Why ClawPOMB is broken
Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2016 6:59 pm
As requested by VoodooMike and Darkson, who think that ClawPOMB is not a broken mechanic. They feel that nobody in the community has ever presented a compelling case as to why this is broken and I agree with them that the burden of proof is on me to demonstrate my case. Please feel free to move to another forum if this is not the right one.
Introduction
Whilst it feels obvious to many that ClawPOMB is a broken mechanic, I am told under good authority that there are some serious people that do not see an issue with it. The following commentary is an explanation of the reasons why the rule is broken.
What do we mean by a broken mechanic
When you use terms in a jargonistic sense it is often a good idea to define clearly what you mean so in order to prevent misunderstanding. A broken mechanic is one that reduces the gameplay of a system. Games should be a competition between two or more players that gives all players a high level of ability to compete or a high level of entertainment. They do not need to be equal, and balance (although not necessary) does not need to be even.
So what does this rather vague generic phrase mean? In a game like Blood Bowl which is seen as a competition between two players it should mean that skill plays a large part in the outcome of the game. It is not the only consideration (team match ups, dice rolls, how tired you are), but it should remain a primary factor. Whilst the best players will not always win you would expect their skill to see them through the majority of the time. Alternatively where the result is unimportant to the players participating the game should provide a level of entertainment. This means that both players should be allowed to influence the game and participate in the aesthetic components of it (such as moving players and rolling dice).
Broken mechanics are ones that severely disrupt this. Whilst you would not expect a game to be perfect such that almost all rules will provide some level of reduction to these things, we accept (and love) the vagaries of these sorts of games with good grace, because we know that ultimately it was a game of skill for both players and/or good fun.
Examples of broken mechanics in other games (often theoretical)
Chess is a game of skill between two players, and whilst one might blunder or head in an interesting direction that gets them into trouble often the skill of the player is the main factor to determine who wins. Now let's change the rules so that the first player to take an opposing piece wins - we'll call it the first blood rule. Now we see that White wins every time by the sequence 1. e3 ? 2. Qf3 taking the f-file pawn on the next turn. This removes all level of skill from the game, and everyone would stop playing.
Warhammer 40k at various stages has been a broken game, denoted by GW by the presence of 'shooty armies of death'. These are forces that have such a strong fire output that they can overwhelm an enemy almost immediately. The balance that they too are easy to kill results in a game that whilst seemingly balanced is also broken. The player who wins the first turn roll amasses an unassailable advantage. Whilst overall the game will result in a 50/50 result it does so on a single dice roll and removes almost all player skill at the same time. A similar effect was seen by the rhino rush armies, but to even greater effect as they could often start the game out of sight and then use smoke on the first turn in the open.
I play a fun but silly game called Wizardology. The objective is to collect your 4 wizardy components from about the maze and there are a number of strategies that you can employ. It also has a fun PVP element where you can take cards or items from other players. Overall for a short silly game it is good fun and definitely skill based although the emphasis is on the former. There is a square in the game where you can cast a spell on an opponent, with the result being decided randomly. Half the results are good for you and half good for the opponent, so there is risk involved. However one of the results is that you swap items with the other player completely. So if they have 4/4 and are trying to get to the exit to win and you have 0/4 you can try to hit this result. If you get it the opposing player, who is now 4 items behind has only one option - the same thing you just did. And if they do it then vice versa. This results in a terrible situation where you can do nothing for 99% of the game, get one lucky roll, and then win. We house ruled the result so that you just stole one item instead and it produced a much more fun game.
So what about ClawPOMB?
Because it displays the same attributes as the above situations. The notation I use will be {x%/y%} where x% represents the chance to cause a casualty and y% is the chance of removing the player from a KO. This assumes no moderations based upon the victim's skills (Thick Skull, Stunty, etc.). Please feel free to check the maths.
A standard knock down on an AV8 player has a 27.8% chance to break armour, and then a 16.7% chance to cause a caualty for a total removal chance of 4.6%, or about 1 in 20 knock downs. In a typical game of about 50 blocks with a good chance of knocking opponents down that would result in about 2 casualties. The chance of a player removal (KO + Cas) is 41.7% on the injury table for a total chance of 11.6%. So in addition to the 2 casualties you would expect another 2 or 3 KOs.
Against other AV we can see the following base levels:
AV7 = {6.9%/17.4%}
AV8 = {4.6%/11.6%}
AV9 = {2.8%/6.9%}
AV10 = {1.4%/3.5%}
This is a standard table that most good coaches will have memorised and factored into their strategies - that is to say don't rely too much on any individual block to put numbers in your favour!
Now let's look again with ClawPOMB:
AV7 = {30.5%/57.2%}
AV8 = {30.5%/57.2%}
AV9 = {30.5%/57.2%}
AV10 = {30.5%/57.2%}
All armour levels are the same due to Claw, and Piling On is assumed to be on both the armour and the injury in this calculation. We see that at worst the skill combination is about 3 times as effective at taking an enemy off the pitch. At best it is about 22 times better at causing a casualty.
It is clearly very powerul but this by itself does not make it broken. There are lots of powerful strategies in many games that result in balanced play, competitive skillful play, or entertaining play. ClawPOMB however does none of these.
So why is ClawPOMB broken?
1. There is no player skill counter to ClawPOMB. This removes any counter strategy and in doing so reduces the game out of the skill of the competing players. With over a 50% chance to remove an opposing player from a knockdown a team will quickly move into an unassailable numbers lead that exacerbates the problem as the remaining defenders find it impossible to maintain a defensive position regardless of the skill level of the opponent.
2. There is no common build counter to ClawPOMB. The only useful skill to take is Fend and that is a very fringe choice, hardly recommended at all on the Fumbbl build choice list (which is the best evidence I can find for it). Opposing players can focus on preventing knockdowns through the use of Block and Guard but this is an ineffective strategy. A similarly developed team with 3 skills each will leave lots of players still vulnerable to the ClawPOMBer, who will no doubt take the blitz action. And once the defending side are a few players down, like in the first point they find themselves unable to form a proper defence (i.e they get overlapped and ganged up on).
3. Mirror matches are luck. One option is to also build for ClawPOMB. This creates a mirror match similar to the shooty army of death. The player that gets the first attack can gain a fast number advantage that results in an unassailable lead. The defender ClawPOMBer will then be exposed and removed earlier. Even if the luck does go against the attacker we are then just into a luck based situation that depends more on the dice rolling than the player skill, again resulting in a broken mechanic.
4. There is no down side to taking ClawPOMB. It is likely that the ClawPOMBer will place excessive priorities on the safety of that player once on the floor making fouling a low probability event of removing that player (and again very dice focused rather than skill focused). Also there is no TV adjustment. Blood Bowl attempts to create more even matches by adjusting the TV of the team based upon the assets that they have in a way that aspires to be correlated linearly with the benefit of that asset. Take another player and your TV goes up. Skills have a set price based upon access and make no note of synergy. We know that a blodger is a good combination, with teams paying 40 or 50TV to access. ClawPOMB is a 60-80TV payment for a skill combination that can single handedly win the game. This is not a sufficient downside to prevent people from taking it, and whilst TV management is an important aspect of the game it has to be done with a view that the TV you pay is proportional to some degree to the asset you have gained. If ClawPOMB cost you 300TV such that your opponent could take a great star player, a chef, or a wizard and change then you might not consider it viable.
5. It removes the entertainment from the game. Blood Bowl is fun because you get to move your players and roll dice. If you are having all your guys stripped from you in a way that you feel you cannot prevent then the game starts to feel unpleasant. We have all had a situation where the dice has gone against you but you can feel that was either a 1%ile game or you made a few mistakes that let your opponent take blocks you need not have given. ClawPOMB is not like either of those, it just munches through you. And so when you end the game with few players that are not able to do a lot (exacerbated remember by all those stuns as well) then you have not really played the game yourself. You have not been able to make choices, rolled the dice, and participated. You have had the gaming equivalent of being lined up against a wall and shot.
Some common counter-whines that are not good arguments:
Q1. But blood bowl is a game about killing as well; you just want to make it soft elf ball!
A1. Not at all. I am happy for blood bowl to be even bloodier. What I am looking for is a mechanic which more evenly distributes the blood and incorporates it onto both sides (not necessarily evenly) in a way that does not reward a single dominant choice. For example fouling can reward good positional play but few teams can afford the very high sending off chance relative to the damage they expect to do.
Q2. It cannot be a broken mechanic because not many teams can take it.
A2. I advocate the creation of a new star player. He has stats of 10 for everything and all the positive skills, however he can only be taken by teams that I coach. Now as just one player in a community of tens of thousands this represents a mechanic that is far far rarer than ClawPOMB. And it would still be a broken mechanic. Rarity of a mechanic is no defence to how broken it is.
Q3. It is not a broken mechanic for tournaments because they prevent skill stacking.
A3. One of the reasons why tournaments have to prevent skill stacking is because of monstrosities like this. Therefore the tournament rules are a band aid to prevent the appearance of a broken mechanic and not a fix to the mechanic itself.
Q4. It is only a problem in endless open matchmaking, so it is the fault of that environment.
A4. This is just a plain dumb point. It is not the environment that makes it broken because the environment doesn't get broken for the million other things that is in the Blood Bowl rule set. Is AG5 broken in short leagues? No. Is it broken in MM? No. Is ClawPOMB broken in short leagues? Yes. Is it broken in MM? Yes. All the same rules apply; like tournaments just because an environment does not reduce its accessibility does not mean the fault is with the environment. This claim is an admission that ClawPOMB is broken because if it is not broken at all then it is not broken in any environment.
Summary
The key component of a broken mechanic is one that either removes the skill or the fun from the game. By increasing the chance of removing players by up to 20 times with no detrimental effect, and no effective counter strategy, you end up with a rule set that reduces player skill to a tiny amount, forces a luck based mirror match, or ruins the fun for one of the players who sees their team deleted beyond any influence they might have.
It is not that I don't like it. It is not because there is a concensus. It is not because it is only a problem in one environment (it is a problem in all environments just some actively move to prevent it). Maths. Evidence. Logic. Reason.
Introduction
Whilst it feels obvious to many that ClawPOMB is a broken mechanic, I am told under good authority that there are some serious people that do not see an issue with it. The following commentary is an explanation of the reasons why the rule is broken.
What do we mean by a broken mechanic
When you use terms in a jargonistic sense it is often a good idea to define clearly what you mean so in order to prevent misunderstanding. A broken mechanic is one that reduces the gameplay of a system. Games should be a competition between two or more players that gives all players a high level of ability to compete or a high level of entertainment. They do not need to be equal, and balance (although not necessary) does not need to be even.
So what does this rather vague generic phrase mean? In a game like Blood Bowl which is seen as a competition between two players it should mean that skill plays a large part in the outcome of the game. It is not the only consideration (team match ups, dice rolls, how tired you are), but it should remain a primary factor. Whilst the best players will not always win you would expect their skill to see them through the majority of the time. Alternatively where the result is unimportant to the players participating the game should provide a level of entertainment. This means that both players should be allowed to influence the game and participate in the aesthetic components of it (such as moving players and rolling dice).
Broken mechanics are ones that severely disrupt this. Whilst you would not expect a game to be perfect such that almost all rules will provide some level of reduction to these things, we accept (and love) the vagaries of these sorts of games with good grace, because we know that ultimately it was a game of skill for both players and/or good fun.
Examples of broken mechanics in other games (often theoretical)
Chess is a game of skill between two players, and whilst one might blunder or head in an interesting direction that gets them into trouble often the skill of the player is the main factor to determine who wins. Now let's change the rules so that the first player to take an opposing piece wins - we'll call it the first blood rule. Now we see that White wins every time by the sequence 1. e3 ? 2. Qf3 taking the f-file pawn on the next turn. This removes all level of skill from the game, and everyone would stop playing.
Warhammer 40k at various stages has been a broken game, denoted by GW by the presence of 'shooty armies of death'. These are forces that have such a strong fire output that they can overwhelm an enemy almost immediately. The balance that they too are easy to kill results in a game that whilst seemingly balanced is also broken. The player who wins the first turn roll amasses an unassailable advantage. Whilst overall the game will result in a 50/50 result it does so on a single dice roll and removes almost all player skill at the same time. A similar effect was seen by the rhino rush armies, but to even greater effect as they could often start the game out of sight and then use smoke on the first turn in the open.
I play a fun but silly game called Wizardology. The objective is to collect your 4 wizardy components from about the maze and there are a number of strategies that you can employ. It also has a fun PVP element where you can take cards or items from other players. Overall for a short silly game it is good fun and definitely skill based although the emphasis is on the former. There is a square in the game where you can cast a spell on an opponent, with the result being decided randomly. Half the results are good for you and half good for the opponent, so there is risk involved. However one of the results is that you swap items with the other player completely. So if they have 4/4 and are trying to get to the exit to win and you have 0/4 you can try to hit this result. If you get it the opposing player, who is now 4 items behind has only one option - the same thing you just did. And if they do it then vice versa. This results in a terrible situation where you can do nothing for 99% of the game, get one lucky roll, and then win. We house ruled the result so that you just stole one item instead and it produced a much more fun game.
So what about ClawPOMB?
Because it displays the same attributes as the above situations. The notation I use will be {x%/y%} where x% represents the chance to cause a casualty and y% is the chance of removing the player from a KO. This assumes no moderations based upon the victim's skills (Thick Skull, Stunty, etc.). Please feel free to check the maths.
A standard knock down on an AV8 player has a 27.8% chance to break armour, and then a 16.7% chance to cause a caualty for a total removal chance of 4.6%, or about 1 in 20 knock downs. In a typical game of about 50 blocks with a good chance of knocking opponents down that would result in about 2 casualties. The chance of a player removal (KO + Cas) is 41.7% on the injury table for a total chance of 11.6%. So in addition to the 2 casualties you would expect another 2 or 3 KOs.
Against other AV we can see the following base levels:
AV7 = {6.9%/17.4%}
AV8 = {4.6%/11.6%}
AV9 = {2.8%/6.9%}
AV10 = {1.4%/3.5%}
This is a standard table that most good coaches will have memorised and factored into their strategies - that is to say don't rely too much on any individual block to put numbers in your favour!
Now let's look again with ClawPOMB:
AV7 = {30.5%/57.2%}
AV8 = {30.5%/57.2%}
AV9 = {30.5%/57.2%}
AV10 = {30.5%/57.2%}
All armour levels are the same due to Claw, and Piling On is assumed to be on both the armour and the injury in this calculation. We see that at worst the skill combination is about 3 times as effective at taking an enemy off the pitch. At best it is about 22 times better at causing a casualty.
It is clearly very powerul but this by itself does not make it broken. There are lots of powerful strategies in many games that result in balanced play, competitive skillful play, or entertaining play. ClawPOMB however does none of these.
So why is ClawPOMB broken?
1. There is no player skill counter to ClawPOMB. This removes any counter strategy and in doing so reduces the game out of the skill of the competing players. With over a 50% chance to remove an opposing player from a knockdown a team will quickly move into an unassailable numbers lead that exacerbates the problem as the remaining defenders find it impossible to maintain a defensive position regardless of the skill level of the opponent.
2. There is no common build counter to ClawPOMB. The only useful skill to take is Fend and that is a very fringe choice, hardly recommended at all on the Fumbbl build choice list (which is the best evidence I can find for it). Opposing players can focus on preventing knockdowns through the use of Block and Guard but this is an ineffective strategy. A similarly developed team with 3 skills each will leave lots of players still vulnerable to the ClawPOMBer, who will no doubt take the blitz action. And once the defending side are a few players down, like in the first point they find themselves unable to form a proper defence (i.e they get overlapped and ganged up on).
3. Mirror matches are luck. One option is to also build for ClawPOMB. This creates a mirror match similar to the shooty army of death. The player that gets the first attack can gain a fast number advantage that results in an unassailable lead. The defender ClawPOMBer will then be exposed and removed earlier. Even if the luck does go against the attacker we are then just into a luck based situation that depends more on the dice rolling than the player skill, again resulting in a broken mechanic.
4. There is no down side to taking ClawPOMB. It is likely that the ClawPOMBer will place excessive priorities on the safety of that player once on the floor making fouling a low probability event of removing that player (and again very dice focused rather than skill focused). Also there is no TV adjustment. Blood Bowl attempts to create more even matches by adjusting the TV of the team based upon the assets that they have in a way that aspires to be correlated linearly with the benefit of that asset. Take another player and your TV goes up. Skills have a set price based upon access and make no note of synergy. We know that a blodger is a good combination, with teams paying 40 or 50TV to access. ClawPOMB is a 60-80TV payment for a skill combination that can single handedly win the game. This is not a sufficient downside to prevent people from taking it, and whilst TV management is an important aspect of the game it has to be done with a view that the TV you pay is proportional to some degree to the asset you have gained. If ClawPOMB cost you 300TV such that your opponent could take a great star player, a chef, or a wizard and change then you might not consider it viable.
5. It removes the entertainment from the game. Blood Bowl is fun because you get to move your players and roll dice. If you are having all your guys stripped from you in a way that you feel you cannot prevent then the game starts to feel unpleasant. We have all had a situation where the dice has gone against you but you can feel that was either a 1%ile game or you made a few mistakes that let your opponent take blocks you need not have given. ClawPOMB is not like either of those, it just munches through you. And so when you end the game with few players that are not able to do a lot (exacerbated remember by all those stuns as well) then you have not really played the game yourself. You have not been able to make choices, rolled the dice, and participated. You have had the gaming equivalent of being lined up against a wall and shot.
Some common counter-whines that are not good arguments:
Q1. But blood bowl is a game about killing as well; you just want to make it soft elf ball!
A1. Not at all. I am happy for blood bowl to be even bloodier. What I am looking for is a mechanic which more evenly distributes the blood and incorporates it onto both sides (not necessarily evenly) in a way that does not reward a single dominant choice. For example fouling can reward good positional play but few teams can afford the very high sending off chance relative to the damage they expect to do.
Q2. It cannot be a broken mechanic because not many teams can take it.
A2. I advocate the creation of a new star player. He has stats of 10 for everything and all the positive skills, however he can only be taken by teams that I coach. Now as just one player in a community of tens of thousands this represents a mechanic that is far far rarer than ClawPOMB. And it would still be a broken mechanic. Rarity of a mechanic is no defence to how broken it is.
Q3. It is not a broken mechanic for tournaments because they prevent skill stacking.
A3. One of the reasons why tournaments have to prevent skill stacking is because of monstrosities like this. Therefore the tournament rules are a band aid to prevent the appearance of a broken mechanic and not a fix to the mechanic itself.
Q4. It is only a problem in endless open matchmaking, so it is the fault of that environment.
A4. This is just a plain dumb point. It is not the environment that makes it broken because the environment doesn't get broken for the million other things that is in the Blood Bowl rule set. Is AG5 broken in short leagues? No. Is it broken in MM? No. Is ClawPOMB broken in short leagues? Yes. Is it broken in MM? Yes. All the same rules apply; like tournaments just because an environment does not reduce its accessibility does not mean the fault is with the environment. This claim is an admission that ClawPOMB is broken because if it is not broken at all then it is not broken in any environment.
Summary
The key component of a broken mechanic is one that either removes the skill or the fun from the game. By increasing the chance of removing players by up to 20 times with no detrimental effect, and no effective counter strategy, you end up with a rule set that reduces player skill to a tiny amount, forces a luck based mirror match, or ruins the fun for one of the players who sees their team deleted beyond any influence they might have.
It is not that I don't like it. It is not because there is a concensus. It is not because it is only a problem in one environment (it is a problem in all environments just some actively move to prevent it). Maths. Evidence. Logic. Reason.