Conceding 1 Touchdown

Korhil · Post by **Korhil** » Sun Dec 08, 2002 8:57 am

Its a bad rule, means Dwarfs cant ever win vs Elves.
It means having 8 or 7 players is better than 11 for Elves & Skaven... just give away a TD every turn so you never get hit anymore and score every other turn with a One Turn Scorer.

Sounds excessive?
It will end up happening if that rule comes in...
I'd definately play like that with Elves, you get more TD's & SPP, so more skills, and in a league you'll get more points and such.

---Korhil

franck_le_grand · Post by **franck_le_grand** » Sun Dec 08, 2002 11:34 am

I'd like to see/hear some playtesting before decideing wether or not it's a good rule. But for now it sounds OK...

plasmoid · Post by **plasmoid** » Sun Dec 08, 2002 2:44 pm

Come on Korhil,
so far we've had around 400 games of playtest, and we haven't had any kind of balance-twisting effects.

Case in point - your scenario.

Clever 7 man skaven team scores.
Basher team lines up, demolishes line of scrimmage and blitzes/fouls.
Basher team follows up to put TZ on a few more players.
Skaven team concedes 1 TD, doing nothing their turn.
Basher team slaughters a few more players and gets their TD (or refuses?).
Skaven at..... how many players.

Clever (?) skaven team scores again.
repeat at own risk....

Martin

Mestari · Post by **Mestari** » Sun Dec 08, 2002 4:44 pm

You do force the teams to set up as many players as they can, don't you? So you don't get teams deliberately starting with less players than they had in the beginning of the drive...

Post by **DoubleSkulls** » Sun Dec 08, 2002 4:48 pm

Korhil wrote:Its a bad rule, means Dwarfs cant ever win vs Elves.
It means having 8 or 7 players is better than 11 for Elves & Skaven... just give away a TD every turn so you never get hit anymore and score every other turn with a One Turn Scorer.

Even 1 turners have a chance of failing - normally a relatively high one. So the one time you fail to score you lose the game.

plasmoid · Post by **plasmoid** » Wed Dec 11, 2002 6:32 pm

Hi all,
for the record: Yes, we force teams to field 11 players if they have them. Otherwize this rule would become "problematic".

Anyway,
I agree with Marcus that one of the signs of a good coach is to be able to control the flow of the game and play the clock.

However, when you outnumber your opponent severely, then dominating the game no longer takes any significant ammount of skill. At the same time - IMO - it makes the game uninteresting.

This season I play a dwarf team.
I have sufficient ammounts of piling on + mighty blow, which means that it is not uncommon that I reduce my opponent to 7-8 players on my first turn of a drive. Once I outnumber my opponent it doesn't take too much skill to cause even more carnage, and ride in the TD.
This may be fair, but I find it rather boring to drive my advantage all the way into the 8th turn of the half.

Even though I'm at the recieving end of the "concede" rule, I quite happily recieve the free TD in order to have another crack at same adrenaline-producing BB.

Martin

CauCauCau · Post by **CauCauCau** » Thu Dec 12, 2002 7:54 am

I must say that I don't like this rule too much. While it does suck to have your team beaten to hell and back, I think that a rule like this takes a huge element out of the game-- sucessfully defending against a stronger team after you've been beaten up a bit in the first half. It's a huge challenge, but I've seen it done.

I don't see controlling the flow of the game and playing the clock as making the game boring. Breaking a cage is fun and challenging and playing against a stronger team when you're already outnumbered can be great fun. While it can be unavoidable, getting into a position where the opponent has his ball carrier sitting on the endzone line for a turn or three while the rest of his team beats your guys into a pulp is often the result of poor coaching and that is what should be fixed rather than making a bandaid rule to neuter the hard hitting teams when they do what they do best.

I agree with zombie: the elf two turn (or even one turn) touchdown every single time they have the ball is pretty boring.

Besides I think that if a team conceded a touch down, a pitch invasion should happen to them for giving up and not playing like true bloodbowl players. If I were a bloodbowl fan and my favorite team just stood there and said "you can have a touchdown, we give up this drive" I'd rush the field and help beat them into the ground along with the hitting team.

Nathan

Shasta McNasty · Post by **Shasta McNasty** » Thu Dec 12, 2002 4:24 pm

Speaking as a heavy hitter team player myself (Undead or Vamps usually) I can see teh benifits of this rule. There are a lot of situations where I would accept a concession, pound some elf/skaven/whatever to a pulp, and then walk in.

On teh other hand, there are certain teams who could use this against me, making it very difficult for me to win. For example, my usual game strategy agains a fast team (skaven, any type of elf) is to only give them posession once a game for more then one turn.
Basically, I'll recieve if I win teh toss, and grind out an 8 turn touchdown. They have 1 turn in which to retaliate. Then I kick off for teh scond half. Usually a fast team will score on my team in two turns, I'm just not quite good enuff to stop it in most cases. But I apply enuff pressure so that they have to score in teh second turn, or risk coughing up teh ball. Then I recieve again and grind in another one, taking up teh rest of teh half. If all goes well, 2-1, my way

If I lose teh toss, tactics for teh halves are reversed, but it all works out teh same.

However, if a team concedes every time I try to grind one in, it at least doubles their ability to score, and leaves my team (which with teh Undead will take 3-4 turns to put one in teh endzone against any competent coach in my experience) high and dry.

Just my 2c.

plasmoid · Post by **plasmoid** » Wed Dec 18, 2002 12:33 pm

BTW,
the rule should work fine even if teams are allowed to field less than 11.
After all, the team looking to "abuse" the rule will be setting up first - meaning that the other team can set up accordingly.

So: Set up 11 skaven - LOS removed, you now have 8.
Set up 8 skaven - LOS removed - you now have 5.
Remember, the opposing team might even refuse the conceded touchdown for a turn or 2, beating your remaining 5 skaven to a bloody pulp.

Martin

PS, someone said that a coach is only really outnumbered/chanceless as a result of bad coaching. Well, tell that to the last coach that I reduced to 7 players before he even had his first turn. Heck, he didn't have time to do any "bad coaching".

grimfang · Post by **grimfang** » Fri Dec 20, 2002 5:22 pm

hmmm... that rule does solve the problem of "what happens when I run out of opponents to hit?" Only so many times you can knock them down before they stop getting up.
Really.. i think it is great to give the poor saps a way to salvage part of thier team... give up the point, and bring in the reserves. As it stands now, One of my regular opponents simply spends 2 or 3 turns trying to run from me.

Darkson · Post by **Darkson** » Fri Dec 20, 2002 9:46 pm

I think this is an interesting idea, though it could do with a lot more play-testing.

Zombie · Post by **Zombie** » Fri Dec 20, 2002 10:58 pm

CauCauCau wrote:Besides I think that if a team conceded a touch down, a pitch invasion should happen to them for giving up and not playing like true bloodbowl players. If I were a bloodbowl fan and my favorite team just stood there and said "you can have a touchdown, we give up this drive" I'd rush the field and help beat them into the ground along with the hitting team.

Nathan

Good point! Also, it would make more sense for the hitting team to receive a pitch invasion if they accept the concession than if they refuse. Blood Bowl fans want blood, not pity.

plasmoid · Post by **plasmoid** » Mon Dec 30, 2002 10:13 pm

Hi all,
Zombie and CauCauCau, I really don't agree with your view of BB fans.
IMO, they are there to see the TDs - the brutality is just an added bonus. If violence was all that they were after then they could watch a pit fight.

Feedback has been pretty positive, though it has been stated several times that the rule needs more playtest. Maybe it does, but I'd again like to stress that it has seen over 600 test matches so far, and response has been very positive.

IMO, a good compromise would be to only let a team concede when it was ounumbered by 4 or more, rather than by 3 or more. This would make the rule even less prone to abuse, and would make sure that it was only invoked in those truly hopeless circumstances.

Also, we're currently discussing that the punishment from refusing a conceded TD should be having a few players sent off, instead of a pitch invasion.
d3 players would probably be a good number.
This would also prevent the rule from clashing with some peoples perception of the fans, and instead lay the blame on those ever hated referees.
The referees would call "delay of game", and send off a few players - something seen in a lot of sports, including american football.

Martin

Mestari · Post by **Mestari** » Tue Dec 31, 2002 10:19 am

Ok, plasmoid.
I'd be happy with the 4 player difference instead of 3 player difference. After all, a significant deal of games see a situation where the other team has a 3-man advantage, and I wouldn't want this rule to have an occurence in every game.

Sending off players:
d3 players is way too hard. With PI, you're not expected to cause 1-3 injuries. I don't have time for doing the exhaustive maths right now, but with the E=3.5 injury rolls and E=1/6 injuries per injury roll, you'd have E=0,58 injuries per pitch invasion. So a d3 sent off players would cause almost a fourfold increase in the number of players that the team loses for the game.
If you want to send off players, make it a fixed number of 1 player. Concede a TD or get one player sent off.

I'd perhaps prefer the PI solution. And it suits the fan fluff too:

"Upon seeing their own team being severely outnumbered, the fans of the outnumbered team invade the pitch if the outnumbering team decides to keep playing instead of accepting a TD"

EDIT: fixed the fan quote...

plasmoid · Post by **plasmoid** » Fri Jan 03, 2003 1:16 pm

Hi Mestari,
glad you like it.

around these parts, we've not settled wether to use PI or sent off solution.
Consider this:

On a PI, you will at least get stuns. The conceder will get 2 entire turns before these get up. You may also get KO's, which for that particular drive would resemble having a player sent off (i.e. removed).
End then there is the casualties naturally.

Some (whimpish) coaches have been a bit too afraid to use the "deny concession" option, because of the chance of a random death.

So, sometimes getting (on average) 2 players sent off is better than having a player killed/SI'd. And sometime better than having 6 players "downed" for 2 turns.

I haven't decided myself yet.
Martin