Showboating - an effort to combat stalling

[JPS]

Our league had an issue with coaches using stalling tactics - one coach in particular. The argument was the fairly standard: yes it's legal, but it's cheesy/no fun for the opponent. The "powerless" feeling was particularly important since we are trying to grow the league and introduce new players to the game.

So we came up with this rule:

SHOWBOATING
Sometimes, undisciplined players may attempt to score a touchdown for themselves, hogging all the glory, even when it is not in the best interests of their teams. The player is far too concerned about how his wiggling fanny and waving arms will look to his adoring fans on Blood Bowl Tonight to notice his Coach screaming at him to slow down and burn up the clock.

On any Team Turn that starts with a player on that team being able to score without his Coach making a dice roll of any kind, the opposing Coach may call Showboating. The Coach declaring Showboating rolls a d6 to determine if the opposing player restrains himself. Add one (+1) to the die roll for each consecutive turn prior to the current turn in which Showboating could have been called (even if it was not). On a result of 6, before or after modification, the player with the ball is unable to restrain himself and immediately dashes into the end zone for the touchdown. On any other result, the play continues as normal.

A Coach may call Showboating at any point during the turn. If not called at the start of the turn, however, the conditions for calling Showboating must have been met at the beginning of the turn AND still exist. If Showboating is called in the middle of a player’s action, the player must complete his action. If a turnover does not occur during that player’s action, then, if the conditions for Showboating still exist, the Coach may make the Showboating roll.

The goal was to let the coach of the team being pounded on still feel like he can do something about it while still allow stalling as a tactic, but make it more difficult the longer you do it.

So far, the opportunity for stalling has occurred in fewer than 1/4 of the games since putting in the rule. In games where stalling has been an available tactic, coaches have tended to cap their stalling to two turns. (I am not able to explain why this rule should have this effect or whether this behavior is even a result of the rule.) When Showboating has been called, it has generally failed to force a TD. Furthermore, even when successful, it has changed the outcome of a game only once (from a stalling team win to a tie on a high risk last turn TD by his opponent). It has also forced the one coach who used stalling most frequently to change his tactics such that he stalls with his MA6 ball carrier positioned seven squares away from the end zone. While he has still won with this tactic, his opponents have been able to attack his cage and even force the ball loose on occasion, making his success with stalling far from guaranteed.

We are pretty happy with the rule. Even the coach who went from Win to Draw because of the rule said it made the game more fun - although he still curses Nuffle for the outcome!

- JPS

[Grumbledook]

can't see this working, coaches will just stall so they need one go for it instead (it is certainly what I would do) and then just move into scoring range before the last turn and they are only forced to score on a 6

or risk the gfi with a reroll and only fail 1/36 times

if you want to cut back on stalling you need to learn to defend against it better

[JPS]

Coaches stalling so they need one GFI leaves the ball carrier closer to the defending team. It has at least given the defending team the feeling that they are more capable of attacking a stalling ball carrier, whether they really are or not. So it serves our purposes.

And, yes, we want coaches to learn how to defend better. But we also want them to keep playing the game until they learn how.

- JPS

[plasmoid]

We tried this for a looong season.
Didn't work.
People would just stall from one GFI out.

[Digger Goreman]

I'd be keen to know the team of the staller and stallees....

[Alamar]

IMHO the way BB is designed slower, lower AG teams are forced to use stall tactics at times simply because they don't have the rapid strike offenses to be as competitive against the faster higher AG teams.

For example if you don't stall and score in T5 vs. Skaven then they have way more time than is needed to turn around and even the score.

[mattgslater]

IMHO the way BB is designed slower, lower AG teams are forced to use stall tactics at times simply because they don't have the rapid strike offenses to be as competitive against the faster higher AG teams.

For example if you don't stall and score in T5 vs. Skaven then they have way more time than is needed to turn around and even the score.

Yup.

Also, there are lots of ways to stall without being in scoring range with the ball. What about the elfy stall games? Keep-away is just as annoying, you know, and even more effective. Against a slow team, a key casualty (just one, from among 4-6 players) and a T6 score can be a nail in the heart; your opponent has to set up for a rapid-fire score, down a skill player. If you're lucky, that yields a two-point lead.

[Joemanji]

This again?

Stalling is not unfair. Not allowing stalling is unfair on the team who had to score too early. Some teams are designed to control the clock but can't score quickly.

[JPS]

Okay, so this rule came about because the majority of coaches in our league did not like the stalling tactic - they felt that it made the game "un-fun" as opposed to unfair. It is particularly "un-fun" for new players who watch their team get decimated by a much more experienced player. Since we have a fair number of new coaches and are trying to expand our league, we felt that this rule still allowed teams to stall - albeit not quite as reliably - while preventing coaches who were being stalled against from giving up (not only on that match, but on Blood Bowl altogether).

Anyway, for us, it seems to be effective toward those goals, so I thought I'd share it.

- JPS

[Digger Goreman]

Fair enough, then....

What you can take home from this thread is:

A rule like this can work in specific league instances....

Different teams have different ways of stalling... and they're diametrically opposite....

It's not fool-proof, but seems effective in your specific league....

Use of the search engine probably would have prepared you for the above responses....

viewtopic.php?f=25&t=31156&hilit=Stalling
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=31060&hilit=Stalling
viewtopic.php?f=43&t=30996&p=549929&hil ... ng#p549929

58 pages of stuff....

[Kort]

There are other ways to prevent perceived "un-fun" stalling than artificial house rules. Experienced coaches could choose more challenging teams or more agility oriented ones that do not need to rely on stalling to win.

If you have a rookie Skaven coach complaining about being stalled and decimated by an experienced Orc coach, then the mistake was to let the rookie choose a hard-to-master roster and let the veteran have an easy-mode roster.

Interestingly, you have not answered Digger's very relevant question about the identity of the staller and the stallee
I suspect that people dislike stalling more because their team gets decimated in the process than because of the defeat. A string of bad injury rolls may have the same effect, so I am not sure a house rule on stalling is really the answer anyway.

Another way to discourage stalling is to design the ranking system is such a way that scoring is rewarded. If I were to design a ranking system for a league, I would perhaps go for this:

Victory by more than one TD: 5 pts
Victory by one TD: 4 pts
Draw: 2 pts
Defeat by one TD: 1 pt
Defeat by more than one TD: 0 pt

Tie-breaker: TD difference (but NOT the CAS count)

[Greyhound]

Do you have a house rule for 1 turn scorer because your coaches feel they can't prevent them?

[Alamar]

<snip>

It is particularly "un-fun" for new players who watch their team get decimated by a much more experienced player.

<snip>

- JPS

I think that one sentence is the problem. Depending on your league if you can develope a culture where the experienced coaches universally play the "so so" teams and leave the strong[er] teams to the newbs this may help.

A better coach will still often win but it's harder to decimate a newb if the experienced coach is behind the power curve.

[Greyhound]

it really depends of the gap we're talking about here.

last night I was facing a complete noob in Cyanide's BB and it was excruciating for him.

1) loaded the LOS when he was kicking, including on the sides.
I had free blocks on just about everybody and pushed his best player in the crowd.
End of my turn 1 he had 3 players out
2) didn't quiet get how to crowd surf, so even though I was pushing him out in the crowd just about every turn and sometimes left my players open for retaliation he would come at them in a diagonal and therefore slide them against the sideline.
3) did not understand the assist rules so he would gang up with too many players or not enough.
4) He had Guard on his Chaos Warrior but did not place them to benefit of the guard bonus
5) didn't get at all what dodge could realistically not happen so he would dodge in the worse places and turn over.

Granted if it was at a table I could have spoken to him (here he was not chatting online), and helped him, but regardless of strength of the team I think I could have smashed his chaos team with goblins if I wanted to.

So you're probably facing this sort of trouble when you have a huge difference of coaching. I think you should start introduce house rules of free inducement for the noobies and teach them to use their star players to stop the stalling rather than stopping stalling all together... which is not teaching them anything anyway.

Also in your house rule... i can still stall with no risk, right? The only risk is to roll poorly and being forced to score which is what would happen if I decided not to stall anyway. So your rule only makes me stop the stalling once in while, at no cost.

[JPS]

Also in your house rule... i can still stall with no risk, right? The only risk is to roll poorly and being forced to score which is what would happen if I decided not to stall anyway. So your rule only makes me stop the stalling once in while, at no cost.

Pretty much sums it up. The rule is directed at reducing the feeling of helplessness experienced by the player (especially newbies) who get beaten up while not actually causing a substantial change in the effectiveness of the tactic.

I did not keep any sort of records as to the rules use, but from casual observation of my league-mates over the last season I would guess it would fall out something like this:
Over around 180 games, the opportunity to call Showboating occurred in fewer than 40. In at least 5 games, the coach who could have called it deliberately chose not to. In the remaining 35 or so, the roll resulted in a "forced" score fewer than five times. Only once did the score directly effect the win/draw/loss outcome of the game (from a win to a draw on Turn 8 Second Half). The two teams most noted for stalling changed their tactics such that one team scored more often by choice and the other stalled with the ball carrier one GFI away from the end zone. Despite the lack of actual change in the match outcomes, between 5 and 10 games were more exciting further into the game for the coaches involved because of the possibility of Showboating.

So, why have the rule if it has such a minimal effect? The argument over whether stalling is fair or not largely disappeared. So maybe I should have titled this post: "An effort to combat the argument over stalling." Oh, well.

As many of you recognized, the problem was largely driven by experienced coaches with high TR, bashy, easy to play teams beating the snot out of less experienced coaches with low TR, harder to play teams that they didn't understand how to use. (It should be noted that the experienced players did try to help the newer coaches combat the stalling tactics, but the newer coaches were slow to take the advice.) As our league grows, I expect this to largely resolve itself. For those who asked, the main perpetrator of stalling ran a Norse team which started the season at TR 175. (He's now running Halflings, has won 2 games and lost 1, and hasn't stalled yet.) Complaints about stalling ran the gamut of teams and experience levels. One-turn scorers have not garnered as many complaints because: a) they are not performing consistently; b) the damage doesn't last into the next game, and; c) and my league-mates seem to feel that suffering for one turn "hurts less" than suffering for six.

Thanks to everybody for the comments and criticisms.

- JPS