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Lord_Ventnor posted:I wonder who's going to die this game? With any luck, an enemy player for once  
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Aug 28, 2014 02:42
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Graverobbin Williams and Mykill Jackson are going to be the best zombies 
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Aug 28, 2014 02:59
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You just wait, our Hollywood zombie pair are gonna be kicking a lot of rear end.... or at least they're going to be very good at taking punches and tying up important enemy pieces.
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Aug 29, 2014 00:02
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Everyone is going to be really sad when Graverobbin Williams rolls dubskulls -> Dead on his first block. 
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Aug 29, 2014 22:20
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***CROSS-POSTING BLOOD BOWL-RELEVANT PROMOTION*** If you're getting tired of waiting for Gnu to update so that you can live vicariously through him as he plays a buggy, busted-rear end version of Blood Bowl then maybe you should consider playing the game for yourself on Fumbbl. A new season of Goon Lino League is now accepting team applications and it is going to be a lot of fun. (Note: Fumbbl has ugly 2D pixelmans instead of pretty 3D ones. Fair warning if that's a dealbreaker.)
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Aug 31, 2014 02:38
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Victor Vermis posted:(Note: Fumbbl has What the gently caress man.
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Aug 31, 2014 02:56
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And aside from Stand Firm, the event related sound effects in FumBBL are way cooler.
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Aug 31, 2014 08:07
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Looks like Space Station 13. But with more stabbing. Spiked balls wtf
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Aug 31, 2014 08:16
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GNU Order posted:With any luck, an enemy player for once To be fair, there is nothing quite like killing a well-trained enemy player. I recently managed to drop a rank 5 +str +mov grab/guard treeman with my Bloodthirster. Best feeling ever. Still, I'm feeling hopeful for Robbie. Hopefully he becomes star player.
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Sep 1, 2014 14:46
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Caught up on the last couple games and was thoroughly entertained, do we know what the next opponent is going to be? Looks like so far we haven't played: Amazon, Dark Elf, High Elf, Human, Nurgle, Ogre, Wood Elf, Chaos Dwarves and Underworld.
Levin fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Sep 4, 2014 |
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Sep 4, 2014 03:22
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I'm going to guess Chorfs Hitlering the gently caress out of us.
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Sep 4, 2014 03:47
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Feinne posted:I'm going to guess Chorfs Hitlering the gently caress out of us. All wolves dead. Blood everywhere. Flesh (Ahhhh!) Gordon in pieces.
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Sep 4, 2014 03:48
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Corte posted:Caught up on the last couple games and was thoroughly entertained, do we know what the next opponent is going to be? Looks like so far we haven't played: Amazon, Dark Elf, High Elf, Human, Nurgle, Ogre, Wood Elf, Chaos Dwarves and Underworld. So the short answer is "Week to week, I'll never know, but it'll probably be a race we haven't seen yet" Though in the meantime, we're long overdue for a  Blood Bowl 101 Lesson 5: The Screen Like "The Cage", "The Screen" is not necessarily a move or play, but more of a general concept. Screening is simply board control by placing your players in such a way that you prevent your opponent from getting past you easily. This sounds almost stupid, right? Stopping your opponent from getting past you is just basic defense. And, while screening is mostly use defensively, it can also be used offensively to protect your ballcarrier from getting whacked or to prevent your opponent from seeping blitzers or defenders into your half of the pitch. In many ways a defensive screen is considered the counter to an offensive cage. However, a screen is not necessarily the opposite of a cage. They both borrow a lot of ideas w/r/t spacing, and in fact they can sometimes end up looking very similar. A player who's caging should also be spreading out a bit to avoid getting boxed in, and a player who's screening should bunch up his players a bit to avoid spreading too thin and getting blasted through. However, let's start with the basics. For all of these examples, we will be playing the part of the Yellow Team on defense. Let's ignore team races, statlines, Strength scores, skills, etc. Each unit will represent, simply, "A Blood Bowl player". Is this a screen?  Sure! Like I said, screening is only a concept, not a finite, definite player layout. It's not a great screen, though. Why?  You let your opponent get a hold of the sideline, and now he's moving down the field and messing your stuff up! How do you stop him. Well, it's time to stop thinking of your player as a singular, one square unit. Your player has a Tackle Zone, and arranging the Tackle Zones of your players smartly is the best way to prevent your opponent from sneaking through your line. In the match videos, I always have my opponent's Tackle Zones turned on, you can do this by pressing the G key once the game has started to turn on the grid. However, you also need to consider your own players' TZ's.  Much better, right? Now you can clearly see that, while we have the middle of the field locked down, the sideline is wide open. So, let's shift that front player over and protect the sideline.  Good luck getting through this one!  Ah, drat, of course, the Blitz. Blitzing is one of the biggest tools an offense can use against a screen, because the whole point is to block the path of your opponent with your players, and the only way your opponent can move your players is by punching them, or blitzing. If you're not standing next to any opponent players, he only gets the one blitz to attempt to clear a path. Obviously we can't prevent our opponent from using his blitz, but how do we make sure he doesn't set up on the sideline that easily?  Well, we just stack up our players. Now let's see what happens when our opponent tries to take the sideline  Much better. Even though our front lineman got knocked down, we have a player in position to provide the retaliatory punch. Our opponent has dedicated to pushing down the sideline, but was unable to break through our defense. This means we can pin him up against the sideline.  So, your screen worked and your opponent flailed up against it, putting himself in position to get swatted away with minimal effort from you, while you reposition your players to prepare for the next blitz from your now-panicking opponent. Sure, you could pile all of your players on his players and just start marking the poo poo out of them, but the screen is working so much better, and it's making it literally impossible for your opponent to break through. The columns were extremely helpful in stopping our opponent from gaining a foothold. Two-deep columns of players are the most fundamental screen, and are the closest thing to a dictionary definition of a Blood Bowl screen. They're called the "Elf Screen" because they're extremely good at keeping elfs from breaking through your defense, but they can be used against bashy teams just fine. Elfs have an affinity for sneaking through and around tackle zones, and the purpose of the Elf Screen is to make Elfs take really risky dodges and decrease their odds of making it through your defense to go score. Here's an example of what the standard "Elf Screen" looks like.  Let's pretend it's turn 16, you're tied against elfs, and you need to make one final formation to block the elfs and keep them from getting past you and scoring. The end zone is just to the right of the screen. Sure, they can dodge right through your screen, but that's going to be a lot of dodge rolls through multiple tackle zones, which is doable, but very difficult. Ultmately, you need to make the odds of success for your opponent as small as possible and hope they don't have godly dice. There's a couple important things about the Elf Screen which make it the best screen setup for ensuring your opponent has a hard time making it through your death wall. 1. Horizontal Spacing The side-to-side spacing of your columns (or your players in general) is important for maximizing your coverage. Let's look at some different spacing setups.  Among all of these options, it should be pretty clear that 2 squares of spacing between your columns is the best.  Why? It lets you spread your players out as far as possible without leaving any holes in your wall. Moving too far apart is obviously poor because it eliminates the purpose of the screen, but moving your players too close together could be disastrous, as it could allow your opponent room to simply run right around your wall. How can this be applied to player positioning in general? Positioning your players 2 apart in this way is extremely useful in generally keeping fast units from running around you. In the match videos, you might sometimes see me shift zombies a couple squares without really marking anything or punching anybody. Typically, this is to make the best use of their Tackle Zones to block off my opponent from moving around or past me. A lot of the time in a Blood Bowl match, you're simply moving your players around brainlessly. However, if you think about your setup first, you can make use of your own Tackle Zones to keep your opponent from simply walking right into somewhere you don't want him to be. The best example of this is receiving a kickoff. Typically the team which caught the kick will attempt to get the ball and cage up. However, hypercaging early on means your opponent and just sprint right past your and surround you, slowly picking off your cage until it weakens. However, if you use a player or two and position them to block the path with your tackle zones, you can force your opponent to take the long way around, slowing down their retaliation. 2. Vertical Spacing In a perfect world, your columns (or screening players) will simply line up totally equally, vertically. However, the reality of the situation may mean that you have to set up staggered columns, or align your players in an uneven fashion. Let's look at some vertical spacings of players and how that can affect the integrity of your cage.  The arrow represents the path of movement to get through the screen, and the numbers on the squares represent the number of tackle zones the player would need to dodge through to make it through. As you can see, the farther away from dead even, the easier it gets to dodge through. You won't even notice this problem if you're using 2 deep columns or filling that gap with another player, though. It is important to recognize the best way to maximize your coverage while minimizing the number of players you have to use to fill a position, though. Because this is only a 2D game, you only need to worry about horizontal and vertical positioning and spacing (though imagine BB with jet packs, that would be sweet). And, in practice, positioning and spacing becomes second nature and basically instinct. You will quickly learn how to best block off players through experience and through watching opponents stop your players. Of course, don't get married to the idea of the "Elf Screen". Don't think "I need to get this player free so I can complete the full Elf Screen as was taught to me, because anything else would be less efficient". Sometimes it just won't be feasable to get the players together to form a screen. Sometimes you might be better served standing next to your opponent's players and punching the poo poo out of them rather than playing back and screening up. Sometimes a full Elf Screen won't be necessary. Consider this situation.  Do you really need to full Elf Screen? Building two columns would require 4 players, but you might only have three. So, how do you best absorb the blitz? You stick one of the three dudes on the ballcarrier and force your opponent to blitz him off. It eats the blitz while stifling the forward progress of the opponent. And, ultimately, that's the reason you're screening up in the first place. As always, I welcome any constructive criticism (a.k.a. yell at me if you think I'm wrong) and don't be afraid to ask questions. I tried using more pictures, which are annoying to make but hopefully easier to digest than huge walls of text
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Sep 4, 2014 05:37
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It's called the elf screen because elves are the only ones with enough 4 agi dudes to reliably get 6-8 dudes free to stand in perfect columns. 
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Sep 4, 2014 05:46
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GNU Order posted:SCREENS Fantastic. All I would add is that with sound positioning, every one of these techniques can be applied on offense, too. Screen off the sideline from your opponent, and send your ball carrier up that open lane you've created. You don't need a four-corners cage around the ball if your opponent has no hope of dodging through to it! This is why balanced hybrid teams like Humans can be so frustrating. They can do the conservative slow cage up the field for a bit and then change gears when you over-commit to one side or push in to mark everyone. That's when their blitzers get punched free (easily, as they have access to the Guard skill) and setup a screened lane for their catchers (again, easily, because ma7 is relatively fast).
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Sep 4, 2014 05:56
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That's why you injure/maim/kill as many elves as possible. Its the same thing with Dwarves, but so much easier. Are there any teams where it is functionally easier/better/funhaver to ignore the 'bowl' part of Bloodbowl? For example I played a game against an Ogre team that while I won, my opponent gave little to no fucks about the ball and instead just went for as many injuries as possible. My evidence for this is that all of his Ogres had Piling On. I think only one of his PO uses/rerolls ended up in an injury, killing a Skink. He even started fouling with his Squigs or whatever the hell, and I don't think a single one got caught. Seriously, Piling On is a dumb skill.
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Sep 4, 2014 05:59
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Coffeehitler posted:That's why you injure/maim/kill as many elves as possible. Its the same thing with Dwarves, but so much easier. High-TV Chaos. Literally every single one of your mans can get Claws, Mighty Blow, and Piling On on regular rolls. You have 4 ST4 positionals and your linos have Horns, which gives them +1 ST on a blitz. Once you get past paying the Block tax on everybody you can start tearing teams apart. Glidergun fucked around with this message at 06:30 on Sep 4, 2014 |
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Sep 4, 2014 06:21
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Coffeehitler posted:That's why you injure/maim/kill as many elves as possible. Its the same thing with Dwarves, but so much easier. Ogres.txt Seriously, picking ogres usually means that they don't care about winning at all. Chances are that you will lose most of your games and most Ogre players have made peace with that. They are there to break other player's mans. Absolutely nothing on the team can handle the ball so a lot of the time you might just want to leave the drat thing be and just punch more dudes instead. The Snotlings are also really bad so you are incentivised to foul with them constantly. I think the ideal Ogre match is you locating your opponent's best player within range, pushing them over with an ogre and then just swarming snotlings in to kick the poo poo out of them. At some point in the game you may make a half-hearted attempt at a throw-teammate touchdown or an inevitably doomed cage but you mostly just want to repeat the above process until they beat you 3-0. At this point you have won the moral victory because the only players on your team that are likely to ever get injured are lovely Snotlings and you have hopefully murdered at least one of their star players. What is more likely however is that they will not only win the game but you will be unable to break their AV7 no matter how many ogres you throw at them and they will also get a lot of Casualty SPP's by kicking your snotlings around.
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Sep 4, 2014 07:02
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Yeah, by the end of the match I had run out of Skinks. Though I did manage to break my Krox away to get a TD. Everything else was getting punched by Ogres. I think the funniest part may have been the Skink trying to get the ball for a TD while getting manhandled by upwards of 3 snotlings. That match was up there with my trampling a Wood Elf team with the same Lizards as funnest game of BB I've played.
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Sep 4, 2014 07:13
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Khemri are also one of the 'ignore the ball, kill everyone' teams. It's less so in the new LRB, but I certainly remember LRB4 fumbbl days where four mummies with block + mighty blow knocked you down and every skeletons first skill was dirty player (back then it was +2 to injury or armor). Since the goon league post I spectated a few days on fumbbl again to see how they do the new rule book. Sure see a lot of chaos and nurgle who go Block, MB, Claw, PO in that order on over 50% of their players. It's really a strategy of victory through elimination of other players. Once you get a man advantage on the field it just starts snowballing pretty hard.
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Sep 4, 2014 07:16
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I think the only time I have won with ogres has been via ragequit. 6 snortlings (one of them a DP) surrounding your best, currently prone, player are scary, bad statline or not. Jade Star posted:Since the goon league post I spectated a few days on fumbbl again to see how they do the new rule book. Sure see a lot of chaos and nurgle who go Block, MB, Claw, PO in that order on over 50% of their players. It's really a strategy of victory through elimination of other players. Once you get a man advantage on the field it just starts snowballing pretty hard. You only need 1 ballhandler in Chaos, and that's the Beastman that rolls doubles and gets Dodge (maybe an extra backup). Then he gets block and Sure Hands and a couple of mutations or attributes and the ball stays the entire match glued to his hands, leaving the rest of your team to murder everything. This means Clawpomb or Guard for your linedudes, usually. Having that number of killers helps with survibability, too, both by attrition and by having too many killer players for the opposing team to focus on a single one. Chaos can be cute an try to build passers and catchers, but I feel that's playing against the strenghts of the team. Fat Samurai fucked around with this message at 07:52 on Sep 4, 2014 |
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Sep 4, 2014 07:49
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Fat Samurai posted:I think the only time I have won with ogres has been via ragequit. You just gotta roll more +agi and doubles. Beastmen can make for some pro ball handlers: https://fumbbl.com/p/player?player_id=8605937
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Sep 4, 2014 08:52
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Blackmage Yapo posted:You just gotta roll more +agi and doubles. Beastmen can make for some pro ball handlers: https://fumbbl.com/p/player?player_id=8605937 That could be said of Khemri with enough +Agi rolls. I'm a scrub in the dice rolling department. Incidentally, I think I'm going to start a Chaos team and farm the poo poo out of the players, in order to REALLY get the fear ragequit going with pubbies. Do you fire anyone who doesn't roll a double or +Stat as his first level up?
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Sep 4, 2014 09:02
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Nah, a lot of your mans just want block. And you'll get SIs that ruin your Jump Up CWs. Clawpomb + JU. Just need a single double to get your murderwarriors rolling.
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Sep 4, 2014 09:06
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Fat Samurai posted:That could be said of Khemri with enough +Agi rolls. I'm a scrub in the dice rolling department. If you're going to farm a clawpomb nightmare team, make it nurgle. The warriors have extra defense from getting hit back, still can use a goat for ball handling, and rotters are better foulers. Plus you can do it for like 1600TV instead of being north of 2k.
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Sep 4, 2014 09:27
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In other news, this is what happens when AV7 fails you (I remember someone was asking about it earlier in the thread) As I post this my 4 ST linerat dies and I'm down 2-0 v Khorne on my drive after the first half also a bunch of rats edit: Rats.png   had 3 gunners on the pitch for the final drive. Rolled Push/Skull to free the ball on a -2db. Veloxyll fucked around with this message at 11:19 on Sep 4, 2014 |
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Sep 4, 2014 10:46
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That's skaven versus khorne for you. It's an exercise in tying up the Bloodthirster, since making him waste his blitz is lovely on a linerat. Otherwise, he murders all your tough guys and chases your gunners around.
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Sep 4, 2014 13:07
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Fat Samurai posted:You only need 1 ballhandler in Chaos, and that's the Beastman that rolls doubles and gets Dodge (maybe an extra backup). Then he gets block and Sure Hands and a couple of mutations or attributes and the ball stays the entire match glued to his hands, leaving the rest of your team to murder everything. Oh yeah, while you're right about this, it's just I'd never seen such single minded focus on it until watching a bit of fumbbl. I'm a chaos coach too, love 'em (once they're out of the 'Fuuuuuck why doesn't anyone have block?!' stage). But typically you need to diversity you beastmen a bit. At least make sure two take Tackle early to blitz ball runners. Also I typically put a lot of guard on my chaos before things like PO, though honestly my main chaos I play on cyanide only has 1 PO player (a +str goat). The idea of having more than 4 players piling on every turn and having the warriors on the ground half the time too is just kind of watching a new level of excess to me. I built my Chaos to punch guys around and likely cause injuries at the same time, but there is a lot of Guard and Tackle in there to hold the field and knock down dodgies. It's a tough team, I punch, it hurts, and I work up the field or stall the opponents drive using force. It's really quite another thing to see when Block-MB-Claw-PO is the skill choice for nearly every single player on the team with the exceptions being a dirty player or two. There's less focus on the ball. It's like a target of opportunity while the team really only cares about finding the 2DB and piling on everyone until there is no one left.
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Sep 4, 2014 15:02
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Reading this thread and all the talk about Chaos really makes me want to bust out my Elfy Chaos team, so I've signed up in the list of players! Be prepared for the Razzle Dazzle combo of a 3AG + Extra Arm Minotaur and 4AG passing Chaos Warrior.
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Sep 8, 2014 01:35
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Hey! Remember this thread? A combination of tech problems and irl busyness has delayed this match quite a bit, but here it is. SDS and I played a Necro mirror match with his pass-focused Necro team. We did it live, and it ended up taking a real long time through a combination of slow play and spending a lot of time talking, from both of us. After the match was over, I discovered the recording had corrupted. So, I had to re-record the match using Cyanide's replay feature. You'll notice a few differences in the video from this match. The big ones are the colors of the circles below my players, the lack of tackle zones around SDS's players, and the Block die menu being completely gone. If you wanna see which dice were rolled on blocks, you'll have to check the dice log. Also, the timing of the replay vs the real match is a bit different so I did my best to make our commentary sync up to the game but there may be some timing issues between what we say and what happens in the video. So, needless to say, between the live commentary, re-recorded replay video, and slight commentary timing issues, this video is a bit raw. It's also fairly long (an hour and a half where most matches have been about 50-60 minutes total), so instead of cutting it into two halves you can have the whole thing.  With this full video comes some voting! What skill do we give Blitzer (Werewolf with Mighty Blow, Normal Levelup, G/A access)? What skill do we give THE HEAD CHEERLEADER (Ghoul, Normal Levelup, G/A access)? What do we do with our spare cash? 1. Buy a 4th reroll 2. Save it 3. Buy something else Seeing as how we finally (FINALLY) have 13 players, none of whom we need to rebuy right now, this may be the last open buying vote we make. Whether or not we buy the 4th reroll (or another player), we're at the point where we're no longer looking towards buying the next thing, and we can just save our money up for maintenance (aka rebuying dead/crippled guys). If there's anything you really think we need to spend that money on, speak now or forever hold your peace. Because otherwise, the team composition is exactly what it'll be from here on out. Voting ends ~48 hours from now
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Sep 12, 2014 06:35
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 That last half is a perfect example of how one small mistake can make a whole game go to poo poo. Skills on players without skills are kinda boring, so this is pretty predictable. Blitzer rolled singles and doesn't have Block, so he needs it to make his murder clawblow even better. There really aren't any other viable choices. THE HEAD CHEERLEADER is a little more interesting. Block is always good, but we have a fresh Ghoul, and that's a perfect chance for Wrestle on a mobile player. The combination of Wrestle and Strip Ball allows you to remove the ball from a non-Sure Hands ball carrier on a 5/6 chance per dice. Getting Wrestle and Strip Ball on a 7 movement player with Dodge is awesome, and makes running the ball without a cage super-dangerous. Oh, and buy a fourth reroll. You always want to roll with 4 rerolls. Seven Deadly Sins fucked around with this message at 06:41 on Sep 12, 2014 |
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Sep 12, 2014 06:36
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Block Wrestle (KING OF SKILLS) I'm boring, but we need them
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Sep 12, 2014 07:52
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Block Wrestle Reroll
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Sep 12, 2014 08:35
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Spikey posted:Block I'm just gonna run with the pack on this one. Don't really have the freedom to make interesting characters quite yet.
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Sep 12, 2014 09:00
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Block Wrestle Reroll SDS speaks good words.
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Sep 12, 2014 09:18
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Neruz posted:Block Can't argue with that really.
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Sep 12, 2014 12:26
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Neruz posted:Block B/W R it is.
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Sep 12, 2014 13:16
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Block for the puppy dog. not having much luck coming up with a dumb but good ghoul skill Assistant Coach since SDS is wrong on mirror matches. With most teams they're frustrating and boring. Necro are one of the few teams that make it interesting since, as Gnu mentioned in the second half, Necro are good at making holes in defenses, but bad at closing the same holes when they appear. But unlike elves, they only have a few pieces that are fast enough to follow a breakthrough so it's very tenuous and high risk. This is also why Skeletons > Zombies.
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Sep 12, 2014 14:27
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Spikey posted:Block
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Sep 12, 2014 15:55
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Spikey posted:Block Gotta go with this. May be a bit vanilla, but having your bases covered means that you won't gently caress up as often doing the simple poo poo, and that saves your rerolls for the crazy plays.
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Sep 12, 2014 18:00
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