Brand new player looking for advice

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dboeren
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Brand new player looking for advice

Post by dboeren »

Hey guys! I just learned how to play Bloodbowl this past weekend when we had a slow day at the LGS. I was waiting for Warmachine players to show up and he was waiting for a Bloodbowl player and he volunteered to teach me and another newbie how to play.

Long story short, my Orcs trounced the other new guy's Humans and a good time was had by all. Now we're trying to get a league set up at the store and I want to pick up my own team. We've got 4 guys signed up so far so it's probably safe to assume this will be a small league and possibly broken into relatively short seasons (not sure on that second part though).

I picked up a copy of the XBox Blood Bowl game the other night for $9 at a local Gamestop and have been playing that for a couple of nights trying to get up to speed. I've mainly been playing a Lizardman team but I hear they are not ideal for beginners? So far they've been doing well for me with a strategy of pounding the opposing team to reduce their number of players until things get clear enough for a skink to run for a TD. Toughest games so far have been against Dwarves who just refuse to get hurt.

So far there is one Dwarf player and one Skaven (or small chance of Chaos), plus the guy who taught me has several teams so I don't know what he'd play.

I'm considering playing one of the following teams:
Amazons
Dark Elves
Lizardmen
Norse
Wood Elves

Here are my impressions of each so far from what I've read, correct me if anything seems wrong:

Amazons: Cheap players, so you can have a big bench, but I've heard claims they top out early (not ideal for long leagues but I don't know if I have to worry about that yet). They seem to be mostly a running team and put me in mind of slippery Humans.

Dark Elves: Somewhat speedy and they seem versatile. More aggressive than the other Elf teams, but not as good at the passing game as they are but neither are they as fragile. High prices so you will wait to get all your players.

Lizardmen: Smashy big lizards, quick and squishy small lizards. Each is good at their role, but the team as a whole lacks ball handling skills badly.

Norse: Very aggressive running team, good at dishing it out but not as much taking it so be careful. They seem to be fairly well regarded as a solid team. You have to skimp a bit starting out and will sometimes lose a player.

Wood Elves: Only elves with a big guy. Fast passing/running team, slippery, and very breakable except for the Treeman. Expensive like all elves, but apparently they're considered one of the top tier teams?


I've played the most games on XBox with Lizardmen and have just started w/ Dark Elves so I'm getting used them. Once I feel comfortable with them I'll start a Wood Elf team. Amazons and Norse aren't on there unfortunately. I'd get Legendary Edition but I'm on a mac laptop most of the time and my wife doesn't like me tying up our Windows computer all night playing games.

Generally speaking I think I like hitting things and running or short passes/handoffs over the long bomb playstyle.

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Re: Brand new player looking for advice

Post by Urb »

Try undead.... Fun team.

Zons... great at lower tv. With a dwarf team in the mist I'd give it more thought. Tackle is bad.

DE, good team... great even. AG4 means forgiveness. Have all the pieces with blitzers and witches. Definitely a great starter choice.

Lizardmen... Play for fun but will be fustrating at times with no hitting skills to start.

Norse. Power house early with all that block and frenzy. My current team for my TT and they are scary.

Wood Elves. One of if not the best starter team. WD are stars out of the box. A skill or two and they dominate.

If your league is new I wouldn't worry about team selection too much. I suggest a team with some block so lizards are probably not the way to go. Seriously consider undead. Mummies!

BTW.. welcome to TFF. Enjoy your stay.

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dboeren
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Re: Brand new player looking for advice

Post by dboeren »

Thanks for the suggestions. I haven't looked at Undead at all yet, so I'll check them out. I think you're right about Amazons, I can cut them from my list and feel no regret.

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Re: Brand new player looking for advice

Post by nonumber »

Welcome to TFF, Wood Elves were the first team I really played with and they allow you to be a little more naive with throwing and catching and get away with it. The flexibility of the Orcs might not be a bad one to consider for your first proper team though. The important thing whatever you do is to have fun with it!

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Re: Brand new player looking for advice

Post by Tourach »

Undead is surely the most "n00b" friendly team. No negative traits. All skill categories but passing skills are represented, will also teach a new coach that passing should be avoided ;D. All players have their specific roles filled already:
- Mummies, bashers "big guys".
- Wights: blitzer types.
- Ghouls, runner types.
- Zombies, line fodder ultimative.
The team is really powerful in low teamvalues making up for the lack of experience!

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Re: Brand new player looking for advice

Post by spubbbba »

Tourach wrote:Undead is surely the most "n00b" friendly team. No negative traits. All skill categories but passing skills are represented, will also teach a new coach that passing should be avoided ;D. All players have their specific roles filled already:
- Mummies, bashers "big guys".
- Wights: blitzer types.
- Ghouls, runner types.
- Zombies, line fodder ultimative.
The team is really powerful in low teamvalues making up for the lack of experience!
Agreed, undead are great at low TV and pretty flexible so you can learn the different aspects of the game. You can get almost all the positionals and still have plenty of re-rolls right from the start and can set them up a couple of ways. 4 ghouls, 2 wights, 2 mummies and the rest skeletons is a pretty good running team on offence with some re-rolls they can even build a passing game, this is not optimal but can be fun.
Whilst 2 mummies, 2 wights, 2 ghouls and 5 zombies can take hits and hold their own against all the other bashy teams at lower TV’s..

The chance to kill opposing players and have them join your team should appeal to many players as well.

The other obvious choice is Orcs as they are very n00b friendly, but I feel they are almost too forgiving and new players will often struggle when they move to a more complicated team. Humans are decent in the early stages but pretty rubbish higher up but if you want to get better quickly they are the best team IMHO. Just accept you’ll likely take a kicking in the 1st season but still have a shot and will learn a lot and can get your revenge in the 2nd season using a different team.

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Re: Brand new player looking for advice

Post by nazgob »

I tend to reccommend humans and orcs for new players. Both are good, both are flexible, and both come with the important starting skills.

By the way, dboeren, were you on 40kforums?

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Re: Brand new player looking for advice

Post by dboeren »

Nope, not on the 40k forums, never played the game. I'm on the Privateer Press forums quite a bit so you might have seen me there, or possibly on the Spartan Games forums.

What do you guys think of Chaos as another possibility? Their access to a wide variety of skills means you can build them out in a lot of different ways which I'm starting to see as a limitation in the Lizardmen. It may look like there are only Beastmen, Chaos Warriors, and Minotaur but they can actually develop into fairly different positions.

I think for now I'm going to skip Amazons (like Norse better) and Wood Elves (tried them on the XBox game and didn't like them as much as Dark Elves - too flighty).

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Re: Brand new player looking for advice

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My first team was chaos. The most poweful at higher team values. I'd say avoid till later wen you understand the team strategies more. Takes a good 20 games till they can compete on paper. True everyone blitzs at str4, with no hitting skills to start rr management is a challenge. Not that you can't be successfull early on with them. Just more challenging. You're toast to anything WE though. blodge, leap, stripball. You'll have no defense early on.

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Re: Brand new player looking for advice

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Can't go wrong with Halflings!.................

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Re: Brand new player looking for advice

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Don't Listen to Pug. Gobbos are where it's at!

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Re: Brand new player looking for advice

Post by DoubleSkulls »

I'd recommend the guy who is teaching you all to play should play a stunty team (Halflings, Goblins, Ogres) to give you all a chance.

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Re: Brand new player looking for advice

Post by dboeren »

I don't know what he's planning to play but you've got a good point about the veterans having a sizable advantage.

Is there any commonly used handicapping system for Bloodbowl? I dunno, maybe the noobs start with a couple of free skill upgrades or something. Although, it's pretty hard to know how much handicap you need until you play a decent number of games so maybe that should wait a bit.

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Re: Brand new player looking for advice

Post by nonumber »

Really the best peice of advice I think is to play as much as you can, get your friends involved, and have fun with it. Play a solid team like Orcs or Undead that are flexible and forgiving while you learn the game sure, but why worry about playing against a more experienced player? It doesn't matter if you win or lose no matter what your experience with the game, because it's a game, but even less so when you've just got started. If you get a few hide kickings just dig out the black box and think about what you did wrong. Don't worry yourself too much with trying to learn how to win before you've even learned how to play.

Why even jump straight into getting a league sorted? Not that there's anything wrong with it, might just be better to just play the game. Get used to the basic tactics and game mechanics before you worry about player advancement etc. Just keep things simple and fun. And definitely don't worry about losing!

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Re: Brand new player looking for advice

Post by dboeren »

No problem. I just wasn't sure what the common practice was for Blood Bowl, since there are already handicaps for TV it seemed possible that handicaps might be used for other stuff too. Absolutely nothing wrong with getting the tar beat out of you for a while when you start playing a new game, you learn faster when your opponent doesn't pull their punches in my experience :)

On the league... I don't know how he plans to run it yet, whether it will incorporate skill-ups for the teams or just be a regular day of the week to meet (league in the game store sense rather than the Blood Bowl sense). Anything's fine with me, but I should find out because if there aren't going to be any skill-ups that kind of argues against some teams I think as you're more dependent on your starting skills.

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