3rd skill on a Troll Slayer

Smeborg · Post by **Smeborg** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 6:29 pm

I'm with Ikterus - Juggernaut would be my choice.

Frenzy, Block and Stand Firm (which you already have) are the ideal companion skills for Juggernaut. Counters Block, Wrestle, Stand Firm and Fend for not just more crowd pushes, but more knockdowns too. Gets those annoying Golems out of the way.

Carnis · Post by **Carnis** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 7:42 pm

Boohoo, the piling on crowd is losing an argument again, to speculative "juggernaut-tackle rocks" arguments

.

I'll try maths again, since my initial 1-liner promoting Piling on did not do the trick.

You already knockdown your opponent almost every time (Frenzy, dauntless&block does that), so you should only be interested in..

The chance to cause serious damage:
AV7

Normal POW = 6,9% CAS
MB vs normal POW = ~108% more CAS, or a total of 14,3% CAS
MB&PO vs normal POW = ~288% more CAS, or a total of 26,8% chance of CAS for a 12,5% difference between MB & MB/PO!!

AV9

Normal POW = 2,77% CAS
MB vs normal POW = ~133% more CAS, or a total of 6,48% CAS
MB&PO vs normal POW = ~410% more CAS or a total of 14,1% CAS for a 7,5% difference between MB & MB/PO.

Clearly MB alone is not enough for any SERIOUS dwarf player

.

lerchey · Post by **lerchey** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 8:14 pm

Well, I never claimed to be a *serious* dwarf player! ;)

I've been trying to not destroy other teams, despite the (well deserved) dwarven reputation. I *do* hit as much as possible, or necessary, depending on your point of view for two purposes. 1) to reduce the number of opposing players on the field, giving me a tactical advantage and 2) to assist with my ability to gain and retain control of the ball.

I don't (usually) knock opposing players down to be vindictive or mean spirited, though I will admit that playing against Orcs, when I noticed that after doing the "important blocks" and moving the ball, that he only had ONE player standing, I went out of my way to hit that last player and take him down simply because I had never before seen an entire team off of their feet!

My only strong reason for not taking piling on is that leaves my TS prone. I don't like my TS prone. Prone is a fouling target. And with AV8, that's just begging for damage.

Yep, gonna take either tackle or juggernaught once I find out what other teams will be in the tournament. :)

grampyseer · Post by **grampyseer** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 9:24 pm

f at first you don't succeed, try, try again....

works for Piling On and grampseer

......I'm not sure that it really, WORKS, per se

Jural · Post by **Jural** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 9:48 pm

Juggernaut is awesome for crowd surfing and multiple pushes, but it's not a necessity, in my book.

Piling On is a great damage skill, if you don't mind going prone... and in the best cases (blocking with 2 die against a blockless, dodgeless AV 7 player when you have MB) it causes an additional armor break every 5 blocks thrown, but you'll lose your tackle zone and go prone 30% of the time to accomplish this.

I prefer tackle on my slayers for that reason. I like them to be in the wides on set ups, and with Stand Firm + Tackle, they are hard to dodge around. THis way they can also go gutter runner/ elf hunting with more effectiveness.

I don't think Piling On or Juggernaut are bad choices, I just prefer Tackle on my Slayers because of how I typically set them up.

Carnis · Post by **Carnis** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 6:31 am

Jural wrote: Piling On is a great damage skill, if you don't mind going prone... and in the best cases (blocking with 2 die against a blockless, dodgeless AV 7 player when you have MB) it causes an additional armor break every 5 blocks thrown, but you'll lose your tackle zone and go prone 30% of the time to accomplish this.

My stats say you get an additional armor break every 4th block, or an additional knockout every 6th block and an additional casualty every 10th block, while going prone 69% of the time.

Still that's just a demeaning way of saying how "effective" piling on is. In reality comparing 69% chance to go prone to 83%/58%/27% chance to get a Stun++/knockout++/CAS on a block is AWESOME.

Using MB&PO is not about spite, its about winning the numerical advantage and working your way towards that fully cleared pitch! And if you don't want to hurt your opposition (=play dwarves to win) you are not playing with your team's full potential.

If your oppo fouls your trollslayer then he is already outnumbering you or you didn't position any blockers to protect him. Not really an issue, and if he doesn't have DP or bribes he will be losing in players by default due to your thickskull and his ejection chance.

lerchey · Post by **lerchey** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 2:19 am

Well, I ended up taking Tackle, but it made no difference what-so-ever.

Everyone showed up and there were 8 teams total. The commish had us roll D8s to determine our placement, with re-rolls if you hit an already filled slot.

I ended up, with my TV 200 dwarves facing a chaos team with a TV of 135. Not pretty. For him.

As I usually do with dwarves when given the option, I kicked to him. Took the ball and scored on turn 4 of the first half, than insanity struck.

The commish was playing (and apparenty not doing well). I had complained about the effects of a home-made inducement card (a 100gp card that caused one of my players to DIE before the game began!), and the commish reduced it to a "miss game" result. I was mollified, but still not happy. I don't really like home-grown cards that have not been vetted by... well... anyone, especially if they do MUCH more than normal inducement cards are capable of. I mean, even the Assassin card in LRB only causes a player to miss a game.

Anyway, we were setting up for the next kick off when the commish informed my opponent and the other players that he wanted his minis and boards to be collected immediately. My opponent has not finished painting his chaos team and was using a set of the commish's figures. He basically pulled the "They my toys and I'm leaving and taking them with me" routine.

League, as far as I can tell, is finished. We never finished the matches, nor the tournament.

Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. And I am (not being big-headed about this - just know how my team has been doing all season!) fairly sure that I would have won.

Thanks again for the advice!

mattgslater · Post by **mattgslater** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 4:00 am

Yuck. I feel for you.

Ikterus · Post by **Ikterus** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 6:52 am

Excuse me for asking, but how old is this commish?

I've heard of twelwe year olds acting like this but grown people?

Carnis · Post by **Carnis** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 10:05 am

ROFLMAO

You can't ever be sure of who's winning or not though, individual matches are always more about dice than skill. Even a 2million dwarf can be outcassed by a rookie skaven team played by a professional dicerap-ist.

Homegrown cards.. eww

.

lerchey · Post by **lerchey** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 3:44 pm

I'm honestly not sure of the commish's age. I *think* he's late 20s or early 30s. In his (limited) defense, his luck in recent games has been abysmal.

Played against him 2 or 3 times recently. Despite my dwarves being good (only 1 blocking w/o a skill up, and no new skills on the deathroller), I basically destroyed him. In almost all cases he would do things like position 2 die blocks, then either roll skul/both down, or push/both down (typically against my stand firm blocker!). Failed most pick up rolls, most throw rolls, and most landing rolls with his goblin. Seriously, I think that the dice actively HATE him. This trend followed with other teams as well. While I certainly (having had a season like that myself - my robot team could not a) pick up the ball or b) successfully GFI almost EVER), I cannot find it within myself to excuse temper tantrums.

Most of the guys in the league were quite reasonable and I would happily play BB with them. One or two, as often happens, had... well, maturity issues.

Should also point out that that Chaos team that ended the season at TV 135? That was played by my 13 year old son, who a) never won a game - not ONE, b) only scored his first TD in his 8th game and c) NEVER once bitched or complained. In fact, despite being told that chaos teams can be more challenging, lost with both delight in playing and trying things, and dignity in never, ever being a poor sport. Right proud of that boy, I am. :)

Still, it would have been fun to play out the tourney. Oh well. Maybe I'll find another league at some point...

mattgslater · Post by **mattgslater** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 5:04 pm

Maybe the guy just needs to learn from that sort of thing. Perhaps it'll only take a couple years to settle in. Funny thing about maturity issues... some (some) of them correct themselves eventually.

I don't get why anyone would put Tackle on a Dwarf positional, though: like bringing sand to the beach. Please enlighten: why not just scheme to maintain a Blocker in a key spot and send the Slayer after schmoes and non-block Blockers/BGs? Do you face a lot of ST4 Dodgers? Even against a Dodge player, is Tackle really better for a Slayer than Stand Firm or Mighty Blow? Even if you have both of these, can it really compete with Pro, Piling On, Juggernaut or Guard?

Craigtw · Post by **Craigtw** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 6:06 pm

mattgslater wrote:I don't get why anyone would put Tackle on a Dwarf positional, though: like bringing sand to the beach. Please enlighten: why not just scheme to maintain a Blocker in a key spot and send the Slayer after schmoes and non-block Blockers/BGs? Do you face a lot of ST4 Dodgers? Even against a Dodge player, is Tackle really better for a Slayer than Stand Firm or Mighty Blow? Even if you have both of these, can it really compete with Pro, Piling On, Juggernaut or Guard?

I guess the nice thing about a slayer having the Tackle skill is that it goes nicely with his Frenzy. This way any blodging ball carriers that are in big trouble. Is it the best skill to go for? Probably not. But it has it's merits IMO.

lerchey · Post by **lerchey** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 6:15 pm

So, the question comes back to "Why tackle?"

The TS in question has/had MB and SF. Most of what I wanted from him was a way to take down dodging ball carriers.

Pro. Agreed that Pro is useful for TS in general, both to offset failed dauntless and to (maybe) get re-rolls on block dice that you didn't like, but this particular team has 5 RR (yeah, I know, that's a LOT, but they're cheap!) and a dungeon bowl cup which counted as a once-per-game RR. So, pro wasn't really necessary.

Piling On. Despite liking to clear the field (and doing so QUITE well in most games!), I felt that this was overkill. First, I like having my TS on their feet. Don't like having them as foul-bait, and because of Frenzy and the (often) opportunistic blocking, they're often out of position anyway. At least they're on their feet. Also, with MB, and the fact that my dice have generally been very lucky with this team, I was breaking armor pretty regularly anyway, and this particular player was scoring a LOT of CAS. Better than tackle? Maybe, but again, wanted to keep him on his feet.

Juggernaut. Good skill. In my other league, one of my TS has it. Along with Pro. However, in this particular league, because of it's "open gaming nature" (no schedule for the games - you show up and play whomever is available to play) I mostly refrained from crowd pushes, preferring to go for CAS by breaking the opposing players. Also, SF was his most recent skill, and I didn't like having him on the sideline until recently. That said, most players tend to stay as far away from the sidelines as they can when playing against me, just in case I change my mind about crowd pushing.

Guard. Well, to be fair, that's about the same (philosophically) as taking Tackle. I was up to 5 guard players already. More Guard? Never bad. More Tackle? Never bad.

In the end, my decision was to convert all Defender Stumbles to Defender Down. I'm sure it would have worked just fine if I had had the opportunity to use the player for more than 4 turns...

Note that I'm not saying that any of the suggested skills weren't potentially better than Tackle. More that in the league, with my team and how well they were doing, and with the teams I regularly faced, it was more fun to put Tackle on him. Note that I also had a Blitzer with Tackle and Jump Up. He caused other teams major headaches with great regularity. :)

mattgslater · Post by **mattgslater** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 7:02 pm

Cool. Your reasoning now makes sense to me, and I can see that I might have done the same in context.

Do note that Juggernaut has uses besides crowd-pushing. Got an annoying SF'er or Fender blocking you off? It's also great for nixing Wrestlers: Wrestle is a very good skill against Dwarfs, and a Jug/MB Slayer is just the thing to get one off the pitch. Not only that, but against a Block player, it changes the math significantly if the first block is 1d. This is invaluable if you're down men or if your opponent has done a good job of hedging (especially in your case with so many TRRs).