Let's Play Blood Bowl - Chaos Team

Honestly, you guys don't spam this thread up enough, and it's getting a little top-heavy.

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Sorry.

Jim Cojones said:

Honestly, you guys don't spam this thread up enough, and it's getting a little top-heavy.

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Sorry.

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Thanks.

Also, it'll be good to have your heavy minotaur firepower back next game. I checked out the Lizardman team and their big un, the Kroxigor, is only level 1. Should be able to tackle their sauri/kroxi line with just chaos warriors and the minotaur, leaving the beastmen free to stomp out skinks.

Yay! New races. I haven't played against Lizardmen or Goblin myself, with ANY of my teams. So, looking forward to seeing these matches.

Looking forward to seeing some new races at last. Playing against lizardmen is going to be about hunting down their skinks. The rest of their players have a miserable AG of 1, which means they almost never manage to pick up the ball, nevermind pass or catch it.

Arrrg, some of those humies were still standing! I blame myself for not being brutal enough. Well, I'll just have to work twice as hard to tech those scaleskins the meaning of fear...

I want to see a match involving the goblins!

OldSkoolKamikaze said:

I want to see a match involving the goblins!

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Oh, me too. The last time I played gobbos was with a dwarf team, and it was FUN.

Also, photobucket tells me I'm at 75% bandwidth used. When does that reset, end of the month? Might be a good time to switch to a new account after another update or two, to prevent me from hitting the bandwidth limit deadon, rite? Not really used to photobucket.

For your LOS men, do not undersetimate guard. Put 1 guy with guard on the line and he'll have a st 5 guy on one side, and if next to the mino, a str 6 guy on the other. I have two flanking my mino and its sick. Once you crush their line, they're also great in the cage

Guard is a great feat, yes. But chaos warriors rarely need it since they're already quite stong naturally (if there's anything natural with chaos creatures).

I'm surprised I'm still interested in this thread though I've been playing the game for the whole week. There's definitely something special about bloodbowl. I'm even considering getting myself the TT one. It would remind me of the good old days, my hanging around with smart jerks with greasy hair and opaque glasses, my first beer my godfather offered me, my crush for Anne-Sophie Monaco who sat next to me in Latin classes, my broken wrist during a judo match, my first read of Sade's Philosophie dans le boudoir, my listening to Nirvana believeing that was great, my wish to live in Paris cause "that's where the real shit happens"... Funny how Bloodbowl brings back all those teenage souvenirs.

Guard for who, the chaos warrior defensive tackles or the beastmen inside linebackers?

It's certainly an option, though there's still enough more vital skills to take before, including tackle.

Match 14!

Lizardmen! Booooo!



Checking their team out, there's two things of note: their Kroxigor is just level one, and the Sauri are not particularly high-level on average, in fact they have one of the worst spreads of SPPs I've ever seen.
And they specialized two skinks in catching and one in throwing. Gotta watch out there.

I bought an extra reroll before the match. I'm painfully outvaluing the opposition teams, I have a team value of around 190k while they have 140k (the Elves are even down to 100k). So naturally inducement rains down like mana from the sky.



They spend it well, but honestly that star player is not a big deal. A more agile saurus, oh boohoo.

I form the wall when kicking off. Why do I form the wall? Well, it looks to me like they're fielding mostly sauruses, and not skinks. In fact they only field 3 skins on their first possession. So they're looking to brawl, and I better meet them head-on if I don't want to be outbrawled.



Star player my behind, all he can do is knock himself out on Jim's fist.



Looking good. Those skinks barely form a protective barrier.



He escapes, but I'm winning the brawl, which freed up Monocause to blitz the runner, down him and pick up the ball.



Lizardmen are pretty good blitzers. It's very hard to stop the skinks from going wherever they want, even with tentacles, and a single free saurus is enough to provide the muscle. At the same time, sauruses are incredibly easy to cover, since they can't dodge for shit.



I'm concentrating on downing skinks with the logic that with no skins, no one on their team can carry the ball.



Bit further down here, this is a bit bizarre. Two times in a row a player tried to pick up the ball (first OldSkoolKamikaze, then Vortexx), fails and the ball bounces to kingcomrade who does manage to hold on to it. It's like he's a ball magnet. Also makes him a target for blitzing, tho'



Soon Vortexx has the ball again and runs up field. Jim Cojones causes the first injury of the match. These guys are hardier than I imagined, tho' we have notched up a few KOs.

Vortexx needs two going for its to make it, or he needs to hand off the ball to HanoverF. That's one 3+ roll, or two 2+ ones. I decide to try for the hand-off.



D'oh!

Half-time.



We had injured only one and knocked out another, but Jim is doing us all a service here, KOing the star player.



See? Skink-blitzes are hard to prevent, but they also tend to do little damage because they're so weak. A both down here, which means little trouble, as I can just down the second skink, get Vortexx back up and hand him the ball again.



Boom! Rabidredneck knocks the Kroxigor out. They're down a lot of firepower now, and I should be able to just overwhelm their Sauruses (Sauri?) with numbers.



And this is what happens if you keep dodging, you stupid little skink. Sadly, no SPP follows from tackle-injuries.



Again! They have only 7 players on the field now, which means I can take it easy sauntering to the endzone.



Vortexx is against the endzone and...hands the ball over to Ogg. Yip, I had rerolls left, turns left, no threat of an immediate blitz (I thought), so why not risk a hand-off to have Jr there share the glory?



Why not indeed!

Honestly, no worries though, kingcomrade just brought down the Saurus. There's a reroll left so it doesn't matter if I use Ogg or Vortexx for the pickup, so I just use Ogg again. OH DEAR!



TD for OJ!

They get to wind down the match, but nothing exciting happens.



Bored the audience to tears, but got me my fan rating back and a bucket of money. Hurray money! Quite a few KOs but few casualties.

I could still use a clarification on what determines winnings, and why I get -10K dollahs anyway.



Forgot to take a shot of the stats but the season stats basically show the same thing: MVP for Rabidredneck, one casualty for Jim Cojones, one TD for Ogg Jr. A measly 10 SPP. No surprise, no level-ups.

That was a surprisingly tough match, mostly because they basically fielded an army of Sauruses and just outmuscled me for a good portion of the match. I won the battle of attrition, but if they'd lucked out into some injuries or KOs it would've been a different story.

According to the TT rules, once team value gets over 1.75 million, they start paying Spiraling Expenses. Pretty much we've moved into a higher tax bracket.

Also from the TT rules for game winnings, each coach rolls D6+FAME (Fan Advantage ModifiEr)*10,000.

WOO! MVP for me!!

Rabidredneck said:

WOO! MVP for me!!

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You earned it, taking out the Kroxigor.

It's funny how you can really tell the game balance shifted. Once their star player and Kroxigor were out, I was clearly winning the brawl, and when their two skinks went down, they clearly had no chance anymore (hence my risking the hand-off).

Brother None said:

And bgillisp was right, this is a 2-team playoff only cup (is that indicated anywhere? I don't want to get caught out by surprise or summat). I finished second behind the Hummies, so we're playing each other for the cup in an immediate final.

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Nope, I didn't find it anywhere, it just surprised me too. Anyone found where to tell this kind of suff?

Hopefully your cup 4 playoff goes well! I had the crasiest final game of the playoffs ever against the Orcs. 1 - 1 tie at turn 16 so we went to overtime (4 extra turns granted, if still tied 4 more turns granted, and so on), but no one had re-rolls left, then I and the computer couldn't make any rolls to save our life. We had a hilarious 3 turns of both of us botching the ball pick up or rolling attacker down rolls until I finally fielded it and succeeded in getting it into the endzone. Took 24 turns to win that game, mostly because of all the botched rolls on both sides!

bgillisp said:

Brother None said:

And bgillisp was right, this is a 2-team playoff only cup (is that indicated anywhere? I don't want to get caught out by surprise or summat). I finished second behind the Hummies, so we're playing each other for the cup in an immediate final.

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Nope, I didn't find it anywhere, it just surprised me too. Anyone found where to tell this kind of suff?

Hopefully your cup 4 playoff goes well! I had the crasiest final game of the playoffs ever against the Orcs. 1 - 1 tie at turn 16 so we went to overtime (4 extra turns granted, if still tied 4 more turns granted, and so on), but no one had re-rolls left, then I and the computer couldn't make any rolls to save our life. We had a hilarious 3 turns of both of us botching the ball pick up or rolling attacker down rolls until I finally fielded it and succeeded in getting it into the endzone. Took 24 turns to win that game, mostly because of all the botched rolls on both sides!

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That's pretty cool, actually. I mean granted, the game isn't exactly the most realistic to begin with, but running our of re-rolls during overtime does somewhat simulate the aspect of your team being "tired" and running out of gas, especially considering that each re-roll is supposed to emulate the overall talent-level of your team.

On the main screen (where you can go to rankings, team roster, etc., there's a link to Matches, with a ? beside it. You can click the ? for the tourney rules, including teams playing, what type of ruleset being used (playoff, championship, cup), who makes the playoff cut etc.

And yes Spiralling Expenses are a bitch. Now you see why I am ruthless with any injured players. You end up really paying for them in TV. Same TV as a regular player, so they get the same inducements and count the same toward your expenses. Don't get me wrong, I love seein my alter-ego grind fools into dust. It'd be tough to ditch him now, though, with so many skills.

Shuma said:

You end up really paying for them in TV. Same TV as a regular player, so they get the same inducements and count the same toward your expenses. Don't get me wrong, I love seein my alter-ego grind fools into dust. It'd be tough to ditch him now, though, with so many skills.

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Mantiis status as a level-one player is still up in the air. Gotta pull the trigger on that one sooner rather than later, tho'

That said, I don't see the big deal about niggling injuries. If they were stat-decreases I'd dump the player in a heartbeat, but the likelyhood of injury is so low for chaos players. So far Shuma has had only one injury since picking up the niggling injury.

In other words, I don't see it as worth dumping players over.

Brother None said:

Shuma said:

You end up really paying for them in TV. Same TV as a regular player, so they get the same inducements and count the same toward your expenses. Don't get me wrong, I love seein my alter-ego grind fools into dust. It'd be tough to ditch him now, though, with so many skills.

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Mantiis status as a level-one player is still up in the air. Gotta pull the trigger on that one sooner rather than later, tho'

That said, I don't see the big deal about niggling injuries. If they were stat-decreases I'd dump the player in a heartbeat, but the likelyhood of injury is so low for chaos players. So far Shuma has had only one injury since picking up the niggling injury.

In other words, I don't see it as worth dumping players over.

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Yeah, keep him around until he gets a REAL injury. Seems like the way to go. I am really biased against niggles cause in the previous version of the game, they were fucking horrendous and grounds for immediate termination. Now, they're not so bad.

Thanks for the let's play. I have no problem with the Blood-Bowl-thread glut, I read it all.

So, winnings. It's not transparent at all, but it looks like the rules* are being implemented, mostly. Very convoluted, I think as a result of nerfing Fan Factor in LRB5.0. You can see it's a heavily revised, 15-year-old game here. You start with FAME (Fan Advantage ModifiEr) for the match, which is determined by a dice roll contest, modified by Fan Factor: Your number of fans attending is a 2d6 roll + Fan Factor (then x1000 for color) and your FAME = 0 if you have equal or fewer fans attending than your opponent, 1 if you have more, and 2 if you have at least twice as many.

Nope, none of this is apparent in the video game. Anyway, at the end of the match:

Generate winnings for the match. Each coach rolls a D6
and adds their FAME (see page 18). Your team receives this
amount x 10,000 gold pieces as winnings for the match. If
you won or tied the match you receive an additional 10,000
gold pieces. If you won the match you may also choose to re-
roll your D6, but you must accept the second result even if it
is worse than the first. Remember that teams that concede a
match do not receive any winnings.

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So you are mostly at the mercy of the dice again. Winning or drawing only gets you that bonus of 10000 and in the video game you don't get that D6 reroll if you win. Even huge Fan Factors (they go as high as 18) would only get you 20000 at the most. Max winnings are 90000 (with 80000 much more likely) but 10-60000 of any winnings come from a D6 roll, win or lose.

I'm reading the rulebook too much so I thought I'd share. Now you should know what Fan Factor does too, which helps a little when you build a new team. For completeness, here's how it changes after a match. Winning the match doesn't guarantee it goes up, especially if it's already high:

If a coach lost or tied the match he should roll 2D6. The
winning coach should roll 3d6. If a coach won or tied the
match and his roll is greater than his team’s current Fan
Factor then his team’s Fan Factor increases by one point. If
the coach lost or tied the match and his roll is less than his
team’s current Fan Factor then his team’s Fan Factor
decreases by one point.

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* At http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/conte ... Id=4800003 . I didn't find them included with the game, actually.

I meant to include that FAME also modifies contests of D6 and D3 rolls in kick-off events. Read the Kick-Off Table in the rules and that should cover everything that FAME, and thus Fan Factor, affects.

(shameless ad for Ogg's BB avatars)

Hey rabidredneck

What is it, Monocause?

You heard who we playing next? The Lowdown Rats!

Gobbos?! You gotta be shitting me.

I shit you not, Shuma. It's squishy time!

Hurray!

Hurray!

Mooooo!

...

Hurray!

(/shameless ad for Ogg's BB avatars)

Blood for the Blood God!

Match 15!

We've finally arrived, guys, fighting the (in)famous Lowdown Rats. Don't expect them to go down too easy, tho'. They have 3 secret weapons (a pogo stick, fanatic and looney, tell you more about them as we encounter them) and count 'em: two trolls. Two! The gobbos go down easy, but the trolls do not, as they can even regenerate from injury.

They get a heap of cash but apparently have no problems filling the field, they buy no replacements or star players, instead going for a bribe the ref (which I think allows them to keep a secret weapon on the pitch one time, but I'm not sure) and an extra re-roll (for a whoppin' EIGHT total rerolls!)

I'm receiving the ball...



The fools are wasting their secret weapons, both the pogo stick (who has the ball to kick off) and the fanatic (between NiM and Monocause) are on the field. Notice the stats on the fanatic: with a strength of 7 this is a hardy bastard to bring down. He moves erratically, often hurting teammates as much as us. As a rule, I tend to just try to avoid him (seems to be my main tactic with secret weapons, really)



The bigger they are...



Holy shit. What the Fuck. Barbecue.

I decide I'm feeling like taking a risk so I let Monocause - with two red dice - make a block. I roll up an attacker down and defender down, so I reroll: reroll gives attacker down and both down. AI picks both down (naturally), but Monocause has block. And BAM! Injury! Apothecary brings him back but woooh-doggy, that was fun.



Tentacles prevent a blitz. Oddly enough they try multiple times to blitz away from OldSkoolKamikaze, and his tentacles just hold 'em off every time.



And there goes their other secret weapon! Swafag (lol wut) is taken out by OldSkoolKamikaze, and dies! Buh-bye, pogo dude, you shan't be missed.



By this point I'm getting a bit annoyed. Not because Cojones just threw another both down on their troll (dude really needs the block skill), but because all those Gobbos on the right side of the field are still standing. The Seaskuas just kept dicing up defender stumbles or pushed, which is useless against all these Gobbos who have dodge.
ARGH.
The dodge skill will keep popping up its ugly head saving those Gobbos throughout the match.



kingcomrade and Biz take care of the lone Goblin who managed to follow them, and saunter to right in front of the endzone, as the midfield (attempt at) slaughter continues.



Fouling up the troll gets HanoverF sent off. The referee, a goblin himself, is obviously partial as hell.

Booo! Kill the ref!

Down in our half of the field, I spot Gritgob, an annoying level 4 gobbo with two +stat bonuses (agility and movement allowed). A dangerous player, and I find myself thinking it'd be nice to get rid of him.



Rabidredneck hears my plea, and send Gritgob off to Goblin Valhalla.



Whaaaahaheeei! Touchdown, SerratedBiz!

Their troll returns, and despite a few KOs they still field a full team, including...



The looney. Be careful around this one, he's dangerous. They also put their fanatic on the field. It's a bit stupid of the AI, to be honest, there's only 2 turns left in this half anyway, so he's wasting his secret weapons.



Doi doi! They never seem to manage to keep two trolls on the field for long.

Kingcomrade blitzed straight through to the ball-carrier. The goblin tries to escape but fails his dodge.



Kingcomrade blitzes the goblin left to guard the ball and picks it up. A badly planned move by me, tho', as you can see moving the square down to pick up the ball will put him out of range to score.

We can still have some fun slau-



The hell?

Wondering how the lowly gobbos did this? They fouled him. Oh yes. Gobbos are experts at fouling up prone players.

Their player initially gets sent off but they use their bribe to keep him in the game.

Anyway, I apothecary him back, figuring that without their secret weapons and trolls the goblins won't do all that much damage in the second half.

Speaking of which...

Second half!
They have two players dead, two sent off, and a troll plus two gobbos knocked out. They still field 9 players, but it's a troll and eight regular Gobbos. No worries.



We get a blitz event, and I manage to get kingcomrade to within two squares of the ball before it even lands!

They knock him down though (with 4 gobbos), but do not pick up the ball, and after downing the troll, I move in plenty of players to have a bit of a fight there in their half.



Mukshag fails epically at dodging Monocause.



kingcomrade, not happy with them tackling him, jumps up for a blitz and injures yet another Gobbo. Hurray!



They get the ball again. Check out their overstocked injury ward in the background.

The ball carrier survives two blocks thanks to his dodge skill (yip, more defender stumbles rolls). But his support crew is crumbling as we KO two nearby Gobbos, and finally...



Push him off the pitch, where the crowd injures him. The ball is - surprisingly - thrown back right to us!

And, since Vortexx is nearby anyway...



One.



Two.



TOUCHDOWN!



Next possession they field 6 players, so I decide to kick it right at one of 'em at the LoS just to see him freak out.

Witit picks up the ball as their trolls knocks himself out on a failed block on Monocause. Ogg Jr blitzes in!



Derrr.

Reroll!



HURRAY!

He fails his ball pick-up, and it goes out of bounds, thrown back in near the Line of Scrimmage again. At this point I still have a scoring opportunity, but it's theoretical. I need to have Vortexx go for it to pick-up the ball (and needed my final reroll for that) and then position Ogg Jr to within TD range. Vortexx will need to perform a handoff without rerolls. Oh dear.



But first some comedic filler as Cojones damages Figmuk's back. Hilarious!

Ok guys, fingers crossed? You ready for this?



SUCCESS!!



Go team!



Two deaths, five casualties (plus two from tackles), three touchdowns. Total slaughter.



A rain of well-spread SPPs follow.



Monocause gets tackle as I'm growing so tired of those dodgy bastards (and the elves are up next)



And Ogg Jr gets block. You're making your pappy proud, son!

And still NOT A SINGLE FUCKING STAT-UP. I swear this game is fucking with me.

And with that match, we're a lock for the playoffs. That's right, the Elves beat the Lizardmen, so the next match is just to determine who gets first place and who gets second.

Oh, so kind of an exhibition match.

Oh well, in that case we should just play it low-key, friendly-like, avoid causing injuries, y'know...

...

AHAHAHAAHAHAH!

Mooooo!

(finally got enough to replace Mantiis now, yet I'm still in doubt. Damn this doubt!)

Brother None said:

Guard for who, the chaos warrior defensive tackles or the beastmen inside linebackers?

It's certainly an option, though there's still enough more vital skills to take before, including tackle.

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For your defensive lineman(chaos warriors in yours and most setups). They don't need tackle because, outside of star players, no one on the line has dodge. Guard is needed if you want to dominate the line when you face Lizardman(as you saw) or Orcs or another Chaos team as they all have a plethora of st:4 players. With guard its very easy to get two dice blocks to smash the line. And when you move into a cage, they make excellent blockers.

Now for blitzers, tackle is way more important. Many Ball carriers have dodge and tackle gives you an additional 1/6 chance to knock them down. Lord know nothing is more annoying than a guy with dodge, block, and side step. You can't knock him down and when you push him, he just gets closer to the ball!

Awesome LP btw. I've been playing the game a shitton and still love reading your LP.

Don't miss the gobbo update above your post, bardon.

bardon777 said:

For your defensive lineman(chaos warriors in yours and most setups). They don't need tackle because, outside of star players, no one on the line has dodge. Guard is needed if you want to dominate the line when you face Lizardman(as you saw) or Orcs or another Chaos team as they all have a plethora of st:4 players. With guard its very easy to get two dice blocks to smash the line. And when you move into a cage, they make excellent blockers.

Now for blitzers, tackle is way more important. Many Ball carriers have dodge and tackle gives you an additional 1/6 chance to knock them down. Lord know nothing is more annoying than a guy with dodge, block, and side step. You can't knock him down and when you push him, he just gets closer to the ball!

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Hmmm. Hadn't actually looked at it from that angle. I remember what a nightmare the line of black orcs was for my dwarf team.

So tackle for my outside linebacker beastmen and defensive end chaos warriors and guard for my two defensive tackle chaos warriors? Sounds good. So far I'm still busy giving everyone block so most characters (except the runners) are pretty open in development path, though I guess NiM and Mantiis can switch position as NiM already has tackle and is currently positioned as a DT.

Could someone explain the secret weapons in this game? All I have are the TT rules and chainsaws are the only weapon they have rules for. So whats with Deathrollers, Pogo Sticks and the like?