DreadBall - The Futuristic Sports Game

[Smeborg]

Thought of another team name: Toxic Breath (Veer-Myn - there has to be an explanation for their filters!).

MDF board and the remaining teams and MVPs arrived today. I very much like the board. Does anyone know how it should be painted?

Played another game against myself. Forge Fathers against Humies. It was a mash, the Humies winning in 4 turns. The FF received, but failed their first pick-up. The Humies scored a 3-pointer, and then pulled off the famous 2-scores-in-a-turn trick. This was possible because (a) I had positioned a Striker to catch the re-launched ball, and (b) I had gained an extra blue coaching die in the first turn, which I used to get (somewhat fortunately) a double success on the catch (gaining a free move and a 1-point score). Thus the FF were 4 points down from a single failed pick-up, as well as not having good field position.

The FF also had a player killed in each of the first 2 (proper) turns, a Striker and a Guard. This appears to confirm my perception that Forge Fathers are the squishiest team in the game. The Strikers are certainly the squishiest player-type (Speed and Armour of 5+), while the Guards and Jacks are vulnerable to being slammed from behind (Speed of 5+), especially if you add an assist or two.

The FF also had their second Striker in the dugout, thus they were forced to recover the ball with a Jack, he got it, but lacked the speed and ability to attempt a Strike. He got sacked and put into the dugout, enabling the Humies to take a whole luxurious turn of Slamming (there was no possibility of a FF score). Then the Humies scored a 2-pointer to go 6 points clear. Finally, a FF Striker came back onto the field, only to fail a pick-up again (this is more common for FF, because they are so slow, they often try to pick up while Sprinting). This gave the Humies the easiest of 1-point scores for a landslide win.

The game seems designed to produce a momentum-shift at some point (can be quite early), leading to a win. The team with the momentum seems to go from strength to strength, while the losing team has to take ever-more-desperate measures, compounding the momentum.

The Forge Fathers have a lot of weaknesses, as far as I can see, while the Humies seem pretty darned good. Perhaps it will take a good FF coach to give me a good smacking... Have found a local DB coach, so should get some real games soon, don't know when.

All the best.

[Smeborg]

A few more thoughts on the last game.

I forgot to mention that the FF had a Strike attempt blocked by the Humies playing the "Run Interference" card (actually in this case a "Jack - Any Action" card). Such a card is not difficult for the Humies to get, they start with 2 cards (the only team to do so), and can swap them before the start, thus they get to pick from 4 cards out of 52 (of which 10 enable them to Run Interference). The Humies potentially look a bit under-priced to me.

The FF are unable to dominate the far end of the pitch. It's simply too far away for their players, especially if they come on from reserves. This seems to hand an advantage to their opponents. Yet another weakness in the team. And their Slamming game seems compromised by their low MA, meaning that opponents are often 1 square out of reach of the Slam or the assist.

All the best.

[MattDakka]

The FF also had a player killed in each of the first 2 (proper) turns, a Striker and a Guard. This appears to confirm my perception that Forge Fathers are the squishiest team in the game. The Strikers are certainly the squishiest player-type (Speed and Armour of 5+), while the Guards and Jacks are vulnerable to being slammed from behind (Speed of 5+), especially if you add an assist or two.

This is one of the things of DreadBall my mind can't accept... squishy dwarfs!
Slow is right but squishy is absolutely out of character, armour standardization sucks .
Out of curiosity, may you try to play a match with an advanced FF team?
I mean with "league-like" rosters different from the starting ones (more than 3 Guards etc).
Maybe in league they are better.

[Smeborg]

Matt - I agree that once teams develop, they may get much better, and any imbalances between races may change somewhat. However, this applies to all teams. I fear Veer-Myn with lots of skill advances - they will still be fast, they will be able to move the ball at 4+, they will have fast Guards hitting at 3+...

Squishy Dwarfs seems odd, but maybe also I am not playing them correctly - see my next match report below.

[Smeborg]

2 more matches.

Humies vs. Veer-Myn. I abandoned the match after 6 turns with the score at 0 - very promising, that. Nice tit-for-tat scoring.

Forge Father vs. Veer-Myn. The Forge Fathers were the home team and won in 8 turns, after having been behind. The poor ball-handling of the Veer-Myn told in the end. This time I tried a different tactic for the FF (well, not new, I had tried it once and failed, but I think my positioning was better this time). I started with 3 Guards and 3 Jacks on the pitch, for a bit of Slamming, treating the Strikers as super-subs. They came on to score when the team was behind on the score-line but up on numbers. It worked, but only because the VM missed 3 or 4 Strikes in a row (also the VM Slamming game went poorly).

Beyond the "dice rolling contest" aspect, there are lots of subtleties in the game which are hard to master:

- Which players to start with, and who to leave on the bench.

- Set piece positioning (the start, the only time you do this). Hugely influential.

- How to face players. Very subtle indeed.

- When to follow up a Slam. Ditto.

- When to leave players in contact.

- When to Slam and not to Slam (as a BB player, I want to Slam a lot, but it can be advantageous not to, for example, to keep your opponents' super-sub on the bench).

- When to foul, including getting intentionally sent off (e.g. to allow a super-sub to come on). I imagine fouling will increase as players gain experience, and you want to see the back of the good ones. So far I have only Stomped, I would like to see opportunities to Stall (block the opponent's sub's bench).

- Generally, what to do with spare actions (those not related to ball movement). You have a very wide choice, it seems unimportant, but what you do can influence the game for many turns. As you speed up your play, you start to see the flows and consequences of these decisions.

I have played all 6 match-ups now. I don't consider the starting teams balanced, but at least they have each won a match (I think). My next venture will probably be a mini-league between the 4 races. I feel the game is designed for one-off matches and for short-format leagues and tournaments, so I won't try anything too long or complicated. Probably I will restrict MVPs to those that can only play for one race.

All the best - I may give you some peace and quiet for a while.

[Sandwich]

I played my first game last night, as Humans against Orcs.

There was nothing in the game to me, that said it was not a Bloodbowl rip-off - possibly with a bit of Elfball ripping-off as well (haven't played Elfball, but I think the facing is important there too?). That said, I like Bloodbowl, and I quite enjoyed Dreadball.

The game we played did go the full 14 turns - I pulled off a 1-point win with some crazy-hot dice on turn 13 (I started) and the goblins, who had been pretty accurate with their ball-work beforehand, couldn't pull off the play needed to win. The lead switched hands several times as neither of us could get a decent lead - my dice were awful for most of the game so the fact I kept it close probably means the humans are a stronger starting team? I also lost about 2 or 3 players to death(?) and another couple out for 2 turns... the orcs were brutal! (my armour dice didn't help)

All in all - it was more enjoyable than I expected, and a lot closer (having read through some of the other review posts here). Possibly things would change with a bit more knowledge of the game, and when to do/not do certain actions - I was fighting the urge to do fouls and unnecessary slams throughout, which was difficult for me

One thing though... I was definitely not impressed by the quality of the game components. The figures are nice enough, but the board is not big enough for them (every time we drew on a slam, there would be a pause while moving players out the way so we could change facing of others!), one of the dice was already broken (game has only been used a few times I believe), and the cards/tokens were little more than slightly thick paper. Having grown up with GW games in the 90s, and played FFG games now, this was a definite let-down and something that would make me seriously consider spending £45-50 on the boxed game.

[Smeborg]

Sandwich - I agree that the quality of basic game components is a bit poor, especially compared to GW. On the plus side, the MDF board is very neat. So I suspect is the acrylic board, although it does not appeal to my taste. The figurines are OK, neither good nor bad, annoying that you have to assemble them (a plus of BB 3rd Ed. is that you don't have this problem), but I believe they paint up well. The transparent hex bases are odd, in that they are a bit too big, this looks like a last minute production decision to me, they are not in any of the photos. I'm not sure they are needed, and a different system might work better. But I think the idea is to show as much as possible of the pitch.

The cards are of poor production quality, not even cut properly, I hope they last. The game box is annoyingly designed, for example, you cannot get the cards out of the card-holder, once you break things open and assemble the figurines, you struggle to fit everything in the box. Box and board are a most annoying size - too big for a book-case or for most carrying cases/bags. Some of this is just repeating the errors of BB 3rd Ed. production. A book-case format would have been much better IMO. I will probably abandon the game box and carry everything in something else. A shame, since the cover painting is nice. Rosters are tiny, I have blown them up from A5 to A4.

My hunch at the moment is that the game will not appeal to most BBers. DB is more of a dice rolling contest than BB, less transparent, and more of a gambler's game. The subtleties of DB differ from BB in that they seem more remote from current play. So while DB is a clearly a straight rip-off of BB, I suspect it will appeal to different personality types. Let's see.

All the best.

[Shteve0]

FWIW: I'm yet to play the game, but have been converting up some of the models. I posted this brief feedback on/review of the forgefather minis a little while back, for anyone who may be interested - here they're mixed with parts from the Avatars of War Dwarf Berzerker kit.

A quick note on the dreadball minis; I don't know what they're made of, but it seems to be some sort of plastic-resin blend. It's funny stuff; trimming the mold lines off is a nightmare (the material 'catches' on the blade and rides up), and filing has to be done very carefully indeed to prevent loss of detail. Sticking it together requires superglue; my attempts with polycement had no discernable effect. It's not the easiest to saw, either, but can be cut really easily if you soak it in warm water for a while first. This latter property is the strangest thing about it; if you warm it in water, you can reposition the model really easily, but left to its own devices it'll (incredibly slowly) revert part way towards it's original position.

I also used some of Mantic's zombies in my Undead team at the start of this plog, and really had no issues with the material (a traditional hard plastic). Given the success of the kickstarter I assumed that mantic would be buying in some machining to produce the DB kits in house in the same material, with perhaps resin stars; but this new material is totally different.

[MattDakka]

The cards are of poor production quality, not even cut properly, I hope they last.

You may use card sleeves to protect them, but it's a shame they are of poor quality, considering the game's price.

[javascrybe]

Did not find the cards so bad, but the minis sure are a pain to assemble (Veer-Myn especially...). Board is OK if a little on the small side, and tokens are just plain cheap (that's why I'm very glad I have the acrylic Kickstarter ones...)

[Smeborg]

Did not find the cards so bad, but the minis sure are a pain to assemble (Veer-Myn especially...). Board is OK if a little on the small side, and tokens are just plain cheap (that's why I'm very glad I have the acrylic Kickstarter ones...)

Yes, I spotted that in the website photos - myfirst purchase decision was to get the acrylic counters.

[Smeborg]

I have been misleading you all on game length. Assume for now that games will be 1.5 times longer than I have given (I still think nearly all games will be short of 14 turns, though).

I was playing a rule wrong (I was continuing actions after picking up the ball). Playing properly slows the game a little, and makes it a little more positional. May also put the casualty rate up a bit. 2 games with the "proper" rules:

(a) VM beat FF in 9 turns. 2 dead VM Strikers, 1 dead FF Guard.

(b) Humies beat FF in 12.5 turns. 2 dead Humies (Guard, Striker). Game length not representative of the game, as the Humies had excellent chances to win by a landslide on turns 3,4 and 5 (each at 3/4 or 7/8 chance). So it was less than a 1% chance of the game going beyond 5.5 turns. Humies got the unbelievably good card "The Ball Shatters" again.

All the best.

[Smeborg]

Another "proper" game, this time Humies beat Orx in 10 turns. So games getting a bit longer. Humies look very good once they start handling the ball properly, they get lots of free actions from doubled pick-ups and doubled catches. This time they won in style from 1 point behind, with 2 unanswered 4-point scores. Although the Orx were ahead a couple of times (only by a point or two), they never looked like running away with the game as it is so hard for Gobbo Jacks to score 3 and 4-pointers on a consistent basis. Game would have been quite a bit shorter, had not the Humies missed several easy Strikes early on.

Orx had a slight advantage at the beginning, starting and getting some numbers advantage. But eventually the Guards (on both teams) got held up or were out of position, at which point the Human Strikers walked away with the game.

2 dead players, 1 Human Striker (early) and 1 Orx Guard (late).

[javascrybe]

Very very interesting accountings, thanks! Could I convince you to enter your game results in the following "online database"? I'm trying to setup an objective mass of semi-empirical data to track the evolution of game balance...

http://db.chezalex.net/

I know results show some tendancy, but I'm hoping the (very active) community can use this to "adjust" the game over time. Like I said somewhere else, it arguably took 15 years to balance BB...

[Smeborg]

Very very interesting accountings, thanks! Could I convince you to enter your game results in the following "online database"? I'm trying to setup an objective mass of semi-empirical data to track the evolution of game balance...

http://db.chezalex.net/

I know results show some tendancy, but I'm hoping the (very active) community can use this to "adjust" the game over time. Like I said somewhere else, it arguably took 15 years to balance BB...

I'll see what I can do.

I certainly don't think the game is balanced between races. I would rank Humans and Veer-Myn as better than Orx and Forge Fathers. If I am correct, then the player pricing is suspect. My "theory-ball" estimate is that Humans and Veer-Myn will also become relatively better with development. I also don't see how "bash" tactics can be of much use if your opponent has plenty of reserves.

On the plus side, I suspect playing a match with two teams of the same race would seem fine and interesting (whereas I find this very boring in BB).

All the best.