How cool is AG5, really?

[spubbbba]

Well half the reason for taking AG5 is the cool factor. From a pure TV efficiency point of view blodge is probably a better way to spend 40K on a lino.

But AG5 increases your chances of pulling off some crazy stuff and can be useful from a psychological point of view, any loose ball is unsafe versus AG5. Taking it also means if you get other stats later on you could end with an even cooler player.

[mattgslater]

Funny enough, I'm in a spot right now where it's not competition with Blodge. The real question is: in terms of on-pitch value, how does AG5/Blodge compete with skill/Blodge?

[MattDakka]

Well half the reason for taking AG5 is the cool factor. From a pure TV efficiency point of view blodge is probably a better way to spend 40K on a lino.

The lino http://www.fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=p ... id=7920060 has already Blodge.
I agree about blodge being better than +1 AG on a lino.

Funny enough, I'm in a spot right now where it's not competition with Blodge. The real question is: in terms of on-pitch value, how does AG5/Blodge compete with skill/Blodge?

Which skill?
I see either Fend, Side Step or Tackle as alternative skill choices instead of +1 AG, but I would take AG 5 without worrying and over-analyzing the TV-efficiency in this case (note: I wouldn't take +1 AG on a skilless linelf, I would go either Wrestle/Block or Dodge), you play in Ranked, after all, you can check your opponent's TV before accepting a match.
If you want to trim your TV a bit drop 1 rr.

[TalonBay]

Pieces is a bit unusual but "Build" is a useful distinction from "team" for me. The team is the current state of my progression in the direction of a build, so builds are flavours of teams. So a dark elf team could be built to pass the ball (not optimal IMO but possible) or a chaos team could be built with guard/block/tackle in mind rather than claw/PO/MB.

If you keep a team for a long time the build may well vary and despite your best intentions the presentation of opportunities for stats may steer you in different directions.

[Smurf]

Funny enough, I'm in a spot right now where it's not competition with Blodge. The real question is: in terms of on-pitch value, how does AG5/Blodge compete with skill/Blodge?

It's a lino... they get whacked. The extra 20k tv is not worth it over skills. It gets an injury and you'll be wondering if it should be sacked. -1 AG, M or AV it's scrimmage fodder. Any of those on a +1 AG piece is just going to be expensive fodder.

[dode74]

Funny enough, I'm in a spot right now where it's not competition with Blodge. The real question is: in terms of on-pitch value, how does AG5/Blodge compete with skill/Blodge?

On a lino I'd probably prefer SS to AG5, looking to Fend as a fourth skill to make a REALLY annoying elf-stall front line player. On just about any other piece, especially if it has guard, I'd take the AG5 (with a view to leap for awesome assist capability).

[JJB]

Three cases:
- on a positional other than an assassin: worth it, though slightly less on a Blitzer maybe.
- on a lineman with a low to medium life expectancy (either because of a short term league, or one with a reasonable level of bash): not worth it, any skill is better to make him both survive (blodge) and be a more immediate annoyance for the opponent (side step then jump up or guard on a double)
- on a lineman in a long term league and with only moderate bashing conditions (e.g. the ranked sectio of FUMBBL): ag5 is worth it, because the lineman has reasonably good chances of surviving to make it long enough to get the obvious blodge but also extra skills that will allow him to make full use of that extra agility with the gaining of leap for example.

[mattgslater]

@MattDakka: I'm very much with you on RR and TV. This is the first time I've put this team on 4x TRR. Here's my logic:
* I'm unlikely to be 1.5M underdog in developmental games. I want more Tackle and Side Step, and I want more oomph on my statfreaks, before I start taking these guys to tournaments.
* I run out of RRs a lot. So RR#4 > Babe.
* I don't do a ton of damage and don't rely on damage, so RR#4 + enemy Babe > nothing.
* Similarly, I don't fear chainsaws or bribes. Saws have a way of disappearing fast against a team like this. Bribes are dependent on getting guys on the ground, and I know how to stop that... usually.
* I actually play a lot of hitters with this team. These guys and my Humans are my compromise teams for coaches who are afraid of my Guard-hoarding Dwarfs and Orcs, but who present too much of a threat for my rebuilding Orcs until they get their stuff together.

@conversation at large: Monte is going AG5, open discussion on relative merit of +AG is worth talking about. I'm not convinced the team is not better off with Side Step, but hopefully play will help with that.

I think the comparison has a lot to do with style. I stick in and slam by nature; with elves, that's more of a real-estate game, with a multilayer zone game designed to partition and control the pitch, to use positioning and zone-blocking (to borrow an American football term, it really is what I mean), plus an excess of blocking skills, to end up with more actions than even a heavy opponent, like Orcs by other means. I'm probably the most aggressive elf coach there is, which probably has a lot to do with the way my record breaks down. Against teams with significant rostered AG4, I'm 7-2-6: I'm great at forcing silliness, but if you can live with silly, that's not so great. Against other teams, I'm 14-4-2, and of the six non-wins, two are ties against ~170 coaches (Chaos, Undead), one a loss to Purdindas's Undead (who just has my number for some reason), one a loss to another high-rated coach running slippery Necromantics, and two ties against 150s coaches running Norse and Chaos.

[MattDakka]

@MattDakka: I'm very much with you on RR and TV. This is the first time I've put this team on 4x TRR.

50 TV less means either: more skills for you (or less for your opponent; 2 skills of difference may not sound a big deal, but for example, if they are POMB or Mighty Blow, Tackle, that apparent small TV difference is huge!), a babe, or one reserve (I know, a reserve linelf is 70 TV, but 50 TV is very close).
I play elves teams and I find that 3 rr are plenty, you have to play carefully but it's perfectly viable.
If you feel better with 4 rrs then play with 4 rrs.
I don't know how you play elves, but try to play with 3 rrs (maybe with another elf team), it's a good practice and makes you (a general "you") better at risk management and elf gameplay.

[mattgslater]

@MattDakka: I'm very much with you on RR and TV. This is the first time I've put this team on 4x TRR.

50 TV less means either: more skills for you (or less for your opponent; 2 skills of difference may not sound a big deal, but for example, if they are POMB or Mighty Blow, Tackle, that apparent small TV difference is huge!), a babe, or one reserve (I know, a reserve linelf is 70 TV, but 50 TV is very close).
I play elves teams and I find that 3 rr are plenty, you have to play carefully but it's perfectly viable.
If you feel better with 4 rrs then play with 4 rrs.
I don't know how you play elves, but try to play with 3 rrs (maybe with another elf team), it's a good practice and makes you (a general "you") better at risk management and elf gameplay.

This team has run 3RR since its inception. I'm a 3RR coach, trying something new. In 5 games, you'll know how it went by seeing how many RRs I have. I'm trying to ride a particular of the Ranked matchmaking process.

My hypothesis is this:

I don't balance this team specifically to opponents. I'm not going to play this team against a 1900-2080 team now, as opposed to an 1850-2030 team if I had one less RR. I'm going to play this team against a peaked-out opponent with some Tackle, whether I do it at 1940 or 1990. Or maybe a just-sub-peak opponent who shies away from Dwarfs and Zons on principle, even though it's not like these guys aren't at least as scary as my 'Zons (psychology: coaches who run away from one race or another will often walk right into a trap in so doing). So with this team, given how it finds its matches, that 50k is really like 10k-20k roster and 30k-40k inducements. That makes the standard not "worth its weight in roster value" but rather "worth more than its weight in inducement value." Know what I'm saying?

I definitely think it fits my style better than a reserve. I plan on being the hammer, not the nail. Though if I did get a reserve, I could take a DP, get rid of solitary T-POMBers. Hmmm....

[MattDakka]

@MattDakka: I'm very much with you on RR and TV. This is the first time I've put this team on 4x TRR.

50 TV less means either: more skills for you (or less for your opponent; 2 skills of difference may not sound a big deal, but for example, if they are POMB or Mighty Blow, Tackle, that apparent small TV difference is huge!), a babe, or one reserve (I know, a reserve linelf is 70 TV, but 50 TV is very close).
I play elves teams and I find that 3 rr are plenty, you have to play carefully but it's perfectly viable.
If you feel better with 4 rrs then play with 4 rrs.
I don't know how you play elves, but try to play with 3 rrs (maybe with another elf team), it's a good practice and makes you (a general "you") better at risk management and elf gameplay.

This team has run 3RR since its inception. I'm a 3RR coach, trying something new. In 5 games, you'll know how it went by seeing how many RRs I have.

My hypothesis is this:
I don't balance this team specifically to opponents. I'm not going to play this team against a 1900-2080 team now, as opposed to an 1850-2030 team if I had one less RR. I'm going to play this team against a peaked-out opponent with some Tackle, whether I do it at 1940 or 1990.

I see.
In the past I tried to play with 4 rrs, then turned back to 3 rrs.
By the way I don't balance (shall I say "tailor" maybe ) either in MM or Ranked my team for a specific opponent.
I might do that in a private league though, where I can calculate better the TV gap and the kind of team/its relative skills I'm going to face.

[mattgslater]

In the past I tried to play with 4 rrs, then turned back to 3 rrs.

Me too. Orcs, Humans, I've tried 4 and dropped one. I think 3 is enough on pretty much any team except Slann, Vamps, or other gimmicky types.

What prompted the purchase was a pair of observations. I ran a long time with one each AC/CL. Went really well. Then I had a long drought of BC/CF, so I fired them. Then I started tying and losing games on singular bad rolls, or on chains that probably would have worked with a re-roll. So I bought the fourth one, when I came to the realization that it wouldn't really impact the team's opposition pool.

They're definitely not tailored to a specific opponent. I'd say they're generally designed to face bashy and medium teams.

The TV from +AG is different. I'm so not cutting this guy if I make the wrong choice, unless he gets hurt. I'm in no way married to the reroll. The cost of picking +AG and hating it (I doubt I will) is a Blodger.

[MattDakka]

In the past I tried to play with 4 rrs, then turned back to 3 rrs.

Me too. Orcs, Humans, I've tried 4 and dropped one. I think 3 is enough on pretty much any team except Slann, Vamps, or other gimmicky types.

What prompted the purchase was a pair of observations. I ran a long time with one each AC/CL. Went really well. Then I had a long drought of BC/CF, so I fired them. Then I started tying and losing games on singular bad rolls, or on chains that probably would have worked with a re-roll. So I bought the fourth one, when I came to the realization that it wouldn't really impact the team's opposition pool.

AC/CL and BC/CF? I don't understand these acronyms, do you care to explain please?
My experience is the opposite, I generally performed better with 3 rrs than 4.

[mattgslater]

AC/CL and BC/CF? I don't understand these acronyms, do you care to explain please?

Assistant Coach and Cheerleader; Brilliant Coaching and Cheering Fans. I'd never take more than 1 of each, but on speed teams they're not bad.

My experience is the opposite, I generally performed better with 3 rrs than 4.

I think that makes our experience the same. 3 outperforms 4. I generally believe this. I'm testing whether I have found an exception, because I believe exceptions to exist. I am not holding 4 TRRs up as the right way to go. I sometimes do things that I think are generally suboptimal, but not terribly so, just to get a taste of where my sense of the optimal fits in with the way it pans out in practice.

[MattDakka]

Assistant Coach and Cheerleader; Brilliant Coaching and Cheering Fans. I'd never take more than 1 of each, but on speed teams they're not bad.

My experience is the opposite, I generally performed better with 3 rrs than 4.

I think that makes our experience the same. 3 outperforms 4. I generally believe this. I'm testing whether I have found an exception, because I believe exceptions to exist. I am not holding 4 TRRs up as the right way to go. I sometimes do things that I think are generally suboptimal, but not terribly so, just to get a taste of where my sense of the optimal fits in with the way it pans out in practice.

Ah right, silly me, I'm a bit tired, sorry .
I used to have 1 AC and 1 CL on Cyanide's game for the very reason you wrote i.e. "I sometimes do things that I think are generally suboptimal, but not terribly so, just to get a taste of where my sense of the optimal fits in with the way it pans out in practice." but currently on FUMBBL I play without any of them.
Probably I'm too accustomed to trim my TV now, yet I avoid the minmax abuse because I find it boring and broken.
I might use the AC/CL in a private league for an important match such as semifinal/final, not sure though.