Elf Team in short league. What do I do with 100K

[AK_Dave]

Then you will be beaten nearly every time by a competant if "braindead" player.

Actually usually it is a 1-1 draw in situations like that.
1st half: I kick, they take 7-8 turns to score. 0-1
2nd half: I know the routine, so I delay my score for 5-6 turns

Again, I'm talking league play not tournament play, and in league I play in I can pick and choose who I play. So I don't need to play an asshat more than once.

Online league play may be different.

But give me a slightly different situation:
1st half: I kick, I pressure my opponent to score, he scores and leaves me time to score. I score. 1-1
2nd half: I score early. 2-1. Opponent now needs to tie it up. Does so. Then I score again. Final=3-2.

Or third scenario:
1st half: I kick, I stall and delay. I pressure but it does no good. I prevent scoring entirely.
2nd half: I score. 1-0. I then delay further scoring, but opponent needs to get points on the board to tie it. This results in a turnover. I score again. 2-0.

Beaten every time? No, I don't think so. Thats why its a game, Sillysod.

What I'm saying is that when I kick, I'll make scoring available to my opponent. But if my opponent wants to stall and delay, I'll fark up his plan so he can't. If possible. Or I'll shoot for the draw, leaving a little time in the 2nd half for him to try to score a 2nd time but likely leave room for me to steal the ball.

What I don't do, if I can avoid it, is receive on the first half. I don't want to receive, score, get scored on, and then kick off in the second half with my opponent now controlling the tempo of the endgame.

[Grumbledook]

why not just receive stall then score if they win the toss and chose to kick ;o

[AK_Dave]

why not just receive stall then score if they win the toss and chose to kick ;o

Sure, if they win the toss and choose to kick. But not if I win the toss. Then I'll choose to kick. I prefer to be starting first in the second half, regardless. For a fast team, I think it is an advantage.

[duttydave]

This is a really interesting discussion guys. On offence I have no trouble scoring in 2 turns.

My problem is defending against bashy cage teams. I have had some success by pressurising the ball carrier with a Blitzer and Catchers which can work a treat if your opponent fails to cage on Turn 1. I especially like the feeling of horror they experience when they subsequently fail their pick up with my NOS Catchers bearing down on them. I had a little luck in my last game and managed three turnover TDs in this way and eventually won the game 4-1.

However, I do struggle to breakdown the cage of a muscly bash team. It's ok to say stay one square away and frustrate their movement. They just blitz my AV7 players out of the way and steamroll their way to a stalling score. I have tried hanging back and picking on a few stragglers with blitzes, blocks and fouls in order to force them to score. Invariably they just ignore this as they usually have high AV and shrug off any attempts to injure them.

How do you guys defend against bash teams? and agility teams for that matter?

[DoubleSkulls]

This is only flair on bash...

With my woodies my normal tactic at the moment is to choose to receive. If I don't know my opponent's abilities I'll try to assess them in the first couple of turns. Against good coaches I'll try to delay scoring as long as possible. Against bad coaches I'll score as quickly as a I can.

Bad coaches I'm probably going to score four or five on so the quicker I score the more I'm likely to score. Glorious vitamin SPP

I'm not going to score more than about 3 on a good bash coach anyway (not without blitzes etc). So I'd rather focus on winning and the benefits that provides (league position, more money, increased FF) than taking a riskier approach and going for TDs.

Good coaches are generally capable of good ball control and can reliably score against softer teams in 6-7 turns. The less time I give them the more risks they will have to take so the better my chances of turning them over.

If I stop them scoring then 1-0 to me at the half is great. They can "settle" for the 1-1 but few do - meaning they go for a 4-5 turn score - meaning high risk plays and generally getting me a few cheap shots at turning them over.

Scoring in two turns generally means I have to defend for longer - meaning the team gets more badly mauled - particularlly since I know if its 1-1 at the half I'm more likely to lose than not - so I'm more likely to throw players in at relatively poor return odds.

[AK_Dave]

I'll change to your gameplay, ian, and see how it goes.

Last two games I kicked for both, got my a$$ kicked on the first turn of the game, and spent the remainder of the 1st half with 3-4 players in the dugout (KO/BH/SI). Most of those casualties were from the first turn alone. Both games I ended up stalling the score until late, and then lacking sufficient time to tie it up before the half. I'd get the ball, score, now my opponent has to play a little looser, and either scores with time for me to tie it up or I steal-and-score but they still manage to tie it up. One of those two games I erred in taking the lead 2-1 too early in the 2nd half, when I should have (could have!) caged up near the endzone to stall the score for a turn or two.

So I'll change to your gameplan. If I can get the ball early and dominate the clock, maybe life will be different and I can get back to winning games instead of having draws (current league record is 6-2-0 & 145TV).

[mattgslater]

I think the best time to go after a cage is before it forms. With Pro Elves I'm 5-0 (19-1 TD) in games where I take the cage down right away on the first kicking drive and score a D-TD in 2-4 turns (which means if I kicked twice I need to be up 2-0 on turn 6), and 2-2 (7-5 TD, including a 4-0 win and a 0-3 loss) in games where I can't make that happen.

Shallow defenses, fast turnover, all the action happens on the offensive side of the field no matter who has the ball. That's how elves win, build and stay alive, all at once.

Little picture timing is a good thing, say scoring on defensive turn 7 rather than 6 so as not to leave room for a 2-turn drill, but holding off until late when you can score early speaks poorly of your defensive confidence. Stalling against teams that hit is doubly bad, as it opens you up for damage. You generally want to turn things over with elves to keep the oppo down to 4 blocks per turn, as it's the sustained mobbing that kills teams' dreams and leads to big bloody 0-2 losses.

[s031720]

With my DE to fight cages i usually:

1. Try to lock up the back of his cage simply by putting Tzs on them.
2. If I can, blitz or block the back of the cage, to get one player in and a tz on the ball carrier.

This forces him to move forward, but without his back. (unless they dodge or make a blitz-move). Or stand still. If he stands still, I consider that turn a win for me. If he moves forward, he needs to get other players to make up the back of the cage. So I usually try to block their paths to the cage (but staying out of tzs), aswell as blocking the way forward, (but staying out of tzs).

Works pretty well against your average cage-player, but if they have their FULL team well collected and organized its pretty futile. Then I hang back and try to exploit mistakes or just let them stall and score.

To preserve the team for future games is as vital as to win the game at hand.

[mattgslater]

Again, hit the cage before it forms, and you don't have to break anything. Force the cage to form in the backfield, and you'll have lots of opportunities to break it with few chances for the offense to recover. But let it form up at midfield and all bets are off. This is what makes Orcs so infuriating, as they can cage up and then throw into the cage. That works about, oh, 512/729 of the time ([8/9]^3 for pickup, pass, catch), and then you have a cage to break. Dwarfs, Undead, etc. need a lucky kick to keep you from getting a shot.

Side Step is huge for stalling cages at midfield, by the way: having 5 or more ST3 Side Step players with AG4 (and ideally Dodge and/or Block or Wrestle) makes it virtually impossible to score on you. This is a great insurance policy. Leap, Guard, Wrestle, Nerves of Steel and Frenzy also make a big difference. Lots of people swear by Strip Ball, but it's very easy to counter.

[PubBowler]

but holding off until late when you can score early speaks poorly of your defensive confidence.

Or an appreciation of your opponents abilities.

[mattgslater]

but holding off until late when you can score early speaks poorly of your defensive confidence.

Or an appreciation of your opponents abilities.

Not so much. Except for special tricks (1TS, comp rotations, etc), most of the advanced skills of BB are defensive, and the relative quality of a defense has more impact on the timing of a game than does the threat level of the opponent.

[PubBowler]

but holding off until late when you can score early speaks poorly of your defensive confidence.

Or an appreciation of your opponents abilities.

Not so much. Except for special tricks (1TS, comp rotations, etc), most of the advanced skills of BB are defensive, and the relative quality of a defense has more impact on the timing of a game than does the threat level of the opponent.

We disagree obviously.
But I can't imagine many (if any) of the top coaches not using stalling as a regular tactic.

Case in point, I played the No1 NAF ranked player in the world yesterday, he could have scored in turn 3 but he held it till I had only had 2 turns left to return the ball.

I'm going to throw it out that his "defensive confidence" might be pretty high...

[Smeborg]

It seems to me that the general tactics outlined by Ian (flair vs. bash) date from BW (that's Before Wrestle). [Of course I'm happy to have my views "corrected" at the table...]

Since AW (the Advent of Wrestle), I have found that the AG4 teams have a significantly increased chance (when kicking) of blitzing the opposing ball carrier. This chance is now so high that it becomes a primary development goal of any AG4 team to have 3 or 4 "super blitzers", leaving the burden of "defense" (slowing down the opponent) to the rest of the team.

Specifically, in a longish league (24 games) I developed a PE team by giving the Catchers Dodge/Wrestle/Tackle. By the final I had 2 with these 3 skills, 1 with these 3 skills plus AG5, and the last with just Dodge. (The 4th normal skill would have been Leap.)

I felt these guys were close to invincible. Even a well developed running team cannot easily cope with multiple blitzes from 2 or 3 of these guys.

With 4 Guarders they could cope in a scrum too. AV7 was rarely an issue as the rate of scoring early in the game was so high (plus I hired 2 Babes for both the semi-final and final).

Hope this helps.