Claw - any armour roll of 8 or more

[Ravenal]

Did a bit of searching but came up empty ...

Now, from what the skill description says the claw skill effectively treats all players like they have AV 7 (that have higher AV) ... having no effect on AV 7 players basically.

Adding MB to the mix means all your opponents effectively have AV 6 (let's not go halfling here). Considering this skill is limited to Chaos, skaven, nurgle and CD (skaven and CD needing a double) this makes those teams (chaos and nurgle more so) very effective at the killing game.

Would it be terribly unbalanced to have claw only treat players like they have AV8? ... this means claw only affects high AV players (9 or 10) ... all orcs, longbeards, CW, most big guys ... still a sizable portion of the BB player population.

Lets do some stats on that:
Players affected currently:
Treeman, Vampire, Mummy, Wight, Zombie, Rat ogre, Storm vermin, orc lineman, orc blitzer, BLorc, orc thrower, ogres, Nurgle beast, nurgle warrior, prestigors, rotters, snow troll, ulfwerner, werewolves, Flesh golems, Saurus, krox, Blitz-ra, human blitzers, human throwers, human lineman, high elf blitzers, high elf linman, high elf thrower, trolls, elf blitzers, death roller, longbeards, dwarf blitzers, runners, troll slayers, DE blitzers, DE lineman, Mino, Bull cent, CD blockers, CW, beasts

total affected: 43 player positions - 54%
total not affected: 36

If claw was AV8 instead of AV7 this would change to:
total affected: 18 player positions - 23%
total not affected: 61

This makes the skill a more tactical skill to get rather than a generic skill and also evens up the game between bashing teams a tiny bit. Skaven vs chaos for example... chaos claws wouldn't touch any skaven player but the skaven claws (aquired by a double) would only affect the CW's

Right, the MB skill affects 100% of the player positions ... why shouldn't claw be at least half as effective?
My answer to that is because their use can be combined. If Claw would exclude the use of MB (choice based) and MB respectively would exclude the use of Claw then the current setting for Claw would be perfectly balanced imo. The fact that they can be combined is ... too deadly to allow only two teams ready access to those two skills (without doubles).

So, in effect by excluding MB and Claw to be used for the same armour/injury roll means MB is effective for getting through AV7 armour (roll of 7 on the dice) while Claw would penetrate everything rolled higher. This means that 7 on the dice excludes the use of MB on the injury but adds a 16,7% chance higher of getting the injury roll over having just claw.

... seems "right" to me

[GalakStarscraper]

Given how often I have to listen to the "you took the blood out of Blood Bowl, Galak" comments over the last 3 years ... I love seeing all the new folks who are coming into the game who think the game is too bloody.

Galak

[DoubleSkulls]

Although I accept Claw/MB is an effective combination, and can really cause a lot of damage to teams, there does not appear to be much evidence that such killer teams are better at winning games than their peers. I'm trying to get stats off focus/cyanide to look at how well teams are performing, but based off their published rankings Chaos are not dominating - even though the teams most vulnerable to claw are both represented.

[Ravenal]

well, its not that I don't like Claw as it is ... it's just that there is an imbalance to the access of that killing ability.

Sure, the killing teams might not dominate the ranks (the do get to play against each other of course) ... and playing the game you often forget to score to win when you are busy trying to kill

... anyway, its the lack of "equal" access to the ability to kill which was opened to chaos and nurgle specifically. Claws on a double wasn't all that bad ... and not allowing claw + mb to mix is still a good combination, thats all I am saying.

[Ravenal]

Given how often I have to listen to the "you took the blood out of Blood Bowl, Galak" comments over the last 3 years ... I love seeing all the new folks who are coming into the game who think the game is too bloody.

Galak

Just a note about "new folks" ... I've been playing BB for 15 years now with only small gaps, the longest one I think was from shortly before LRB4 came out (although I explored the changes out of habit and interest) until recently with the PC game coming out.

... granted I didn't play the fumbbl at all really, didn't like the feel of it compared to the table top. Anyway, not "new" to this stuff

[voyagers_uk]

I suppose your "voice" is new to being heard, and thus it is worth listening to when taken against all the "old voices" that have claimed this is a soft game now.....


There are counters to Claw/MB/Piling on, these have been discussed, so I would advise searching for those threads.

The game favours the Bashier teams currently, but a solid coach can still win with an AG reliant team.

[Eski]

as a chaos player against pro elves and wood elves..and even lizardmen,, its still not easy to score against faster teams.. I mean if you don't break armour or just stun players then you'll stuggle to dominate the faster teams..

I found that the elve players just buy more players to add to their roster and then I have to kill three times as many players to get an advantgage on them..

I suppose this combo is good.. but I certainly won't invest in more than two players as deathblowers

[voyagers_uk]

I have 4 CW's with the Combo and My Mino has it too (+Block) and they are reaping and winnowing through teams... the rest of the team has to be balanced to stop the run and or pass though or defense is difficult.

My Treasury had reached in excess of 700k recently so against an Orc team I took Morg as a paid inducement and let the other coach take over 1m of inducements, his team were down 4 players in the first turn.....

that said without the supporting cast I would still probably have lost the match.

[Krennick]

Notwithstanding the suggestion put forward here, I think the underlying question is: Is there a problem with claw? Even that, I don't think is going deeply enough, but let's start looking at some possible answers.

1) There is no problem with overly bashing teams because bashing does not win games.

While true, I think this answer rather misses the point. I fully admit that my view is in some degree informed by just permanently losing 3 players with two skills each in a single game (nothing to do with claw), but I think the impact to be considering the balance implications for is not the impact on your chance to win this game, but rather on the long term attack on team development that it constitutes.

Arguably one of the reasons bashing teams are effective in the long term over flair teams is that bashing teams tend to have higher AV - they lose players more rarely and can thus develop better.

The suggestion is presented in a manipulative way that suggests the impact will be smaller than it actually will. It focuses on the amount of positional players for whom it will be an issue. However, it neglects to consider that for each of the positional players that will remain affected, the effect is still greatly lessened. The proposed nerf is a huge one.

However, I think the valid consideration is not how big the nerf is. It is this: If this nerf was carried out, would claw still be worth buying? If the answer is an unequivocal yes the skill is now hugely overpowered and should be nerfed.

I think the problem (if there is one) is not with claw itself. It is with the huge difference in survivability between AV 7 and AV 9. By huge I mean a straight factor 2.5 with unmodified armor rolls. Low AV teams know that they lose players all the time. Claw comes as a shock to high-AV teams and make them behave for one game as if they were a low-AV team and that is what creates a perception that there might be something wrong with Claw.

Players do need to die, but I think an argument could perhaps be made for AV 7 teams losing players too fast and AV 9 teams losing players too slowly. To death, I mean. As long as there is a factor 2.5 difference in the amounts of injury rolls made between AV7 and AV9 that will continue to be the case. In other words, to fix what I think is the underlying problem we would need to manipulate the end-effect of the difference between AV7 and AV9 so it is not a factor of 2.5. Ideally both AV 7 and AV 9 under a different system would behave much closer to how AV 8 behaves now.

With this in mind you could say - nerfing Claw to work as if it was AV8 seems to fit the bill. But no, it doesn't. It doesn't fix the bigger problem (which is that AV 7 teams die too often). It only fixes the smaller problem (that AV 9 teams survive too much) and then only conditionally (if the opponent has unlimited mutation access).

My basic idea is this: Make it much easier to get through armor and much harder to get serious casualties.

Note that I haven't done the math work to determine what will work best, but consider this:
Let the armor roll be affected by
1) Number of block dice (1 die or multiple dice against, unmodified, 2 dice +1, 3 dice +2)
2) Seperately (and in a sense additionally) +1 for each assist - without -1 for each defensive assist.
With this kind of change it'll be quite normal for AV 9 and AV 7 to behave as AV 7 and AV 5 behave now. Where AV9 is 6/36 and AV7 is 15/36 - AV5 is 26/36. And where 15 is 2.5 times 6, 26 is less than 1.5 times 15.

While this would cause injury rolls more often (and potentially much more often) the next trick would be to reduce somewhat the effect of the injury roll. One way to do this could be to reduce CAS to be 11+ rather than 10+ and introduce a "not even stunned" option at the lower end. Like this (example): 2-6 not even stunned, 7-8 stunned, 9-10 KO, 11+ casualty.

This would make AV less powerful, would (if balanced correctly) let AV 7 teams live longer and develop more, let AV 9 teams die more often (if balanced correctly), give the teams more tactical options for setting up AV rolls that are beneficial to them, make MB more powerful (as there is less chance it is needed for armour roll and therefore more chance it is available for injury roll) and make Claw less powerful.

Far from a perfect solution, but I think a more appropriate solution to the underlying problem than an outright nerf to Claw.

[voyagers_uk]

it is an interesting idea, I would keep the Injury roll as Casualties from 10 upwards though, maybe a knocked down result is 2-4, stunned 5-7 KO'd 8-9 etc (allowing for differences, stunties etc)

[Smeborg]

In my league experience (5th Ed. and 5th Ed.+) both Chaos and Nurgle tend to take at least as many casualties as they inflict. Against the "ready made" bash teams (e.g. Dwarfs, CDs, Orcs) that actually come with skills, they tend to come off second best. They will often be matched for Claw/M-Blow by lighter and faster opponents (for example by Necros with a couple of doubles on Werewolves, or Skaven with a couple of doubles on Storm Vermin).

The concept of M.A.D. means that in a league of any size, a slayer side based on Claw will come up against another, and both will get bruised.

It takes a long time to build a decent "can opener" on a Chaos or Nurgle side. At least 3 skills are needed (Block, M-Blow, Claw), and you still do not have the other very helpful slayer skills (Frenzy, Piling On, Tackle, Grab, Juggernaut). In a 42 game season this year with Nurgle, I built two Nurgle Warriors into can openers (in the order: M-Blow, Claw, Block). This is not necessarily the best order, but at least it gets SPPs. The first can opener died soon after getting his third skill (a random one-die block by a rookie Zombie). The other took 40 games to get to his third skill. Chaos will build more quickly, because the Warriors can actually score TDs (!).

So, I believe Chaos and Nurgle can be made into decent, but not outstanding, slayer teams. They will thrive only if they do not come up against other slayer teams. In so far as they are built to slay, they may struggle against teams with lots of Dodge and/or AG4.

It seems to me that one of the main effects of Claw in a long-running league is to provide a balance to counter the AV9 teams who might otherwise dominate through better survival rates. If that was the intention of the BBRC, full marks to them.

Claw is also a fun skill, in that opposing coaches are unduly afraid of it. Next season I expect to play Chaos Dwarfs, giving the CDs M-Blow as their first skill (to maximise Block/Tackle/M-Blow/Claw/P-On combinations). We'll see what happens.

[GalakStarscraper]

It seems to me that one of the main effects of Claw in a long-running league is to provide a balance to counter the AV9 teams who might otherwise dominate through better survival rates. If that was the intention of the BBRC, full marks to them.

Thanks ... in pure honesty ... yes that was the intention (not a cool side effect) ... we meant to do this one.

Galak

[Ravenal]

It seems to me that one of the main effects of Claw in a long-running league is to provide a balance to counter the AV9 teams who might otherwise dominate through better survival rates. If that was the intention of the BBRC, full marks to them.

Thanks ... in pure honesty ... yes that was the intention (not a cool side effect) ... we meant to do this one.

Galak

Yes, which begs the question why claw affects AV8 too then? ... why not only AV9 and AV10?

[Grumbledook]

because AV8 players survive longer than AV7 players as well...

claw is more effective vs AV9 than AV8 compared to mighty blow

[GalakStarscraper]

Yes, which begs the question why claw affects AV8 too then? ... why not only AV9 and AV10?

Because Claw was supposed to be a skill you would actually consider taking compared to Mighty Blow. They were supposed to be on a somewhat level playing field for use.

Galak