Fixing ClawPOMB without hurting ClawMB or POMB

Got some ideas for rules? Maybe a skill change or something completely different!!! Tell us here.

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Re: Fixing ClawPOMB without hurting ClawMB or POMB

Post by Corvidius »

garion wrote: What do you think about only limiting the skill to Big guys or maybe even strength 5+ players. That way stat freaks could still obtain it; mummies, tomb guardians and all the big guys could take it too. It would encourage people to take big guys more because of the extra punch they could provide. It would also still keep Chaos as the killingest race about because their Minotaur gets Mutation skills on single rolls so could achieve the CPOMB combo easily.
Hi Garion, What I meant was that If I lose a point of Strength I might keep the player but if losing that point of Strength due to an injury also stopped me from using a skill i'd got I would have to fire him. Limiting Skills by Statistic simply heightens the already devastating effect of taking a Stat decrease.

For example, Ogre on an Ogre team takes Piling On because he's St5 and can use it then get's a couple more skills like Block/Guard etc and takes an unlucky injury putting him at St4, Strength 4 and being able to use Piling On would mean i'd probably still keep him but St4 AND being barred from using one of the skills which is adding to tv, nope instantly fired. It's much worse than being -Ag on a Leaping player.

Does that better explain what I meant? :)

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Re: Fixing ClawPOMB without hurting ClawMB or POMB

Post by DoubleSkulls »

garion wrote:I also think reverting it back to adding St to the Av roll would probably be too much especially when Claw is so wide spread.
Maybe, but on a ClawPOMB Chaos Warrior for example PO is wasted on a 8 or higher (40% of the time) and only of use on 4,5,6 (33% of the time). So if you use PO 2/3 of the time you'll be prone for no benefit and 1/6 of the time it would be for a 7 when you'd use MB to break armour.

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Re: Fixing ClawPOMB without hurting ClawMB or POMB

Post by Wylder »

The problem is not C/PO/MB, the problem is cyanide.

My local league plays sort-of-fixed league schedules that head to the semi-finals after about 10 games played. With only 10 games to get through, agile teams have a fairly good chance of making it to the playoffs without getting destroyed. Meanwhile, bash teams have a fairly good chance of eliminating some of their rivals. It creates a relatively even playing field.

Yes, the bash teams are more likely to survive to play in more seasons than the agile teams, but we also tend to start each season with roughly equivalent TRs anyway (by choice) so the ultra-high TR bash teams tend to just get retired after a while anyway.

We play our TR in the sweet spot where games are competetive and fun, and we play in the sweet spot between overly short and overly long leagues. All of us enjoy our games immensely, and we have almost no bitching about "OP teams".

Make of this what you will.

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Re: Fixing ClawPOMB without hurting ClawMB or POMB

Post by garion »

Corvidius wrote: Does that better explain what I meant? :)
It does thanks, although I would always fire a -St player anyway regardless of skills. But i do see you your point.
plasmoid wrote: Apoth was nerfed to compensate to increase loss of players - which was decreased by weakened fouling and removal of ageing.
Also, it was part of improving the TV-system (and handicap system). The old apoth was sooo much better than it's 50K price tag.
Thanks plamoids. This was what I suspected then. The apo nerf doesn't bother me at all. I think it is a very good way of making up for the removal of ageing and the decreased effect of fouling, but I do wonder why Regen didn't get a similar nerf. Maybe 5 and 6 regen works - send to reserves box and a roll of 4 regen works but the player goes to the KO box would have been a good idea. Or something along those lines anyway.
Wylder wrote: My local league plays sort-of-fixed league schedules that head to the semi-finals after about 10 games played. With only 10 games to get through, agile teams have a fairly good chance of making it to the playoffs without getting destroyed. Meanwhile, bash teams have a fairly good chance of eliminating some of their rivals. It creates a relatively even playing field.
That isn't a long enough season to see what this discussion is about really. I play in a similar length TT league and thankfully it is too short to see the CPOMB teams completely dominate. CPOMB teams or Hyperbash teams as they are getting called now usually take between 30 and 40 games to achieve the peak of their power and this is where the problems start to occur. Because in a truely perpetual league (I'm not talking about MM or Black Box here) these teams will be able to maintain a high TV consistently, while no other teams can achieve that for anywhere near the same length of time.

Here are some quotes from Galak and JJ about perpetual leagues and how the new rules make them a lot more balanced and achievable in comparison with LRB4 and earlier editions-
Jervis Johnson wrote:
The version you are now reading is the PBBL (Perpetual Blood Bowl League)
edition

The single most important thing I needed to sort out with the league rules
was the problem of the ‘part-time’ coach. Anybody who has played in a
Blood Bowl league before will understand this problem. When the league
starts up you get loads of enthusiastic coaches all clamouring to take
part. After half a dozen games, however, quite a few of the coaches will
have started missing games, or have dropped out of the league
altogether, especially if their team isn’t doing very well... The way that I
tried to get round this problem was by creating an ‘open’ league format.
This places the emphasis on arranging matches and playing games
firmly on the shoulders of the coaches themselves. In this way
enthusiastic coaches can play as many games as they like, or rather, as
many games as they can find opponents to play against. Meanwhile, less
enthusiastic coaches can play fewer games, as and when they like.
This system worked well in the 3rd edition rules, with one very important
exception: teams just kept getting better and better if they played
matches, and if they played enough matches there was simply no way
for a starting team to compete against them. This was not what I had
intended to happen at all; the league rules were there to provide
continuity between games, not to allow coaches to create ‘super-teams’
that couldn’t be beaten unless an opponent had racked up enough
matches.

This problem came about because the handicapping system I’d built into
the 3rd edition rules didn’t give enough help to the underdog. In the years
following the release of 3rd edition a number of increasingly complex
‘patches’ were applied to the game rules to try and deal with the
problem, but none of them really worked as well as I hoped, and they
added a lot of complexity to the game. In the end I became frustrated
with the whole thing and decided to go back to the drawing board and
start again with a new handicap system. After a few wrong turns this
resulted in an early version of the rules for Inducements that you will find
in the new League rules, and the associated rules that increase the value
of a player as they learn more skills. These two things are a lot simpler
than what we had before, and make it much more straight-forward to
balance a match between two teams of differing experience. They also
mean that the Blood Bowl league rules have finally achieved the design
goals I set for them back in 1993 (well, better late than never!)
Some comments from Tom Anders:

http://www.cyanide-studio.com/forumBB/v ... 39#p398639
GalakStarScraper wrote:
Jervis Johnson's definition of a "perpetual" league was one where player could come and go, stick with teams they love or start new ones in the midst of seasoned teams and the league kept running just fine. The idea of his for prepetual Blood Bowl was for a league that never had to be restarted in order to work. 3rd edition didn't work that way ... you had to restart the league from scratch every couple seasons or new teams spent forever developing because they would be slaughtered. This fact was pretty true all the way through LRB 4.0. LRB 5.0 was Jervis introducing the perpetual league concept where a league would never need to be restarted in order to work.

That's what that word meant in relationship to Blood Bowl.

So in Jervis's mind ... perpetual to him meant a league that constantly had teams retiring and new ones starting as player interest changed or new players joined and that was not a problem.
Tom

http://www.cyanide-studio.com/forumBB/v ... 63#p398663
GalakStarScraper wrote:

Yes it was the intention that if a player never wanted to retire his team that would be okay. That's why the attritrion rules pack the improved punch they do with CRP, why the apothecary is worse and why Spiralling Expenses are there. All 3 are meant to help the game trim down a higher TV team.
http://www.cyanide-studio.com/forumBB/v ... 17#p165017
GalakStarScraper wrote::

My thoughts on this. FUMBBL has proven without a doubt to me that perpetual Blood Bowl can work. IF Cyanide would program in ALL the inducements (including all the Star Players (they can leave out the Special Play Cards though)) and the rest of the 21 teams and make sure that you have a way to only have games played through non-cherry picking and non-I'll get my friends to help me cheat methods ... then it would be readily appartant that this game does work with teams playing for as many games as they want. FUMBBL has teams that have played THOUSANDS of games. And LRB 5.0/6.0 takes what FUMBBL had and made it even more balanced.

Yes at some point Blood Bowl becomes about team management over team growth ... but that is delibrate and meant to be a part of the game. Allowing continuous growth is broken and reaches the boring point that dode74 mentions.

Before you try to suggest that this games needs changed ... can you use that energy to actually work to get the whole game available first.

Seriously ... I spent thousands of hours over the last 5 years re-writing the rulebook. The BBRC had the help of some great people doing it. I believe without question that what Doubleskulls and I present to you in LRB 6.0 is the most balanced rulebook Blood Bowl has ever had. It doesn't need more ... its that good and I know its that good. However ... too many are judging this game on just a fraction of its rules as implemented by Cyanide. Before we start looking for wierd features in Blitz mode ... let's give everyone a chance to play the actual game firs.t

Galak
Now sadly this is where things start to fall down. While the rules are a definate imporvement on LRB4 for a great deal of things - journeymen, removed ageing, change to niggles, inducements are better than handicaps and Av9 teams (Orcs and Dwarves) no longer dominate the perpetual league environment like they once did. There are similar problems as before -

Now in truely perpetual leagues the only teams that can maintain a very high TV will be the hyperbash teams. Chaos and Nurlge. So instead of Dwarf and Orc we have two new monster teams. The reason no other teams can maintain this TV for such prolonged periods of time is because when they play CPOMB teams, regardless of whether they win or lose, their TV takes a pounding and they usually suffer a number of stat drops, niggles or kills.

This causes major problems for new teams joining in these leagues because none of the inducements can make up for this killer combo when it is on a handfull of players while their other players have support skills like guard etc... New teams entering into this situation will take a long long long time to reach a TV where they finally start being competative again.

Elf teams can often win these games if they are within a TV of 300 ish because they can cope with being reduced to 5 or 6 players each half and the wizard makes getting the ball and running away a lot easier than it would be without. But other bash teams without the CPOMB combo within a 300TV range do not stand much of a chance and their team will likely get slaughtered in the process. Teams like Orcs or Khemri etc... do not have the ability to dodge away from CPOMB players with any reliability and will almost always be caught up in a war of attrition which only the CPOMB teams can win.

Maybe a star player on each team that can help defend against such skills would have be a good edition. Someone who has all the anti CPOMB skills. Dodge, Wrestle, Thick Skull and Fend. At the moment the star players that are meant to damage these players in a perpetual league environment are the secret weapon players. None of them pose any real threat though and with one or two turns of protecting your killers against them you wil almost always be able to get a blitz or block against a secret weapon player and take him out the game. The possible exception to this is the Ball and Chain players who are amazing but randomised movement makes them hit and miss.

Other inducments that are meant to help beat these teams -

Bribes - Means you can foul every chance you get. In theory it is a nice idea. But since fouling has been nerfed so badly you cannot reliably foul a player now. Also PO is so good because it apparently comes with a down side, which is - it leaves your player prone. Meaning in theory good coaches will be able to exploit the extra space left by leaving a player on the floor. However to foul effectively you need to commit so many players to surrounding the prone player that it will leave a huge amount of space for your opponent to exploit. Making it easier for him/her to score. Bringing back the +1 to av for a foul would go someway in helping this.

Master Chef - Very expensive and can only take a set amount of re-rolls and with only 50% chance of this happening per roll it is not really money well spent and even if you reduce a CPOMB team to 1 re-roll they will nto be affected because they can easily get 3 dice blocks off every single turn so the risk of failure is minimal.

Wizards- amazing inducement and one that can cetainly win a game for any fast teams that can exploit a loose ball. However it will not help stop the CPOMB teams TV increasing or stop them destroying your team.

Finally the balance between bash and finesse is probably just the same as it was in LRB4, not better or worse. However the Stunty teams (Ogre, Halfling, Underworld and Goblin) have been hit really hard by PO so hard that these teams now have little to no chance in a perpetual league environment. Goblins possibly do because their myriad of secret weapons and two big guys can inflict some serious damage every so often but a lot of luck is needed. Then there comes the versatile teams, or tier 2 teams. Humans, Norse, Zons, Orcs, Lizardmen etc.... These teams can no longer compete at all when playing a higly developed CPOMB team, they may get the occasional lucky win, but if they are playing a hyper bash team who is being handled by a very good coach then they don't stand a chance.
So in conclusion it feels like very little has changed between the rule sets in regards to how teams perform in a perputual league environement, the only difference now is there are slighly less teams that can be truely competative at a high TV.

By my guess I would say 10 in LRB6 and 13 in LRB4

LRB6 - Elf, High Elf, Wood Elf, Dark Elf, Skaven, Chaos, Necromantic Nurgle maybe Dwarf and CD too

LRB4 - High Elf, Wood Elf, Dark Elf, Skaven, Chaos, Dwarf, Chaos Dwarf, Orc, Khermi, Ogres, Lizardmen, Undead and maybe Elf too.

P.S. Galak has very kindly taken his to work with Double skulls and suggested a number of rules he would like to see play tested, including some changes to the rosters and pricing. I hope we can see these play tested on fumbbl in the next few years to see how they woudl effect the game.

Over and out.

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Re: Fixing ClawPOMB without hurting ClawMB or POMB

Post by Hitonagashi »

I can't wait to see how mercenaries work on FUMBBL.

Hyperbash teams rely on removing most of your players so they can get the ball to the endzone without a) lots of defensive skills or b) lots of ball handling skills.

I've had some real success against them with teams that are stacked up with a deep bench (14-15 players) with 6-7 superstars who do most of the playing. The problem with that, is elves and skinks are both really expensive, so your deep bench doesn't last long before SE bites hard.

If I had the option of inducing 2 rookie High Elf linemen rather than one Eldril, I'd almost certainly jump at it(at least at first)!

I'm still not convinced by your "humans and lizards aren't competitive" approach, but I've said that enough ^^.

If mercenaries aren't enough, simply being able to hire Journeymen with inducement money at their regular price would be *very* powerful against hyperbash.

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Re: Fixing ClawPOMB without hurting ClawMB or POMB

Post by mattgslater »

Wylder wrote:The problem is not C/PO/MB, the problem is cyanide.
I don't play Cyanide, and I think it's a problem. It took a couple years for our league to run afoul of it, because one such player isn't really a big deal. But we've seen now what it does when spammed, and it's not fun. It hasn't become a problem in our league (our league format minimizes the impact), but it's completely dominant in TV-oriented matchmaking formats, and with our new crop of basher coaches, we may be in the same boat in two seasons.

Hey, how about limiting mutations-as-improvements to 2x each per team? That would put a sock in it.

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Re: Fixing ClawPOMB without hurting ClawMB or POMB

Post by Steam Ball »

Hitonagashi wrote:I can't wait to see how mercenaries work on FUMBBL.
...
If mercenaries aren't enough, simply being able to hire Journeymen with inducement money at their regular price would be *very* powerful against hyperbash.
Except that in FUMBBL's Blackbox the limit is 15%, a TV2000 can play against TV2300, but no so common. The inducements are kept to a minimum, by matching teams with minimal difference, and never allowing above that 15%. And in other places the social part will kick in (as well as team resets, fixed objetive instead of "keep on playing", etc) and people will not play against CPOMBers if they do not like that.

Where did you read about hiring Journeymen with petty cash, BTW?

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Re: Fixing ClawPOMB without hurting ClawMB or POMB

Post by DoubleSkulls »

Hitonagashi wrote:If I had the option of inducing 2 rookie High Elf linemen rather than one Eldril, I'd almost certainly jump at it(at least at first)!
You can... 2 merc linemen = 1 eldril

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Re: Fixing ClawPOMB without hurting ClawMB or POMB

Post by Aliboon »

Nothing to do with you being an Orc coach Matt? :wink:

I jest...but I don't see a huge problem really with high AV teams getting trimmed at high TVs (call it schadenfreude if you like, given I generally play low AV teams and have been destroyed by POMB players anyway...). Eventually the killer Nurgle and Chaos teams will come up against each other for a bit of MAD and if all the other races can't develop that far then they'll be able to induce APOs, BB Babes, Merc DPs, Bribes etc to at least survive against the CPOMB beast teams.

I thought a design point of LRB5-6 was that teams wouldn't keep on growing given S.E. and all...

Having said all that, I'd be happy if PO didn't stack with other skills on the reroll and I personally reckon the +1 should still be given to the fouler on the AV roll.

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Re: Fixing ClawPOMB without hurting ClawMB or POMB

Post by plasmoid »

Hi Garion,
random bits:
I do wonder why Regen didn't get a similar nerf. Maybe 5 and 6 regen works
I don't think regen needs to be compared with the apothecary.
An apothecary is 5 points of TV. Regen is usually around 20.
Also, regen can't be earned. It's exclusively a starting trait of some rosters - and none of those are high-TV powerhouses.
(Well yeah, Nurgle, but I think you've already called 'CPOMB' on that ;))

In fact, from a metagaming perspective, I think the BBRC were wise enough to keep some teams that would be less vulnerable to a pure bash tactic.
Other inducments that are meant to help beat these teams
I do think you somewhat exaggerate how guaranteed bash are to lose against cpomb. But never mind.
If bash lose to cpomb consistently, then bash should invest in fend.

That aside, extra apothecaries can be pretty useful if you are just worried about the damage (because you think you can beat them anyway).
I hope we can see these play tested on fumbbl in the next few years to see how they woudl effect the game.
I very much doubt that. :o
But I'm hosting a play be email tournament, where we'll be testing tweaked piling on, +1 to fouling, and some alternative rosters.
You're welcome to join :D
2 teams max :D

Cheers
Martin

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Re: Fixing ClawPOMB without hurting ClawMB or POMB

Post by garion »

plasmoid wrote: I do think you somewhat exaggerate how guaranteed bash are to lose against cpomb. But never mind.
If bash lose to cpomb consistently, then bash should invest in fend.
Just watch some games on fumbbl, or better still play some, you will quickly find out how ineffective bash teams are against hyperkillers. Dwarves can do okay and so can Chaos Dwarves because of the amazing starter skills their players get and they can spam fend really easily. However it is not so easy for teams like Khemri, Orcs, Lizardmen etc.... to have so much Fend because they have so many other vital skills to get first, some of their key players are very slow to develop and you do need to spam it across at least half your team to see the true benfit of Fend when facing these teams with Claw and MB on most players and CPOMB on 3 or 4.

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Re: Fixing ClawPOMB without hurting ClawMB or POMB

Post by Anglakhel »

I think a significant factor in this problem in perpetual leagues is the economy of Blood Bowl.

It seems like teams, Bashers in particular, can save tons of treasury and maintain extremely high TVs for extremely long time periods.

It means eventually the Chaos and Nurgle squads can easily end up with half a dozen Super Stars, most of them with heavy Bash skill combos.

I think the Bank rules would significantly curtail the excessive team growth in the new online perpetual leagues and force team management over growth sooner.

It is commonplace for Bash teams to maintain TVs of 2400+ which tends to end up with far too many Stars and Suoer Stars and doesn't really require the Coach to manage the roster and make sacrifices. In the OCC, for example, we had an Orc team pass 3000 TV last season and there was a Chaos squad that hovered around 2800 TV for a long time.

It's too easy for these teams to ignore Spiraling Expenses and just add more and more Bash skills to the team roster.

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Re: Fixing ClawPOMB without hurting ClawMB or POMB

Post by DoubleSkulls »

I think bash teams without claw need to develop specifically to counter it. Dodge is good in this regard since many Claw teams are light on tackle with the Clawpombers - however that generally means you need a policy of using all your doubles on Dodge to make it worthwhile. Fend is also good, but a lot of those players you really want stand firm for other opponents and it can be difficult to justify them both.

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Re: Fixing ClawPOMB without hurting ClawMB or POMB

Post by dode74 »

Well put, Anglakhel. I also think that the break-even point for SE might be a tad high, but I'd rather see the effect of the bank rules first.

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Re: Fixing ClawPOMB without hurting ClawMB or POMB

Post by mattgslater »

DoubleSkulls wrote:I think bash teams without claw need to develop specifically to counter it. Dodge is good in this regard since many Claw teams are light on tackle with the Clawpombers - however that generally means you need a policy of using all your doubles on Dodge to make it worthwhile. Fend is also good, but a lot of those players you really want stand firm for other opponents and it can be difficult to justify them both.
Like I said, I don't think ClawMB is the problem, necessarily. And I don't think POMB is the problem. It's ClawPOMB. Vs. AV9, POMB doesn't beat Stand Firm (that is, PO vs AV9 = not so hot). ClawMB without PO is nasty, but it's a nice balance element to keep the Orcs from dominating. But the whole combo, expressed on multiple players, is problematic.

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