Change my mind: Black Orcs belong in Tier 3

[El_Jairo]

Well folks, I know this opinion is controversial, yet I don't claim to be an expert at coaching bashy teams. So that is my first disclaimer: my natural style is best matched in Elf teams: which can reliably reposition and have the mobility to capitalize on errors the opponent makes.

Yet I'm not here to talk about other teams, let's talk about the Black Orc team, why it is lacking IMHO, what we can compare it to and what is actually needed to make this team viable in Tier 2.

My credentials are: I'm playing Blood Bowl since 3rd edition when Death Zone came out. Played a decent amount online in OBBL and Fummbl and now recently on Blood Bowl 2 and have have attended to some tournaments, the biggest ones being the last World Cups playing with Dark Elves and Necromantic respectively. I am no pro player, as my record shows, yet I am above average since I can obtain 65% win rate in the online ladder consistently.
Currently I have played 6 games with the Black Orc vs coaches of different levels of skill. Against newer coaches I had a fighting chance, against experienced ones, there simply was nothing but hoping for Nuffle to dice my opponent.

So, with that you of the way, let's dive straight into what I think Black Orcs are best compared to. Because most people where comparing them to Lizardmen, yet I feel that they have more in common with Nurgle, minus the benefits of Nurgle: mutations (ei: Claw access).

Let's start looking through the positionals, one by one.
First off, the Troll: he almost matches the Beast of Nurgle, yet no Nurgle's Rot and no Tentacles. Sure Tentacles is a lot worse, yet crucial in feeding the big guys some casualties. Which are crucial in rookie games to get up in numbers and start making the most of those numbers.

You want the typical skills on the troll, yet I prefer Guard over Brawler because Guard is 'always' on and it helps out with fouls now. Also having experienced how low the impact of Brawler can be, I believe that Guard, Stand Firm is the best two skills the Troll can get. If you want to develop him long term, I would advise Guard, Block and then Stand Firm.

Next up: Black Orcs: which compare very much with Nurgle Warriors
Black Orcs get two skills: Brawler and Grab, of which Grab is more useful. Brawler, in my experience is sometimes useful because I tend to roll more 1/9 (Both Down/Skull 2x) than a push & BD. So in that case I prefer using the TRR to be able to continue my turn.
Black Orcs are cheaper (25k) that the Nurgle Warriors, but the skills the Warriors get do help them out: Foul Appearance is an underrated skill because most of the time it doesn't do much, but when it does, it can really derail the opponents turn. Furthermore Disturbing Presence is great to discourage Hand-off plays to switch flanks and regeneration is just better that one apothecary in the long run.

Because there is no build in discouragement for pass or hand-off plays, the MA4 of the Black Orcs really hurts them: once the opposition has managed to move around them, there is simply no recovery because most players can move 6 or more squares, so you are betting to get in range with Rushes.

Lastly: the Goblin Bruisers: they of course don't compare with the Rotter Lineman nor the Pestigors.
They are 10k more expensive that the Rotter Lineman but are strictly worse lineman because they have ST 2.
Pestigors, let's not even start talking about it because that is what the Black Orc team is really missing: a player with the potential to blitz or become a safety or become a ball handler.

Goblins are stunty/right stuff players and their biggest benefit is that they used to be cheap. Yet Goblin Bruisers get Thick Skull for 5k, which is a steal, yet it increases their cost by 12,5% or an 8th. They still can get CASed of the pitch as easily as any other Stunty player though.

They do have the one skill which is useful: Sneaky Git but most other Agility skills aren't worth 20k on top of the 45k.

So far for all the different positionals. Next post we are going to look at their development.

[El_Jairo]

Now on the development of the players in the Black Orc team.
I have already covered the Troll, because that is quite fairly simple: he's too expensive to go for random rolls, unless you are in for some Russian Roulette and don't worry about rolling Shadowing or Arm-Bar.

Now onto the Black Orcs.
At 90k a pop, the same argument goes for Black Orcs: they can't afford to roll a bad random skill. Especially since reaching enough SPP is a real challenge, as you can't plan for Casualties.

So you might be tempted to roll on the Strength Skill table because they already have two skills and Strong Arm isn't a viable option, so there are 'only' 8 skills to roll on.
Let's break them down into three rough categories: the Good, the skills you actually want, the Bad: skills that you don't actually want but can be sometimes useful and the Ugly: skills that are hardly to be of any use at all to the player.

Good: Guard, Mighty Blow and Stand Firm (the holy trinity for all Blocker players) 33,33% or 1/3 chance to roll this
Bad: Break Tackle, Juggernaut, Pile Driver (which can have their use but not every turn, Juggernaut is actually the best, if you can blitz with it every turn) 33,33% or 1/3 chance to roll this
Ugly: Arm Bar, Multiple Block, Thick Skull (Thick Skull is the best here, yet the chance of it being useful are very low) 33,33% or 1/3 chance to roll this

So an optimist would say: I have 2/3 not to screw up my random roll. I am an optimist, yet I'm also realistic about this. In one season you will be lucky to roll once on the skill table, so you have to make the most out of it and then only 1/3 is actually a useful skill. Not tremendous odds.

I'm not making the comparison in depth for the General Skills because there are only 2 skills there: Block and Fend so only 18% of randomly getting a useful skill. (Frenzy isn't an option since Grab excludes it.)

So the fun part: Goblins Bruisers:
They realistically are the players who are going to be doing the scoring part, so they actually can get enough SPP to get some skills.

To speed up their development you want to roll for a random skill, because the team isn't going to be able to score reliably or on the player they want.

From experience I would advice to wait up until 6SPP to roll on General Skills, because those are the best skills and you will save the most TV if you get a good skill. We'll continue the Good, the Bad and the Ugly comparison.

Good: Block, Dirty Player, Sure Hands, Tackle, Wrestle which is 41,67% chance or 5/12 rolls.
Bad: Dauntless, Strip Ball, Kick, Fend these skills are actually half bad but the team doesn't have the tool to benefit the most of them so I still consider them bad rolls. 33,33% chance or 1/3 rolls
Ugly: Frenzy, Pro, Shadowing These Skills are really not worth the time, maybe Pro will save you once in a game, yet still not worth 10k IMHO. 25% chance or 1/4 rolls.

To be complete, i will add the table for Agility skills, yet I am convinced that the best way to develop Goblin Bruisers is first to roll a General Skill and than pick the Agility Skill which will complement this (or General Skill or Passing Skill).
Good: Jump-Up, Sneaky Git, Side-Step, Diving Tackle which are all skills that I would pick if I had to on a rookie Goblin, especially Sneaky Git is worth it now. 36,36% chance or 4/11 rolls.
Bad: Sprint, Sure Feet, Catch, Defensive. All supportive skills, not good as first skill. 36,36% chance or 4/11 rolls.
Ugly: Diving Catch, Safe Pair of Hands, Leap. Clearly bad skills except for Diving Catch which can help out on a hand off play but strictly worst than Catch. 27,27% chance or 3/11 rolls.

So as you can see: the development of the Black Orcs team is slow and doesn't really have a pay off to build for. You can get more reliable Black Orcs and hopefully you roll well on the Goblins so you actually get a proper team. If the goblins don't get murdered or maimed.

[El_Jairo]

Now, what would I change in the Black Orc team to make them an actual Tier 2 team? Where they actually belong, they clearly weren't designed as another stunty team!

Well I would add at least one positional: the squig rider: (Based of Madcap Miggz)
MA ST AG AV
6 3 3+ 9+
Skills: Break Tackle, Claws, Horns, No Hands, Leap, Loner (3+), Very Long Legs, Animal Savagery
Number: 0-2 and cost 90k
Skill acces: Primary Strength and Secondary: GMA

I chose to give them Horns because of the aggressive nature of Squiggs, but you could drop it, and make them cost 70k. Which leaves them open to more development and more accessible.

I would strongly look at the Pogoer and 'Ooligan from the Goblin team to add to this team to strengthen their game but I understand that it's simply stealing at this point. Which isn't wrong, since the Black Orcs were stolen from the Orc team to begin with.
Yet one could get creative and think about adding Forest Goblins, or Night Goblins to give the team some different angles to work with.

As a final thought: I would consider bringing the cost for the Team Re-Roll down to 50k because the lore states that the Black Orcs are the smartest of all the Orcs and because the team really needs the TRR's to be able to score. But I get that this is a minor point and almost all 50k teams are Tier 1 (except for Humans and Elven Union).

[Jayward]

What are you talking about? They're fine. They're just really hard to manoeuvre; playing them is like shifting a piano, and their slow speed means they can't recover from difficulties particularly easily.

Yeah, they're not going to set the world on fire and I doubt we'll see them win too many tournaments, but they're not so disastrously bad that they need a rework.

[El_Jairo]

Well I guess the team just isn't for me, yet I don't see the appeal in them currently to be played by many coaches.

Over at BloodBowlStrategies there are some early statistics, which concur with my point: their average win rate is in the low 40% and besides the cool models, I don't really see an USP why you should play this race.

Goblins have secret weapons to cause havoc, Ogres have lot's of Big Guys to wack people with, Halflings are cheap enough to induce cool stars or eat that the TRR of the opponent.

Nurgle and Chaos get the high TV Claw killers. Vampires get to make cool plays with Hypnotic Gaze.

And what do Black Orcs get? They move like a piano?

I'm not sold, so yeah, this team is not for me.

[Jayward]

So it goes. I know people who would choose the high-strength fouling team over Dark Elves every day of the week. I'm partial to Imperial Nobility despite people often telling me they're rubbish, but wouldn't voluntarily play Lizardmen despite them being very good.

Black Orcs are a fairly unique team; they've got the combo of highest amount of high-ST players but lowest average speed. Couple that with some unusual skills and you've got a team with well-defined strengths and weaknesses, as well as slightly safer blocking and interesting possibilities with Grab. Even if that's not your cup of tea there's enough going on to catch peoples' eye.

To be clear, I don't disagree with the concept that Black Orcs could do with a small boost... Although I think we need a lot more data before we can say for sure. It might be that someone will hit upon some good strategies for them. It might be that new players using the cool-looking team that came in the box is pushing the numbers down slightly. But overall, as you say, their win rate is consistently low 40s and I'm pretty sure the design aim has been stated to have all teams in the 45-55% win rate range. So a little nudge wouldn't be amiss

But I do disagree that they're tier 3

[El_Jairo]

Yes I do agree that Tier 3 is over stated, it was my way of grabbing attention.

Yet the data, outside tournaments, is from FUMBBL, so not really influenced by the shiny new models. I'm not sure how many new players find their way to FUMBBL these days, because I am not actively playing there.

Like I said, I am not convinced by their strength because it is easily outdone by their weaknesses.

Thanks for the conversation.