Should Brettonians be in Bloodbowl?

[fen]

I sure do miss DL. He was one of the better minds. His instability just made it entertaining.

He still posts on the Impact! Forums.

[GalakStarscraper]

often agree with Snew ... I definitely do here.

Galak

Thanks Tom. I knew you felt that way. That's why I don't ever misquote you. You simply can't make a quote like that any better.

Galak

[plasmoid]

Hi Galak,

>Nice selective quoting Martin. I said that Vampires are the ONLY team
>that have been DESIGNED to be in the 40 to 49% category.
>D*mn I'm being to fell a DL sized rant coming on here about being
>selective quoted.

Hey, I didn't quote. I paraphrased. No > or ".
Problem is that Darkson understood it as a direct quote.
So - Nice misunderstanding what I was trying to say.

To clarify:
Darkson wanted the Brettonians to be weakened, in order to be tier 2.
His argument must have been that since only vamps are tier 2, then tier 2 equals their win percentage of 43(?). Hence, Brettonians with 49 were way too good to be tier 2.
He said, quote: "Really? I thought they were meant to be a tier 2 team at best (ie on par with Vamps), in which case 49% is to high."

I just underlined that tier 2 is more than 43%.
It's 40-49% - acording to you - so no nerf needed.

Cheers
Martin

[Omalley69]

bretonians without knights!?!

give em a horseback riding secreat weapon dude...

[Lickety Split]

Give that man a griffon. Yes. Add riders to the game. I want my hobgoblins to be able to ride the bull centaurs and goblins riding trolls, and halflings in trees. All should have the annoy skill from the pumpwagon. Oh pure bliss. Yes. Please add all kinds of dumb stuff to the game. It's lacking so much as it stands.

[Bludbowler]

As much as I like the GW fluff about Brets and painting all those knights on horseback for WHFB, I really can't stand the team in a BB setting. There is just something about the team as it stands that makes it feel like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole...

The "square peg/round hole" analogy is perfect. I have absolutely no documented evidence to back up my next statement, but my gut instinct tells me that the Bretonian team list is GW's way to trick gullible BB coaches into buying unsold WFB models and convert them into BB teams. The same is probably true for Vampire Counts, Beastmen, Khemri, etc. and I'm willing to bet that there's a stockpile of "Snow Troll" convertables waiting to be shipped to any unsuspecting Norse coaches who think that they'll still be on the team list a year from now.

[Darkson]

Blimey! And I thought I had a negative outlook!
The Snow Trolls here for at least another 18 months, and I can't see it going then.

[Mephisto]

I had a look on MBBL, and I discovered this:

Now for the changes:
The amazonian teams will disappear from the league. All amazonian teams should be converted to amazon teams. If there's any problems, check: http://blood-bowl.net/MBBL/forum/viewtopic.php?p=8062

The Bretonnian team is not dead in the MBBL, but it will be switching from experimental to house rules status. At the same time, the line-up has changed, meaning that existing Bretonnian teams will need to be updated.

All Bretonnian coaches should already have recieved an email about this change, but in case your junk mail filter ate it, please contact plasmoid at hotmail dot com for further details.

Bretonnian teams should not start any new matches, until their roster has been converted. We hope to have this done by monday the 10th of december.

The new line-up looks like this:
0-16 40K linemen 6337 - A
0-4 60K yeomen 6337 Wrestle GS
0-4 120K blitzers 7339 block, catch, juggernaut GS

If there's any problems converting, check http://blood-bowl.net/MBBL/forum/viewtopic.php?p=8061

I think it is a much better roster than the one with all linemen having loner.

[plasmoid]

Hi Mephisto,
that team is intended to replace the old one (unless they turn out to be unbalanced - naturally)
It's in the coming season of MBBL, so we can collect some data concerning their power level.
We'll know how strong they are in 6 months time.

The new team was developed by me and a few hand picked experienced Bret coaches.
Cheers
Martin

[Mephisto]

Hi Mephisto,
that team is intended to replace the old one (unless they turn out to be unbalanced - naturally)
It's in the coming season of MBBL, so we can collect some data concerning their power level.
We'll know how strong they are in 6 months time.

The new team was developed by me and a few hand picked experienced Bret coaches.
Cheers
Martin

I think it's great to test this team, but I have posted the new "provisional" roster on the spanish BB forum and the firsts opinions about it, is that it looks very low-powered. I know that it has to be tested yet, but:

- The blitzers are ok, but why do they have catch?
- The rest of the team has AV7 and seems very fragile...

What can be seen is that this team is going to be a "running-style" team and most XP will be concentrated on the blitzers...

pretty unbalanced in my opinion, but let's see how it develops.

What about the Chaos Pact, Slann and the other experimental teams? Are they going to see the light?

[DoubleSkulls]

The Bretts & Amazonians didn't even get put to the BBRC this time around.

[plasmoid]

Hi Mephisto,
thank you for your feedback, and for posting the team to the spanish board(s).
I hope you will forward this post to those same boards, translated or not.
>

Greetings
I'm the original designer of a Bretonnian team that has floated around on the web for years, which has been discussed online and modified quite a few times, and which was used in the MBBL playtest league for a 3 seasons. Two months ago, I invited 6 hand picked Bretonnian coaches to help me improve the roster. Five of them decided to help out, and the resulting team is the one that Mephisto has posted here. It will be used in the coming season in the MBBL, and will hopefully replace the previous one permanently (if it doesn't turn out to be overly powerful).

I wanted to post here to reply to your feedback, and to give a general description of the team. I know that not everybody wants Bretonnians to play BB. Fair enough. I just want a Bretonnian team to exist for those that do - and I'm hoping that this team will become the "unofficial official" Bretonnians, a team that some leagues use, some leagues don't - but everybody knows about it

Just to refresh your memory, the team looks like this:
0-16 40K linemen 6337 - A
0-4 60K yeomen 6337 wrestle GS
0-4 120K blitzers 7339 block, juggernaut, catch GS
60K rerolls. No big guy.

DESIGN
I wanted the team to have the right Bretonnian flavour, in order to attract fans of the Bretonnians in WFB/WFRP. Therefore I tried to make them reflect Bretonnian society (not military). Excellent aristocrats and their aides on top - downtrodden lacklustre linemen at the bottom. Very feudal and Bretonnian (I hope).

I also wanted it to have a unique playing style: I'm hoping that they'll be a fast offense, fast defense running (and short passing) team. They don't have the mobility or agility to play real elfy finesse BB, so they'll be a bashy team. But without high strength, high AV or a big guy they won't be able to play cage-&-stall tactics. That should provide a nice break from standard bash tactics.

I also wanted the team to have a feature that could tempt other coaches to play them. And that feature is the hard hitting blitzer-catcher hybrid. A player that can be trusted with the ball - and while he may not be elegant enough to avoid hits, he is tough enough to get back up and take the ball back! I wanted him to appeal to coaches not because he was insanely powerful, but because of his unique stats and playing style.

YOUR COMMENTS
Mephisto mentioned 3 doubts raised about the team:

1. The blitzers will hog the SPPs!
Yes. That is intentional. And IMO very Bretonnian.
The aristocrats will be the stars of the team, and the rest are just there to help them shine.
That being said, a Bretonnian coach will need to try to skill up his other players too, otherwize the team will get in trouble.

2. They are weak!
Perhaps they are. I hope to have 40-50 games played in the next 6 months with them, so we'll know by then. But things aren't always as they seem. Then again - sometimes things are exactly what they seem.

I did not want this team to be as weak as some of the newest BB teams, like ogres and vampires.
But I don't want them to be in the power-top-5 either.

But most importantly, I added them to an existing league, and I wanted to make sure that I didn't wreck the league by adding a monster team. So I wanted to make absolutely sure that the team was not too strong.

If the team proves to be too strong, I will remove either 1AV or 1MA from the blitzers.
If the team proves to be too weak - I'm considering several things:
a) Make yeomen AV8 (70K).
or
b) Give yeomen grab - so 6337 wrestle grab (70K). This would make them even better at removing players standing in the way of the blitzers.

c) Make blitzers 8338 instead of 7339.
That may not look like much, but I think 4 super fast blitzers would be a boost.
Some would say that the drop to AV8 would make them less "knightly". But on the other hand, AV8 is more of a human stat, and MA8 would make them more clearly a blitzer/catcher hybrid.
(Finally, it may be worth noting that the high elf team also has 4 MA8 ST3 players - and while those are more fragile, they are also a lot more mobile. I think that the 8338 players will be standing and blocking a lot of the time, instead of using their high MA)

3. Why catch?
Other skills were suggested as the blitzers 3rd skill. Some of those simply because they seemed "knightly" or "chivalrious" - skills like dauntless, nerves of steel and stand firm. But pro was discussed too.

In the end, I chose a skill that was not just generically "knightly", but would help the team play in a specific and unique way. And catch fit that role perfectly. It helps the team play the fast offense that they'll have to rely on, and it makes the bretonnian blitzer a blitzer-catcher hybrid (as mentioned above).

I also think that catch portrays the Bretonnian nobility quite well. They're all trying to be the team's star. All trying to score the winning touchdown (and hog the SPPs). You know what those Bretonnians say: "score on the pitch, score with the ladies"

...
Thanks for your time.
If you decide to play some games with the team, please let me know how they went:
plasmoid at hotmail dot com

Cheers
Martin

[Mephisto]

Thanks for your comments (and your time) Plasmoid.

I'm a little bit in a hurry, so I'm going to answer another day, but I'm going to copy your comments in the spanish BB forum.

[Glucksbar]

We were fooling around with a Brets-Team in my league, and here is what we came up with. But it never got tested.


0-16 Squires: 40k; 6 3 3 7; G
0-2 Knight Errant: 80k; 7 3 3 8; Dauntless; G
0-2 Knight of the Realm: 100k; 6 3 3 9; Block, Guard; G
0-2 Questing Knight: 120k; 6 4 3 9; Loner, Block, Juggernaut; G S
0-2 Grail Knight: 130k; 5 4 3 9; Pro, Stand Firm, Regenerate; G S

Well, it was a first try and a quickdraw. But we wanted to do something unique for Brets as they deserve it (if they are to get their own team)
I don't feel quite comfortable with it, as you want to give Knights all AV9 and/or Block and so on. Perhaps Squires should get only Agility Skills or something like that.

[Darkson]

Block on a rookie ST4 is a huge no-no.