Winning with necs.. Teams of [B]Fumbbl

[Carnis]

This is too offtopic for nurgle thread, but..

I also think that good use of SF is a game-changer, and that SF has good utility against POMBer teams, as long as you're not in an environment with so much bash that you can't build any kind of blocker development strategy beyond "take a lot of X and hope for the best." I see how some 'Box coaches fail to see this, because it's tempting to think of the 'Box as some kind of "pure BB" even though most BB environments have common features that differ markedly from Blackbox (could make a pun about thinking outside ... but no). But there's a reason Necro are one of the winningest teams in league BB, and Flesh Golems are a big part of it.

Could it be some other unknown factor, that makes necs the winningest team? Only listing >70% win teams here, with more than a few games under their belt.

The whole list:
http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=teams ... 10&start=0

http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=team& ... _id=642389
http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=team& ... _id=650533
http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=team& ... _id=640707
http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=team& ... _id=644035
http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=team& ... _id=642728
http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=team& ... _id=648424
http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=team& ... _id=640512
http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=team& ... _id=643360
http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=team& ... _id=642789
http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=team& ... _id=640359

There is a strong trend towards killy werewolves, note how the last team doesnt even have fleshies (the SF part of your argument)..

[Overhamsteren]

And regeneration and 40k linos with...regeneration.

[Jimmy Fantastic]

I think Flesh Golems are actually kind of good players, they would be far better than Nurgle Warriors if they could get Claw.
I personally haven't taken them on my teams because 110 is expensive for basically a BOB and you only get two.
If you could take 4 FG they could be really effective, but I find they are marked up quite easily and reserves so that you can foul or TRR for reliability is a better use of TV than just 2 overcosted Str 4 guys.
I think it's quite clear that the success of Necro teams is largely due to Werewolves who score loads of TDs and cause loads of CAS.

[mattgslater]

Blackbox isn't a great environment for Flesh Golems. They're best off at the team's (league) peak TV, and their AV isn't much of a protection at that value in a format where teams that peak out high have to play slayers all the time. Got stats for Ranked? That's probably a better analog to most TT play.

I've got a buddy who's a really awful coach (about on Henekka's level risk-wise, but maybe a better spatial sense), and yet his perpetual Necromantic team is getting close to .500 after a 1-1-10 start. A lot of it has to do with his Golems and Golem-things (Wight with +ST/Dodge/Tackle/SF, Zombie with +ST/Block/Fend) and the 4x SS on his other players. He never would have been able to build this in the Box, and the teams he'd face at his absurd TV would not be very vulnerable to it anyway. But in a league format, where he knows that only one of the five teams he faces has major killy skills, that Necro team turns a lousy coach with no sense of probability into a credible threat, and the Golems are at the team's heart.

[Carnis]

Got stats for Ranked? That's probably a better analog to most TT play.

Theres the same teams for ranked.

http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=teams ... =1&start=0

Sadly, as it's very few coaches who actually WANT to face well built necs, there are absurdly low # of games for necroes in Ranked. I could only find one team on the first page, that had played any games in LRB6-mode, it's this one:

http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=team& ... _id=325476

Admittedly, I didnt look through more than 5 teams..

[Hitonagashi]

I think Fleshies suffer the problem of how easy it is to tie them up.

With only 2 with low movement, it's usually quite easy to find an couple of expendable players to mark them with, and BT doesn't help that much.

Wolves are the heart of a necro team.

Look at it the other way, Flesh Golems are nice, but I'd say Mummies are better for their price. Losing G access, true, but gaining +1 ST and MB for 10k more than Stand Firm(and the ability to take SF first skill if you *really* want it), AND being the only natural ST 5 player in the game without negatraits.

If you wanted to build a team around the golems, and they were what mattered, Undead would be more effective and doing it with mummies, as it's more natural to their playstyle.

The Necro big advantage is their dogs of killin'n'catchin'. The ability to get a blodge ss claw player, and with MB with one double is immense.

[PorkSol]

For players like myself who are bad at game, stand firm holding the middle of the field is *very*annoying to play against if you can't remove it from the pitch (and it is hard to remove av9 thick skull from the pitch without claw, especially since they can regen even if you do foul them off).

Sure, you can mark them, but just by standing in the right spots they make it hard to advance a solid cage up the middle of the pitch. If you go up the middle and you're forced to rely on a partial cage or screen because of the stand firm, the speedy wolves are perfect to exploit any weakpoints in that formation (and to force you to guard the rear of the formation). If you're forced to widezones then you have to be more cautious with your positioning, to avoid surfs.

I do think that at least at lower skill levels the flesh golems help a lot to disrupt the enemy formation, slow down the offense, tie up men and generally leave the opponent vulnerable to the inevitable frenzy claw mighty blow blitz each turn.

Obviously the wolves are probably more important, and of course with a claw team you can just kill the golems.

But it does make me think that 4x stand firm BOBs or Nurgle Warriors would be awesome... in a world where people didn't just clawbomb them to death..

But that's probably like saying Amazons would be awesome in a world without tackle.

[mattgslater]

Filtering just for teams with 10+ wins, going by win%, it's really not very informative. Obviously, the Were skills much faster and is much sexier, but the successful teams seem mostly able to run on just one. Also note that while it seems most of these teams develop one Were as a killer, the second Were has a lot of roles to fill. But only Nice Times End has run without Golems, and four of the top ten have shown a preference for replacing dead Golems over dead Weres.

1) Joke Over (10-3-1)
Both Golems; one got niggled after 11 games, got replaced. One 2-skill (Blodge) Were; hasn't yet bothered with the second one. +ST Ghoul for most of the team's tenure to date. One loss was to Amazons.

2) Nice Times End (26-5-6)
No Golems; big roster, superkiller Were, schmoe Were. Great Wights, Dauntless Zombies. Lots of Side Step back in the day, but those guys are all dead.

3) Howling 4 Regen (15-6-3)
Two MB/Block Golems, rookie Were, killer Were, lots of Guard Zombies. Lost a Golem recently, lost a good Were not long before. +AG Wight, lost a Dodge Wight. Lots of Guard, but not on the SF guys, despite both being at 2 skills.

4) Metu Mortis (20-5-5)
Wicked Golems, wicked Weres; evidence for both claims. All 4 boutique players have a long tenure and good stuff. The Golems are Block/Guard, the Weres are a killer and a marker/carrier/forward, both at 5 skills.

5) Hydralic (23-9-5)
This team has a massive injury history, and has retired lots of good players, but tellingly, the team has one one-skill Were and two Golems with about the same number of SPP; one has two skills. They seem to have been driven in great part by a superior Wight, who has gone on to claim his infernal reward.

6) Todburg Phantoms (14-9-2)
Running on one Were for some time. Two Golems.

7) Oooooooooooo (15-3-5)
Two Golems, replaced two dead Golems. One Were, has not replaced dead one yet.

Freaky Necros (14-5-4)
Killer Golems and Weres, lots of positioning skills, esp. Fend. One Golem has MB/Dodge, the other has MB/B/G. Weres are a slayer (MB/PO/Fend/JU/Block) and a ballhawk (B/D/SS/Fend/Strip).

9) Not Our Foul(t) (34-8-11)
Good Golems, good Weres, slayer Wights and Weres, deals a lot of damage.

10) Copenhagen Claws (11-7-3)
One Were keeps dying, Golems and other Were holding up nicely.

[Drool_bucket]

Necro teams are strong teams not because of Golems that come with SF or because of WW that can become amazing killers, but the combination of the two *and* the rest of the roster.

a Team with 40K lineman that have AV8 and regen, I'll take those over most other lineman out there.
a Team with one of the best killer pieces with a single doubles roll, please.
a Team with 4 MV 7 and 8 ball movers, sign me up.
a Team with 2 solid utility players 6338 Block, Regen, GS access, sure, I can make use of them.
a Team with a little bump in STR and players that will stay on the pitch where I want them, sounds nicer than 2 Frenzy STR 4 players...

I don't understand, under the CRP, why some coaches don't think Necro are a great team. In the hands of a coach that knows what they are up to, they do amazing things... they score, they cause CAS and they play some defense...

[Jimmy Fantastic]

They are a better team under CRP because of how clawpomb has changed the landscape and the TV of teambuilding.
Under LRB4 a few superstars cost you a lot of TR and precision DP fouls could get rid of them.
Spreading out Spps to numerous players made a lot of sense in order to both limit DP brutality and to be TR efficient.
With the new clawpomb being so dominant you can only protect a few players effectively and the majority of your players will be left vulnerable. You will also likely take 3+ cas and in this environment 40TV regen players are indeed excellent linemen.
Now that 6 skills on a wolf is exactly the same is as 6 skills on various players it's no surprise that Necro are vastly improved, most of this is down to the Wights and Wolves combined with cheap durable linemen.

[mattgslater]

They are a better team under CRP because of how clawpomb has changed the landscape and the TV of teambuilding.
Under LRB4 a few superstars cost you a lot of TR and precision DP fouls could get rid of them.
Spreading out Spps to numerous players made a lot of sense in order to both limit DP brutality and to be TR efficient.
With the new clawpomb being so dominant you can only protect a few players effectively and the majority of your players will be left vulnerable. You will also likely take 3+ cas and in this environment 40TV regen players are indeed excellent linemen.
Now that 6 skills on a wolf is exactly the same is as 6 skills on various players it's no surprise that Necro are vastly improved, most of this is down to the Wights and Wolves combined with cheap durable linemen.

This is why I don't like Blackbox; I hate that kind of play. Fortunately, I haven't found it to be as true in other formats. The Blackbox format introduces a bias in favor of ClawPOMB, which is already a very powerful combo. And, as Jimmy said, an environment dominated by ClawPOMB favors cheap, Regen linemen and a few mobile SPP-hogs, which is an easy way (not the only way) to build effective Necro. Funny enough, though, only a few of those ten 'Box Necro builds actually look much different from the ones we see down here. And the Necros I've played in Ranked, and the ones I've specced in Rank and Box have mostly had similar builds and styles to what I've seen on the table, except for one team that had no Ghouls or Golems. And those Box teams have a little less SS/SF at peak, mostly; at least one of those teams has adapted to the Box environment by spamming Fend instead of SS/SF, on what's otherwise the same basic build.

[B SIDE]

The Blackbox format introduces a bias in favor of ClawPOMB, which is already a very powerful combo.

I can't say that I agree with this. In Blackbox (where I've been playing a lot of games lately), you're matched up against teams with similar TV. Bashy teams may get to higher TV overall, but AG teams don't have to play many games against these overdeveloped monsters. I've had good success with my Slann in , in part because every time I get up to about TV2000 I get murdered by a bashy team, and go right back down to my comfort zone at 1600-1800.

The Kaeru Killers (15-10-8)
http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=team& ... _id=649806

Necro teams are good, and versatile. I don't think they're too powerful, but they do present their own unique challenges.

[mattgslater]

I guess what I'm seeing is that in other formats some teams "naturally" peak out at a higher level. Like in our league, with a round-robin mechanism and a challenge mechanism, where your sked has no relation to TV. This creates a different optimum TV for a lot of teams. In such an environment, a High Elf team can maintain a TV in the 2M range for a very long time... and when such a team does fall, it finds itself in underdog status. Lacking good stars, facing up 350k against a heavy team is a real drag, so the game is about floating at peak, and if you must crash, doing it before a soft game.

Interesting, the difference.