Narrow Tiers and Galaks Wish List

[plasmoid]

Hi guys,
@Snap: The Right Stuff prevents Tackle thing is not just prevent team death. It's more to ensure that there is an actual game going on - with a few hard hitting tacklers, stunty games can quickly become a pointless farce.
And specifically, little guy games against dwarfs and CDs are currently a sad affair.

Most commenters side with you on the wizard thing. I'm still thinking about how to do this. I do think the current lightning bolt is too good for finesse teams if (c)pomb is toned down. But as stated elsewhere, replacing lightning bolt with zap! might be the way to go.

@Duke Jan:
Well, to some extent you're right. It's the stated goal of these alternative rules to buff tier3 and tier 2 teams. So I suppose you could call that power creep.
However, I'm not just buffing everyone. That would be power creep.
In the current tier1 I'm buffing 2 teams but nerfing 5. So the cieling gets taken down a notch, and I don't see the power creep in that.

Cheers
Martin

[Duke Jan]

The reason I say power creep is because the humans get a buff. The first reaction from several players when I said I was going to play humans next year at tourneys was: "Ah, nice and average". I'm inclined to agree with that. To me buffing the average smells of power creep. No matter what you do take the worst excesses out.

I also noticed the piling on nerf. It looks extremely unattractive now, it is mighty blow but you fall over. Being placed prone should have some benefit. Maybe "After the armor roll you can roll 2d6 again (no matter whether you break armor on the first roll or not). You get to choose which of the rolls is for armour and which for injury after the roll." is better. This way it can still be pretty effective against robust teams while it is not destroying teams who already have enough difficulty staying alive.

[Snap Wilson]

Hi guys,
@Snap: The Right Stuff prevents Tackle thing is not just prevent team death. It's more to ensure that there is an actual game going on - with a few hard hitting tacklers, stunty games can quickly become a pointless farce.
And specifically, little guy games against dwarfs and CDs are currently a sad affair.

Plas: That's fair. Just out of curiosity, how are Lizardmen teams fairing against those teams?

[plasmoid]

Hi Snap,
remember, Skinks don't have Right Stuff, only Stunty, so they're not protected by this rule

Cheers
Martin

[Chris]

The reason I say power creep is because the humans get a buff. The first reaction from several players when I said I was going to play humans next year at tourneys was: "Ah, nice and average". I'm inclined to agree with that.

Incidentally statistically (at tournaments) they are well below average.
http://naf.doubleskulls.net/lrb6.html
Currently coming in at 18th out of all 24 teams.

[TalonBay]

The reason I say power creep is because the humans get a buff. The first reaction from several players when I said I was going to play humans next year at tourneys was: "Ah, nice and average". I'm inclined to agree with that.

Incidentally statistically (at tournaments) they are well below average.
http://naf.doubleskulls.net/lrb6.html
Currently coming in at 18th out of all 24 teams.

This would be presumably skewed by the number of relatively new coaches taking human. Vampires rank higher in that chart and having used them I'd put them comfortably below humans.

[Chris]

I beleive its possible to get the ranking of humans done by looking at the best players with all races and they again come out below average.

And this is before you go into a league environment where they consistently get worse as TV's go up and god forbid one of your developed players getting killed, its hard to recover from in comparison to many other teams.

[Snap Wilson]

Hi Snap,
remember, Skinks don't have Right Stuff, only Stunty, so they're not protected by this rule

Cheers
Martin

I realize that, that's why I was wondering, since the rule seems specifically to disclude them.

[Hitonagashi]

Lizardmen are several tiers better than goblins and halflings...

[Thadrin]

Having listened to 3DB has made me reconsider a lot of this.

Hate the Gobbo change (they don't need a third troll). Far from sold on the Right Stuff change. If you did want to make Gobs a little better, I'd add a piece in the "Secret Weapon" skill to say that a coach may choose not to set up this player, even if they would have less than 11 players on pitch. This would also allow people to get better use of Secret Weapon star players they may induce.

For Halflings, not sure about the Armour boost. However, I'd want to add 0-4 Halfling Catchers, +1MA and catch from a standard halfling. Alternatively, having 0-2 Halfling Blitzers who'd start with Blodge would be potentially amusing. Adding Chefs would suck, because playing with no rerolls isn't much fun. This would pretty much make it the norm in any game vs Halflings.

RE:- the Amazons and potential redundancy of the Catcher, I'd be tempted to (on top of the other changes) add 10k to cost and give her +1MA. Breaks the standard profile mould, but I don't consider that a bad thing per se.

[plasmoid]

Hi Thadrin,
"defending" sounds so, well, defensive. I was shooting for "explaining".

Either way,

Hate the Gobbo change (they don't need a third troll)

I suppose that depends what you're shooting for, eh?
Personally I don't much like breaking with such a basic tenet of the game as 'must field 11'.

However, I'd want to add 0-4 Halfling Catchers, +1MA and catch from a standard halfling.

There's been plenty of discussion about various halfling positionals. To my mind the problem would be that unless he was pretty friggin spectacular, he'd add something a tad more powerful than a halfling to the roster. Which is a pretty insignificant boost. IMO not enough if you're trying to push up the bottom (by roughly the same ammount as an extra troll for the gobbos).

Adding Chefs would suck, because playing with no rerolls isn't much fun. This would pretty much make it the norm in any game vs Halflings.

Not really true though. On average they'd suck down 3 rerolls. I've seen teams with more than 3
Either way, it would make the opposing team suck. As much as halflings? Probably not

RE:- the Amazons and potential redundancy of the Catcher, I'd be tempted to (on top of the other changes) add 10k to cost and give her +1MA.

I'm not that adverse to breaking the mold a little.
But I think this would be a short term buff, and I don't think the team needs that at all.

Cheers
Martin

[Chris]

Piling on - Plasmoid what do you think of the idea of making pile on a fouling skill? Would then be a general, agility and strength fouling skill. Some stuff, fail to get past the armour, pile on.

[garion]

For Halflings, not sure about the Armour boost. However, I'd want to add 0-4 Halfling Catchers, +1MA and catch from a standard halfling. Alternatively, having 0-2 Halfling Blitzers who'd start with Blodge would be potentially amusing. Adding Chefs would suck, because playing with no rerolls isn't much fun. This would pretty much make it the norm in any game vs Halflings.

About halflings, having played that insanely high armoured fling team with my lizards. I too think that av boost is far too much. I only had a block saurus in that game and no other skills (I think) and I only managed one KO the whole game, from memeory I think he managed to BH two Saurii and Ko a Skink ot two. So i got a mauling from those flings. For such cheap players they shoudlnt have Av that high. I am in complete agreement with you there.

I did still win that game but franky I should not have, the fling coach despite having 3 more playes on the pitch than me all game and a couple of players on the bench did not foul me once. Had he started fouling every turn after the 2nd turn in the game (by which point I was 2 saurus down) he would have won that game with ease.

Flings should pop easily imo. The reason they are good is they are cheap and they can foul happily turn after turn to even up attrition, even in these days of toothless fouling.

I do really like the extra chef though, the chef is so un-reliable in this edition anyway and playing opponent's without re-rolls was what made flings competative in LRB4. In LRB4 you could hire a chef for every re-roll you opponent had and you got a free team chef as well and you only need a 2+ to steal the re-roll and I think they were only 20k or 30k each? This meant you never played an opponent with re-rolls unless you were really unlucky and even with this they were still a bottom tier team. I used to play with them all the time - http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=team& ... _id=603039 - I got this teams FF up to 23 at one point and my record was really good. But I also used to play agains them because the games were highly tactical and you couldn't afford any slip ups. I still found them easy to beat because I knew how to play against a team when I had no re-roll and even without re-rolls it was still great fun.

Now in CRP they got some buffs, (treeman loses loner and gets strong arm, great inducements), and they got some nerfs - (can't TTM long passes anymore, chef is now rubbish in comparison, fouling sucks, and pilling on has really damaged stunty teams big time).

So in a lot of ways they have done very badly out of this rule set, but because they can play the inducement game so well now - getting morg, or deeproot, sometimes both. The old chef would probably be too good. But having a rostered chef would make little difference for the short game anyway, you would still be using the rostered chef and take deeproot and morg. You would only start getting the chance to take two chefs once your opponent's Tv becomes higher anyway and this usually means facing Pilling On on Blodge elves etc.. both of which makes life extremely tough for flings, Pilling On especially is something flings never had to face in LRB4 and clears stunty players from the pitch with ease.

so yeah, I would say take their Av back down they just dont need it and it doesnt seem to fit. Gobos should have higher Av than flings. But definately stick with the chef.

[plasmoid]

Hi Chris,
I think Piling On could be cool as a straight fouling skill.
But I think bash would then need a weapon - I don't think MB is quite enough.

Or, PiOn could be a skill allowing you to - immediately after a block knockdown than wasn't satisfactory - to declare a foul with the same player, and do the foul adding ST to the armor roll.
Brutal? Yep.
But it's still only 1 foul pr. turn, and your big killer has the 30% to get sent off.

@Thadrin: Say, if you wanted to tweak amazon catchers, I'd add Diving Catch for free. Passing is not a big amazon tactic, so it wouldn't be a big boost, but it would make both the catchers and throwers more viable.

Cheers
Martin

[the.tok]

About halflings, having played that insanely high armoured fling team with my lizards.
The reason they are good is they are cheap

halflings are good? Seriously?
insanely high armour?
don't let this particular game give you false ideas. They is no way they are better than lizards, or any tier 1 team, even with AV7
IMO this buff is reasonable