Moving Agility-skills to Double for DE

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Re: Moving Agility-skills to Double for DE

Post by Darkson »

Short-term nerf? Really?
In the same vein, give them all AV9 - that's only a minor buff... :roll:

Seriously, if DEs lose to Blitzers, they need more of a buff than making Assassins MV7.

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Re: Moving Agility-skills to Double for DE

Post by Darkson »

Short-term nerf? Really?
In the same vein, give them all AV9 - that's only a minor buff... :roll:

Seriously, if DEs lose two Blitzers, they need more of a buff than making Assassins MV7.

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Re: Moving Agility-skills to Double for DE

Post by Xadie »

Rhyoth wrote: That, imo, make the team a bit too good, and way too popular compared to other Elf teams, especially their High Elf counterpart.
It's not that Dark Elves are too good, rather the other Elfs are too bad...

@Darkson: I still wouldn't hire an Assassin, even with 7/3/4/7. As long as he doesn't bring anything to the table that makes him good against bash he is not worth taking.

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Re: Moving Agility-skills to Double for DE

Post by zerodemon »

Elf teams all spam blodge for a very specific reason. If they don't, all those fairly expensive players die, pick up niggling injuries or end up with stat decreases. The sad truth is that once they have blodge, they become a bit too effective. It's six of one and half dozen of the other.

Now I'm not one to toss around the word "broken," especially referring to Blood Bowl (which is a fairly informal game, where the teams aren't even meant to be equal) but if you were going to describe a team as broken, Dark Elves would be right up there.

Moving AG skills to doubles is a silly move in any case. The team has a specific flavour, like all elves, in that they rely on high AG to get the business done. Other coaches can get around this by hitting them until the're all dead. That's the Blood Bowl way, after all.

I don't know why they don't just ban blodge and wrodge combos. That's what we're doing now and it increases play variety.

I mean why would a player be an expert at both blocking and dodging?

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Re: Moving Agility-skills to Double for DE

Post by Hitonagashi »

zerodemon wrote:I don't know why they don't just ban blodge and wrodge combos. That's what we're doing now and it increases play variety.

I mean why would a player be an expert at both blocking and dodging?
Are you banning Block and Tackle too? Seems rather bashfriendly if you aren't!

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Re: Moving Agility-skills to Double for DE

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zerodemon wrote:I don't know why they don't just ban blodge and wrodge combos. That's what we're doing now and it increases play variety.
Wow, this reduces the survivability of already fragile teams (I'm struggling to imagine Skaven in my tackle heavy league without access to block/wrestle). The AG based teams need blodge to reduce the casualty rates, the correct response surely is to have the bash teams invest their skills in tackle or are they too busy loading up on mighty blow and aren't happy they're not knocking enough players down?

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Re: Moving Agility-skills to Double for DE

Post by zerodemon »

Yeah, we realised this on our last games night. We aren't banning wrodge. Blodge is still on the outs. I find it personally hard to clear in my mind why almost every player would be both an expert blocker (so big and strong) and an expert dodger (agile and spry). Block and tackle make logical sense.

That said, I'm talking about a game where people sometimes get eaten. Logic doesn't really have that much of a place.

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Moving Agility-skills to Double for DE

Post by TalonBay »

zerodemon wrote:Yeah, we realised this on our last games night. We aren't banning wrodge. Blodge is still on the outs. I find it personally hard to clear in my mind why almost every player would be both an expert blocker (so big and strong) and an expert dodger (agile and spry). Block and tackle make logical sense.
Removing the blodge option changes the balance of the teams, have you found that the bashy teams tend dominate after these changes? Dwarfs must be brutal, dodge is useless and their agile opponents can't take block.

For me it's equally obvious that as a defense mechanism you wear lots of armour (av9) or you rely instead on being able to dodge, sometimes both if you're particularly lucky (ie. rolled the right skill rolls). Blocking is the offensive part and I don't see any reason agile guys can't throw blocks.

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Re: Moving Agility-skills to Double for DE

Post by dode74 »

zerodemon wrote:I find it personally hard to clear in my mind why almost every player would be both an expert blocker (so big and strong) and an expert dodger (agile and spry). Block and tackle make logical sense.
Perhaps it might help to think of the skills as learning different techniques rather than describing the physical characteristics of the player, which are possibly better thought of as the stats (MA, ST and AG are obvious, with AV representing an overall toughess rather than just armour). Blocking is a technique which enables you to take unskilled people down more effectively (which is enhanced by being big and strong - more block dice for higher ST), and dodging is a technique which can be as simple a thing as staying on your feet when hit as well as the ability to move away from a player nimbly (hence it's an agi roll as it relies on physical characteristics). I'm not saying that's the right interpretation, but it may help your dissonance there.

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Re: Moving Agility-skills to Double for DE

Post by zerodemon »

What we have found these last few weeks is that some of the teams that exploit Blodge (Namely Elves) become more reliant on agility skills (like Leap and Side-Step) or quasi-useful skills like Fend to keep players away when they do go down while bashy teams become more reliant on Strength skills (and since we changed claw to AV8 after modification and pile-on to an injury re-roll, bash teams have a lot less to exploit in this department, while keeping the skills effective)

If anything it has increased diversity in the game to a decent extent. Since Wrestle counters Block and Tackle counters Dodge, the overall result so far has been that when a player has Block he can take Tackle, while a Dodge player can take Wrestle. It also ensures no one dice blocked player only has a 1/6 chance of going down through taking both skills (which, as you know is more of a problem is you're a weedy little elf trying to bring down any bash team player.)

Overall, taking blodge away is a great unifier. Bashy teams lose a little invulnerability while speedy teams like elves have to focus more on speed, avoidance and finesse rather than the convenience of skill combos like block-dodge. Other options exist for such players (Dodge-fend-jump up/dodge-sidestep) while heavier low AG players can take skills like block-breaktackle to increase manouvering without the cheeky bonus of "I only go down 16.6% of the time."

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Moving Agility-skills to Double for DE

Post by TalonBay »

This really sounds like coaches are making poor choices for their skills and wanting house rules to make them more effective.

There's an Orc team in my division that's easily the bashiest team, with only 4 or 5 players with tackle it's almost like my dodge skills are useless when we play. A one dice block with his tacklers taking any of my plays down 1/3rd of the times regardless of how skilled they are, that's pretty good and obviously the success rate is higher because most dice are two dice blocks. If you take away block as well then you're looking at 75% success rate on a 2d block, this is too easy.

Have you got some experienced coaches playing elves and newer coaches playing bash teams? I can see that leading to frustration if the wrong skill choices are made but in a relatively balanced league i think your changes would cause problems, I regularly suffer five or more casualties and this will only go up with your changes.

In terms of getting your head around blodge, I played corner back/ kick returner at uni so would qualify as an AG player but I could dish out a hit. What I was much worse at was the grappling that I think is covered by the wrestle skill, I just didn't have the strength. So it's odd to me that you see wrodge as ok but blodge as not.

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Re: Moving Agility-skills to Double for DE

Post by zerodemon »

With 4 to 5 tacklers he must be playing an awful lot of dodge heavy teams, otherwise he wouldn't see it as important. Our league is fairly balanced in terms of team types. This may be why it's working so far for us. Lighter teams are more fragile now they can't take blodge, but the injuries and deaths curb back their fast development cycles just enough. They also have a chance to bring down players on bash team who (providing they were blodgers) would only go down 11/36 of the time on a two dice block.

That said, your concerns are valid, especially for teams like Pro and Wood Elves (mostly AV7) who'd have little chance in the long term. Might need a rethink. Like I said, we're not at a stage to say the change has been developed long term yet. It's ok right now (where most players are still unskilled) but over time it may become more of a problem.

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Re: Moving Agility-skills to Double for DE

Post by dines »

What about amazons? They would suck big time if they couldn't take block on anyone except the blitzers who already defy your rules.

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Re: Moving Agility-skills to Double for DE

Post by Xadie »

zerodemon wrote:With 4 to 5 tacklers he must be playing an awful lot of dodge heavy teams
It's just a question how high the tv of the orc team is. Sure around TV1400 or so 4-5 tacklers might seem a lot. Post 2000 it's a common sight even if they bash just dwarfs all day.

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Re: Moving Agility-skills to Double for DE

Post by zerodemon »

@dines Very sorry, you can add Amazons, Goblins, Halflings, Skink-heavy Lizardman teams, 60% of the Ogre team and ANY AV7 or lower player in Blood Bowl at all.

Amazons could do with being more challenging to play anyway. We moved G skill access to doubles with our last season, giving them all A skill access as standard. We also made their Blitzers wrodge as standard instead of blodge just last week to fit in with the house ruling (though we haven't changed it in our modified team document yet.)

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