Talk Fantasy Football

On my trek to the station this morning listening to Pitch Invasion discuss strength skills a series of thoughts occurred to me

Some skills are under rated and under used

Passing is not considered optimal by a majority of online coaches

Awareness of players is not really a factor in games

Very long legs has multiple aspects, both movement and bonuses to interceptions

Why don't we do a similar thing for non mutating teams and give them a general skill that has a similar effect

Combine Shadowing and pass block into a new skill called Play Recognition and you get a defensive player who can see the pass/run play forming to take action against it

Follow the runner forcing extra dodges or break up the pass play and maybe intercept / knock down the ball

Thoughts?

voyagers_uk wrote:Very long legs has multiple aspects, both movement and bonuses to interceptions

Wasn't the extra movement taken away?

TheDancingClown wrote:

voyagers_uk wrote:Very long legs has multiple aspects, both movement and bonuses to interceptions

Wasn't the extra movement taken away?

Yes it was.


Overall an interesting house rule that has a lot of potential. Combine two underused skills, freeing up a a skill slot and making it more attractive. I think I'd take skill on AG4 high MA teams.

shows how recently I have played Skaven or taken VLL.

this skill could, as you say, free up development slots in AG4 teams, but also on teams with High MA players, eg Ghouls/Norse Runners/Skinks spring to mind as players who would benefit from this skill. but given the extra movement afforded for repositioning any MA6 player could utilise this to its advantage

Love this idea! It would be great to see skill trees which are unused become viable.

Cheers,
Michael

How about introducing "Half Skills"? Essentially, if a player has a chance to choose a new skill, they could either choose ONE skill or TWO half-skills, chosen from the categories they would normally have access to. This would have the same impact as the new "Play Recognition" skill, but would give more variety to choose from.

Some possible half-skills:

Diving Catch
Diving Tackle
Dump-Off
Fend
Grab
Hail Mary Pass
Juggernaut
Kick-Off Return
Pass Block
Pro
Safe Throw
Shadowing

I don't believe I have seen anyone take these skills BY CHOICE in a long time. Some players start with them, but few players opt for them. Giving players a chance to pick up two of these somewhat-useful skills might make them more popular in some instances than the standard choices.

This is somewhat similar to Plasmoid's recent post on changing skill costs to 10k, 20k and 30k.
I'd be more in favour of combining some of these skills to make them more enticing rather than having a blanket 'any two from this selection'. Mostly because it would be simpler to manage. Essentially you'd be trying to reduce the total number of skills available by merging the less common choice together.
As Voyagers suggested Shadowing + Pass Block become Play Recognition. Similarly, Kick and Dirty Player could be combined given the two uses for a particularly adept kicker. I am sure there are many more that would fit thematically and balance-wise.

I'd combine diving catch and dump off.

I think that would have some hilarious combos.

I had forgotten I had suggested this, still seems like a good idea

This disadvantage to combining them into "super skills", we'd just wind up with one or two new skills that get taken. By giving players a chance to choose two, we might see some new combinations out there.

Along similar lines: viewtopic.php?p=758639#p758639

similar, but also not. as it involves repricing a lot of stuff as opposed to just merging 2 barely selected skills into one that has a better chance of getting picked

@Milo - I think we'd have to be very sloppy to accidentally create any super skills.
As I posted 2 minutes ago in House Rules, I'm not quite convinced that half-skills would be a good idea, as it will make developed rosters even harder to keep track of.

Personally I'm inclined towards merging/buffing skills.
In doing that, I think it is important to not just merge 2 skills that do different Things, because skills are usually picked to get better at something, rather than getting "random" advantages.

In that respect, I think Voyagers suggestion makes sense. The 2 skills do in fact affect the same situation.
Now all we have to do is look into our Heart of Hearts and consider, whether we'd ever pick Play Recognition.
I'm honestly not sure that I would...
Maybe that's just me? I think it is still too marginal.

Now, if Pass Block also kicked in on hand-offs, then I think we'd have an interesting skill....
Cheers
Martin

Plasmoid,

I didn't mean to refer to "super-skills" to mean merged skills that are too powerful, but simply to refer to the combination of two of the more marginal skills.

I think we can all agree that most or all of the skills I listed do not get selected very often. I think we can all agree it would be nice to see more of them on the pitch, just for variety's sake.

So, three possibilities that I can see:

1) Incentivize taking the skills as-is, perhaps by giving the selection of two as a single skill pick
2) Combine these skills into more powerful combined skills, increasing their value
3) Find some other way to grant these skills to players outside the normal skill progression

Path #2 is what brings us to "Play Recognition". I think it's a decent skill in it's own right, but would it be chosen even as a combined skill? Maybe, maybe not.

I'm just brainstorming here, so don't consider these fully formed ideas, but what if we looked at #3?

You could say, at every other skill up (so, 16, 51, 101, etc.), you automatically get an additional selection from these "minor" skills, in addition to your normal skill roll.

Or, another possibility, we give anyone who rolls doubles (or some other specific roll on the level up table) the chance to select a minor skill in addition to a normal skill (as opposed to selecting a skill from the doubles table). Or maybe on a skill roll of 8-9 (or just 9)?

We may also want to price these minor skills to have less impact on TV.