Talk Fantasy Football

Inspired by the fact that Cyanide are almost certainly going to FUBAR this, but they've at least inspired a surge in interest in the always cool idea, I decided to redo the Colleges of Magic teams to fit the most recent rules.

Here's the guidelines I went with:
1) Keep the Primary-Secondary-Tertiary race concept.
2) TRY and keep close to the original Dungeonbowl teams if possible. If not don't sweat it.
3) Every race should be represented. Luckily 24 is divisible by 3. This gives us 8 teams. IIRC there were oringinally ten. AFAIK though there are now 8 colleges of magic in the Warhammer fluff. I haven't checked. I could remember 8. So, one slot per race. Nice.
4) We'll keep the original 2nd ed position limits: 0-4 Blitzer, 0-4 Blocker, 0-4 Catcher, 0-2 Thrower, unlimited linemen.
(For the sake of arguments that always come up, if it doesn't have a position per se, that is Witch Elves and Slayers, it's a Blitzer. Cos I say so.)
5) Team Building rules:
a) Primary race: 0-10. Allowed full positional access, but no more than 6 total. If the team has a big guy he may be taken as a Blocker.
(Special case: Dwarf Blockers count as Linemen.)
(Special Case: Max one Big guy per College Team.)
b) Secondary race: 0-6. Halved positional access (round down).
(Special case: The Goblin secret weapons collectively count as a position, so 0-2 Secret Weapons).
c) Tertiary race: 0-4. Max One positional player. (Special Case: No Treemen.)
d) Secondary race may NOT have more players on roster than primary. Tertiary race may not have more players on roster than secondary.
e) Each time you hire a positional player from one of your available rosters the next player you choose from that roster must be a Lineman-type. This prevents people simply cherry picking the best players from each roster.

Here's the college breakdown I went with:
Bright: 1 - Dwarf, 2 - Human, 3 - Norse
Celestial: 1 - Elf, 2 - Wood Elf, 3 - High Elf
Light: 1 - Amazon, 2 - Slann, 3 - Halfling
Grey: 1 - Pact, 2 - Chaos, 3 - Underworld
Amethyst: 1- Necro, 2 - Nurgle, 3 - Undead
Gold: 1 - Chaos Dwarf, 2 - Khemri, 3 - Vampire
Jade: 1 - Orc, 2 - Goblin, 3 - Ogre
Amber: 1 - Skaven, 2 - Dark Elf, 3 - Lizardman

Rainbow and Dark follow different rules:
Rainbow may take 0-4 of each of the following: Human Linemen. Dwarf Blockers. Elf Linemen. Amazon Linewomen. Halflings. You may have 0-4 positional players of any non-loner, non-Big Guy sort from these races, but no more than 2 of any one type.
Dark may take 0-4 of each of the following: Orc Linemen. Skaven Linemen. Dark Elf Linemen. Beastmen. Goblins. Same positional rule.

These Colleges are meant to be at least VAGUELY fluffy, while maintaining some sort of balance. I've probably missed something, there may be something hideously busted or stupid in here...tell me if you see anything. This is just my initial ideas and I'm open to change if we can maintain the rules.

(edit: switched Amethyst and Amber around. think I was remembering which was which in the original box wrong. Fits the WFB fluff quite nicely too. Exchanged pact and Chaos in Grey, for a more Human focus on the team, per old version.)
(Edit: added Rainbow and Dark)

Good idea, you should post that to the Dungeonbowl site to try and steer them towards more sensible rosters.

The 2 missing colleges were Dark and Rainbow.

I don’t think it is wise to have 3 full rosters to make up the colleges and would much rather they limit the choices somewhat. In particular the tertiary choice I believe should be just 1 or 2 options from a roster, ideally something a bit out there like a big guy, stunty or a good player for an otherwise weak team.

So instead of having humans primary (5 roster options), dwarfs (5 roster options),secondary and norse (6 roster options) tertiary I’d make the roster set like this.

Human linemen 0-16
Human Blitzer 0-3
Human thrower 0-1 (maybe 0-2)
Human catcher 0-4
Ogre 0-1
Dwarf Longbeard 0-3
Dwarf Blitzer 0-1
Dwarf runner 0-1
Dwarf Slayer 0-1
Norse Ulfwerener 0-1
Snow Troll 0-1

I am not sure if I’d allow a Deathroller or maybe give the option of berserkers as well.

I think the primary team should make up the majority of the roster as it would be quite lame to have 6 dwarf positionals, 2 norse positionals then a few cheap human linemen to bulk out the team.

If you mix 3 tier 1 teams, like Amber was if memory serves with Orcs, Dark Elves and Skaven it is just a bit silly and teams lose any coherency and character.

spubbbba wrote:Good idea, you should post that to the Dungeonbowl site to try and steer them towards more sensible rosters.

The 2 missing colleges were Dark and Rainbow.

I don’t think it is wise to have 3 full rosters to make up the colleges and would much rather they limit the choices somewhat. In particular the tertiary choice I believe should be just 1 or 2 options from a roster, ideally something a bit out there like a big guy, stunty or a good player for an otherwise weak team.

I originally forgot Amber and included Dark. Amended now.

For your second concern, I thought of a similar situation (Skaven linemen en masse with loads of Dark Elves in Amethyst) and added 5e to combat that.

As for submitting the ideas to Cyanide...I doubt they'd listen to reason. I have no faith in a company who think adding Khorne Demons to the game is a good idea...

Looks really good. A lot of fun too!
Just goes to show how a dead game can be tweaked and given new life if you've got the imagination and determination to do so...

I like the idea that your must have more of 1st race than the 2nd and so on. The team building and team breakdowns get a little weird and provides a huge debate.

If I was re-creating it I would say only the NON 0-16 or 0-12 positionals have a limit of simply either 0-2 or to me even better 0-1. Sure this limits players like Wardancers, Trollslayers, Trolls, and Bull Centaurs to one, but makes them very special and unique too. Facing the Celestial Wizards team would be hard enough, but a team with 2 Wardancers, 2 Pro Elf Blitzers, 2 High Elf Blitzers would be a pain.

Of course either way you go these would have to be play tested alot, and with the way Dungeon Bowl plays out with the craziness not sure those stats would get a good read. I guess we will find out soon with the release of the video game.

spubbbba wrote: If you mix 3 tier 1 teams, like Amber was if memory serves with Orcs, Dark Elves and Skaven it is just a bit silly and teams lose any coherency and character.

I have re-read this several times, can you explain this comment even further. Why is this silly?

I think he simply means that if you build an orc team as normal and then just add 2 gutter runners, it gets very silly very fast.

fatfinley wrote: If I was re-creating it I would say only the NON 0-16 or 0-12 positionals have a limit of simply either 0-2 or to me even better 0-1. Sure this limits players like Wardancers, Trollslayers, Trolls, and Bull Centaurs to one, but makes them very special and unique too. Facing the Celestial Wizards team would be hard enough, but a team with 2 Wardancers, 2 Pro Elf Blitzers, 2 High Elf Blitzers would be a pain.

Note that by my rules that Blitzer scenario is impossible. max 0-1 Wardancer and no more than 4 Blitzers (Wardancers being Blitzers).
You COULD have One Wardancer, 2 pro Elf Blitzers and 1 High Elf Blitzer in a Celestial team though. Not cheap though. You could have this:
2 Elf Blitzers, 1 Wardancer, 1 High Elf Blitzer, 1 Wood Elf Lineman, 1 Wood Elf Catcher, 5 Elf linemen, 2 rerolls.
Nasty, but I don't think it's worse than some other colleges can come up with.

Seeing as Dark and Rainbow are not in my rules, but were part of the original rules I also thought it might be fun if they were REALLY mixed teams.
Rainbow may take 0-4 of each of the following: Human Linemen. Dwarf Blockers. Elf Linemen. Amazon Linewomen. Halflings. You may have 0-4 positional players of any sort from these races, but no more than 2 of any one type.
Dark may take 0-4 of each of the following: Orc Linemen. Skaven Linemen. Dark Elf Linemen. Beastmen. Goblins. Same positional rule.

Thadrin wrote: Note that by my rules that Blitzer scenario is impossible. max 0-1 Wardancer and no more than 4 Blitzers (Wardancers being Blitzers).
You COULD have One Wardancer, 2 pro Elf Blitzers and 1 High Elf Blitzer in a Celestial team though. Not cheap though. You could have this:
2 Elf Blitzers, 1 Wardancer, 1 High Elf Blitzer, 1 Wood Elf Lineman, 1 Wood Elf Catcher, 5 Elf linemen, 2 rerolls.
Nasty, but I don't think it's worse than some other colleges can come up with.

Okay I see that more clearly now. I guess I misread it the first time. Us Both Down fellas aren't that bright

But I do like fatfinley's idea, though. (Or something like it)

Primary team - all access halved, round up.
Secondary team - all access is 0-1 except linemen. Can take 0-6 players from secondary.
Tertiary team - all access is 0-1. Can take 0-2 players.

This means that Grey can get five big guys and Jade can get three - but Grey should have Underworld and Pact change places anyway, so that'd be fixed down to four big guys for them.
(Pact is already a College team, sort of)

Under the Grey College, shouldn't chaos be the first team?

I think Old School Grey had Humans as primary. I wanted to keep similar there, so put Pact in that slot. The majority of players would thus be your marauders. You'd add a couple of Warriors and Beastmen to that.
(FWIW - I actually HAVE a painted Grey College team...and I went Human-Chaos-can't remember because I didn't take a third)
REALLY wanted to limit Big Guys too. Too many ST5 lumps in a cramped Dungeon would be a right PITA, hence the limit I imposed of 1 per team.

fatfinley wrote:

spubbbba wrote: If you mix 3 tier 1 teams, like Amber was if memory serves with Orcs, Dark Elves and Skaven it is just a bit silly and teams lose any coherency and character.

I have re-read this several times, can you explain this comment even further. Why is this silly?

Well I think it is important that teams all have a unique and distinct character. If you take an existing roster and add players from another team that cancels these weaknesses out then you lose much of what makes that team interesting. I like how they changed the teams in 3rd edition so that none have both blockers and catchers, and that humans and orcs are no totally different when they used to be identical.

One of the best things about BB is that we have 24 distinct teams all with varying playing styles and power levels at different TV’s. If you just mash them together with no real thought then they risk ending up being too samey and bland. Whilst on the face of it having nasty blockers with high armour and strength access, agile catchers with AG4 and agility access a big guy and some cheap fodder on a team sounds great, if all the teams have that then it is kind of dull.

The Underworld team are a great example of how to do a mixed team well. Both skaven and goblins rely on agility and being sneaky to win games and tend to be rather squishy so they compliment each other well. They removed some of the unique players such as the goblin secret weapons, gutters and rat ogre but allowed all players to mutate on normal rolls.

I’d much rather they give a limited selection of players as the secondary choice that complimented the primary race and make the tertiary choice 1 or 2 players from another team. So say humans as primary with 0-2 dwarf blockers, 0-2 dwarf blitzers and 0-2 dwarf runners as secondary. The tertiary choice would be something like 0-2 ulfwereners or 0-2 snow trolls or possibly 0-2 halflings.

spubbbba wrote: I’d much rather they give a limited selection of players as the secondary choice that complimented the primary race and make the tertiary choice 1 or 2 players from another team. So say humans as primary with 0-2 dwarf blockers, 0-2 dwarf blitzers and 0-2 dwarf runners as secondary. The tertiary choice would be something like 0-2 ulfwereners or 0-2 snow trolls or possibly 0-2 halflings.

I think I agree with this. It will take more work but I like this idea. Like in your example all the secondary races should include the 0-16 type position, and having the 3rd race being a splash of flavor like a couple halflings, Ulfwereners or a Minotaur is nice.

This has already been done, so use this - http://blood-bowl.nl/faccess.php?id=470

It has been playtested a fair amount and all the teams are equally broken