What would be the effect of 16 players

[Chris]

That is in a league all teams getting journeymen to take numbers pre-match up to 16?
I’m thinking of trying to start a league for a group of wargamers and they would like I think deep rosters. So what is the effect of going through team creation as normal (so get 11 players minimum) then change the journeyman rule to make it when a team has less than 16 instead of 11 players?
Teams like elves would be quite expensive so there would be a lot more inducements used. Who do you think this sort of approach would benefit?

[spubbbba]

Some teams can easily get by with just 11 players even if a couple are journeymen whilst others really struggle.

I think this would help teams with cheap fodder linemen that you don’t expect to do much and those that like to foul lots.Undead, necros and Khemri would benefit as they won’t care if journeymen get sent off late in the half. I could see humans and skaven liking this as well since they tend to struggle when under strength and a few extra meat shields would help keep the positionals alive whilst not adding all that much TV.

Chaos Dwarfs, Nurgle and the stunty teams would probably not mind either as they all have cheap throw away journeymen too.

[Chris]

So you think it would encourage fouling more than anything else?

[Der_Doodle]

with an average of 3 extra players (going from 13 to 16) in a team i am pretty sure that fouling will increase ALOT.

As soon as you can see that a drive will come to an end one of the journeyman will make a foul since you will basicly NEVER risk to be below 11 players at the beginning of the next drive if you start with a 16 player team.

[cbbakke]

I brought this idea up a while ago and it got a lot of hate.

I think it would help hybrid/stunty teams the most since they require a deeper bench generally.

I think it would hurt high armor teams the most since they dont generally need as much of a bench.


Here is a few positive effects I think it would have on the game:
-I think it would promote some more fouling which would be good (more chances for high spp to be removed from the pitch)
- Since you need to have a full roster people will be more likely to buy players instead of having loners. A person could go with a bunch of journeyman as a way of saving coin, but I think it would cost them on the pitch. Having a lot of unskilled loners is not going to fair well against developed teams.
- I think it would promote more specialty players. The human team already is going to fill out there roster so having passblock specialist (for example) or two on your team would not cost as much.
- I think it would be a stealth nerf to basher teams since it would not be as easy for them to bleed out the other teams and start the 2nd half with a several player advantage.

The downsides:
- Somebody could use the journeyman as fodder to protect their players. I think it could be an issue but I would predict that those teams would eventually become overwhelmed by developed teams. Having several guys on the front line of the pitch without block is not going to stand up against a developed dwarf/orc team.

[neverworking]

The spiraling expense chart will need to be adjusted.

MVPs will get spread across more players reducing the rate some players skill up. I would keep journeymen eligible for MVP as it will encourage purchasing players.

Some more marginal positionals may become more useful since they will have no longer represent as much bloat (de assassin, all human catchers). Some teams might develop specialists they would otherwise not have room for.

[dode74]

There would be a real issue with losing MVPs to journeymen, slowing development severely. Many agi teams play the first few (sometimes a lot more - I know I went to ~30) games with journeymen just to get to 11 players simply because any cash spent goes on replacing expensive positionals. Even if you manage to stay at 11 players early on, forcing an extra 5 players on a team will reduce the odds of one of your players getting the MVP by almost a third. This is already frustrating when it happens to agi teams, and this suggestion would exacerbate the situation.

Orcs, with their high AV and cheap linemen, and chaos, with their medium AV and relatively cheap beastmen, would be helped out as they could foul a lot more - I'd happily risk 5 sending off's of Orc linmen, since the bloat they create is effectively free (since they are only 50k) against all but stunties. Currently they have to stay trim to be competitive, and this would remove that necessity as all teams would be (roughly) equally bloated, but the high AV teams would have more leeway because they will tend to lose fewer players to injury.

It would remove some of the management element - you'd no longer have to choose whether it's the right time to buy that extra player, as the decision will be made for you.

[neverworking]

Out of curiosity why would they want deep rosters exactly?

[nazgob]

As an elf coach, i'd be. Seeing this in two ways.

1) I don't need them. It's taken me 10 games ro get a 12th player with my league wood elves, and I haven't missed the spares yet.

2) i'll be putting 3 journeymen on the line of scrimmage every drive.

[dode74]

As an aside, why shouldn't they work to get these deep rosters within the current ruleset rather than simply giving them to them? I'm all for house rules, but would this not distort an aspect of team management for them?

[Chris]

Becasue they like team sports that have large squads and don't like the idea of keeping team numbers as low as possible to avoid inducements. Though of course under this teams like pricey elves will be giving away a fair bit in inducements game 1.

Maybe after a season that would change. Could always increase the winnings to allow more players to be purchased.

Team management is good, however I wish to ease people into such activity from demo games and this could be an intermediate step.

[dode74]

Fair enough. One solution could be to adjust journeymen a bit - perhaps make it so that loner means that they can never take a reroll (journeymen only, not big guys or stars), and reduce their cost a bit - say by 10k for players which would normally cost up to 40k, by 15k for players up to 60k (rounding total cost of the journeymen up or down to the nearest 10k - your choice), and by 20k for players which would normally cost 70k.
e.g. Zombies/skellies would be 30k with loner, humans/orcs/rats would be 35k, beastmen would be 45k, dwarves/elves would be 50k.

That might allow for those large squads, reduce the deficit the high-cost teams are running, and put the players off the journeyman concept by reducing their reliability.

[voyagers_uk]

why not have them run a second "feeder" team (same race/lower division) that can be used to supply skilled players to the "Major" team when required for a nominal fee (say position cost plus 50k)

as all coaches will be running a first and second squad they will become used to the game faster and will also work to build their teams equally.

so rather than have 16 players sqauds for each game, they have access to a separate side but have to pay for the privilege.

[cbbakke]

The spiraling expense chart will need to be adjusted.

MVPs will get spread across more players reducing the rate some players skill up. I would keep journeymen eligible for MVP as it will encourage purchasing players.

Some more marginal positionals may become more useful since they will have no longer represent as much bloat (de assassin, all human catchers). Some teams might develop specialists they would otherwise not have room for.

I agree completely on journeyman getting MVPs as a encouragement for purchasing players. I also agree that marginal players would be more likely to be on rosters. I know for myself I would be far more likely to develop a few speciality players that I simply cannot afford to do with the current hyper case management style of play. I think this would be a possible stealth nerf to agility teams which would be good also. In 4th edition it was more the standard in my experience to have a full roster. My human team would have two catchers who were pass defense specialist. In this edition there is no way to justify having two extra catchers with a few skills each sitting on the end of the bench.

I think the other part of this is fun factor. Blood bowl is suppose to be fun with developing your team, players getting skills is FUN!!! The current trend is far more power gaming of TV management. It just doesn't make sense in a roleplay way to have the short rosters. It would be like the Minnesota Vikings going with 35 man roster instead of a 53 man roster. In game there is no benefit to that so every NFL team has a full roster. The current BB rules have created an artificial benefit into playing the number game imo

[neverworking]

I'm sure this has some holes in it, but given your purpose I'd consider something along these lines

1)Increase Minimum Roster Size to 12 or 13
2)Slightly Increase Starting Cash to account for #1 (perhaps 40k per extra minimum roster slot as that is the price of cheapest non-stunties).
3)Significantly reduce the TV impact of the 14th+ player on the roster for calculating inducements. (perhaps 50% rounded down so wood elf/dwarf=30k zombie 20k)
4)Bump the SE starting point by 150k-200k (counting all players at full value)

Most teams tend to gravitate towards 13 or 14 man rosters long term, if you cut the impact on TV of the 14th-16th player you will lessen the impact that bench players have on inducements which is probably appropriate given the reduced likelihood of them seeing the pitch for a significant portion of the game. You'd still be working towards purchasing your extra players rather than getting them for free. There would still be a management decision to the extra players but a notably more debatable one. Currently most teams wont buy a 14th or 15th player because its effectively giving away or denying yourself a bloodweiser babe being used on more important players and the SE system encourages you to hold back funds.