Narrow Tiers and Galaks Wish List

[Hitonagashi]

I'm just wondering if I really need both those S11 AV20 trolls

Hey, speak for yourself, I want some of those st 4 ag 4 mv 9 av 10 gobbos! Especially if they get stunty

[dode74]

What does the "etc" skill do?

[DoubleSkulls]

Each time you take an action with the player roll a D6, on a 6 you get a TD.

[Chris]

It is obvious none of you can take the brilliance of my proposed goblin roster. Dream Trolls aside in the case of gobbos does sticking the wizard and bribes on the roster work?

You would get confusion about whether they could be bought as part of the normal line up (separate point). Can’t just shove the wizard in as a star player as can only have 2 of those. So making it presentationaly clear would need an idea.

Separately what would be the effect of having a wizard that could be bought with the team? On the face of it I couldn’t see who would want to buy a wizard apart from the lower tier teams and it would probably be a mid development buy, others preferring to have 150-200k of skills on players. Elves could perhaps buy a team of linemen and use a wizard best as a starting team?

And finally back to the original proposed rosters. Chatting with the people I used to play blood bowl with before ECBBL (so roughly when I was a toddler) and what they thought of the new edition. They now play board games, meeting in London occasionally to do so. There thoughts around blood bowl were the rosters crowded out linemen and with few exceptions it was teams of specialists (or positionals as I tried a few times to correct). So what would be the effect of having a 10k across the board increase in the cost of positionals? It would change starting line ups obviously, make player replacement harder at high TVs. Would seem on the face of it to be a boost for teams with good linemen, i.e. elves. How would that effect your balancing through the life of the teams?

[macabeo]

Reading here in TFF and in the playtest tournament forum the 40k AG4 Halflings change, which I love, has lead me to think that the problem with tiers lies not in the balance, but rather in the assumption that stunty = bad team. With the excuse of the stunty teams, the tier 3 teams were made intentionally bad, but also bland. I for instance don't like halflings because they look to me like watered down goblins with fewer tricks, and I also find wrong that the Ogre team is in a sense a bad and unreliable Lizardmen team.

I'm also surprised about the ongoing debate about Sneaky Git. There are a lot of skills that are niche skills, underpowered but that fill a role or give a team character. A good example is Dump Off for the DE runner, a non-optimal pick, but it gives the DE runner a different flavor and encourages different playstyles. Many other skills (Sprint, Foul Appearance, Very Long Legs,...) are probably underpowered, yet not many people complaint because they have a purpose in some builds and help keeping the fluff.

On the other hand, many of the changes proposed affect not the bad teams but the whole game. The changes to fouling and Right Stuff require changing the mechanics and may have a bigger impact than expected: buffed fouling may end up being worse for the agility teams because they have lower AV, I see fouling in CRP as a high risk high reward surgical tool and not a weapon of mass destruction; buffing Right Stuff, which is actually a Tackle nerf, could buff Dodge by discouraging picking Tackle (Tackle makes a blocker more reliable, and now it doesn't work? meh).

The changes I'd suggest for the stunty teams are:

- 40k Ag4 Halflings, while maybe giving back Loner to the treemen to avoid overbuffing TTM and maybe also keeping the chef as an inducement. 2+ dodges are compensated by MA5, and a tackle sweeper can still easily counter a MA5 ST2 AV6 dodge player, I'd say they'd be at the bottom of Tier 1 at most.

- Sneaky Git is boring and underpowered? Goblins are still lacking? Well, give Sneaky Git to the 0-16 goblins, and also allow rostered bribes as proposed. This turns the goblins into an alternative damage dealing team, a change from the maybe-too-popular bashing way.

- Ogres are at the very bottom of the ranking, so the proposed +MA snotling and TV discount buffs are IMHO needed. However, the problem with Ogres is that with a maximum of 6 generic ogres they are not an Ogre team, they are a Snotling team. Adding ogre positionals has been suggested a lot of times because it would allow to field more ogres and would give them alternatives of play. I'd like to see something like 0-2 5528 Ogre Thrower, same price but trading Migthy Blow and AV9 for Strong Arm, AV8 and P access, which: allows fielding 8 ogres without excessive MB spam; gives easier access to Leader and the passing game; encourages picking different A skills for the Snotlings, like Catch and Diving Catch. Of course other positionals could be interesting, this is just to insist on the positionals fix.

This way we wouldn't have stunty teams anymore (just like Lizardmen are not considered stunty), we'd have a slow and fragile mini-elf team, a fouling and cheating team and a Big Guys team. These are only personal suggestions, I'm sure others will have their own, but I like that none of these changes affect the mechanics and make picking these teams fun for other reasons than the "funny" uphill challenge they give. I mean, I think the BB community should strive for uniqueness and fun, not perfectly balance.

[Tourach]

took a x-mas break for some bloodbowl reading. I do like macabeos suggestions... well except i cant really comprehend the 8 ogre roster, it might be really hard to deal with for most teams. Im not sure if it too good, boughut i have played against the 8 ogres back in the time, and it was just stupid, even without re-rolls on the team (there were 3 goblins thogh) .

[plasmoid]

Hi Macabeo,
thanks for chipping in.

I should start by saying (as I often do) that I'm not trying to make the teams 'balanced' - but to make them less unbalanced. That can be done in a number of very creative ways, but I'm trying for something really simple. I don't think that simple = boring, and I really want to avoid stuff that makes a few people go "awesome!" and a lot go "huh?".

Also, just for the record, there are really 2 sets of rules in the playtest tournament.
1. The actual roster changes are to make the teams less unbalanced.
2. The 8 non-roster rules on the other hand are intended to better some problems with the current rules. The 'Right Stuff' change is the only exception to this split, and I have to say I'm tempted to give that one up!

So - the change to SG really isn't about fixing a weak skill. There are plenty of those, and they're not a real problem. It's about fixing fouling.

I see fouling in CRP as a high risk high reward surgical tool and not a weapon of mass destruction

I think most people see fouling as high risk, low reward - and that's the problem in a nutshell.
So the intent really is to buff fouling. And there is 2 reasons for this:
1. Bash-stack needs to be nerfed, but we don't want the game to get too soft & cuddly.
2. Buffing fouling actually is a minor nerf to PiOn, becaise PiOn places you prone.

So yeah, elves could fear new fouling. But they'll like weakened Bash-stack. And besides, at least the elves can get in on the fouling action, if they want to

Now, about your roster ideas:
Like I said, there are lots of neat ways to do buffs. At this point I'm trying to acchieve stability, so I'm sticking with the ones I've got, unless they turn out to not work as intended.

a) I do like your foulerrific gobbo roster. I do however find it a bit problematic to make gobbos bashier. The gobbo team is already about destroying the opposing team, and they can do some damage (even though they get damaged more themselves). It's a discussion we've had on here before (back when we discussed adding squigs). Admittedly, the extra troll also beefs up the bash, but at least it serves more purposes than just that.

b) I don't agree that a 6 ogre team isn't an ogre team. It takes 6 CDs to have a CD team, and 6 vamps to have a vampire team. Besides, like Tourach, I'm very uncertain about 8 ogres. I'm not saying they'd be unbeatable. They most certainly wouldn't be. But all the ST3 teams would have very little to do constructively against them, except prance around and wait for Bonehead to fail. Not sure those games would be much fun. Besides, it changes the miniatures you need to play the team - and I really want to avoid that. (Yes, I did it with gobbos, but I really don't want to do it again).

c) I'm very tempted by Voyagers_uk's suggestion to not make every halfling AG4, but make it a positional instead. That would take the top of their power off, and make their newfound TTM power more tolerable. Either way, you can't put loner back on the trees. That's instant team death due to Take Root.

What I'm leaning towards ATM is:
0-16 30K Halflings 5237 dodge, stunty, right stuff
0-6? 50K Halflings 5246 dodge, stunty, right stuff
0-2 Treeman

Cheers
Martin

[Tourach]

What I'm leaning towards ATM is:
0-16 30K Halflings 5237 dodge, stunty, right stuff
0-6? 50K Halflings 5246 dodge, stunty, right stuff
0-2 Treeman

so normal halflings will have more armor and the ag ones will keep av 6??

[voyagers_uk]

I like it Martin

[garion]

took a x-mas break for some bloodbowl reading. I do like macabeos suggestions... well except i cant really comprehend the 8 ogre roster, it might be really hard to deal with for most teams. Im not sure if it too good, boughut i have played against the 8 ogres back in the time, and it was just stupid, even without re-rolls on the team (there were 3 goblins thogh) .

I whole heartedly disagree here, having 12 ogre rosters as it was in LRB4 still saw them as a tier2 team maybe even tier3 and the Ogres were only a 120k then, but at least they could be competative against some races. All the Elf teams and Skaven still beat them with ease the majority of the time. They were only really any good against the slow bash teams back then, teams like Chaos Dwarves, Orcs etc...

Interestingly there are still quite a few LRB4 Ogre teams playing on Fumbbl at the moment - taking part in all the CRP tournaments and they are performing poorly even with 12 ogres on the roster, but at least they can win the odd game here and there, which currently in CRP they just cannot do against high TV opponents unless they get ridiculously favourable dice.

Peronally I think 12 just wouldn't work now because of the TV bloat and the inducement system, but giving them 8 would be fine and witha price decrease. The problem then would be they would still have St1 snotlings, which are just stupidly bad and unless their Av is increased alot or their St is increased to 2 they will never be competative, but those changes just dont fit fluff wise. The other buff they need is to be able to field 6 ogres and have 1 RR from the first game.

Some LRB4 Ogres being allowed to play using CRP -

http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=team& ... _id=509686
http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=team& ... _id=582247
http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=team& ... _id=507371
http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=team& ... _id=537811
The best ogre team ever and the best ogre coach - http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=team& ... _id=606519
http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=team& ... _id=597214

So as you can see none of them perform partiuclarly well, except Vicius' team. But ogres then are a damn site better than the current joke of a team.

[garion]

Another small point Plasmoid. Why haven't Chaos Dwarves been looked at?

For narrowing the tiers the only change they need is getting rid of all mutation access. They just don't need it. For me they are the best team in the game now, dwarves with Claw Yuck! As I've already said, I don't have an issue with the tiers but I do think this change was something of a mistake even if it is a nod back to 2nd ed.

[plasmoid]

Hi Garion,
Re: Ogres
I think a lot of good points could be made both for and against, but the bottom line for me is that I don't want to make changes that will require more/new minis. Yes, I've broken that rule once - with gobbos - but only because I really can't come up with something better for them.
Also worth noting is that in playtest, so far our ogre coach has averaged 1 point per game. Not too bad, considering that he is only running half the buffs I have planned for them.

The other buff they need is to be able to field 6 ogres and have 1 RR from the first game.

With ogres at 130K and rerolls at 60K they can
Not sure it's their best starting roster - but they can.

Re: CDs

Why haven't Chaos Dwarves been looked at?

The league play data I had to go from put them (IIRC) at 50%.
So I had no tangible reason to mess with them.
Remember, I have it in me to go crazy and mess with everything - but this is the restrained version of myself. I want to leave at least half of the teams unchanged.

Cheers
Martin

[dode74]

The CRP data I have from FUMBBL (B, R and L) during CRP for about 90,000 games puts the win%s as:

Code: Select all

Race        Played    Win% bounds (95CI)
Amazon       4866     58.22 - 55.44
Wood Elf     7921     56.37 - 54.18
Chaos Dwarf 12534     55.59 - 53.85
Skaven       8782     55.74 - 53.66
Dark Elf    10128     55.37 - 53.43
Lizardmen    6822     55.35 - 52.98
Undead       7817     54.79 - 52.58
Elf          3753     54.06 - 50.87
Dwarf       10408     52.31 - 50.39
High Elf     5628     52.51 - 49.90
Norse        9380     52.16 - 50.14
Necromantic  9559     51.74 - 49.74
Human        8740     50.83 - 48.73
Chaos       15358     50.49 - 48.91
Chaos Pact  10158     49.44 - 47.49
Nurgle      11178     48.34 - 46.48
Slann        5441     48.40 - 45.75
Orc         12413     47.82 - 46.07
Khemri       5386     47.90 - 45.23
Underworld   4060     44.84 - 41.79
Vampire      3319     42.41 - 39.06
Goblin       2105     32.71 - 28.77
Halfling     2138     29.23 - 25.45
Ogre         2294     27.89 - 24.29

Which suggests to me that Amazons and WE may be more worthy of being looked at.

[plasmoid]

Hi guys,
returning to SG - how about this:

If this player is sent off on anything but a double 1 then he is merely cautioned by the referee instead. The player is removed to the KO box, and may recover in the usual manner. This is not a turnover, unless the player was carrying the ball.

The way I see it, it would be good for secret weapons, it would be good for dirty players, it would be good for teams that often end up with their numbers heavily depleted (stunty teams), and it would be good for teams with linemen too expensive for fouling (elf teams).

Cheers
Martin

[Chris]

Interesting idea - though with the effect of high vs low rolls in fouling a double 6 seems more appropiate!.

Sticking it on secret weapons would be a big balance change though? Certainly give a massive avantage to a deathroller getting a double than one that doesn't currently...