Discuss Fantasy football-style board games - GW's Blood Bowl, Impact!'s Elfball, Privateer Press' Grind, Heresy's Deathball, etc. THIS IS NOT AN NFL FANTASY FOOTBALL SITE!
-Destroyed some dark elfs 3-0 almost 4-0 lots of cas for me, no cas for him.
-Got destroyed by Khemri 2-0, had some shots at a draw maybe 30% chance total but the team just evaporated and did no damage themselves.
-Then a very close affair against amazons with 9 linos, 4 blitzers, 1 guard and 3 rerolls, could have gone either way but ended 1-2.
Reason:''
there is Nuffle, always in my lawn
peering through my keyhole
wanting to touch my low hanging fruit
I like Humans with no Ogre in a scheduled rookie format. 4 Blitzers, a Thrower, a Catcher, 6 Linemen, 4 RR. Mighty Blow, then Tackle on the Blitzers. Block, then toolbox skill on the Linemen, except one gets Dirty Player (in perpetual play I fire non-special linos without Kick after I have Tackle on 3 Blitzers). +AV is better than any skill a Norse Lineman can take, and it only costs what you pay for Block. AV7 means you take 50% more damage. Sure Hands Throwers who either benefit from the same math as Linemen on top of free SH (take Block first) or (okay, and) start a skill ahead once you start down the passer track, a MA8 player with Catch and Dodge (more to follow), four MA7 Block players with S access (who get to MB/Tackle very fast), and 4 rerolls for the price of 3.33. 12 bodies means you can foul or absorb that much more of a hit in the first half.
Or do you mean doing it with almost all MA6/AV7, 60k RRs, no Sure Hands, and only G access?
Reason:''
What is Nuffle's view? Through a window, two-by-three. He peers through snake eyes.
What is Nuffle's lawn? Inches, squares, and tackle zones: Reddened blades of grass.
What is Nuffle's tree? Risk its trunk, space the branches. Touchdowns are its fruit.
So have Norse ever been successful in leagues or tourneys or are they just there to make up the numbers and have fun? I like playing Norse, but I struggle to win with them. They beat a High Elf team recently, but consistently do badly against tougher running teams.
Reason:''
Purity Through Pain!
NUFFLE SUCKS!!
If I hadn't seen such riches I could live with being poor!
NightDragon 2 wrote:So have Norse ever been successful in leagues or tourneys or are they just there to make up the numbers and have fun? I like playing Norse, but I struggle to win with them. They beat a High Elf team recently, but consistently do badly against tougher running teams.
They can do OK in the right tourney format, but I have never seen a Norse team win a tourney IIRC. They do not seem able to win consistently as far as I can see. Say once in 4 or 5 games, AV7 is their downfall.
Norse are good in rookie tournaments.
1 Runner: 90k
1 Berserker: 90k
10 Linemen: 500k
3 Re-Rolls: 180k
1 Apothecary: 50k
Treasury: 120k, usually enough to induce 1-2 Babes and/or Boomer.
Reason:''
What is Nuffle's view? Through a window, two-by-three. He peers through snake eyes.
What is Nuffle's lawn? Inches, squares, and tackle zones: Reddened blades of grass.
What is Nuffle's tree? Risk its trunk, space the branches. Touchdowns are its fruit.
I am modifying my skill development plan slightly. My thinking now is to give a few skills to Linos before Fend, for example one Lino each with the following:
- Kick
- Tackle
- D-Player
I like Fend on the LoS, but I also want to maximise performance off the LoS. Obviously you will normally have 8 players not on the LoS, this will include 2 'Zerks, 2 Runners and 1 Thrower (at least once you have one with Leader). That leaves room for 3 regular Lino skills before the mass Fend is invoked.
All the best.
[Edit: Of course this plan will be modified as and when Linos get Guard, each one will reduce the number of spare slots off the defensive LoS. For this reason it's probably best to plan no more than 3 of the above skills. Bear in mind also that D-Player is somewhat more a skill for offensive, rather than defensive, drives.]
Since this is a somewhat radical experiment, even by my standards, I ran a test-bed mini-league to see what would happen. 6 teams, 15 games (i.e. 5 games per team), teams were Norse, Necros, Dwarfs, WEs, Orcs, 'Flings.
The Norse did well, tying for first place with the Necros, with 3 wins and 2 draws (TDs: 10-6, CAS: 8-12). Draws were against Necros and WEs (the fastest opponents). Not too much store should be set by these results, as a fair amount of luck fell the way of the Norse, especially against the Orcs and the Dwarfs. However, it was quite a revealing little exercise, I found that the Norse were able to deploy their extra mobility quite well, especially against the AV9 teams, even while losing players to the dugout (I gave lots of M-Blow to the Orcs and Dwarfs). Block on everybody makes for a lot of blocks against all comers, and a strong starting team (this matters in our league). Here is the team after the 5 games, note the lovely rapid development:
The 2 +AG skill-ups are pretty special, especially on the Thrower, the team is starting to play a bit like, say, DEs. Stat increases are good on these Norse, since they all start with Block, any player with just a stat increase is a quite complete player.
It is too early to see a large effect from Fend (these skill-ups are mostly recent, and the Fenders have also tended to MNG). I have been keeping the Fenders off the defensive LoS (no opponents with P-On yet). Just 1 or 2 Fenders to go before I would start putting them on the LoS. You will note that I have reverted to the policy of Fend first on the Linos. This is because I realised that some Linos will get Guard or stat increases as first skill-up, I will want to keep these off the LoS. When the real league comes around, I will find out whether not having early Tackle matters (mass Block and a couple of Frenzy seems a decent poor man's substitute on the basis of this experiment).
The Runners have 6 of the 10 TDs, they skill up by themselves, and so do not deserve MVPs. I feel the need to skill up the second Berserker (Guard) and the second Thrower (Leader). The team would likely have 11 skilled players after say 8 games. Guard on a Lino or two would be nice, but I can't complain. The well-rounded development is particularly pleasing.
Babes seem a good inducement for these guys, unsurprising as they work well for other AV7 teams.
I have an idea to split Lino development into 2 main branches: Fend/Tackle/Shadowing and Fend/Dauntless/Pro. But that may be too intricate a plan to cope with the normal vagaries of doubles, stat increases and CAS.
Very interesting Smeborg. I would have expected the opposite, that they do badly against Orcs and Dwarves and better against Elves. One thing that has been bothering me for a while now is the Fend skill. Lots of players seem to like it, but I hardly ever choose it as a skill. Am I missing its value? My Norse team is now getting nicely skilled and more competitive although I am still losing way more than I win with them. Frustrating, but boy is this team entertaining! For the new league season I am hoping to achieve at least 4th of 8 teams, but there are strong WE, Orc and Lizardman teams. Its possible I could get 3rd if the WE's suffer badly from casualties.
On the matter of Dauntless I give this skill to lots of my Norse players. My logic is that this team is born to get stuck in. With their low AV this also means they are going to get beaten up as well at times. Any skill that helps them smack the opposition tough guys/girls is therefore one I'm going to take plenty of!
Reason:''
Purity Through Pain!
NUFFLE SUCKS!!
If I hadn't seen such riches I could live with being poor!
I like the Fend skill a lot on Norse. It's main benefit is disrupting the blocking tempo of the opposition.
Blocking tempo is a concept where, all things being equal, the team who throws the most blocks in a game has a better chance of winning that game.
If one team throws more blocks than the other then that is typically more knock downs and less players available to return blocks the next turn thus maintain any blocking tempo advantage.
If your player is knocked over and an opponent follows up then you have four choices. Stand up and invite a second hit without reply, stand up and risk a dodge away, stand up and blitz free, or stay down and give your opponent a positional advantage. None of these options are advantageous for a Norse coach. Fend can prevent having to make any of these choices.
I think the reason coaches don't value Fend as a skill is that if you take a hit you are just as likely to die as any other AV7 player without Fend getting hit. However with Fend each player is likely to be receiving 2-4 less hits a match or not having to attempt an equal number of dodges, providing increased survivability and mobility.
babass wrote:Why Dauntless ?
you have already 2 on your team.
Because the heavy bash teams have 4-5 players of ST4+. The idea is to have (eventually) 4 Dauntless players (plus Guarders) to enable the Norse team to take their 4 turn 1 blocks with ease against any team. Dauntless also makes the team more difficult to mark by these same heavy bash teams. Lastly, the Runners have a split personality, it will pay sometimes to use them as rapid Receivers (e.g. when attempting a 2-turn score), which means leaving some other poor saps to do the heavy liftiing on the LoS. But I give Tackle (say 2xTackle) a higher priority than Dauntless. Kick may also possibly get a higher priority.
NightDragon 2 wrote:Very interesting Smeborg. I would have expected the opposite, that they do badly against Orcs and Dwarves and better against Elves...
There is a difference in playstyle or mindset, too. Although many Norse coaches view the Norse as a damage-causing, grinding team, I view them as a blocking, but not a grinding, team. And I view them as a "disappearing" team, along with the other AV7 races. CAS and crowd surfs will help the Norse to get up on numbers sometimes, but not systematically IMO. Mass Fend emphasises the non-bash aspects of the team.
