Strong, free and safe: terms for "blitzability"

[duckwing]

your own descriptions are similarly complex and opaque.

Talking about intuitive; why do you use the term "strong" player for a position that I would call a weak point in your defence?

See, this is the conversation I want to have, at least early in the process. Nobody nobody nobody has a corner on the market of what's intuitive. Something that just makes a ton of sense to you has a good chance of not making any sense at all to somebody else. So the best way to do terms like this is by committee.

So what is your answer?
Be as it may with the other proposed terms (fence? what's wrong with calling a tight screen a tight screen?), but the ones about positions in defence I can actually see having a use in thought and speech.

[mattgslater]

"Strong" is the American Footballer in me talking. I think of "strong" in terms of a LB or S, whose job on the "strong side" is to eat up a block and/or plug a hole or make a tackle just behind the line. But I see how it would be confusing. I've put up the alternate term "point" but I'm not happy with it either. Certainly, though, if one wants to defend an area with, say, a Guard player and a Blodge player, or two players with very different AV scores, it could very much matter how much of a positional advantage the opponent gets for blitzing one player over the other.

[sann0638]

My two cents' worth:
- ways of describing initial setups without pictures should be useful;
- terminology in many fields does evolve, but the way it does it is by people suggesting possible terms and then them being filtered, which is what Matt is trying to do. Terminology is also evolving on the tournament circuit, and this should be mixed with the theoretical concepts too;
- despite having followed all of these threads, and being reasonably bright, I still don't follow some of what Matt says;
- but most importantly, I'm consistently impressed by how civil virtually all these posts have been. Even the ones calling Matt "mad" are I think trying to make the point that he is barking up the wrong tree, but that is his right. Almost everyone is making their points in a mostly constructive way (especially Matt!).

Keep it up folks!

Mike

[duckwing]

"Strong" is the American Footballer in me talking. I think of "strong" in terms of a LB or S, whose job on the "strong side" is to eat up a block and/or plug a hole or make a tackle just behind the line. But I see how it would be confusing. I've put up the alternate term "point" but I'm not happy with it either. Certainly, though, if one wants to defend an area with, say, a Guard player and a Blodge player, or two players with very different AV scores, it could very much matter how much of a positional advantage the opponent gets for blitzing one player over the other.

So you were actually naming a player suited to put in that position rather than the position itself. I do think it's best to simply call it a weak point or the weakest link in a defence.

[mattgslater]

Blitzy? Target? Open? Hard?

Oh, and, thanks, sann0638!

[mattski]

There is one big problem that I see with this discussion (apart from the point made earlier about the desire to impose language downwards rather than allowing it to grow in a more organic manner) apart from labelling some limited positions and concepts such as screen, trap and lock etc. This I think is fine and it is possible to expand this and use the terms when describing opening formations and the like. Ok, I can see that working and eventually even becoming part of the lexicon of the game. But the idea of doing this with players is simply too complex. It is an issue of where one variable (a players spatial position) is being measured by using another variable (another players position). That works at a kick-off for example but as soon as play begins then every situation is different apart from when using the terms such as those above. And then when you add in even more variables like in inherent abilities of players and the skills that they possess, well, there is nothing fixed. Nothing to be able to frame an argument which carries weight outside of that particular situation. I can see the desire to be able to take the macro view of how BBowl is played in terms of overlapping tackle zones and risk-analysis etc and wanting to see it at a micro-level in order to think about different situations but I just think that the game is just too complex to do that.

It works with chess because everything is fixed and it works in sports because, to an extent they are also fixed and also we can see so many examples of how things are played out and people spend a great deal of time and money trying to understand them. Ultimately BBowl is just filled with so many fine differences that I think that real-world experience is the key; play games, watch games via FUMMBL and the like and see how successful coaches do things. I know that the idea is to be able to take a game played by coach X and say that they used 'Y' formation and used 'Z' positioning and tactics but as I have said, there are so many variables at play that outside of the most obvious and blunt tactics I really don't think that it is so easy to be able to think about the game at such a conceptual level. It is like trying to use a map to get from A to B when you don't know where you are in the first place. I admire the passion to think about the game at such a deep level; I just don't agree that the desire to give everything a name and a label would be achievable and even useful.

[duckwing]

Blitzy? Target? Open? Hard?

Oh, and, thanks, sann0638!

The problem with all those names is that they really doesn't give any clue or feeling of what they are about unless you already know the hidden meaning. The "official" lingo like cage, blodge etc. is easy to understand just as long as you know the rulebook.

EDIT: Blitzy does have some kind of ring to it, when I think about it

[mattgslater]

@mattski: Oh, I'm not talking about doing this with everything. Specifically, I think we need better ways to describe the relationship between two players (screen), between a player and a pitch (midfield), and between a player and the two teams' immediate objectives (free). Those are the building blocks, and there's a lot of overlap between them (mark fits into 1 and 3).

I also think setup is a slightly different beast that takes well to a few specific terms, to help newbies remember the basic patterns, like the Ziggurat, and the common variants. One thing I find is that novices consistently create silly defensive setups because they don't know what's important, and a set of principles isn't enough. If you're the type that likes to narrow the field with positioning skills, then terms like "nose" or "midfielder" and "free" or "safe" make a real difference, too. For example, my favorite elf defense simply doesn't work if I don't have Side Step on the nose and both wingers.

@duckwing: That's probably an unrealistic objective for all/most of your terms, though I think safe works nicely in that regard . The best you can hope for is that when you explain a term, people don't ask you why it's called that, and they probably not need it explained again next time the same term comes up in a similar context, at least not in the same day. I mean, look at pro sports, with their dime formations (that don't have ten of anything) and sticky wickets.

[Grumbledook]

or side step on the middle and wide players

[mattgslater]

Yes, but which "middle" and "wide" players? I have four guys in the wide zone, two have it, two don't. I have three guys on the LOS; one is in the middle of the LOS, yes. But I also have four other guys in the box, and two of them are more in the "middle" of my half than anybody else, and they don't need SS (okay, it's a late selection). I mean, what a difference a square makes.

[Grumbledook]

middle means the one in the middle

wide means the widest

[mattgslater]

middle means the one in the middle

wide means the widest

Yes, but what if I'm not running a symmetrical LOS? If I'm still trying to hold out with an asymmetric defense, I might use Side Step on the inside end instead of the guy in the middle of the line. But what would I call him then? And what would I call the guy in the middle of the line be called if he's not in the middle of the field? And what if I'm running Undead in an Arrowhead against an elfy team, and instead of talking about SS, I'm talking about where I put the Guard Zombie? Then I have three guys in the "middle": the Guard Z on the line, the Kick Skel at centerfield and the hunter Ghoul behind him at safety. None of those guys could do the other guy's job, or the job of the guy on the left or right of them (okay, if the other Zs are rookies, the Guard guy could do their job... but they couldn't do his, so he's stuck there).

It's not like this just popped into my head and I said one day, "hey, let's do this!" I've struggled to convey ideas, and struggled to figure out what others were saying, on most of these topics, for years and years. And since I've started doing this, I've gotten better and my league has gotten (a lot) better around me, despite massive coaching turnover problems.

[duckwing]

@duckwing: That's probably an unrealistic objective for all/most of your terms, though I think safe works nicely in that regard . The best you can hope for is that when you explain a term, people don't ask you why it's called that, and they probably not need it explained again next time the same term comes up in a similar context, at least not in the same day. I mean, look at pro sports, with their dime formations (that don't have ten of anything) and sticky wickets.

Yeah, I think the consensus of this thread is that Blood Bowl players don't want to repeat the hideous mess that is sports lingo

Better too have slightly longer terms than short but strange one word terms.

[mattgslater]

Prime?
Cover?
Plug?
Key?

[mattgslater]

Better too have slightly longer terms than short but strange one word terms.

Better to have short terms that are intuitive enough to make immediate sense on explanation. The term "nickelback" passes my smell test (if it's confusing, it's because you don't know AmFB; it's common AmFB knowledge that the standard defense runs four defensive backs), and "dime back" doesn't pass my test, because it's confusing and misleading.

"Why is it called a nickel formation?"
"Because they have five men in the backfield."
"Ok."

vs.
"Why is it called a dime formation?"
"Because it's got two nickelbacks."
"What's a nickelback?"
"A fifth man in the backfield."
"So a dime means six? I thought it meant ten."