DE team without ball movement skills?

[Hitonagashi]

As to whether I'd go without SH entirely if I didn't +AG..I don't know. I usually tend to on FUMBBL, but that's because I quite frequently design builds that are *extremely* weak against Wood Elves, but give improved performance against everyone else (in Majors, you don't tend to see that many Wood Elf teams). I honestly don't think you need it against anyone else, and I'm always loathe to take a skill just for one race. If there's lots, or even just a few good wood elf players in your league, I suppose I would, but usually I just try and outplay them, even if their build gives them an advantage to start.

Never played on FUMBBL but at high TV I guess you should start to see freaks appearing all over the place, like orc blitzers with +AG, leap and strip-ball. Surely wood-elves aren't the only ones to try that?

Wood Elves are the only players who can do it at lower TV though. As as been said earlier, I'm quite confident in the mass dt/ss to stop offenses.

That said, I'm not a hugely experienced Dark Elf player (only 100-200 games with them), and looking at one of my favourite FUMBBL DE teams, PeteW's Mr Men, he takes Sure Hands on a blitzer, so I guess it must be right!

[Hitonagashi]

Do I need to play fummbl? I consider myself a decent coach but I know there are lurkers on there who just want to flatten teams.

I'd say you should. I very rarely run into the flatten team type...sure, there's a fair bit of clawbomb if you join the random matching divisions, but it's rare to meet someone who doesn't want to win. Also, Ranked allows you to just flip the bird to griefing teams. It's fun, and there's some extremely good players there.

[narg]

That said, I'm not a hugely experienced Dark Elf player (only 100-200 games with them), and looking at one of my favourite FUMBBL DE teams, PeteW's Mr Men, he takes Sure Hands on a blitzer, so I guess it must be right!

You guys on FUMBBL have a weird notion of "not hugely experienced"! 100 - 200 games, that's probably the total amount of games I played against human players (as opposed to Cyanide AI).

That being said, I often hear that strip ball is no good because everybody has sure hands and then I hear that sure hands is no good because nobody has strip ball - looks like there's a failure in logic somewhere here. But I understand that if every second team you play against is a full claw-pomb chaos team then skilling the team to defend against strip-ball isn't exactly a priority. I still find that a bit surprising, in my teams I always try to build a player with blodge, sure hands and ST4+ to get the best possible ball defense, so it's interesting to see that some experienced coaches think it's mostly useless.

[Hitonagashi]

That said, I'm not a hugely experienced Dark Elf player (only 100-200 games with them), and looking at one of my favourite FUMBBL DE teams, PeteW's Mr Men, he takes Sure Hands on a blitzer, so I guess it must be right!

You guys on FUMBBL have a weird notion of "not hugely experienced"! 100 - 200 games, that's probably the total amount of games I played against human players (as opposed to Cyanide AI).

That being said, I often hear that strip ball is no good because everybody has sure hands and then I hear that sure hands is no good because nobody has strip ball - looks like there's a failure in logic somewhere here. But I understand that if every second team you play against is a full claw-pomb chaos team then skilling the team to defend against strip-ball isn't exactly a priority. I still find that a bit surprising, in my teams I always try to build a player with blodge, sure hands and ST4+ to get the best possible ball defense, so it's interesting to see that some experienced coaches think it's mostly useless.

There's a difference between "casual" play, where especially in the random matching divisions, there's a lot of bash, and the big tournaments. Big tournaments tend to be bash-centric (I think a recent one had about a 75%-25% split in hyperbash to elf), and so anti-elf skills are prized less. They are still very very useful though, because elf teams tend to rise above the "lolbash" type, and by about rounds 3-4 (KO tournaments), the split is a lot more even. League play in addition tends to be a lot more balanced. In the White Isle League, my division(premiership) has 4 elf teams(3 HE 1 WE), 2 Lizardmen, 1 Dwarf, 1 Amazon, 1 Undead, 1 Chaos Dwarf. It all depends on where you choose to play on FUMBBL.

With regard to "experience", it means different things to different people . I find it takes me around 50 games to start to really appreciate a team, and maybe 100 to gather tactics for it in detail. Thing is, that especially with skill selection, I tend to go with what works for me. It takes conscious effort to branch out and try new skills, and even then some skills/styles are only really valid in the context of the team you use them in. I'd consider myself an average AV 8 elf player (looking at it in more detail, 120 HE games and 67 DE games), but I'd still not class myself as good. Every game I play against more experienced coaches, I'm still learning tricks, and timing of offenses. My favourite race is Lizardmen (some 500 games), but even with them, I still learn new skill synergies and combinations. Bloodbowl really is a rather deep game .

[MattDakka]

As to whether I'd go without SH entirely if I didn't +AG..I don't know. I usually tend to on FUMBBL, but that's because I quite frequently design builds that are *extremely* weak against Wood Elves, but give improved performance against everyone else (in Majors, you don't tend to see that many Wood Elf teams). I honestly don't think you need it against anyone else, and I'm always loathe to take a skill just for one race. If there's lots, or even just a few good wood elf players in your league, I suppose I would, but usually I just try and outplay them, even if their build gives them an advantage to start.

Never played on FUMBBL but at high TV I guess you should start to see freaks appearing all over the place, like orc blitzers with +AG, leap and strip-ball. Surely wood-elves aren't the only ones to try that?

Leap on an AG 4 is not as TV-efficient as a Mighty blow, Piling On, Tackle Blitzer, so at high TV you are likely to find heavily bash-oriented builds rather than weird and silly builds as leaping Orc Blitzers.
Orcs don't leap in cages, they try to crush the opponent team, by blocking, blitzing, putting pressure on the cage and forcing it to score.

[dines]

Do I need to play fummbl? I consider myself a decent coach but I know there are lurkers on there who just want to flatten teams.

I think you could learn a lot from it and if you make a team in ranked or a league there is less risk of running into the really heavy clawpombers if thats not your thing.

[juck101]

Fumbbl has many good players, so its a nice challenge. I personally find fumbbl can be a little 'colder' for the experience and prefer the cyanide digital game as its more fun. Neither replace tabletop but i like playing 3+ games a week and that is the only way.

Righty to the topic...

I started about 6 DE sides over the last two years without any av7 players. Typically my reasons go like this;

Start with 4 blitzers and 7 linemen. Day one I dont want any injuries and a lost game without injury can be considered a good day at the office. Games 2-20 its time to build guard. Becasue of the 'contact game' that DE play at times I need some guard to consider facing up to the bashers. I want EVERY double EVERYTIME to be guard. I would like about 4 before I consider the team and rating, which might be a teams entire lifespan.

Guard for me is essential and has two effects in such a high demand. Firstly I need to buy players above that can effectively use guard. I would argue runners, assassins and witches dont make the best guarders mostly becasue of av7. I dont want a good positional hit without the armour to stand up. This I find a marked change to woodies. Clearly my postionals do great things but a 170k+witch I would rather give other skills. So its linemen and blitzers all the way.

Second knock-on effect for me is the lack of ball & movement based skills. My build is heavy to prepare for blodge/ss/guard development on linemen and blitzers. This brings down the teams total MA of the side and takes me into a route with maximum solid defensive skills and little else. I argue this is to the benefit of the dark elf playstyle but does suck on quick offenses. I do buy a witch and runner later but the team is so far behind compared to a throwing elf side that I dont tend to try to compensate for this.

We are only talking a few MA, few catch and a pass difference between a flair elf side and a solid strong dark elf one. But with the most expensive squad in the game I tend to stick to the more bash based approach and skills that would with contact.

Don't think I leave my men in base-to-base as I don't ever want an elf taking a hit as a philsophy. However when its time to fight a cage or break loose from a team marking me, then I need the hitting skills.

A suitble twist in the start is actually having 7 linemen I use these to chuck the ball on offense for short passes. This bumps up the xp and I am more likely to get 2 skilled linos after a short period than if I started with a witch or runners. Just a minor boost, but this rotation works well for me.

However my approach does result later on with weaker offense. In games at 2K against a killer I do miss not having a throwing game. So i'm starting to add a runnner late and get accurate & pass if I can. I might be missing out on the throwing game which can be gained for about 50k of rating which is well worth it.

Conclusion for me is that so far this plays well. It's based on the most effective overall squad tactic that I play and a 'solid' build as far as elves can ever play. It took me years to prefer this elf style over 2turn scores but this is where I am as a coach.

The question is what will the team develop into? Which leads to the best preparation to do that
Hope that helps Smeborg

[juck101]

Just also consider the fumbbl sides I think abuse the loners ruling more than might be common in a league as such. Often a ranked team can play with 11 good players and if a few linos dies as the team skills, then so be it. However I think it's a common practice the same side if going into a major competion wont be so foolish to play without a bench, and buy one when needed.

I dont play on the client much but from the games I watch I find it's a valid point and an effective way to play vs similar rated sides. All your TV being on the pitch is a good idea where possible and I think squads reflect this.
^ Just factor that in if you studied fumbbl top sides

[Coach Grievous]

Conclusion for me is that so far this plays well. It's based on the most effective overall squad tactic that I play and a 'solid' build as far as elves can ever play. It took me years to prefer this elf style over 2turn scores but this is where I am as a coach.

I'm largely in agreement with the thinking in juck101's post.

I'll tangent a little bit on one part specifically. When I came back to the current rules (after missing several rules editions) I was at first keen to score in two turns with my elves because - well - that's what elves do. Trying to do that, I ran into some difficulty though and often over-extended myself. So I adjusted to a slower pace where I can comfortably score in three turns, but can also take much slower. In a pinch, you can go for a two turn score, but it is more riskier. And realizing that stalling is such a huge part of the game this sluggishness can be seen as an advantage rather than a disadvantage.

Totally with juck101 on the necessity of Guard of course, but now I'm in a position that I'm also thinking Mighty Blow is very important to Dark Elves. And the Witch Elves are the players to put it on, because they will maximize its effect in addition to being your go-to blitzers (I find that the actual Blitzer positionals play a more defensive or lynchpin role, hence the optimum build of Blodge, Sidestep, Guard).

[Smurf]

I watched a Fumbbl game and wondered what was going on.

Maybe also watch a WE game so I can get use to, what appears to be 16 bit, icons. The graphics have not made a great advertisement.

[spubbbba]

I watched a Fumbbl game and wondered what was going on.

Maybe also watch a WE game so I can get use to, what appears to be 16 bit, icons. The graphics have not made a great advertisement.

I find the simplicity of the FUMBBL graphics helps me play. I am far less likely to confuse players or miss tackle zones in that version than I am in Cyanide’s.
I also wish you could switch off the animation as I really don’t want to see the player taking every step, FUMBBL’s auto-move is a thing of beauty.

Back to Dark Elves, I very much agree with Juck’s team building strategy. Elves are expensive, but also very flexible so you can do well with 4 blitzers and the rest linos. Once I have an apoth, 3 re-rolls and a full squad I then look at adding witches. Too many coaches focus on the frenzy, but that can be a death trap without block/wrestle and sidestep so until she gets up to 6 spp’s I use her as a catcher since she has MA7 and dodge.

Guard is golden on all elves and I certainly take it as 1st choice on linemen and throwers (much better then Strong arm). For Dark elves the choice is tougher as runners are a little fragile and witch elves really do suit MB more, and if you get a 2nd double then PO and JU are great together. The only issue is if you have already given her wrestle.
For Blitzers I tend to favour guard over MB unless I know I will be facing other squishy teams and he has tackle.

I don’t rate assassins but did take one in a major when I knew I’d be facing amazons and dark elves in the final. He did a great job and was fun but is probably not worth the TV.

[Ullis]

The graphics have not made a great advertisement.

That was my exact first impression on Fumbbl as well. I wondered how it could look so, well, ugly (that was the old client which was not as pretty as the new one).

But Spubbba's spot on that the graphics and pitch layout work great for BB. I've tried Cyanide too and it was more cumbersome and it wasn't as easy to plan out positioning which is frustrating when playing BB.

[spubbbba]

When it comes to graphics I’d equate it to battlechess.

As a novelty it is great to see the pieces take a step for each square you move into and is really cool to see a little animation of them “killing” each other when you take a piece. As a fun experience it is more rewarding than a flat board with icons and probably more fun for the 1st few games. With a game like Bloodbowl it helps capture the fluff and is a shame you can’t modify the appearance of players more easily.

But if you just want to play the game then these things can get quickly annoying. There are only so many times you can see the exact same animation of a knight taking a pawn before it gets dull. Plus if you want to play quickly then having to watch the bishop slowly walk though every square gets frustrating. On top of that if the camera only lets you see half the board in 3D (unless you zoom out and then it gets confusing) and pieces or squares get hidden behind each other then it makes it harder to play the game and you are more likely to make mistakes.

The FUMBBL interface and graphics make it easier to play the game so I favour that. Mind you it did take me a while to get used to a cross over the player meaning stunned and a line being prone.

[Overhamsteren]

Am I the only one who thinks the fumbbl icons and sounds have a great feel to them?

[Smeborg]

Thanks, guys, for interesting and useful feedback.