1Tier BB: The 4 homemade teams

[Darkson]

They're supposed to be a hybrid between a human catcher and a human catcher.

Ah, so Bret Blitzers are meant to be ST2 and have no Block?

[Alamar]

As for their speed - they're as fast as human catchers.
They're supposed to be a hybrid between a human catcher and a human catcher.
So, they're really not supposed to be super fast - rather they're super fit, allowing them to carry the heavier gear without impeding their movement. Good, strong genetic stock. Not elfy fast.

Actually there's not an Elf in the whole game that is faster [base movement] than a Bret Blitzer. IIRC only the Skaven Gutter Runner has a higher base move in the whole game. So those guys [but not the whole team] are Elfy-fast.

When playtesting Brets what was their weakness early on and also later in development?? I see argueably the games 2nd best "Blitzer" [if you count WarDancers as a "Blitzer"] and you can have 4 of them ... I see a great "toolset" guy in the Yeoman starting with Wrestle and you can have 4 of them ... The Linemen seem expendable and they're priced that way but they even start with a good linemen skill of Fend. If they die who cares ... Journeymen are almost as good and are free.

Looking for weaknesses I don't see a lot .... it seems like a strong Tier 1 team to me. Am I missing something??

[plasmoid]

They're supposed to be a hybrid between a human catcher and a human catcher.

I meant a hybrid between a human catcher and a human blitzer.
I hope you all figured that out

[plasmoid]

OK - sorry for the hiatus. I forgot about this

Alamar said:

So those guys [but not the whole team] are Elfy-fast.

You seem to have misunderstood my point: What you call elfy, I call fast as a run of the mill human catcher.
All I wanted to say was that their MA8 does not really come from being elfy, but from being strong enough to wear a heavier kit while maintaining the speed of a human catcher.

When playtesting Brets what was their weakness early on and also later in development?? I see argueably the games 2nd best "Blitzer" [if you count WarDancers as a "Blitzer"] and you can have 4 of them ... I see a great "toolset" guy in the Yeoman starting with Wrestle and you can have 4 of them ... The Linemen seem expendable and they're priced that way but they even start with a good linemen skill of Fend. If they die who cares ... Journeymen are almost as good and are free.

As my playtesters tell me, they're definately tier 1 - but outside of the top 5.
I'm very happy with that.

Yes, the blitzers are great. And they hog the SPPs. However, they have nowhere near the mobility of the wardancer. Stick them in a tacklezone, and often they'll just be 120K blockers.
Also, both in the short and longer term, these guys really have to carry the team, but they're AV8 - without blodge. Many teams have a fair shot at taking them out, and once you lose one or two, the (lack of) quality of your linemen will really start to show.

As for the yeomen - they're decent positional.
Wrestle is a very neat skill, and S-access is a strong category - but their starting statline isn't far removed from a human lineman.
Also, while wrestle is neat, it does not combo well with anything that the yeoman are likely to build into. They either become ball-fetchers for their masters. And you don't want a ball carrier to have wrestle. Or they become guard players and/or bashers - both of which don't really want to go prone.

As for the linemen - yes, fend is good.
AV7 without dodge is never good. Just ask a skaven lineman.
AG2 compounds this, and ensures that not everyone are reliable for dodging/catching, which can be exploited by opponents.
As for using journeymen - this team really is not tough enough to run with 11 players.

Cheers
Martin

[plasmoid]

A few comments from the other thread:

Xadie said:

I'm a fan of the bretonnian team and I think they look quite polished on the paper

Happy to hear it

I really dislike the Tilea and the Ithilmar. They don't really fill a new play style niche and look rather bland.

OK.
I think the Ithilmar Elfs have a rather distinct niche. But I did not want to go overboard, which may make them bland.
Tilea - I agree - don't have a clear niche. Unless you'd consider choice a niche. But of the 4, I like the Tileans the least.

Only I dislike they have just one daemon type that can hope of handling the ball, so the team won't work without horrors.

I'd argue that one of the teams main weaknesses is that they have so few ball-carriers. I wouldn't want to mess with that.
If you wanted to go without horrors though, you could. But it would be 5+ pick-ups
I think one of the interesting things about the team is figuring out which players you'll be buying/fielding. You simply can't have all of your cool toys at the same time. Coincidentally, an opposing removing a few of either positional will weaken the team a lot. In my experience.

What do you think about ghouls losing dodge/fend but receiving regenerate instead?

I think it could work just fine.
It would weaken necro/undead short term, and strengthen them long term.
Good idea, I reckon.
But with regen they simply wouldn't be ghouls. Wight Runners perhaps. And changing that would mess with miniatures, which I wanted to avoid.

Cheers
Martin

[Aliboon]

My tuppence..

I like the idea of the new Elves, something different, probably not a team I'd particularly want to play, but an AG4, AV9 team is pretty unique.

Brets are fine and have been pretty well playtested in MBBL. The blitzers can become monsters though, especially with a few stat increases (although this is true of most teams).

Tileans, mmm, idea's good, but don't like the sure hands price hike/fluff contradiction:

Almost every young Blood Bowl player dreams of playing in the Imperial leagues, but not all get their wish fulfilled..............rejected hopefuls....

So these (presumably) underskilled players who can't make it in the Imperial leagues have surehands? Just change the fluff a bit and I'd be happy. Or make them into hobgoblins. I can't really think whether the team would be broken or not with the 500k to spend, but I think with the various computations would take a lot of working out to see. And is the 500k to spend on allies their base cost, or would you have to sack allies as they got skills and increased in worth?

1st thought on the Demon team was uck, the 4 powers working together, but it seems they all like each other now...

This team I have reservations about tbh, the horrors are forced to be ball handlers, so without them the team pretty much couldn't score. Yet they are ST2 and can't get dodge easily. Is that why they get regen' and the others don't? They would also be SPP hogs, more so than any other player in the game I think.

The bloodletter in particular looks to have been hamstrung so he isn't too expensive? ST4 and MA6 are nice, but no frenzy, AG1 and AV7? The demonettes have claw and are agile, but can only be reasonably mobile blitzers, I'd probably pick them last, if at all. AG3 hypnogaze isn't great and they wouldn't skill up very quick, even with claw.

The plague bearer is fine, but I'm afraid that imo it's got the looks of a team that has been somewhat thrown together ("mmm, demon team, 4 demons from each of the powers, scribble, scribble, scribble there we go"). The best thing I can say is that I doubt it would be overpowered, I think it would be brutalised by bash teams and ran rings around by agility teams, but at high TVs, if the players survived, it could become a powerhouse (8 x St4 players).

I don't much like the concept, but that is as much down to the revised GW fluff as anything else.

So, three outta four aint bad.