralls.

That of course is forgetting about how you got to no thralls on pitch in the first place. A good chunk of your 16 man roster is taking a beating. That will make it hard to field thralls for future drives. Thus snow-balling the problem.

Winnings are not that easy to come by in the LRB5.0 especially when you don't win 75% of your matches, and have a big TV. Replacing thralls isn't the easiest thing to do either.

Sure you can stop Vampires from lusting off the pitch by not activating them. But then what good is st 4 +ag 4 +hypnogaze (on a player who just stands around) ?

3 vamps on the pitch at once max. until you have a team re-roll for every turn left in the drive , which is when you can play 4 , is a pretty good rule of thumb.

Successful vampire coaches know it is all about the thralls.

Grumbledook · Post by **Grumbledook** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 9:17 pm

blood bowl is a lot easier with 11 players on the pitch than less than 11

the more vamps you have on pitch the quicker you get to less than 11 players and thats without the other team hitting your av7 guys ;]

zephard · Post by **zephard** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 11:31 am

I started my team with 5 vamps and only 3 rerolls, you can count up the thralls from that. I now have only 4 thralls and 2 Journeymen now. At first it looks as if I might be able to pull it off. Then the CAS started up on the Thralls, and well as they have said, it is hard to replace thralls.

Sure people look at a 6 3 3 7 general player and think boring. Sure you can get up to 6 Vamps. But those Vamps can do as much damage to the thralls since they go straight to injury instead of worrying about AV.

I have also played it where I let a Vamp go to the reserve instead of touching a thrall, but you know, there is just something about having less warm bodies on the pitch than your oppenent. We do a lot of hard work to get the other team to have less, much less we helping them out with sending our own guys off the pitch.

Since the league is the way it is, I plan on doing a mass remodeling of my vamp team, rather than starting a new one.

dines · Post by **dines** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 6:44 pm

sgtspiff wrote: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.

I have played against a vampire team with 6 vampires on pitch at the same time on fumbbl... and only one reroll. The guy was actually quite lucky with his blood lust rolls, but i think the result speaks for itself: 6-0 http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=match ... id=1606940

sgtspiff · Post by **sgtspiff** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 11:26 am

Ok I take this thread for my question.

Does you guys have any special bloodlust tactics?
Something like...
...each Vamp has its own Thrall to bite that tags along.
...1or2 offering thrall that always takes the bites.
...strategic thralls, placed to let the vampire move to a good place for a snack.
...rather sparing certain thrall then eating them (moving off the pitch)

Grumbledook · Post by **Grumbledook** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 11:45 am

keep the nigglers for LOS and use them to bite

if a player is already stunned and not too valuable i'd try and bite that guy so i don't make another player prone

if i want the vamp in a certain area, move a thrall there first if i can afford it, then i can still move the vamp over and bite that player

have lots of rerolls and hope not to roll a 1 ;o

fen · Post by **fen** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 5:20 pm

Grumbledook wrote:keep the nigglers for LOS and use them to bite

I agree with the rest, but not this one. I always* fire niggled Thralls on my Vampire team as I don't want AV7 players with an increased chance of leaving the pitch.

*excepting certain combinations of increases/skills

Grumbledook · Post by **Grumbledook** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 6:01 pm

they are only worth 40k rather a niggled player died or was there to eat than a player with a skill

i often find i am starting drives with less players
sacking ppl needlessly seems silly

specially even more so now they don't miss one in six games

Mad Jackal · Post by **Mad Jackal** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 6:15 pm

for most races I agree the nigglers don't need cut.

But with Vampires feeding on the thrall at +1 AND the opponents beating on the thralls at +1 suddenly there is one less thrall on the pitch a lot sooner than without the niggle.

Vampires in my experience are a race that really prefers to have 11 players on the pitch and a high thrall count to remain effective and avoid sending further players off the pitch via injury or reserves feeding.

I'd sooner have a loner journeyman thrall than a niggled one on the pitch.

I think this only increases in importance when starting with less than 11 anyway. Each thrall needs to stay on the pitch, even if stunned to keep the vampires from imploding . And or the other team from isolating your thralls and waiting for your vamps to get thirsty.

I have to add. I have a +1 ST block +AV thrall who gained a niggle. I think he is worth the risk on the pitch. So I agree with the caveat that certain skill combos / increases might casue an exception to the always fire a niggler rule.

Skipper · Post by **Skipper** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 12:46 am

If your roster is only 11 players deep, the niggling Thrall is to be cut as soon as possible and replaced by a Journeyman unless he has needed skill combinations. If he picks up SPPs you will have hopefully have accumulated enough to add him permanently to the roster.

Once the team reaches 12 or more players you might as well keep him for fodder as you will not get a journeyman to replace him. Yes, he will eventually die, so what.....you've already paid for him and he is now expendable.

fen · Post by **fen** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 8:22 am

Skipper wrote:Once the team reaches 12 or more players you might as well keep him for fodder as you will not get a journeyman to replace him. Yes, he will eventually die, so what.....you've already paid for him and he is now expendable.

It's all to do with presence on pitch. The Vampire team suffers from player erosion each drive far more than any other team (excepting for stunties) and is the team that causes the most damage to it's own players by a long margin.

The odds of a thrall being removed from the pitch with a niggle are greatly increased by AV7 and Vampire bites. This compounds the general trend in BB that once you get slightly behind another player in numbers it's very difficult to recover and in fact normally once you start to lose players that snowballs. Outside of Elf teams, the team with the least players on the pitch is the more likely to lose that drive.

This is why you should not bite a niggled thrall unless the drive is close to ending.

So in summary, each niggled thrall on the pitch increases the chances of you losing the drive, and I feel that increase is unacceptable, especially when the player is 40K and the team can be very quickly maxed out at 3 vampires 13 thralls and 7 rerolls if you desire to take the optimal path to success. This in combination with available journeymen in the earlier part of the team's life span, there are few situations where keeping a niggled thrall is worth the risk. The same applies to -AV and -ST (but I would keep -MA and -AG if I couldn't afford to replace them or was saving for something at the time)