The Blood Bowl Thread!

[MDK]

So, for the four of us that play it, here we are.

I hate the Undead, fuck them.

[JasonM]

Undead are massive cunts to face. One the mummies regenerate so it's nigh-impossible to keep them down for the entire match. Then the Ghouls have dodge by default so they can just fly through your defensive line unscathed.

The only real weakness they got is that their non-mummies are squishy as hell, and the wights/ghouls are their main offensive players, so if you can get past those mummies and beat down their skilled players you can whittle them down. Another significant weakness is that they are all lumbering and will take a while before they reach your endzone, so you got plenty of time to try to break down their cage or even try to bumrush the carrier before they can even set-up a cage.

Basically they're a glass-cannon team, they can fuck you up big time when tackling, but if you on the other hand can gang up on their star players you can crush them equally as quick...

A human tactic I tend to use, which is risky as it is useful. Set up a defensive cage at the center, have my two catchers run up the pitch and hopefully end up next to each other for a defensive boost... And then get my passer into that defensive cage I set up.

During their defensive turn they will probably waste their Blitz on one of the catchers, which means that the other catcher can get open in the backfield for a pass to them.
Needless to say, it's risky, since the pass can easily go wrong and end up costing you the possession, but if you got a good pass/catcher combo they can be devastating by scoring an early point and then turtling up and grinding it out for the rest of the half.

[MDK]

I managed to grind out a 1-0 win by defending like beavers, eventually getting a turnover and surrounding my ball carrier with people and getting a bit lucky.

[lanky316]

Undead are one of the best teams in the game with two of the top 10 teams in the world being Undead (Wood Elves have 3!), on the local meta our league last season was won by a first season Undead team. They're hard to take care of. While as an individual you may be able to remove odd players, chances are you won't get rid of them for more than a drive so a you're going to struggle to grind down the opposition. You've got the advantage of movement generally, but the corpses don't really need to move. Through mummies a lot of Undead teams teams will have essentially two big guys without negatraits. Low MV perhaps but stick a "guard" next to them and even a blitzing mino will only be on a one dice block against them. The best defense I've found is to essentially set up a road block and slow their cage while hoping to get a big breakthrough on the ghoul/wight carrying the ball. If they do manage to open a hole in the first line, at least make them need to make more dodges to get through to the end zone. 

 

When you have the ball you need to find a weak point and punch a hole there and exploit the gap, the teams general lack of movement means if you can target the ghouls earlier in the game with a lot of cheap shots (foul, foul and foul again!) since they can't regenerate  the little extra pace they give is gone. Treat mummies as any other big guy, they can be almost as much a distraction to you as an hazard so ignore them, if you have to have something near them for a block make it a linesman, don't think too much about them, get a few squares away and they can't catch you, or at least make them dodge past more expendable players for the tackles. Make a hole, exploit it and stay one step ahead you can hopefully pick up a 1-0. Undead will keep coming at you in a relentless onslaught, try to restrict hits you take and pace of it and try to get past it. You are very likely to take a battering, just try to dictate your expendable players are the most battered!

 

My league match next week is against an Undead team with one game under its belt and a fairly rookie coach. On paper the Big Socks should win the tie comfortably but with them having ~700k inducements on me I'm expecting a nasty brawl against the inevitable three mummies since I see Ramtut III making an appearance. I'll feed my lesser trained beastmen to them while picking the fights I should win, the claw/mighty blow combo removing players for a drive giving me gaps to exploit and making it harder for them to form a cage and hopefully I will get my first win of the season following my nightmare against Skaven in the pouring rain last time out!

[MDK]

You guys know a hell of a lot more about this than I do >_>

[JasonM]

I have a whole lot more theoretical knowledge of the game from watching people play it, than I have actual experience from playing it myself. I assume Lanky has much more experience than any of us.

[MDK]

I can safely say that I will never play the board game version. I like Warhammer and all that stuff but I can only play them on PC. Too much hassle and at least on the PC I can't break the pieces. 

[JasonM]

Well, for the sake of everyone that's gonna read this thread and want to get into Blood Bowl... There are multiple ways.

There is the video game versions:
Blood Bowl 1: Chaos Edition (This is the complete version with all races, the main go-to version for online play too.)
Blood Bowl 2 (The newest version coming out on Sep 22, 2015 - It's unsure how popular it will end up being compared to the solid but flawed BB1)
FUMBBL (Online version of Blood Bowl, no real graphics, but the ruleset is better and the RNG is more realistic than the video game versions)

Places of Power (Guides & Tutorials):
r/BloodBowl (The ''official'' subreddit for Blood Bowl, they're pretty noob-friendly and are always looking to help people get started)
Team Summary (A summary with all 23 teams, the opening post is a general summary, and the replies below add more information!)
FUMBBL Newbie Guide (A very general newbie guide that gives very useful tips regarding Blood Bowl. Do's and Dont's)
FUMBBL Help Section (Includes the newbie guide, and lots of race-strategies too!)

Youtube Guides/LP's
Basics of Blood Bowl (A video from TotalBiscuit that describes much of the basics of BB.)
Beginners Guide to BB (Beginner guide from LPer cKnoor who has lots of BB content on his channel)
LP BB Skaven (Let's Play of BB:CE with the Skaven aka Rats aka Stunty Fuckers by Veriax)

[lanky316]

I've been playing the board game for about 15 years and have some experience of playing nearly every team but have only been playing it "seriously" for the last few after coming across a local tournament and realising there was a league that met up 2 minutes walk from where I lived. I'm still learning the long term development tactics - some teams you don't WANT to level up to very high TV - but as a league I'm lucky to have some good and experienced coaches to learn from and play semi-regularly, the number 3 coach in the world won our league in the first season I played and one of the others won the Stunty Cup (best performing halfling/ogre/goblin team) at the Blood Bowl (now having to be called the NAF Championship) tournament in Nottingham last year. Last year I took Ogres to our "host" tournament and came home with the Most Vicious coach trophy but this years did nothing with the same side, narrowly missing out on the booby prize of some gold block dice due to a 1-1 draw with a Halfling coach.

 

I am lucky that I am very close to an active tabletop community though which means I've got a good amount of local opposition and different coaches with different play styles. "Cyanide" Blood Bowl has opened more people up to it and it's great. You don't have the expense of buying all the kit, setting up and everything else that goes with it you can just log in and play a game for a little while against the AI or a human opponent. Some long term players don't like it because it's not a "pure" version as it's missing some elements but realistically those are relatively minor like some of the Star Player options and inducements so it doesn't really bother that much, the AI isn't great - you rarely see Vampires use Hypnotic Gaze which can be a great skill and the best way to get Vamps going - but it's more than functional and can cause a challenge, even if it's due to a slight bug or error in rule implementation. I like to use the version to try out new teams and styles with games against the AI to try and plot development for a side. This season I'm looking to retire the Big Socks at the end of the season so I'm playing with the idea of going for a bashy focused human team, their strength is flexibility so I'm giving up one of their options to begin with but the core is going to be two throwers, an ogre and four blitzers as a starting line up and lineman making up the numbers. So far they've done well but the first tournament it gave me featured Vamps, Halflings and Orcs so two easy games and an orc team where I got enough inducements to bring in Griff Oberwald who had a good game (normally I'd have considered a couple of cheaper options but 5 Blitzers seemed to fit the team!) I'm interested to see how they cope in a game against a more focused bashing side on an even footing.

 

FUMBBL is a great option and if you're enjoying playing on Cyanide then I would say it's worth looking into. It's the full game, all the teams, inducements, stars and so on and has become a different world with its own tournaments and majors alongside the tabletop scene. In fact it has complimented it quite well with a lot of World Cup and Euro Bowl squads meeting on there which in turn is helping other tabletop tournaments as people will travel to play with them to warm up and there's now a bigger national scene - certainly in the UK, I think it's spreading further afield too. Spain seems to be a bit of a hotbed with loads of mini manufacturers coming from there. Generally it's a good atmosphere - ranked more so than Black Box in my opinion - and you get a great mix of coaches, styles and teams to play against. The forums also have a lot of tactical advice and suggestions to help out there so it's a good all in one resource to visit. My FUMBBL record is appalling as it is a tricky step up but you'll improve as you do so. I like the feature that you can watch any match so you can learn first hand by watching people as well. Lots of scouting chances before that big tournament match  

[KevinStorm]

I was under the impression that FUMBBL played the PC Blood Bowl game.

I have a great team going in a Blood Bowl 1 single player campaign.  Had some good performances in the MP beta for Blood Bowl 2 but I really want the full game released before I dive into that.  I'd join an online league if I was more confident I'd be able to make scheduled games.

[lanky316]

FUMBBL is the full CRP/LRB6 - the latest official rules - so all official teams, stars, inducements and with better rule implementation that runs through a Java client. Since Cyanide did a pretty good job of getting the structure in place you'll be familiar with them from playing on Steam and elements of Blood Bowl 2 from what I understand - with the exception of the return of the much maligned "ageing" rule - have filled in the gaps they slowly worked through with each edition of the first one. I've not really seen a lot on how it has worked in principal so we'll see later.

[Cactus Drags]

My dad and I played when I was a kid, but he simplified the shit out of the rules so when I came to play the pc version or the one on 360 I was way out of my depth. Gonna pick the new one up on XB1 and give it another whirl. I won't bombard the thread with noob questions, I'll get to reading the subreddit for a lot of it. But is there a particularly noob friendly team you could recommend I start with? 

[JasonM]

My dad and I played when I was a kid, but he simplified the shit out of the rules so when I came to play the pc version or the one on 360 I was way out of my depth. Gonna pick the new one up on XB1 and give it another whirl. I won't bombard the thread with noob questions, I'll get to reading the subreddit for a lot of it. But is there a particularly noob friendly team you could recommend I start with? 

Humans are good for all-round, they can pass, bash, run and all that. They're the prototypical ''master-of-none'' race to play, so they're always a good bet for starting out.
Orcs are also a good solid race for beginners if you like a more bashy approach to the game, they're less agile so you're going to play a more bashing game.
Pretty sure one of the Elven races in turn are really good at dodging and passing a lot with high movement values and agility, but in turn are made of glass.

[KevinStorm]

Definitely humans.  They're a good medium between run and pass heavy play, and you can specialize more as you level up players.

Their position names also make more sense to me.

[KevinStorm]

Double posting to recap a hell of a close game I just had.  My humans vs. Nurgles.  The whole match they're out playing me on strength.  My ogre goes down on the first turn for the rest of the game.  They just beat my ass all over the place.  They go up 1-0.  I manage to tie the game later, and I was happy to keep it there.  On turn 15, they try a long range pass to a player about halfway between midfield and the end zone on my side that I have double covered.  My catcher intercepts.  Turn 16, I run my other catcher past three tackle zone squares to the end zone.  He makes all three rolls.  I move the catcher with the ball up to a little on my side of mid field, and throw a pass.  Catcher in the end zone catches it.  I win 2-1.  Holy shit.

[JasonM]

Double posting to recap a hell of a close game I just had.  My humans vs. Nurgles.  The whole match they're out playing me on strength.  My ogre goes down on the first turn for the rest of the game.  They just beat my ass all over the place.  They go up 1-0.  I manage to tie the game later, and I was happy to keep it there.  On turn 15, they try a long range pass to a player about halfway between midfield and the end zone on my side that I have double covered.  My catcher intercepts.  Turn 16, I run my other catcher past three tackle zone squares to the end zone.  He makes all three rolls.  I move the catcher with the ball up to a little on my side of mid field, and throw a pass.  Catcher in the end zone catches it.  I win 2-1.  Holy shit.

When things go right in Blood Bowl it's just so freaking awesome in every way...

It's offset by the fact that 99% of the times it doesn't go right, but it probably fails horribly... But that makes the good moments all the sweeter.

[R.W.]

There's something just so satisfying about watching your opponent dashing to the endzone, making a Go For It roll to score, failing, using a reroll, failing again, and then watching his player die on the injury roll.

[lanky316]

I stole a cup game on penalties because of that which nearly saw the opposing coach rage quit the league. His Chaos Dwarf team had pounded my Chaos side badly, first half was a typical CD cage grind where they slowly went down field before being pressured into the end zone in turn 7. My "Why the hell do a Chaos team have a passing game?!?" tactic worked and despite only having 7 players on the field we were tied 1-1 at half time with him kicking to me. Second half started as bad with more of players getting pounded off the pitch but the ball got deep enough that they couldn't quite get down field and my 5 players lined up for Overtime. I won the toss and chose to receive.

 

Touchback due to a bad kick and bounce and I give the ball to Fluffy, the team minotaur. It wasn't going to be pretty but if I could just bludgeon downfield wide and force myself into the endzone. Didn't work as he got bought down and taken out of the game and at that point I was close to handing the win when the commissioner pointed out if I could stop the CDs from scoring in a half it was a straight roll off penalty shoot out. They start their grind down the pitch and my last surviving Warrior tackles the ball carrier knocking it loose where my "quarterback" beastman picked up the ball and hurled a long bomb to an empty square at the other end of the pitch. Warrior punished and removed from the game, 3 players left. With the ball deep the CDs have to pass it downfield at it's inaccurate. Landing back in the hands of my quarterback who threw it deep again to an empty square! This time when they get it and throw down field it's caught in the wide zone. After a lucky dodge I managed to get a blitz on the ball carrier, only a push but it was enough to make him need to go for it to score. Surviving three players were in a position to make them need to dodge as well, odds against me with a reroll but he'd have to work for it. Blitz to try and take out one of my blockers works, I've got two players on the pitch and he now will only need one dodge. Making that comfortably. Game probably over. By now the crowd who've gathered to watch the dramatic conclusion start congratulating him on the win and me on the tough fight we showed in defeat. GFI roll.... 1. Uses the reroll and a 1 again. Player dead - his only actual long term casualty in the game - and people rush to find dice cups for the tense penalty shoot out.

 

Dice rolled and ready for the reveal, I've peeked at mine and seen I've only rolled a 2 and assume we have deservedly lost. Dice revealed and he's rolled another 1. Big Socks undeservedly go through to the cup semi-final. Just a stunned silence from both of us and the watching group as we finished filling in the forms and he silently packed his team away and left. Interestingly, after the game had gone and we were talking about it later someone pointed out if he'd saved that reroll it'd have been 2-2 and he'd get another roll, although I think most people would have used it on the Go For It. Still after a couple of weeks away from the game when we thought he'd quit for good he came back and got his revenge on the last regular game of the season when he battered my team again (we put up slightly more of a fight) and won 2-1, clinching a bye and knocking me out of the play-off places. Season faded into obscurity but we won the end of season award for best defensive performance in that hard fought cup quarter final.

 

"That's Blood Bowl!"

Edited September 14, 2015 by lanky316

[KevinStorm]

Fluffy, the team minotaur

Made the entire story right there.

[MDK]

Reading some of the posts in here I keep getting the scene from Red Dwarf when Rimmer is reciting his Risk story stuck in my head >_>