Strong, free and safe: terms for "blitzability"

[mattgslater]

Hee hee... there are all kinds of Dick Butkisisms in American football, if you're into that sort of humor.

There are two kinds of tight ends.
1) Tight ends who are really "tackle eligible" and
2) Wide receivers, playing inside.
It never ends.

FWIW, there are TEs and WRs in BB, but I don't think that's what to call them unless you know you're talking to American football people. I agree with probably a lot of non-football people that "tight end" is a confusing term (and "tackle eligible" doesn't work in BB, for oh so many reasons). I'd rather use a non-Yankee term like "wing forward" for "wide receiver" (or "wing back" which is actually an American FB term). Ditto with offensive guard and tackle, which I don't think need real names so much as some analog to the numbered AmFB defensive line techniques. Similarly, there's no quarterback, or if there is, he's seldom a dedicated passer. Instead, there's one or more "retrievers," per special teams play.

Ooh. I think it may be a topic for another thread, but what do you think of this?

Offense: A player on (or maybe one square behind) the halfway line is a forward if he's not up on a defender, or a blocker if he is. A player behind the line is a halfback (shallow) or a fullback (too deep to cover or too deep to move to LOS), said to be "back X" squares. A player in the WZ is a "wing" player, like a wing forward or wing halfback. Any player can be identified by column, with 0 being the centerfield column, 3 being just inside the WZ, and usually the defensive winger playing the 6 column. So what is a TE in American football would be a 3-forward or 3-blocker, while a guard is a 1-blocker.

The High Elf "Ace" offense against a 101 defense, for example, relies on a pair of 3-halfbacks, a 0-halfback and a 0-fullback, with either five blockers (2,1,0,1,2) and two forwards, if you want to knock the D-line down, or one 2-"blocker", two 3-forwards, and four forwards or halfbacks if you want to avoid contact. It only matters if you're trying to convey a specific plan. For instance, "my 0-blocker opens up on the end to his right, pushing laterally or knocking down diagonally, not following; then my 1-blocker on my left side does the same to the nose-guard."

[mattgslater]

Standard Charlie Brown.

I was looking for a term to refer to what we've since started calling the Ziggurat. You're just giving me ammo. Clearer and clearer, better and better, the march of progress. So help me make this easy, fluid, natural. Or failing that, at least cool. ("Ziggurat!")

[sann0638]

I would allways use a tight end safty, but I worry that if I leave my deffensive nose unguarded, then I will end up on a negative blooty on a quack candle and wind up on the jessop jessop jessop!

was followed 20 mins later by:

All fair points

Get back to your painting, Goblin!

[plasmoid]

I don't want to derail your project at all. Really don't.
But this:

Well, maybe that bloke is the "inside picket" in a "hedging screen," while the other bloke is part of a "trap wedge" and blocking him does you no good.

..is like fingernails on a blackboard to me.
I've spent countless hours on this game, but I just can't muster any kind of will to learn these expressions.

Cheers
Martin

[The Painted Goblin]

I would allways use a tight end safty, but I worry that if I leave my deffensive nose unguarded, then I will end up on a negative blooty on a quack candle and wind up on the jessop jessop jessop!

was followed 20 mins later by:

All fair points

Get back to your painting, Goblin!

Wot? Made perfect sense to me

[mattgslater]

I've spent countless hours on this game, but I just can't muster any kind of will to learn these expressions.

Even if it makes you a better coach? The way I see it, that trumps all non-ethical, non-economic considerations. Difficulty isn't important, by comparison.

There's no need, once you've seen things this way, to talk about them only in these terms. But being able to fall back on a clear descriptive terminology really helps you visualize your strategy. I'm not proposing one tenth of the terminology or the counterintuitiveness of even Magic. But this board seems to have a very hard time talking about space and specific positioning, and I figure a more precise terminology of position can increase our tactical awareness.

[Insane_Prophet]

But this board seems to have a very hard time talking about space and specific positioning, and I figure a more precise terminology of position can increase our tactical awareness.

I guess what you need to do is convince everyone else of this. Maybe you should write a handbook containing your ideas and terminology - if enough of the board finds it aids their playing of BB you'll probably get them on board.

As it is, as much as I appreciate what you're trying to do, you do seem to be the only poster here using these terms (save a few of your names for defensive set ups). Perhaps this means that the majority of people don't find them as useful as you do, in comparison to terms like Blodge, Wrackle, etc?

[plasmoid]

Would it make me a better coach though?

I think I'd rather explain myself more thoroughly, rather than risk that a massive chunk of my readers didn't understand, what I was trying to describe.

Perhaps in 5 years, the situation will have changed.

[plasmoid]

(That being said, I wouldn't mind a universal term for when a roll is covered by a skill reroll, a team reroll (etc).
Then again, I fear it would never be universal.)

Something like a "skilled" 3+ and a "covered" or "backed" 3+.

So: "I just had to do 2 skilled 2+ dodges (same guy), a skilled 2+ dodge and 2 backed GFIs and a catch. Naturally, Nuffle blasted me".
Something like that

[Podfrey]

Mattgslater, I too think you're overcooking this whole thing. Blood Bowl is actually quite easy. Observe:

You start your turn with whatever Brucie's your oppo has left, then consider who to Chip, before moving on to standard fare, maybe a few Percies and possibly the odd Jonny. Depending on the situation you would probably check for any cocoshunting opportunities or, if T8 or T16, the odd Cockerel.

The only "tight end" a healthy red blooded male should be interested in isn't on a BB pitch!!!

[mattgslater]

Yes, but we have terms for all that stuff. I'm not talking about renaming what people are already discussing nicely. I'm talking about covering concepts that are not all that difficult, but aren't supported by our current framework for conversation.

[Joemanji]

(That being said, I wouldn't mind a universal term for when a roll is covered by a skill reroll, a team reroll (etc).
Then again, I fear it would never be universal.)

Something like a "skilled" 3+ and a "covered" or "backed" 3+.

So: "I just had to do 2 skilled 2+ dodges (same guy), a skilled 2+ dodge and 2 backed GFIs and a catch. Naturally, Nuffle blasted me".
Something like that

I call it "rerollable". We have a term for the opposite though, a roll without a reroll available is "naked".

[mattgslater]

Naked and covered? I like it.

[mattgslater]

I've been working on-and-off on an article for the High Elf "ace" offense for, well, too long. It'll probably come out short and to the point, but I'm not ready for that. I won't use any of this terminology (nor my American spelling) in that article, but if you're thinking in these terms, the article will make sense in a different light. I don't think you have to make a whole lot of use of a term in order to get a whole lot of value out of it, especially when you're communicating with different audiences. Simply knowing the term gives you a framework to think about what sorts of concepts build on it.

The concept of "strong, free and safe" came up here first when talking about defensive formations, but they come up in play all the time, on both sides of the ball, throughout all phases of every drive. Certainly, I think a better understanding of the different types and characteristics of multiplayer structures can help build better cages (and attack them better) and play tighter formations with less manpower investment. But I think there's even more to it than that. Particularly I think this holds a lot of potential for an average coach with a fair amount of experience, looking to make that next leap. The dabbler won't bother, and the contender has probably got an intuitive sense of most of it anyway. But still, if this is built on for long enough, just watch, you'll see coaches at all levels getting better once they're exposed to the concepts in context.

The problem is that in order to build a context, there's a lot of groundwork. You can't connect the parts together until the parts themselves have been assembled. I think that space management is a very important, underdeveloped area of the game, still in the realm of "more art than science." Risk management is much easier to discuss: you don't have to explain to anybody what 11/36 means, though even there there's some room (see discussion above about "naked dice"). But a proper treatment of space takes either a ton of pics or a new jargon, or preferably both at different times.

[sann0638]

you don't have to explain to anybody what 11/36 means

Speaking as a maths teacher, yep, you do, and I've heard more times than I would like complete misconceptions about how likely a blitz result is.