Referee + Secret Weapon rules (Feedback desired)

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Brot
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Referee + Secret Weapon rules (Feedback desired)

Post by Brot »

Hi Guys!

I'm pretty motivated to get my 7s league and wanted to ask around for advice on some house rules. The general rules are as minimalistic as possible - it's basically the normal Blood Bowl 7s pitch but with Street Bowl walls.

But something rather specific I would find logical and wanted to try out is the following:

Chainsaw-wielding Referee
If a player would normally be ejected for a foul, leave him on the pitch and make an immediate injury roll for the fouling player instead. No armour roll is required. It still counts as a turnover.

Secret Weapons
At the start of any drive when setting up his players a coach may declare that his team brought a secret weapon on the field (if available through Inducements or otherwise).
Declare which player uses the Secret Weapon (and preferably keep a relevant miniature or counter nearby). Depending on the Secret Weapon used, the player gains specific skills for the duration of the drive.
After the drive ends the player suffers an injury roll (unless a Bribe is used successfully or the player already left the pitch due to a KO or casualty result) and the Secret Weapon is lost (unless a Bribe is used successfully). A Bribe may always be used to keep a Secret Weapon available, even if the player is already KO or injured.
The Dwarven Deathroller is an exception and will be ejected as normally from the game in addition to suffering the injury roll (unless a Bribe is used successfully, in which case both effects don’t take place).
Goblin teams may always pick up to 3 Secret Weapons as free Inducements before every match, irrelevant of Team Value, in addition to any other Inducements.


Reasonings are as follows:
1) Basically any team has chainsaws or other stuff available through star players, so I see no 'critical balance mistake here'.
2) Due to the reduced player numbers of 7s, Secret Weapons can be managed better and more flexible.
3) It should all in all be a small boost to goblins - they do not suffer all the ejections and are never forced to put their secret weapons on the field. Yes, they might suffer more injuries - but then again they won't lose as many players for the match.
4) The general injury roll for fouling is imo a good way to give a slight boost and a bigger drawback at the same time. The turnover stays and in the quick 7s games a stunned result is also a strong factor. But it makes fouling a bit less of a 'dick'-move, since the referee will chop the occasional head off.
5) The few unbalanced combination (only thing i can really think of is an elf with bombs) should be counteracted by the price of suffering an injury roll on that elite player.
6) There are already Special Play Cards that do this (e.g. Chainsaw).

Thanks for reading through it, would you give me advice if I am overlooking something critical here? Especially veteran goblin coaches ;)
As I see it (not been playtested yet) it should be more fun for goblin coaches, and also more 'logical' when thinking about the background.

Greetings!

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Chris
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Re: Referee + Secret Weapon rules (Feedback desired)

Post by Chris »

Going to list the secret weapons? (So is the dagger or pogo one?)

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Re: Referee + Secret Weapon rules (Feedback desired)

Post by Brot »

For starters, I made these:

Chainsaw – Chainsaw, Secret Weapon

Ball & Chain – Ball & Chain, No Hands, Secret Weapon, in addition treat the ST of the player as 7 (if not already higher) and the MA of the player as 3 (if not already lower)

Blunderbuss – Hail Mary Pass, Secret Weapon

Bombs – Bombardier, Secret Weapon

Dagger – Stab, Secret Weapon

Pogo Stick – Leap, Very Long Legs, Secret Weapon

I know there have been a lot more whacky secret weapons in earlier editions, but I though it's best to keep it relatively simple initially.

edit: For the inducement price I think they are best somewhere between 100.000 and 150.000 ... putting them at 150 at first would be the 'cautious' way.

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Re: Referee + Secret Weapon rules (Feedback desired)

Post by Brot »

No 'OMG you can't do this!!!' so far?

I could take this as a good sign. :)

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Re: Referee + Secret Weapon rules (Feedback desired)

Post by Chris »

Only for linemen to take?

Pogo Stick – Leap, Very Long Legs

So not a secret weapon, so no penalty to taking it?

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Re: Referee + Secret Weapon rules (Feedback desired)

Post by Brot »

Chris wrote:Only for linemen to take?

Pogo Stick – Leap, Very Long Legs

So not a secret weapon, so no penalty to taking it?
Whoops, missing Secret Weapon for the Pogo Stick is a typo.

If I would concur it is better to reduce it for Linemen, I would probably just make everything easier - and delete these rule changes again and allow every team to induce basic Linemen Mercenaries armed with Secret Weapons.
Which I guess, would work too. Maybe that's a better solution.

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Re: Referee + Secret Weapon rules (Feedback desired)

Post by Chris »

Making a set of linemen with secret weapons would allow you to balance things better as well, and simply not bother with useless options (zombie bomber for example). In those cases could use a different player (ghoul) from the team?

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Re: Referee + Secret Weapon rules (Feedback desired)

Post by Brot »

Still thinking about this - to change that players are not 'fixed' to secret weapons would maybe bring a ton of ridiculous fun, but maybe also lack of balance.

Due to the college atmosphere of the league/variant rules i'm working on, I'd like to get rid of Star Players and Mercenaries. I would like the coaches to take the challenge with their own team, rather than giving them superstars that will leave the following game anyway.

Weirdly enough, most of the rules of the specific secret weapons seem to some extent be designed with this possibility in mind, and for most items it would be idiotic to give them to good players. (Wouldn't give you much to hand your minotaur a chainsaw...). The only rough things would be elven throwers throwing bombs with pin point accuracy, or any speedy agile character to receive a pogo stick for the drive. Even in those cases, the injury roll penalty would be strong (thinking about a +1 modifier for the ref in general)...

The second thing is it would give Goblin teams in the 7s environment more flexibility. A goblin team depletes quickly - and if you use all 3 secret weapons in a full 10-man team that only worsens it. Using these rules and giving them a bunch for free every game would give them the option of using them when they need them on any player. I'm trying to find a goblin veteran coach atm, who would give me his opinion on this.

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