Chaos, no Block/Wrestle/Dodge -- fun idea?

[mattgslater]

Well I can tell you one way to handicap yourself and at the same time improve your gaming skills.

Don't think Chaos would be a good team to do it, but go No TRRs.

It is devastating, really. If you can win without them, then you are really going somewhere.

I did it as a theme on my Nuffles Blessed. Not best coach rating, but it taught me a ton on risk management. Yes I allowed all the bread and butter skills, and still got crushed a ton. Granted I did it when I shouldn't have, less skilled as a coach, but it grew my learning curve rapidly.

Yeah, I knew a guy way back when who did that pretty effectively with Woodies at 1.1M (he'd just start without them and buy them as time went on). His extra starting cash let him start a Tree, 2 WDs, 2 Catchers, an Apoth (old rules: 2+ to stay face up on pitch) and 9 FF (back when high FF mattered), and all the Dodge and Catch would let him build pretty effectively. The Apoth would save a player every other game, which meant that it paid for itself faster than the TRR would have. Still, he never won a championship; he had a Marty-like reputation for crushing the bad teams and losing tight games to good teams (not because he was too conservative like Marty, but because he ended a lot of turns on elf-rolls and couldn't make do when his best players got neutralized... I guess more Dungy than Schottenheimer... but Dungy eventually got his ring). I'd think the only teams that could really do it are Wood and Dark Elves, as they have easy access to AG4, RR skills and very expensive players.

[mattgslater]

Ooh...

1) No two players may have the same set of skills and mutations.
2) Each time a player gains an Improvement, or when a player is hired, I "call" that player's next skill (or Mutation... treating as skills) on a normal or double roll. I may take a Characteristic instead. But I can't give X to the first guy to skill, unless I engineer the improvement on the field or get lucky and see him get the MVP.
3) EDIT 6/12 I can't call more than one instance of a non-doubles skill as a first improvement, and two instances at each additional level.
4) EDIT 6/12 I can call two instances of any given doubles skill at any given time, regardless of improvement level. I must have at least four different skills so declared. I may declare doubles skills from any category, and they are not considered against non-doubles skills.
5) EDIT 6/12 I can change one player's declaration every time I cut a player, a player dies, or a player rolls doubles or a stat increase. I may declare any skill a lost player had, or had declared but did not take, or any skill bypassed by a player in favor of a doubles skill or characteristic increase. This lets me replace lost key skills. I may make these changes at the end of the post-match sequence only.
6) Not a rule, but a clarifying consequence of 2 and 5: Note that the only other way to change a player's declared skill is to improve, but any improvement will do it. So if I had declared Mighty Blow/Side Step on a Beastman and he rolled +AG, then I could change my selections for the second skill, say to Big Hand/Dodge. I'm not trying to handicap myself into stupid selections, but rather to force myself to build a creative team.

[mattgslater]

If I'm going to do it that way, here's what I'm thinking of developing for the first skill on each player in the regular season (including players I won't start with). Anything I should consider rethinking?

#1: Minotaur. Claw/Block
#3: Warrior. Stand Firm/Side Step
#4: Warrior. Grab/Side Step
#5: Warrior. Mighty Blow/Block
#6: Warrior. Block/Dodge
#7: Beastman. Prehensile Tail/Dodge
#8: Beastman (AG4). Sure Hands/Nerves of Steel
#9: Beastman. Guard/Pass
#10: Beastman. Kick/Diving Tackle
#11: Beastman. Extra Arms/Sure Feet
#12: Beastman. Wrestle/Jump Up
#13: Beastman. Dirty Player/Sneaky Git
#14: Beastman. Kick-off Return/Accurate
#15: Beastman. Frenzy/Sure Feet