Killball - First games done - a report

[juergen]

In the last two nights I played my first 4 games of Killball against my 12 year old cousin. Here's a little report (at some point I will add a little BB comparisson because I think many Killball Players will have played BB at some point)

Short report:
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We still learn the game and we need about 90min for a game - I suppose to get this down to 45-60min once we are settled with the rules. Game feels fast, because of the alternate player movement (team a, team b,...). First I had the feeling you can't do very much on the tactics side - but after resolving some errors in our play (correct playing of guard, dodges on hits, throws,..) i can see a couple different tactics evolve. For a long term league I think there are to many permanent injuries.

Long report:
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To get a feel for the game mechanics (and not to overload a 12year with tons of information he can't read for himself) we started with a all Starter player team without any perk (BB compare: all lineman team with no skills). We worked out the basic movement/action sequence, tested hitting/dodging and a couple of throws. I won easily 2-0 (cousin said: only because you have bb expierence ). In the second game we used the same principle, but this time we choose two teams from the rulebook and played with their M/Hit/Dodge,.. values and ignored the perks (BB: skill positions with their stats but without skills). In 8 of 12 turns he nailed me 2-0 rolling tons of critical hits. I on the other hand crippled one of his players - since it was already late we called it a day.
Having the feeling we did a lot wrong I sat down reading the rules again (now with some ingame exp. I better understood a lot of rules).
For the second night we created a new team according to the rules, I had a pretty average team I would say, and my cousin had a monster thrower (he made him captain, and with exp + skills he had 100% sucess rate at score throws - and they couldn't be intercepted). Thanks to his young age and having almost no tabletop exp. he couldn't use him like others would do. We also played the rules correct now and from a pretty open formation on day 1 we pretty much caged at the beginning (taking care of line of sight so we don't get blindside hits - which can't be dodged - use guard correctly,...). Since we couldn't avoid everything, had some perks, slamed players in walls, hit knocked down players the injury rate went up. From the first feeling way to much for a team with just 4 players but after two games the permanent injuries were not as much as it felt. We played a follow up game to see the between the match sequence (nothing for us) and how permanent injuries tear down teams.
We had no decaptitation (although we tried hard) - so no multi ball game.

I like the concept, don't know about not beeing able to move in diagonals. Throwing is reduced to straight line or diagonals. Having this easy movement/passing and no need for rulers you can easily scale up the field as you like using whatever you like for a game filed (e.g. Hirstarts). I found (or can't remember now) no rules for balls hitting the wall (liked the BB Dungonbowl passing rules). Once you don't need more then the reference sheet games can get pretty fast and ideal for quick one-off games. For leagues, I am not sure, I have the feeling the injury rate is too high. Maybe having reserves would be nice.

Some rules I am not sure if we played correct:
- Page 2 says after a score return to setup phase. USing the same order as the opening setup we had the odd situation that my cousin got the ball and I started to move.
- Hit: there is no mention of an automatic follow up so we didn't (so if we moved to hit and it was successfull we have been 1 square away. First I thought this is a no brainer (no follow is mentioned, none is made) but since scatter roll 9,10 means that the attacker has the ball it felt weird to knock someone back and have the ball a square away.
- between game replacements: after 2 games a player will get veteran (getting 2xp), after 4 captain. If I read this correctly, after two games only the starter player can get 2xp because the other already have 2 or 3). After four games a player can get captain but only 1 is allowed, does this mean he stays veteran and get promoted whenever needed (and only then he gets the xp and perk?)
- Skills that mention adjacent squares. There a couple of them, some of them add +10 hit for every player adjacent, some +10 dodge but there is no mention if a player needs to be on his feet so we also added the modifiers for knocked down adjacent players)
- Toughness points: in the rules it it just mentioned that they are used to force re-rolls on injury rolls, but not if only 1 can be used or more (we played as many as are available - one time even 3 times because a critical hit rolled a catastrophic inj, rr catastrohic, rr catastrohic, rr knocked down - I guess this saved us from a lot of permanent injuries.

Pro:
- copyready and download versions of game sheets and team sheets,
- quickplay reference on the backside of the rulebook
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Con:
- No Team value, so not sure how a advanced team would play against a new team (they do have perks and stat increase but they will also have suffered a couple nasty injuries.
- For leagues I think the Beween game sequence is not suitable (just player replacement), after two games players are veterans, after four you can make one captain (up to a max of 1).

[Khar-peth]

nice report but can you please tell us more ?
did you enjoy it, will you play it again ?

[juergen]

I enjoyed it and tomorrow I will introduce it in my local tabletop club. Lets see what other experienced tt players will say.

Apart from them I am afraid that it will be hard to find other opponents

[juergen]

I also hope that travesty games will answer my rule questions soon.

[mubo]

Thanks- enjoyed the report! Probably worth sticking on BoardGameGeek or similar?

[Spiky]

Thanks Juergen

I've ordered a copy already, so this is very handy.

[juergen]

Today I played two games against a Tabletop player who plays a lot of systems, so a new perspective on the game - and two losses and two lost heads

Although we had a lot of "good perks" we found out that we didn't use them very often (either because it was not possible or we have been kocked down/injured prior to their use). I had Counter (chance to hit if opponent miss: never had the chance, either opponent hat 80+% hit or I was on the ground), double attack (2 attacks if max 2 movement): I was never close enough, dodge away (move 3 sq. if successfull dodged): most of the time i didn't dodge or this players have been crippled before and dodge was down to 20 or 30%. Although my opponent had passing skills, we never threw the ball (I think we had 1 goal score - just because we wanted to try it).

The most important tactic seemed to be hitting players on the ground. With the -3 modifier, there was a 40% chance of getting a catastrophic injury (permanent injury and off the board for 2 turns). If you did this with a brutal ball carrier you got another -2 (-1 for ball, -1 for brutal). Not to mention a critical attack which gave anoher -3.

Another tactic was hand the ball to a player with dodge skills and higher dodge attribute, move them forward and hope they survive. I had a player with 50% dodge and perks which gave +10% for every adjacent opponent (so at least +10 for the attacking player) and dodge away (move 3 squares after successfull dodge).

compared to BB you need to completely get some thinks off your head:
- moving a player adjacent to make them dodge doesn't work, there is no such thing. you can only move them in a way to make ways longer (move around them) since they can't move diagonal.
- making and taking hand offs is free and doesn't need any dice rolls at all
- no rolls are required for pickups as well

So far, we don't have any idea about a tactical setup, either offense or defense, so we basically moved a wider cage and guarded with all players. Once a player started the hittiting (or tried hitting because the guarder had the first hit) one guard marker after another went away and was not used again (or not often).

I am not good at reviews, don't know if you can use any of it, but no matter what, it have been funny 2 games (especially then I got decapitated and suddenly 2 balls were on the field and there was a dash who scored first.

We both think that killball is really really funny for one off games, but we are very very sceptical about a league (injuries just occur too often and the possibilty to exchange 1 player after each game is not enough when the captain or veteran is crippled). Also, there is no such think as TV and inducements so already hurt teams won't win anything.

The first few ideas we had:
- have a roster with more than 4 players and just choose 4 for the game
- Mega kill ball, make a cross with 2 fields, play with 4 team

if some other killball coach can explain me the perk "Technique attack" - I don't get it (from the reading you always fall down, so why choose it?)