Tournament Skill selection strategies

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bouncergriim
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Tournament Skill selection strategies

Post by bouncergriim »

How do you select skills for a competitive team for tournaments?
For skills that minimize Turn overs/mitigate weaknesses in team(reroll type skills: sure hands)
Skills that make specific players better than they are at what they already do (block on a lineman, accurate for a thrower)
Skills that provide unique abilities (wrestle, sidestep, stand firm)

And do you bias your skills for something in particular
Positioning (dodge, sidestep, break tackle, stand firm)
Blocking/Cas (block, guard, might blow)
Stealing the ball? (Strip ball, wrestle)


Feel free to add what ever ideas you want to these.

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Shteve0
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Re: Tournament Skill selection strategies

Post by Shteve0 »

Generally I'll look at the ruleset and try and get a sense of what teams benefit most from the rules, and try to put together a toolkit for my own team to deal with those opponents if they come up. For instance if I'm playing a fast team in a ruleset that helps bash teams I'll go for kick; if the other way I'll want at least one tackle, maybe a wrestle too.

Leader is always good in purchased skill environments. Where it's pick from a set number of skills it depends on the team and what you can afford in your cash.

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rolo
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Re: Tournament Skill selection strategies

Post by rolo »

Leader for me depends a lot on the tournament skill rules, and on the team.

Amazons are an example of a team that I'd never take Leader on - players and rerolls are inexpensive enough that you can generally field a full team from most tournament budgets, and Throwers (the only players on the team with Passing skill access) are commonly left off of tournament rosters in the first place, so Leader takes a valuable Doubles roll.

Compare that with Chaos Pact, a team with easy Passing skill access and expensive rerolls - a normal Marauder skill to "save" a 70k reroll is a great bargain!

Other skills on a tournament team depend far too much on the tournament-specific rules, the team itself, and what (if anything) I know about potential opponents. Some are easy, Witch Elves for example always get Block or Wrestle because it's just too much of a liability otherwise. Guard is great, especially on teams which can get a lot of it (I know "Guard Spam" is boring on Dwarves, but it's popular for a reason). And so on. Sorry if that isn't really helpful ...

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bouncergriim
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Re: Tournament Skill selection strategies

Post by bouncergriim »

Just curious about what others think on this topic. So really what it boils down to is what the ruleset looks like, what you think the opponents teams will be. Just wanted to see the mindset for other coaches is.

So with this in mind and the best teams (hardest teams to play against if well coached) being elves and dwarves. Any specific anti-elf, anti-dwarf skills that you can think of. (the team I am going to play is Lizards if that helps the thought process, but I was also trying to look at generic advice). Generic advice though is not always useful for BB where teams are so diverse by nature.

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rolo
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Re: Tournament Skill selection strategies

Post by rolo »

Well, generally you don't really know who you'll be playing against beforehand, so that makes it hard to plan specific anti-race skills. And I think your own race counts for more - for example, against Elves, you almost always want some Tackle on a Blitzer. But Tackle is hard to justify for Lizardmen, because they have no Blitzers and desperately need Block.

For me, I'm trying to either cover up weaknesses of a team, or emphasize strengths. I suggested Guard in your Lizardmen thread, because a few ST4 Lizards with Guard makes it really hard to get through your scale wall. Take as much Block as you can, because that's their biggest weakness. If you can get Sure Hands and Block on a Skink, you have a really good ball carrier. But, depending on the tournament rules, that might be too expensive ... and so on.

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