C.O.F.A.B.

[Colin]

I agree with Zombie (will wonders never cease). I am playing Vamps with COFAB in MBBL and believe me they aren't that great. Having to make a roll every action insead of at the srart of the drive does make them less appealing to the power players.

[nouge]

I don't mind the COFAB suggestion, but maybe the thralls should just be stunned or KOd, otherwise they'll be injured constantly. You could just use a

2-7: Stunned
8-12: KOd

type injury table.

This fits better with the idea of having their blood drained too; otherwise you have thralls serious injured with gouged eyes because of feeding...

[Mestari]

Not having a possibility for the thralls to be seriously injured or killed would simply be lame. Where's the fun in that? And in addition, it seriously deteriorates the negative effect on the team.

Under the current ruling, approximately every six turns the vamps injure their own player, thus they injure approximately 2,66 own players each game assuming every campire is on the pitch all the time and there is a thrall available for each COFAB roll. So only about 1,33 thralls suffer a SI or die each game. This is definitely not going to kill the team, it is simply going to keep them in check.

Thadrins suggestion would drop that number radically, to a bit over 0,4 injured players per match (approx 0,2 SI/deaths), which would be way too little. In addition, failing COFAB only 1/6 turns would have practically no impact on the teams gameplay.

Thralls are not supposed to be gaining lots of skills, they are irrelevant and replaceable in the vampires opinion. If the vamp teams fails to have enough thralls every time when they play a couple of games, then we could follow Pariah's suggestion and lower their price. But it's only good if they have to struggle. This is an excellent possibility to create a low-end team with a different concept, let's not waste it.

[Redfang]

I voted NO, because this rule would make the Vampire team unlpayable.

Compare it with Alway Hungry (for instance) -> you only have a small risk of eating one of your goblins/halflings if you are picking it up. This new rule would mean wit say 3 vamps on the pitch, that once every two turns, one of your vampires will attack a thrall. This just isn't playable!!!

Maybe consider it that if a Vampires is next to a (warmblooded) living creature, it has to roll a dice. On a 1 it will try to bite the creature (if more creatures are optional, roll once for each, but the vamp only attacks once in a turn this way. The coach may choose for which player to roll first).
The vampire then stoops over, but the victim gets a free movement of 1 square to dodge out of the vampires reach. (with normal dodge roll).
Vamp does nothing else this turn.

I think that would be better, and a coach might try to avoid something bad from happening.

[GalakStarscraper]

I voted NO, because this rule would make the Vampire team unlpayable.

Compare it with Alway Hungry (for instance) -> you only have a small risk of eating one of your goblins/halflings if you are picking it up. This new rule would mean wit say 3 vamps on the pitch, that once every two turns, one of your vampires will attack a thrall. This just isn't playable!!!

The more I read the posts from the negative side the more I like this skill. I'd like the Vampire team to be a challenging team but not unplayable. With ST 4/AG 4 players and the best ST 5 player in the game, the team SHOULD have SOME handicaps (and no the current OFAB is not a handicap). Currently to me the only really challenging team to play with are the Stunties ... if Vamps get added ... bravo I say.

So let's be honest here and talk about Vampire strategy with COFAB and see how bad it is.

Let's take a slightly experienced Vampire team and see what some good coaching yields. Now the teams that I've played most in my life in order are (Vampire, Halfling, Human, Snotling, Treeman) ... so I have some experience with the challenging teams ... I actually love to play them and work around their problems. So let's take that serious look at the Vampire team.

Here's my take on Vampire strategy with COFAB:
1) Start the teams with 3 rerolls and 2 normal Vampires
2) The first skill for any Vampire is Pro
3) The first Thrall to roll doubles gets Leader
4) I will buy an apothecary as my first team improvement.
5) I will save my rerolls for failed COFAB and trust the teams ST 4/AG 4 and the Pro skill to carry it.

Now let's go forward to say game 7 with the team, by now I'd hope to have my Leader, my apothecary, and 4 Vampires with Pro (its pushing it for the 4th vampire but doable).

Now with the suggestions above let's see how unplayable the team is:

Now its pretty easy to argue that not all 4 Vampires will get activated every turn (playtesting is already showing this with just 2 Vampires on the pitch with Torg and I) but let's go high anyway and say that you make 30 OFAB rolls per a half.

You are going to fail 5 of them per a Half, however you have 4 rerolls that you are saving for just these problems. Now the odds of rerolls all 4 successfully and having Pro successfully stop the 5th is 43.5%, so since we went high with the 30 OFAB rolls per a half, lets say 50% here which means that per a half, I'll actually attack one thrall.

So that means during a game I'll only fail 2 OFAB rolls on average. Now, SI or Death only occurs 8.3% of OFAB attacks, so let's again go high stat wise and say I will injury one Thrall per game. But wait the Vampire now get an Apothecary for the Thralls so I'll apothecary him and since I'm assuming injury here ... for the sake of stat balance I'm going to say I don't roll a 1 for the apoth.

And there you have it. An experienced coach making some good coaching decisions can play a Vampire team with 4 vampires and only fail 2 OFAB rolls the entire game and not kill or injury a single Thrall on the team.

Think outside the box.

Galak

Oh and before someone says that this proves that the revised COFAB is too weak since I was able to show how to get "around" it. The get around IS the balance. I used all my rerolls on OFAB and I'm burning my first skill roll on Pro for the team to help with OFAB and my lack of reroll. I'm having to do all this coaching in order to play the team successful, in my mind the balance is definitely there.

Now for those who are suggesting that the skill is way to negative, tell me where I went wrong up above with my description of how I'd coach the team, and Pariah's you cannot use statistics to predict game play argument is NOT allowed, because 30 OFAB rolls per a half is WAY high so if anything my statistics paint too negative of a case not too positive.

Galak

[GalakStarscraper]

Even with COFAB, i'm pretty sure that Vampires would be much better than most people here believe. Maybe even better than humans. Only testing can tell.

Funny that one of the few things Zombie and I agree on are Vampires. In the example I gave above I showed how you could coach a 4 Vampire team working with the COFAB trait. I think Zombie is definitely right that this team is MUCH better than folks believe.

Granted the team will be tough to coach as you are in effect coaching the team with zero rerolls, but man take 4 ST4/AG4 players and 1 ST5/AG4 player all with Pro and even without rerolls I think the team will be pretty d*mn competitive. I really think the folks on the negative are not thinking about the ways to coach this team competitively. I definitely do not think this team would be just a step above the Stunties.

Heck, a team with just a Vampire Lord and Thralls can be pretty strong. In 16 games my Vampire Lord on my 3rd edition teams scored 31 touchdowns. Don't underestimate AG 4/ST 4 and definitely do not underestimate the power of the Lord.

Galak

[GalakStarscraper]

So we have 11 NOs.

That's actually good. Okay taking the 2 posts I just made can I get some of the 11 NOs to tell me if they still think NO or if I changed their minds.

If you still think NO can you tell why. See the Vampire team has been one of my favorite teams for some time. My wife loves Vampires and I coached them for so long because it was the only way when she was my girlfriend to even get her interest if I wanted to talk about playing it.

So I would like a good Vampire team in Blood Bowl. But I don't want a mockery that will get rejected by the vast majority of the community. The current team in BB Mag #4 is getting such a response. So I think that COFAB is the way to make the team balanced. I think the negatives voted NO because they think the skill will destroy the team and make it unplayable like Redfang suggested .... did I change any minds ... if not can I know why. Like I said if there are real problems with the trait, I'd like to hear it since my league starts testing it in 2 weeks with Torg's team joing the MBBL.

Galak

[Ghost of Pariah]

Galak what about giving them no apoth and having all thralls killed by OFAB turn into zombies? I think this would make them more inline with the other undead teams without upsetting the balance of the team.

[Marcus]

To be honest, the fewer negative traits in the game the better IMO. Too many special rules, too much working around.

I'd just prefer to see no more than 3 Vamps on a team and a shedload of really crappy thralls (I'm thinking skeleton/zombie crappy). 3 superplayers and a load of linefodder. Could be interesting.

[GalakStarscraper]

Galak what about giving them no apoth and having all thralls killed by OFAB turn into zombies? I think this would make them more inline with the other undead teams without upsetting the balance of the team.

Okay at that point the BBRC will laugh it out of town. As worded its easy to play with and understand. Make it too complex and it won't fly at all.

If this were an MBBL2 skill, I'd agree that its interesting Pariah, but I'm really trying to go for a skill that could make the official rules.

Galak

[Ghost of Pariah]

Nah! It's all in the presentation!
Just appeal to them with the no exceptions rule. Tell them that no undead team should have an apothecary.

My biggest peeve lately is this "streamlining", "simplification", "complexity reduction" is just another way of saying, "We need to dumb this down for Joe consumer at Toys R Us."

Blood Bowl attracted me becaue it's complex and strategic. Simplify and I'll just go play Chess.

[Lucien Swift]

whn it's all said and done, i still wish there were some way to avoid an overly complicated solution, and i think that's what we're looking at here... i've always been wary of negatraits in general, especially as they get more and more involved (i still don't see why all big guys just can't use the same bonehead-based mechanic and justify it with a variety of semantics, but that's me)...

there's just such a huge difeference between providing diversity to the feel of the game and adding unneeded encumberence to the game... systems that alter the nature of the play on the field are always going to challenge the integrity of the game, and even when they work, will leave me wondering why they were needed in the first place?

why has the simple option of a roster that doesn't need xofab gotten any further along? wouldn't this be best for everyone involved? much like the endlessly circular werewolf debate, this team seems to attract the most clever and demanding systems... when it is plainly visible that there are easier ways, and even the very simple 'no rule required' approach...

i know, i know, some people really get off on adding complexity to the game, and i suppose that it can be fun here and there, but i prefer to add only to the off-the-field burdens of the game, and leave the action of the game itself untouched by our little schemes...

but then, who am i anyway?

[Mestari]

The more I read the posts from the negative side the more I like this skill.

My thoughts exactly. I'm just hoping it will be even half that negative as some people think. They'll probably be all surprised how those ST4/AG4 players actually won't need the thralls much.

If there is a vamp team that should be tested, it's the BBMag4 team with COFAB.

And a word IMO about the playtesting:

-If vamps suck, everything's fine. It will become one of the challenging teams, that not everyone can coach victoriously. Not every team should be an easy one to coach.

-If vamps are still too competitive, which is a possibility still, then force all the vamps to move before the thralls and playtest it again.
Or use the rules that I suggested...

[GalakStarscraper]

i know, i know, some people really get off on adding complexity to the game, and i suppose that it can be fun here and there, but i prefer to add only to the off-the-field burdens of the game, and leave the action of the game itself untouched by our little schemes...

Says the man who created the Pixie and Skaven-Clan Axme teams. Yeah right. COFAB looks childishly simple compared to those teams.

Galak

[sean newboy]

They'll probably be all surprised how those ST4/AG4 players actually won't need the thralls much

They will be very useful, dont think of them as Thralls, call them what they really would be, Moving Tackle Zones. Without cofab I would only play the bbmag 4 vampires as a fun team, that is just to win tournys and league cups. I cant even see having fun with them for more than one season before i got tired of how awesome they would be becoming.