Talk Fantasy Football

I was thinking about fouling and BB strategy the other day.

Presuming both teams have set up well, on turn 1 there are limits to what you can do - though a blitz or pitch invasion can change things. The defense, especially, should be making its better players hard to hit and even harder to get a good foul on. Yes you could foul line fodder but that is generally inefficient.

So when approaching a fouling strategy it is more likely turn 2 that either side will get its first real opportunity for a good foul.

At this point the defense will have reacted, and on the offensive side you might now have a better player isolated, and the same is true for the defense once their turn starts.

But why turn 2 and not say turn 5?

Because the significant risk of being thrown out AND the loss of position for a good foul usually costs more the later it is in a half.

The first part is easy to define, 1/6 for no armor break and 11/36 if you do. If you foul out you lose that player for the rest of the game and are down a man for the half. In most cases though your goal is to trade a low value player (lineman+DP) for a high value player so that the stats work out in your favor even if you do get thrown out (eg you lose that human lineman with DP at 70K for a KO on that 190K orc blitzer). For this part the risk and reward are closely matched - you get thrown out on T2 and your target gets KO'd/CAS'd on T2.

But positioning is often under looked. To get a decent foul you have to commit enough players to knock your target down and then reduce the target's armor to a reasonable value (the lower the better, but I try to get to the point where a 7+ without using DP is enough. Depending on the target that can mean 1-3 assists, and then someone to foul with. If you are investing 5 players to blitz/foul the target those are five players that are generally not available to either move the offense forward or position to stop the offense.

From the offense's perspective this might be ok - often you are just getting to the line of scrimmage anyway on T2, and for the defense forcing your opponent to score fast is the second best thing to stopping them. Giving up potential positioning is usually much worse as time goes on. Consider T7, for example, where the offense MUST get players into scoring position.

Thoughts?

Fouling is a thing I still haven't managed to wrap my head around to completion, so this is an interesting topic for me. In my current season (nine games, fresh start, playing Necro myself) I tend to foul very little, as I'm still struggling with positioning and keeping my players together. I simply don't want to risk getting a Zombie sent off while attempting to get a AV9 dude off the pitch (I should say that the roster of teams looks pretty bashy, Dwarves, Orcs, Ch. Dwarves, Lizardmen, Undead, etc., not a single AG team in there) and the few AV7 guys that I encounter (Hobgoblins, for instance) are usually not worth putting a boot into in my view.

But more to the point of when to foul, I can see the argument for starting rather sooner than later, if you are a) confident that you can keep control of the pitch, b) sure that the numbers work out (i.e., calculating chance for armor break, etc.) and c) not scared to risk the send-off for a potential stun. If all of that is out of the way, you should have a good estimate of when to go for the stomp. Then again, sometimes it should be ok to attempt a foul even if deep into the drive, let's say if you're up some bodies and really want to reduce the risk of having that Wardancer or runner type causing you headache in the second half.

It looks like fouling is a mystery that has to be carefully considered in both time and space. Oh, the secrets of our time...

I've learned to value one bribe highly. Really lets you foul with impunity. Lets you foul the enemy's lesser players early on. Lets you foul for numbers, like in the old days. With a bribe, your chances of getting ejected are at most 11 in 216, about 5%. You'll burn 6x that much in bribes, but keep doing it while you got it. After all, eliminating the cover players early exposes the gamebreakers to POMBs and fouls later.

Excellent point, matt. Now the question is in which situations the 100TV in inducements for the bribe win out against other alternatives. 50TV more and you could get a Wizard... Which teams have an easier time reaching such an outcome? Humans? Underworld? Chaos Dwarves?

Bribe + Trick over Wizard if you're the heavy team. Kill all menz!
Wizard over Bribe + Trick if you're the light team. Snatch that ball!