Narrow Tiers and Galaks Wish List

[plasmoid]

Garion said:

The easiest way to imrpove Undead at a high Tv is to make fouling viable again, they along with Khemri are the teams most suited to fouling a lot. I like the +1 to av coming back, but still dont think it is enough personally.

Easy. Perhaps.
But I'd be worried at the ripple effects. What other teams would benefit tremendously from this. And I'm not sure why this would only help undead in late development. Zombies foul just fine early on.
I prefer tweaking Undeads by actually tweaking (just) Undeads.

Cheers
Martin

[plasmoid]

Hi Rhyoth,
thanks for your time. I'm glad you like most of the stuff, and I'll be happy to explain why I did things the way I did:

PiOn: Yes, not going prone often is a buff of sorts. That's why you only get the effect that is free on mighty blow. I'm trying to make the skill less extreme in its effect. I get that it is a bit dull, but lots and lots of skills are. And currently the extreme/fun element is causing problems in the game. Garion posted a nice long list of suggestions that have been made. I like this one because:
It's fair (evenly distributed effect). It's simple. It's not broken.
I know that the comparison with accurate/strong arm isn't perfectly similar, but I can live with that, just as I don't much care if nobody ever would take PO before MB.

Fouling and Sneaky Git:
I understand your example, but for me it is a higher priority to be able to get in a good foul on a PiOn player protected by team mates.

Concerning the Rosters, I do have some key rules, that I think are very important.
I don't want changes to spill over into other teams that don't need a change.
I don't want to make anyones miniatures redundant.
I don't want to invent special rules or new skills.
With that in mind, Rosters:

Human:
You're not alone in disliking the AV8 catcher. Neither am I in liking him.
There was a poll here at some point, and I think it was an even split.
I think AV comes from more than armour, also good physique. I think some fast catchers in the NFL are pretty darn fit. Besides, AV8 does not imply heavy armor.

If you look at the other existing catchers (high elf, wood elf, pro elf, amazon (& slann)) they pay with either ST or AV (compared to a lineman) for their high speed. Only the slann catcher pays with both (and he gets +1AG for it). I know AV8 would make him the 'toughest' catcher, but his ST makes him not tough instead.

I think Fend is an interesting choice. But to my mind, the problem is that many coaches prefer having linemen over human catchers. At least AV8 would let the catchers compete with the linemen.

Undead :
I can't agree that starting without MB is a short term buff. Lack of MB will make them a lot less deadly, and make them skill up more slowly. When you do get to first skill, if you take Block, then Mighty Blow will be a loooong way off.

Either way:

a) Give Ghouls Regeneration for 10 or 20 k, and if it makes the team too expensive, cut 10k off Skellies and Flesh Golems (yeah, you can't make this change without changing at least Necros, probably Khemri as well).

I don't like this because it affects the necro team which really doesn't need a boost.
Also, Ghouls just don't regenerate in the fluff.
This would make them something like Wight Runners, which could be OK, except that's not what people have miniatures for.

b) When you reroll a Regen test with an Igor, add +1 to the dice.

?
I don't think this weakens the team short term.

c) Change Regen rolls : 1-2 no effect, 3-4 transform the injury into Badly Hurt*, 5-6 fully healed
*OR may reroll the injury (can't combine with an Apo)

Not exactly sure how big the effect would be. But it would affect necro, khemri, nurgle and trolls so I think the ripple effect would be far too big.

Amazons :

I must admit this is a tricky subject, but I can't say i like your change ; it could do the trick for trounaments, but i think it will make the team very frustrating to play in a league.

Right now I see a lot of coaches take wrestle on linewomen, because they have the 4 blodgers.
With wrodge blitzers, I think the linewomen would just get more block.

A full rewrite is probably the better option here (but if you get the shadow of a fragment of consensus on that topic, consider yourself a lucky man...).

Maybe it would be for the better. Personally, I like the 6337 dodging amazon team fine.
But either way, I'm not foolish enough to think I could ever get any kind of consensus on anything suggested for amazons, so I'd rather just do something really simple.

Cheers
Martin

[garion]

Hi Garion,
sorry for the delay.
I see you had a tough game. I also see you won it. Sounds perfect to me
It was an easy game, but in theory i should have lost after losing players so early, this was my issue. I know I would have won that with flings had I been playing both races

I can see that the dice were not even between the two of you, but even so, I have a hard time taking it seriously when you call them 'insanely high armoured' and say that 'the AV boost is far too much'. I can see where you're coming from on a conceptual level - even though I don't agree. But power-wize I don't see them anywhere near the middle or top of tier one. I'll happily wait for feedback from all 13 games, but I'll say right now that ST2 AV7 +1 to injury isn't super tough - and besides, unlike elves you don't really need to reduce them in numbers to beat them. IMO.

But it'll be interesting to see how the extra chef plays out.
Starting roster?
2 tress (=240) 9 flings (=510) 1 chef (=610) 0FF, 0RR, [Induce Chef + Bertha = 1000K]
Powerteam? IMO, no.
And remember that the Bank rule would force them to empty their coffers, so unlike CRP, they won't be going in with a nice 300K cushion.

In the 2nd playtest tournament I'll encourage both the gobbo and halfling coach to play the inducement angle.
We'll see what happens then.
Maybe you're our next fouling halfling coach

Cheers
Martin

Would love to play with halfling next time

Also i never said flings were middle or top of tier 1, I said they were middle of tier2 with these changes for short length leagues like the one we are trialling.

But yeah I really like the chef option, it fits the team nicely and that starting roster is in no way OP. I would possibly consider taking 1 RR though to start off with and not bother inducing the extra chef for the first few games.

gobos and zombies/skelies are all more expensive than flings, and they have expensive players on their team so are unlilkely to field 16 players at any point. flings only have treemen then all other players are 30k 2nd cheapest in the game and when i said insanely high armour I said for a fling not generally

anyway I would love to take on the flings next time, they are certainly no worse that the daemons

I would go -

2 tress (=240) 9 flings (=510) 1 chef (=610) 0FF, 1RR (670) then take zara, bertha or deeproot depending on who I was playing.

[plasmoid]

Hi Garion,
I have you down for halflings I might take the gobbos myself

2 quick points:

It was an easy game, but in theory i should have lost after losing players so early, this was my issue. I know I would have won that with flings had I been playing both races

No problem with that. It's a contingent situation, rather than something inherent in the rosters. And Blood Bowl being a dice game, nothing was ever guaranteed anyway. I do doubt that mass fouling will ever be a reliable or powerful tactic in the CRP era. If it was, even with the difference between 30K and 40K, I think you'd see certain teams go cheap linemen and a few powerplayers and just foul, foul, foul. I have my doubts.
Be that as it may.
This is what it boils down to:

Also i never said flings were middle or top of tier 1, I said they were middle of tier2 with these changes for short length leagues like the one we are trialling.

Excellent.
In NTBB I was hoping to push the tier 3 teams into the bottom of tier 1, or thereabouts.

Cheers
Martin

[Rhyoth]

Hi Rhyoth,
thanks for your time. I'm glad you like most of the stuff, and I'll be happy to explain why I did things the way I did:

PiOn: Yes, not going prone often is a buff of sorts. That's why you only get the effect that is free on mighty blow. I'm trying to make the skill less extreme in its effect. I get that it is a bit dull, but lots and lots of skills are. And currently the extreme/fun element is causing problems in the game. Garion posted a nice long list of suggestions that have been made. I like this one because:
It's fair (evenly distributed effect). It's simple. It's not broken.
I know that the comparison with accurate/strong arm isn't perfectly similar, but I can live with that, just as I don't much care if nobody ever would take PO before MB.

Fouling and Sneaky Git:
I understand your example, but for me it is a higher priority to be able to get in a good foul on a PiOn player protected by team mates.

(...)
Cheers
Martin

I just want to add a few comments :

Piling On :
I don't understand why you focus so much on this skill : taken alone, it does not deal so much damages, and it comes with several drawbacks : you need to follow up and go prone, plus, this skill can be countered by Fend. For me, Mighty Blow seems more effective, thus more problematic (even if statistics say otherwise, they don't take into account that you don't/can't use Piling On all the time).
Of course, the combo MB + PO is destructive, even more if you add Claw to the mix ; but then, you have at least 2 better ways to deal with this problem :
1) don't change the skills, just nerf how those skills interact with each others
2) nerf the better skill of the combo : Mighty Blow

So with that in mind (plus Galak & Ian's idea), why don't you consider another change, like for example :
prevent Mighty Blow to be used if the armor or injury roll was modified or rerolled (so, you can't combined MB with either Claw or Piling On on the same roll)

This kind of change would hurt Piling On more than the statistics may show (if PO is less effective, coaches won't take the risk to use it in some situations, where they would have before, making Piling On even less effective).


note : Piling On may be a bit more problematic if you play a coach for whom victory is not the main objective : those coaches will use PO way too recklessly. But then, the problem is the coaches attitude, and this kind of attitude is always problematic, wether or not Piling On is involved.
The only thing you can do to fix that problem is to make sure the format of your league highly reward victory, and reward, if not, the bloodiest team/player.



Fouling :
Piling On retaliation feels somewhat like a "passive" way to foul.
It think it's more interesting to first reward a more "active" way to foul, like this kind of play :
pick an opponent player you don't like -> isolate him -> put him down -> gangfoul -> evil laugh (optionnal)

Then, for those who do want to improve their fouling, particulary when retaliating against PO, give them an improved Sneaky Git. (yeah, this improve fouling only for "lighter" teams, but aren't those teams more vulnerable to PO than "stronger" teams ? besides stronger team may push away any obstacle to the foul instead)

Also remember, a +1 to foul even in TZ may be used in a lot more occurence than just PO retaliation, and i'm worried about unwanted side effect for such a rule (mainly : won't this change make bashy team even deadlier ?)

[Chris]

From chatting to my brother who I am trying to tempt back into blood bowl...

He couldn't see why the goblin cheap bribes and halflinf cheap master chef weren't on their rosters, rather than having to have a special note in the inducements.

[plasmoid]

Hi Chris,
good point!
I'll add that in on next revision.
Cheers
Martin

[plasmoid]

Hi Rhyoth,
I'm not sure I understand what you were saying concerning fouling.

As for piling on:

1) don't change the skills, just nerf how those skills interact with each others
2) nerf the better skill of the combo : Mighty Blow

Re 1: I like that skills interact/stack. It's a basic concept in skills, and I don't want to mess with it.
Re 2: Piling On is the better skill. At least against AV8 and below. (I did the math).
You'll probably reply that people don't always use piling on. True. But some people do. And it's when people go full thottle with it that bashing becomes a problem.

Cheers
Martin

[Chris]

Hi Chris,
good point!
I'll add that in on next revision.
Cheers
Martin

Of course it would mean you could have 6 bribes (for 450k) or 2 chefs (450k) for goblins/halflings respectively. But I can't see how that is a problem. Then again if you had a loon with block and bomber with hail mary pass would it be a problem?

A seperate idea from a different thread I love is to add your 'levels' to the injury roll. So a level 6 player with 5 extra skills would add 6 to the dice roll. You would have to re-write the injury table to be 11-40 Badly hurt, 41-50 MNG, 51-60 MNG and penalty, 61+ dead. Old age can get you after all... Goes nicely with concerns over reducing the 'kill stack' effectiveness.

[spubbbba]

Re 2: Piling On is the better skill. At least against AV8 and below. (I did the math).
You'll probably reply that people don't always use piling on. True. But some people do. And it's when people go full thottle with it that bashing becomes a problem.

I really hate that using Piling on isn't that big a disadvantage. Of course there is the loss of a tackel zone but the daft thing is that if the other team has their own killer players then you are often safer being prone than staying standing.
So Piling on often gets used as a safe way to go prone with the added advantage of increased chance of causing a casulaty.

[the.tok]

Re 2: Piling On is the better skill. At least against AV8 and below. (I did the math).
You'll probably reply that people don't always use piling on. True. But some people do. And it's when people go full thottle with it that bashing becomes a problem.

I really hate that using Piling on isn't that big a disadvantage. Of course there is the loss of a tackel zone but the daft thing is that if the other team has their own killer players then you are often safer being prone than staying standing.
So Piling on often gets used as a safe way to go prone with the added advantage of increased chance of causing a casulaty.

Improving fouling will fix that. You'll feel safer standing up

[spubbbba]

Improving fouling will fix that. You'll feel safer standing up

True, but the danger if we went back to something like the lrb4 DP is that teams like chaos could just have 3 or 4 killer players that use PO and have some cheap fodder for finishing off any player that they don't take down.

The trick would be to buff fouling so it helps teams that dont have access to mass PO/MB, otherwise improving fouling hurts lower AV teams more.

[the.tok]

Improving fouling will fix that. You'll feel safer standing up

True, but the danger if we went back to something like the lrb4 DP is that teams like chaos could just have 3 or 4 killer players that use PO and have some cheap fodder for finishing off any player that they don't take down.

The trick would be to buff fouling so it helps teams that dont have access to mass PO/MB, otherwise improving fouling hurts lower AV teams more.

Wouldn't buffing Sneaky Git kind of achieve that?

[plasmoid]

Indeed.
Right now the buff to fouling is 'self assisting' and the buff to SG.

Though I gotta admit that I'm kind of tempted to let (my) PiOn also work on fouling - because several people have suggested as a straight weaker (but stacking) mighty blow it's just a tad boring.
I can see how that might be a concern though....
So far my thinking is: You wouldn't very likely be fouling with your maxed out cpomber. I mean, 30% to have him sent off.
There are some S-access linemen that could go DP, PO - but again, such a player is a fairly expensive guy to get sent off...
I'm thinking hard on this one...

[Chris]

Well, I still like the idea of a 'foul stack' spanning general, agility and strength. The arguements about players not taking a double for a foul skill surely also apply to the ag skill sneaky git?

(And who would like a hobgoblin star, with a goblin counterpart, with all three skills?)