Strategy to get good matches in open format

[MattDakka]

A counter example MattDakka:

Kfoged, Tarabaralla and Tuamadre all hit no 1 on the overall rankings through min-maxing in the Box.

Tara and Kfoged? Maybe the top coach. Tuamadre? No way. He's a 160 standard at *best*, but the fact he plays 100% of his games with a retarded 1400 CD team means that he's right at the top.

Similarly, due to me building my lizzies up and using minmax tactics to skill the saurii, my CR is a ridiculous 174. I'm not a bad bloodbowler, but I'm not that good! I could easily list 50 to 100 coaches on the site that are a lot better than me, but because I'm playing Box, I'm apparently no 14. Are you telling me there is much skill has to do with any team drawn against that lizzie team? Unless you are similarly min-maxed, it'll rip a normal team apart, especially one with under 10 games.

You can have fun in the Box. You can have fun in Ranked. You can find good games in both. What you can't do is draw any sort of conclusions about your skill level compared to other coaches.

I agree that Tuamadre is not as good as Tarabaralla and Kfoged (watched Tuamadre playing and I played against him), but they all play with very competitive teams, right? We can discuss about real coaching skill or cheese roster minmax edge, but even an idiot, with a very competitive team can make a competitive match (so the division is competitive, be it due to coach's skill, roster, or both). I remember that Tuamadre used a bashy Chaos team in Ranked as well.

About you: in Ranked you would be even higher, I guess.
If you win 10 games it can be only due to minmax, but if you win consistently in the Box (where you are not the only one with a minmaxed team) you are probably a good coach (Tuamadre is an exception ).
I don't rely only on the sheer CR and Win %, I watch coaches playing and their replays too.
My counter counter example-question is: how many poor coaches with a high CR there are in Ranked?
I suspect more than in the Box.

edit: checked your roster, it's fine for me, I don't find it cheesey, 1 rr means that if something unpredictable happens you have no safety net.
Tuamadre's CDs on the other hand are...

[mattgslater]

The new gamefinder makes it harder than it used to be to play a lot of [R] games and farm your CR up. You can do it for a little bit, but eventually only coaches who are genuinely very new or very good will greenlight you. This will either force you to stop cherrypicking, or to only play way down and crash when you get a bad run of luck, or more likely, to abandon [R] because everybody's supposedly cherrypicking there and won't let you beat on your victims of choice.

Or to accept that CR is a range, not a number, and that you are who you are and you play at the level you play at, and greenlight (or at least accept) everything that doesn't make you roll your eyes at how stupid it sounds. Then your CR will represent your true skill level with some variance, and your W% will represent your skill level with a certain consistent error.

I think playing [R], and really minmaxing [R] also means accepting that you don't just build to win, you build to play. There's tons of min-maxing going on, but the best of it is not based on the question of "what will win the matches I get?" but instead on "what will get matches and win them?"

[Hitonagashi]

My counter counter example-question is: how many poor coaches with a high CR there are in Ranked?
I suspect more than in the Box.

I don't doubt that there are more weak cherrypickers in R than B. You can tell that whenever a major rolls around.

My point was that while it might be possible to pick harder in R than B, it's still very easy to pick in B.

It's like saying that Burger King is healthy because it's not as calorific as McDonalds!

[mattgslater]

I don't doubt that there are more weak cherrypickers in R than B. You can tell that whenever a major rolls around.

That's probably true. But there's more than that. [R] punishes (or at least limits) the most ruinous and boring (but very effective) minmaxing games, while rewards them. Kinda like playing at night: when the sun goes down, the stars get to shine. The overworked killstack is the problem with CRP, and as it turns out an open perpetual format by nature offers some insulation against killstacking (hence the suggested rules). Most TT leagues in my experience put up some PO nerf, direct or indirect (actually, so does FUMBBL: it's just not particularly impactful).

[MattDakka]

I don't doubt that there are more weak cherrypickers in R than B. You can tell that whenever a major rolls around.

That's probably true. But there's more than that. [R] punishes the best minmaxing games, while rewards them.

I've seen some Major teams (bashy and not bashy) coming from Ranked with unnatural builds and players that in Box you will never see, not because the builds are silly or weak, but because in Box your pixels tend to die way before becoming Legends (clawpombers are the exception I guess).
I hate that kind of superfarmed teams 2000 TV or over, in Box it's way harder to build a 2000 TV team and survive long enough.
So, if Box rewards the minmax, Ranked rewards the farm and the active cherrypicking.
Soon or later every super team in the Box will meet his doom, in Ranked you can keep your super team and farm it over and over with less risks, if you really want.

[mattgslater]

You don't even have to farm it. You can build bigger in Ranked, just because people assiduously avoid looking too scary until they get way up there. There's a certain level of minmax that Ranked likes, and it's sort of a compromise between "optimal" and "desirable as an opponent" that works, relying on the fact that the other guy probably wants a good sweat and a chance to win, lose, or draw, just like you do.

Even still, build too big and you will have to play very well (and get a little lucky) to keep it. Eventually you too will come crashing down. Teams that don't, just don't play a lot of games. Besides, farming isn't as easy as you say it is. Not everybody wants to be the cherrypicker, but nobody at all wants to be the cherry.*

TBH, in Ranked I only see a few of those teams on gamefinder. Most teams are between 1M and 2M, and usually I only activate under about 1.6M: I just like low-value games more.

* That's not quite true. Sometimes new coaches seek me out for tips on their game, and the cost is a match, usually resulting in a good beating (not always). But if I had a rep as a cherrypicker, that wouldn't happen.

[MattDakka]

I don't doubt that there are more weak cherrypickers in R than B. You can tell that whenever a major rolls around.

My point was that while it might be possible to pick harder in R than B, it's still very easy to pick in B.

It's like saying that Burger King is healthy because it's not as calorific as McDonalds!

I think that active picking (in Ranked) is easier and sure, passive picking (in Box) by sweetspotting/minmaxing has more risks and it's harder.
Anecdotal example:
in Ranked Tarabaralla rarely plays against other Legends, while in the Box he plays with Legends (not every match, of course, but more often than in Ranked, as far as I know).
I have him on my buddy list and I use to watch him... his Ranked games are rarely worth a watch due to the poor quality of his opponent.

[mattgslater]

Not many Ranked Legends activate all that much. I see Chainsaw all the time, but any other "Legends" who show up a lot are "Legends" like I was a "Legend" for about a week, "Stars" or "Super-Stars" on a nice little streak. I guess BattleLore is a borderline-Legend... but mostly if you want a good game you're gonna find the next tier down, top-500 rather than top-50. We're all over the place on Ranked, we know how to play and how to build a fun, effective team, we probably know things you don't or see things in a valid way you hadn't considered (no matter who you are), and we'll usually give you a good run (and sometimes a sound thrashing). Then when you need to play a Legend to remind yourself, you PM your Legend buddies or find who's LFG on IRC, and you set up a named match.

Ranked is as competitive as you want it to be. It's only hard to find a good match if you're a jerk, and though gamefinder is certainly imperfect, it's much harder to cherrypick the new one (I have my own complaints about it, but they don't have to do with balance or time to find a game: mostly I hate the way teams flicker in and out in one column and totally screw up your greenlighting.)

In my first 100 games I built about the worst possible reputation for finding [R] games.
* Sloooow....
* Too many dice made, too many dice forced, slow you down too.
* Losing to solid but unexpected fundamentals coupled with occasional questionable decisions makes you feel like you're getting Nuffled even when the dice are coming down exactly like they're supposed to.
* Hardly gave up any SPP at all, even in losses. I have given up four TDs exactly once (and once on tabletop, and once with a Snotling builder game where I was 1/3d chaining his players into 1TTDs, but that's hardly fair game).

But I learned the Zen of gamefinding, and even as I've gotten more consistent and started winning more, giving up fewer SPP, and still choking people out of the game in slow, ugly grinding fashion (and still sometimes doing stupid things 'cause IyamwutIyam), I've also found it easier to find games. Playing faster? A little. I'm still slow. I still hear the ref whistle about once per three games or so, I still slow my opponents down. But I joke with them on their turn and congratulate them on their smart plays (especially when they outsmart me), I activate two teams in each bracket, I take all comers after 1-2 minutes, I greenlight for fun more than winnability (fun implies winnable, that's enough) and most of all I build to win the kind of game I want to play, more than the kind of game I think I'll get. Even without cherrypicking it pads my win rate, but not much. Playing late night on the US West Coast probably doesn't hurt either, though it's also not doing my CR any favors. I'd probably be forced into better form if I could activate during the workday. I do sometimes go LFG for a minute just to see what I'm missing when there are twice as many coaches on.

This makes me wonder what my CR is on the weekend daytimes vs nighttimes. My record on daytime weekend is pretty solid, TBH, so it may not be much of a factor, and I've played enough games in both cases to see a curve. Is there any way to track that?

[dode74]

A part of the coaching skill (and competitiveness) in BB is being able to deal with all kinds of possible match ups with one race.
If you are able to select the easy (or simply not unfavourable) matches and avoid the bad matches there is less competition,

You can do that in B.

I hate that kind of superfarmed teams 2000 TV or over, in Box it's way harder to build a 2000 TV team and survive long enough.

You can farm ball in R, but you can farm bash in B. What's the difference?

Thing is, Matt, you dismiss R because you claim it is uncompetitive and people pick. But people also pick in B. As Hito put it, McDonalds isn't healthy just because it's not Burger King: just because it's easier in one than the other does not make one competitive and the other not. Each is as competitive as your attitude approaching it.

[Purplegoo]

It’s not often I post here, but I so happened across this, and like a moron, here I am wasting precious life seconds. I’m a sucker for an unhinged FUMBBL based thread, much as I do my very best to avoid silly noise, especially here.

Matt (not of the Slater variety), I think this is now the third forum on which I will have engaged with you over this very strongly held belief of yours. I struggle to see what more I can add to what I’ve said previously; apparently you just have an opinion you’re sticking to. That’s fine, but presenting it as fact is a bit much. I do wonder why the need to go over it again and again, least of all on three entirely different websites! Are you trying to convince others, or yourself?

I, personally, have finally canned the B division (as of this past weekend, coincidentally). My recent history there involves attempting to recover a couple of teams (and hence swallow some results), a pause, and then starting a bunch of TV 1000 teams (always susceptible to a tie without skills), so I bow out with a CR and win % a good chunk lower than it organically has been historically. I simply have much less free time than I did so I cannot risk an hour of it sitting through some minmaxed goon cheesing it up around me in an unwinnable match (as happened in the final, straw that broke the camel’s back, game). I can avoid this in R, so it will get my custom on the rare occasions I have time for a game. It tickles me that this might one day lead to someone pointing at me as someone who can’t really play, look at his B CR, he’s got nothing!

I don’t believe this makes me a lesser human, a lesser coach or a less manly man; just someone looking out for keeping his fun time fun. If I wanted to just win, I’d play B, which I think is an easier place to get results (for a bunch of reasons that are my opinion rather than fact, so in an effort not to be hypocritical, I’ll pass them over). There are plenty of good coaches that only play one division or the other; or even have awful win rates, but the only real loser if you spend time going through their records trying to trip them up over this or that is yourself. How do you know what options were open to that individual when he looked for a game? How do you know why he retired that Lino? I’m not going to, but I’ve no doubt I could trawl through any coach’s past teams (including yours) and pick cynical fault. But it would be a pointless, sad exercise.

What is competitive or important is in the eye of the beholder so much that it’s unreal. I used to be a Matt-esq character in my younger days, flooding any and every thread pertaining to ‘Majors’ with ‘the truth’ about how they weren’t really competitive and how they were a bit of a cess pit. I might or might not (but, not so subtle hint, I do) still think that to be true, but I worked out a while ago that people enjoy them, and it’s not a good look, being the fun police. If I don’t like something, I can just ignore it. Are leagues more competitive? Well that depends on who you are. We have WIL coaches that don’t really care and mess about, we have divisions we don’t want to get promoted too early from (I’m currently attempting to get skills to win later, not win too much now) or else we’ll get smashed, and we have cut throat, win at all costs Blood Bowl up the top end of the league. When I get there with my new team, I’ll be one of those guys. So, like any other division on site, the league structure is catering for all of the different flavours of Blood Bowl nerd. And we’re having fun. And hurrah.

The OP is just a ludicrous waste of time, if you ask me. Run proper Blood Bowl teams properly. Be willing to invest 20 minutes of your life at slow times finding a game, if needs be. If not, bugger off to B, but accept what you’re letting yourself in for. End of.

Less talky talky and posturing, more having fun. And I’ll be taking my advice, two posts in this most ridiculed of forum areas in the last 6 months clearly shows I need to get me some more life.

[spubbbba]

Ranked is as competitive as you want it to be. It's only hard to find a good match if you're a jerk, and though gamefinder is certainly imperfect, it's much harder to cherrypick the new one (I have my own complaints about it, but they don't have to do with balance or time to find a game: mostly I hate the way teams flicker in and out in one column and totally screw up your greenlighting.)

This^

Ranked is a competitive as you want to make it. We always hear about coaches who cherrypick easier matches in R, but never about those who use it to seek out challenging games. They either aim to play against coaches at least their own standard or will happily give a weaker coach a pre game advantage, like making a zon team that only plays dwarfs.
I’ll freely admit they are a smaller minority, but the number of pickers is not as bad as we’re led to believe either. Most newbies who stay wise up pretty quick, so to pick in R you need a lot of patience, either that or be great at persuading people to play you.

B only offers matches as competitive as the scheduler will allow you to be. If you play enough games in B by the law of averages you’ll face average teams and average coaches. If you’re a newbie and inexperienced at team building then it will be a tough challenge. However if you are a top coach or have strong teams (like the much maligned min-max chaos dwarf or pact abominations) then you’ll be facing more games you’re likely to win than lose. If you are both a top coach and take the strongest possible teams then you can easily wrack up an impressive win tally that would be possible in R but would take much longer.

Regarding being able to tailor in L. I like this aspect as it makes it even harder for teams to stay at the top since everyone else will gang up on them. If zons or wood elves are dominating then watch as tackle, tents and Diving tackle become more popular. Whilst if you clawpomb to the top you can bet you’ll be facing more fend and DP and be on the receiving end of plenty of fouls, even at T16. But if these teams suddenly fall away then those skills can be wasted so you have to balance between short term and long term gains.

[MattDakka]

A part of the coaching skill (and competitiveness) in BB is being able to deal with all kinds of possible match ups with one race.
If you are able to select the easy (or simply not unfavourable) matches and avoid the bad matches there is less competition,

You can do that in B.

Then please explain how to avoid them. My last match in Box was my Lizardmen vs minmaxed CDs, not a good match up for me.

You can farm ball in R, but you can farm bash in B. What's the difference?

The difference is that in B if you farm bash you can meet another farmed bash team which destroys yours, while in Ranked you can farm ball and even bash (I've seen some nasty bash teams in Ranked as well) and never play a nasty bash team.

Thing is, Matt, you dismiss R because you claim it is uncompetitive and people pick. But people also pick in B. As Hito put it, McDonalds isn't healthy just because it's not Burger King: just because it's easier in one than the other does not make one competitive and the other not. Each is as competitive as your attitude approaching it.

No, you are comparing different ways of matching and saying they are both as competitive as you want: if you play in a division with people allowed to pick their opponents (and getting a CR and win % from these matches) the division can't be considered really competitive.
In competitive tournaments are you allowed to pick the opponents you want?
Can you dodge unfavourable match ups as you fancy?

It’s not often I post here, but I so happened across this, and like a moron, here I am wasting precious life seconds. I’m a sucker for an unhinged FUMBBL based thread, much as I do my very best to avoid silly noise, especially here.

Matt (not of the Slater variety), I think this is now the third forum on which I will have engaged with you over this very strongly held belief of yours. I struggle to see what more I can add to what I’ve said previously; apparently you just have an opinion you’re sticking to. That’s fine, but presenting it as fact is a bit much. I do wonder why the need to go over it again and again, least of all on three entirely different websites! Are you trying to convince others, or yourself?

Just expressing my ideas, only a fool would think to convince coaches supporting Ranked.


edit: I've just seen this thread on FUMBBL:
http://fumbbl.com/index.php?name=PNphpB ... ic&t=23100
I'm not the only one

[Purplegoo]

People will moan about the status quo until the end of time. Ranked, Box, Faction, League, Ladder... You don't have to be a forum search guru to find 101 threads moaning about every one of them, the rain, the price of fish... If Christer gave us each a pound, people would ask why not ten?

Just feels like a closed, defensive mind and a fobbing off to me. Shrug. Anyway, my TFF busman's holiday is over. Enjoy going round and round flogging this manly horse.

[mattgslater]

1) Ah, Goo. We love you too. Nice to see you slumming it with the theorybowlers.

2) Can we go by MattD and MattS?

3) MattD has a point on the relative ease of sustaining a high-value team in Ranked as opposed to Box, but I don't think it's a particularly great one. You can get to high value (though not to genuine competitiveness) and stay there for a little while with the right twenty games and a policy of assiduously avoiding the killers. Then you activate the team with a bunch of other teams, and eventually somebody will take a cherry game against you. Given enough time, this could be a lot of games. Mind you, if you want to play more than one game a month, you have to either actually risk your team against teams who will play you, or build a team people will play against, and that team will have a much bigger impact on your personal stats. And if you want a real tournament team, you have to build some freaks. This takes time, and luck to keep it intact, as in [R] play the statfreaks that win tourneys are mostly bloat: your +AG Blitzer is only cool until you realize it means you're facing one more POMBer.

If you look at the real hardcore Ranked bash teams, the ones that go out there and play games even when they're not just tourney-picking, you will see that their value and composition changes quite a bit, just like in Box. The teams that stay in tournament form are the ones that don't get activated, or get activated along with other teams that actually accept fair matchups. The ones that play all the games? They take fair matchups. If you hate the existence of those big bloaty teams, I hate to tell you, but all a Box basher has to do is stop playing when he's in good form. Is this more common in Ranked? If so, there's no real reason it should be, and no real difference except that like once a month that Ranked team might get yet another supposedly-cherry match. And we all know those famous last words, "that looks like an easy matchup."

[mattgslater]

Interesting outcome. Welcome to Ranked! is working like a charm: they get a lot of teams that have played just a couple games. They started out 1-1-1 against rookies, but since then they've beaten one team at 990k, two at 1.04M, one at 1.09M, and one at 1.1M: their loss in that time was against 1.18M Dorfs.

As for the others, I've decided to stop trying to bracket them specifically, and just generally keeping them about 100k apart. Part of this is because I really like developing, and part of it is because A Short-Term Effect runs into too many noobs. Two concessions in eight games is really frustrating. They were "justified" (Dwarfs down 2-0 at the half, kicking off with a dead Runner, 9 men, and no Apo last night), but I would rather it not be one game in four. I don't mind showing a new coach the ropes if I can't find a veteran to play against, but I'd rather do it with Welcome to Ranked!, you know? At least it has ASTE's Blitzers looking good... and now they're up to 1320 and about to jump again in a couple games.

Oh, and AnagramMATTic Shock has a big guy. They lost their SPP leader, the B/MB/T guy, and have no Tackle for the moment. I have a few players who are close to improving and three rookie linos. I'm contemplating going Wrestle on the rookies, and Tackle on the B/MB guys (29 and 21 SPP), unless I get both B/MB guys up, and then they both get Tackle and I'm not so sure about Wrestle. One alternative is letting two guys go down a killer route, while building the other two (including the Block one) for more mobile Guard (can't have enough). Maybe a pure killstacker, a B/G, a Wrackle sweeper, and a Wrestle guy ready to replace whoever dies.

ASTE still has no big guy, and I kind of like it. Maybe their next player will be a second Catcher, never thought much of them but having a B/G one is all kinds of fun. They want to be at the Shock's current value, so I think Shock need to build a little. Shock probably should have hired the Troll last game, may do so after this one. ASTE is perilously close to getting its first T-POMBer and two Blodge/Guards, and I want to hit/approach 1400 when I do, or I won't get any games.

Edit: ASTE up into 1400s now, still no POMB, but quite close to it. Should be able to get games easily with two Catchers, and perform well with five Dodge. At this point, they don't look like Shock do on paper, they look lighter even if they're really not.