Initial Double on a Chaos Pact Troll

[cyagen]

I was surprised by the effectiveness of the Mino on my CP team. Used to hate Minos when playing chaos but the presence of 2 other BG probably makes him more effective. I took Guard as my first skill on him since I with that skill I do not need to move him to make him useful. Pretty satisfied with the results.

[quozl]

Yeah, minos are a liability, but they offer humongous upside. 3d/Frenzy rocks on offense or defense, blocking or blitzing. As is, a Mino makes a great outside backer, protecting the corner: opponents pretty much have to ignore his wide zone, so you can pack the other side with all kinds of ugly and not see anything go to waste. Frenzy/ST5 is a great way to engineer extra blocks on offense, too... 3d gives you a 19/27 to push if that's what you want, so the second block can send the opponent across the LOS on his feet 361 times out of 729, or about 49%, and when it doesn't happen, you usually get the consolation of a knockdown (322 to knockdown, 46 to skull). From there it's easy to engineer a chainpush to line one of your men (like that Block Troll) up on the inside backer. Then if you get him down, you can blitz the safety on that side, usually a squishy player put into a protected position for a reason. This way, you can hit five players instead of four.

That's a very interesting idea, thanks for taking the time to type it out, Mattgslater.

[mattgslater]

Game it out a little, and you'll see how cool Grab can be in service of this plan as an alternative to the second instance of Frenzy. You'll find that once you've got a Grabber, the Mino is better for making the follow-up block. But then he won't get optimal use of Guard.

Positioning skills are the way to neutralize it. Stand Firm or Side Step on both ends means you need Grab to make it work (Frenzy won't cut it), while Stand Firm on the nose means you need to take an extra action unless you have Grab, but the defender can't spread the line out. Side Step works the same as Stand Firm in this context, except that 2x Grab means the defender needs 3x SS (but of course, SS limits each defender to one block). Fend can force extra actions, but can only stop it from happening if they have 3x Fend and you have no Grab. On the Grab or Frenzy player who makes the push across scrimmage, it's best to have ST4+, but Block is only an insurance policy on the 1/12 (or 7/216 on 3d) chance that you blow it but don't get double (triple) skulls, so it's fine to put it on a guy without Block (makes a great follow-up to Stand Firm, and an excellent #1 skill on a Flesh Golem; with 2 Weres, a Grab Golem and a Guard, you can threaten a very credible 1TTD. Ditto a Stormvermin or a Treeman on a Wood Elf team, but in those cases it's a better #2 skill, as you need that Guard and have other ways to engineer the 1TTD).

But most teams don't invest heavily in positioning skills on the line. For the most part, Stand Firm goes to linebackers and Side Step to the secondary, where it's not useful in this context. Usually you see opponents build their line with skills that save knockdowns. But in this context those skills are almost worthless (in fact, if your opponent doesn't know what you're doing, Dodge can hurt them).