Taking Back Blood Bowl

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Milo
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Re: Taking Back Blood Bowl

Post by Milo »

GalakStarscraper wrote: 3) We were already having many many many people scream at us that we were completely taking the blood out of Blood Bowl with the new rules. Constant barrage of accusations of making Pansy Bowl. ClawPOMB for all that it is ... it is still not RSC+RSF level of deadly as per the rules that came before it. So when you looked at the possible level of injury before compared to ClawPOMB ... it was actually lower odds for injury. Because of this ... ClawPOMB was discussed and felt like making it less of a thing would be making the possible blood level even less. The CRP process was to remove roster attrition from the off the pitch from the game and make it all on pitch so ClawPOMB was felt to be appropriate for that goal.
I still feel that anyone who rages against ClawPOMP lacks a historical understanding of the game. Consider that in 3rd edition:

1) It was statistically more likely in some scenarios to kill someone rather than seriously injure them.
2) Fouls and push-outs granted SPPs.
3) You could stack modifiers if you had MB and RSC, or MB and Dirty Player, or Piling On (which granted +X to the armor roll where X was the players strength.)
4) Mighty Blow was +1/+1. Dirty Player was +2/+2.
5) Armor and injury rolls could be re-rolled.
6) To a lesser extent, the changes to Diving Tackle have reduced the number of blocks in the game somewhat.
7) Changes to Special Play cards mean the chance of having a player maimed, killed or otherwise forced off your team are much lower.

The game has become SIGNIFICANTLY less lethal since 1993, but in general, armor values haven't changed at all. Agilities haven't changed at all. The advantages of the power teams have been toned down but the same has not (always) occurred with the finesse teams.

I understand that at high TR levels, where every team can have ClawPOMB, it can get ugly, but frankly those situations don't show up that often, outside of online leagues. And a good league commissioner should endeavor to make sure it never happens in tabletop leagues. I think removing ClawPOMB would do more harm than good.

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Re: Taking Back Blood Bowl

Post by Milo »

VoodooMike wrote:The former BBRC members don't much care to get involved.. they're all focused on their own divergent paths.
Some of us have other things consuming our time, but several of us are still around and involved.

For what it's worth, I applied for the Specialist Games job in hopes of being involved, but didn't get it. But I wouldn't say that we're all divorced from the game now.

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Re: Taking Back Blood Bowl

Post by Milo »

Bakunin wrote:Clawpomb is a problem in tabletop. Any noob can win with it.
In a game, or a league? Note that CLAWPOMB requires at least three skills, 31 SPPs (although a very few start with some of them. I guess Big Guys on a Chaos Pact team could get it in two skills, if you want to have them laying around on the pitch.)

I would guess the average BB "league" lasts between 10 and 20 games. Some leagues persist teams, others don't. Persistence is much more common in online play, where teams routinely get 100+ games under their belts -- I think the number of tabletop teams that get this many games are pretty few.

Would a ClawPOMB team win a league title? Probably not -- by the time they have a significant number of ClawPOMB players, they also probably have a number of losses. And, many of the teams who are likely to be ahead of them in that hypothetical league have little to few from Claw: Wood Elves, Skaven, Norse, Amazons are all mostly immune to it.

If they do win the league title, though, it probably is due to ClawPOMB -- because those teams who get mutations easily usually don't have the agility or skills necessary to run up high scores and win games that way. They HAVE to cause attrition, both within games and to address the proliferation of skills on high agility teams.

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Re: Taking Back Blood Bowl

Post by Milo »

Babs wrote: 4 Blitzers on a Dark Elf team in addition to their two witch elves? Absurd! (I don't think I originally proposed this, but argued strongly for it, along with the High Elf 'Lion Warriors' to go from 2 to 4).
Dysfunctional and broken Wild Animal, that worked as an advantage when played right (attacked nearest player)?
In your (our) defense, Babs, the increase in DE Blitzers and HE Lion Warriors was directly in response to the addition of Big Guys to nearly every roster. We intended it to be a balancing factor for those teams which could not get a Big Guy. I'm still not sure it was a terrible idea, but to point it out as a misstep without acknowledging the other aspects of the meta at that time isn't fair.

That said, I thoroughly approve of the current ruleset and think that it is miles ahead of the last edition I was involved with. But it's supposed to be: Jervis always intended the BBRC and Living Rulebook to be an iterative process, refining the rules, observing the impacts of those changes, and reviewing on an annual basis.

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Re: Taking Back Blood Bowl

Post by Milo »

Heh, you'd think I'd already replied to this thread enough, given that the last four or five replies are all from me.

But to the original point of "taking back" Blood Bowl:

Even assuming that the revised game is a disaster -- and it does not appear to be at the moment -- and the hypothetical that GW would take no legal action to defend intellectual property (which may not have merit but would be impossible for a volunteer group to fight in court), the question remains:

Is it right for the Blood Bowl community?

I like the ruleset we have now, but looking at the leaps from 1st Edition to 2nd and from 2nd to 3rd, it's hard to argue that the game got WORSE as a result of GW's releases. It would definitely take some time to get used to any major changes in a new Edition of the core boxed game, but that doesn't mean that those changes are necessarily BAD.

What would be BAD would be to split the community in half, with two groups playing with massively different rulesets. It's bad for new players, coming into the game with the new rules but being told "we don't play that here'. It's bad for tournament play, because you would either have inevitable fights between camps or you'd simply see half the turnout you did previously.

Now, when GW put together the BBRC, we had a clear mandate to make OFFICIAL changes to the ruleset. And there would be a certain veneer of respectability if we could cobble together former members of the BBRC to shepherd and approve a new open-source Fantasy Football ruleset. I'm still not sure that's a good idea, but probably the NAF or the former BBRC would be the most likely progenitors of any ruleset that would be considered acceptable by the masses.

I think the correct approach at the moment is to wait and see. I've expressed my feelings about GW making change for change's sake, but aside from a little bit of scale creep, we haven't seen proof of anything like that. (And, ironically, the scale creep could serve the purpose of bringing official GW minis more in line with what 3rd parties like Willy are doing right now.)

If things go south, and there is an overwhelming cry from the masses to split from GW and go our own way, I'm game. I'll do whatever I can. But I think it's premature to dismiss GW's efforts out of hand. It may turn out to be a Very Good Thing (tm) that GW is re-releasing the game.

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Re: Taking Back Blood Bowl

Post by Bakunin »

Milo wrote:
Bakunin wrote:Clawpomb is a problem in tabletop. Any noob can win with it.
In a game, or a league? Note that CLAWPOMB requires at least three skills, 31 SPPs (although a very few start with some of them. I guess Big Guys on a Chaos Pact team could get it in two skills, if you want to have them laying around on the pitch.)

I would guess the average BB "league" lasts between 10 and 20 games. Some leagues persist teams, others don't. Persistence is much more common in online play, where teams routinely get 100+ games under their belts -- I think the number of tabletop teams that get this many games are pretty few.

Would a ClawPOMB team win a league title? Probably not -- by the time they have a significant number of ClawPOMB players, they also probably have a number of losses. And, many of the teams who are likely to be ahead of them in that hypothetical league have little to few from Claw: Wood Elves, Skaven, Norse, Amazons are all mostly immune to it.

If they do win the league title, though, it probably is due to ClawPOMB -- because those teams who get mutations easily usually don't have the agility or skills necessary to run up high scores and win games that way. They HAVE to cause attrition, both within games and to address the proliferation of skills on high agility teams.

Of course the problem is in leagues where teams continue to be used. So you start season '13' and you know that clawpomb-team, at least is going to be in the playoff, if not win it all. Thats a problem. Also having 58% chance of pitch-takeoff, if you get a knock down is a problem (and broken to me)...

Generally this may not be a problem (I have not seen otherwise), but I play in a highly competitive league with some of the best players in the world who power-games (Kåre, MissSweden etc.), so when they build for clawpomb, you gotta follow along. - We have been playing with CRP+/NTBB rules, but now we are going back to CRP and immediately people are switching back to PO and aiming for more claw-mb.
Blood Bowl just becomes more of a wargame, than a fantasy football game.

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Re: Taking Back Blood Bowl

Post by Regash »

Bakunin wrote:Also having 58% chance of pitch-takeoff, if you get a knock down is a problem (and broken to me)...
But that doesn't do anything to the fact that you still have to get that poor little bugger down to the ground FIRST before you can take your chances with that 58 %!
Guess what? Claw reduces armor to AV7, so a roll of 8 succeeds. So what? Norse do have these odds all the time and I don't hear them complaining!
What about Halflings? I hear no 'boohoo' from those coaches with their AV6!

There are now 3 threads where the majority shrug CPOMB off as no problem but you guys keep on insisting and insisting...
I'm really trying not to get involved in this to much but it kind of starts to creep me out.

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Re: Taking Back Blood Bowl

Post by Milo »

Bakunin wrote:
Milo wrote:
Bakunin wrote:Clawpomb is a problem in tabletop. Any noob can win with it.
In a game, or a league? Note that CLAWPOMB requires at least three skills, 31 SPPs (although a very few start with some of them. I guess Big Guys on a Chaos Pact team could get it in two skills, if you want to have them laying around on the pitch.)
Of course the problem is in leagues where teams continue to be used. So you start season '13' and you know that clawpomb-team, at least is going to be in the playoff, if not win it all. Thats a problem. Also having 58% chance of pitch-takeoff, if you get a knock down is a problem (and broken to me)...
Well, as I mentioned before, lots of teams -- notably Skaven and Wood Elves -- deal with this reality on a daily basis if they run into a POMB player. And as I mentioned elsewhere, BB used to be FAR more tuned to the lethal than it is today even with ClawPOMB.

I will grant you that over 13 seasons, ClawPOMB is both easier to acquire on a large number of players AND will cause attrition in the finesse teams. Those finesse teams, on the other hand, have the potential to rack up SPPs faster (PCs and TDs generate more than CAS, at least early on) and to get lots of skills which make it harder for the blocky teams to knock them over in the first place. That's just part of how the game is "balanced".

But to say that a skill combo needs to be nerfed when it:

a) is limited to a only few teams (Skaven, Underworld, Chaos varieties, Necromantic, Norse)
b) requires at least two skills to be earned and
c) only shows up as a problem in teams that have played 100+ games

...well, I think you're a solution looking for a problem to solve. After all the reductions to bashy skills over the years, ClawPOMB (and POMB to a lesser extent) is a balancing factor to make bashy teams playable.

Consider that under 3rd Ed rules, a Chaos Warrior with ClawPOMB would have +5 to the armor roll and +3 to the injury roll, and so would casualty an Orc Lineman on an armor roll of 5+ and an injury roll of 7+. And yes, back then they could reroll the armor and injury rolls if they wanted. (Armor roll: +4 based on St4 with Piling On stacked with +1 from Mighty Blow, Injury: +2 from Razor Sharp Claws stacked with +1 from Piling On)

Wanna work up the percentage chance of a pitch-takeoff under those rules? Better, want to work up the DIFFERENCE in pitch-takeoff from yesteryear to now?

And again, Claw mostly works against the tougher teams who don't suffer many casualties in the first place. This new version of Claw is MUCH better against Dwarves and Orcs and MUCH worse against the finesse teams.
Bakunin wrote:Generally this may not be a problem (I have not seen otherwise), but I play in a highly competitive league with some of the best players in the world who power-games (Kåre, MissSweden etc.), so when they build for clawpomb, you gotta follow along.
Those are the noobs you were referring to? Some of the best players in the world who power-game?

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Re: Taking Back Blood Bowl

Post by dode74 »

Bakunin wrote:Of course the problem is in leagues where teams continue to be used. So you start season '13' and you know that clawpomb-team, at least is going to be in the playoff, if not win it all.
Season 31 in OCC and that's simply not happening.

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Re: Taking Back Blood Bowl

Post by koadah »

Definitely wouldn't vote for Milo or Dode to be on the BBRC. :lol:

But you knew I wouldn't vote for Dode. ;)

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Re: Taking Back Blood Bowl

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Milo wrote:
Bakunin wrote:Generally this may not be a problem (I have not seen otherwise), but I play in a highly competitive league with some of the best players in the world who power-games (Kåre, MissSweden etc.), so when they build for clawpomb, you gotta follow along.
Those are the noobs you were referring to? Some of the best players in the world who power-game?
Thats the problem in "the highly competitive league" I play in. Unless you wanna be the only fluff coach and lose, than you have to aim for the best bash combo if you can....

But thats not the only tabletop league I play in - the one where im commish, passblockers have been seen on the pitch - and yes clawpomb have been a problem there.

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Re: Taking Back Blood Bowl

Post by dode74 »

Bakunin wrote:Thats the problem in "the highly competitive league" I play in. Unless you wanna be the only fluff coach and lose, than you have to aim for the best bash combo if you can....

But thats not the only tabletop league I play in - the one where im commish, passblockers have been seen on the pitch - and yes clawpomb have been a problem there.
Look, if you don't like it then house rule it. It's a fairly simple solution. Thing is, while you see problems there are plenty of others - including some very long-running leagues - which don't. Given the rules work for some but not for you then why don't you do exactly what it says in the rulebook and house rule it so it does work for you? Given you can do that what's the problem?

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Re: Taking Back Blood Bowl

Post by koadah »

dode74 wrote:
Bakunin wrote:Thats the problem in "the highly competitive league" I play in. Unless you wanna be the only fluff coach and lose, than you have to aim for the best bash combo if you can....

But thats not the only tabletop league I play in - the one where im commish, passblockers have been seen on the pitch - and yes clawpomb have been a problem there.
Look, if you don't like it then house rule it. It's a fairly simple solution. Thing is, while you see problems there are plenty of others - including some very long-running leagues - which don't. Given the rules work for some but not for you then why don't you do exactly what it says in the rulebook and house rule it so it does work for you? Given you can do that what's the problem?
I do house rule it.

But if people are going to talk about reforming the BBRC and changing the rules then we'll talk about changing rules.

Whenever the topic of changing the rules comes up people will tell you what they think is wrong with the current set.

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Re: Taking Back Blood Bowl

Post by plasmoid »

Hi Milo,
I still feel that anyone who rages against ClawPOMP lacks a historical understanding of the game. Consider that in 3rd edition:
[snip list]
Heh, if we're talking historical understanding of the game, then we'd have to remember that straight 3rd ed. was bat shit crazy.
I think we all know the story of an outsider joining the GW studio league and taking it apart with DP.
I played a few in-store touraments back then, and it was also DP-o-rama.
JJ himself was quick to react to DP. Remember the original IGMEOY? Not just getting sent off on a 4+, but getting sent off on a "non-doubles" - i.e. 83% send-off?

So yes, over the years BB has indeed become less lethal. I think the changes along the way were all good for the game.
Like the cas-roll/Sigurds-injury-rule. Or taking rerolls off armor/injury.

AFAIK, when CPOMB was discussed on the PBBL forums as potentially problematic, I and others responded that the stats were modelled on 3rd ed. bashers - i.e. +5/+1 and +4/+2 guys - so they were OK. I think in hindsight that that argument should have been a warning to ourselves. That we had stepped back too far towards crazyness.
Way back in the day, I used to play in a very long term league: 1 year season, 50-80 games(!). It was always a super bloody, and Piling On (and DP) was the weapon of choice. It made perfect sense too: When you're facing TV 400(0) teams, removing even a single high-value player was a big deal. Ah well, bygones.

Be that as it may. I think that the historical comparison misses 2 things:
1) Up until CRP, the FF system meant that cash was plentiful. Money rolled in, and we never had problems replacing players.
2) Up until CRP, the handicap system was rather toothless, making running a 16 man roster completely viable.

I'd argue that with CRP, the standard roster size dropped from 16 to 12, meaning that injuries and KOs taken don't just cut into your bench, but quickly cut into your active roster. This makes bashy-killy considerably more viable as a strategy. Edit: And also means that even if you win, a brush with a killy team or two is much more likely to leave your team in tatters.
I understand that at high TR levels, where every team can have ClawPOMB, it can get ugly, but frankly those situations don't show up that often, outside of online leagues. And a good league commissioner should endeavor to make sure it never happens in tabletop leagues. I think removing ClawPOMB would do more harm than good.
While I agree that a good commish should handle this, I also think that it is bad for a rule set to require that.
It is also worth noting that the PBBL rules were intended to work for perpetual play. That was the stated design goal.
I totally agree that very few TT leagues run long enough to ever experience any problems with CPOMB. I think most tabletop leagues don't run long enough to experience any CPOMB, period.
Which is why a nerf to CPOMB wouldn't sting. I don't think anybody want to remove CPOMB. Just rein it in.

Cheers
Martin

PS - just so we're clear, I think that the BBRC did a stellar job, and that CRP is the best rule set yet.

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Re: Taking Back Blood Bowl

Post by hutchinsfairy »

Milo wrote:I still feel that anyone who rages against ClawPOMP lacks a historical understanding of the game.
Really appreciating your take on things generally but this bit doesn't make sense to me. If someone feels that there is a problem with ClawPOMB in the current ruleset then what difference do previous rulesets make? I can see the relevance when it comes to understanding how CRP evolved but not how that might have any bearing on how ClawPOMB works.

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