Str 3 Human Catcher?

[daloonieshaman]

no one has given a good reason to make the Human Catcher st 3
There is NO reason to make a Human Catcher st 3. Learn to develope and play your players better.

It brings to light the lack of long term team development.
Why would a catcher get block as his first or second skill there are at least 5 or 6 better first and second skills to give him
Why would a MV 8 player have st 3
Why rearrange the whole player to try and fit a square peg in a round hole
Why try to make them faster Amazon Catchers or cheaper "pro" Elf Catchers (why do they have a double skill anyway)

Leave them alone and learn how to play them long game
They should not be fast blitzers they should be great catchers (Unless you get a +1 str)
(A st 2 catcher should not have the ball if there is the slightest chance he can be hit, until he is ready to score (or wild chit happens outside your control {he can use catch to try an not catch a bouncing ball})
ALSO: he should not be standing next to an opposing player at the end of your turn. (Your opponent gets one blitz make him choose)

tough love is often misunderstood

[Kort]

Human Catchers are quite useful on offense, albeit a bit expensive and fragile.
They also offer a fast scoring option but unfortunately this is generally a losing strategy against most opponents.
Furthermore, having more than one ST2 AG3 AV7 player on defense is a liability, and their main asset, high speed, is then only marginally useful.
The current BB rules reward well-rounded players, and benching one or several 70k+ positional players is not a very attractive alternative.

The problem is Humans as a team have no ST3 player with access to Agility skills, something many harder hitting rosters do have (Norse, Undead, Necromantic) and can exploit for both offensive and defensive purposes. I think this is the main reason why Humans fade as TV goes up, the second reason being that they have slightly overpriced players (Blitzers, Catchers, even the Ogre) who must be replaced a bit too often.

I would be glad to know what are the 6 skills that are better than Block for a Catcher (and how they can survive to get so many of them )

Also there are already several ST3 MA8 players in the game, namely the Wardancer, the Werewolf, the Elf & High Catchers, but I agree that Humans should not have access to 4 such players.

[Smurf]

Standing the Catcher alone invites him to be hit.

Protecting the Catcher, making the offence to make dodge rolls, will prevent the Catcher from being hit.

When getting the ball the Catcher ought to score.

The Catcher is not a blocking piece, it can help in a block but is not there to join in on the line of scrimmage.

[Chris]

no one has given a good reason to make the Human Catcher st 3
There is NO reason to make a Human Catcher st 3. Learn to develope and play your players better.

So, to be fair you are coming from this from a different angle.

One that is there is no problem with the human team, that they simply need to be coached better.

You are in that regard I think different to most players as the mass of data and personal experience of players is that the team is not that good and is very hard to develop, with the best will in the world and excepting teams that roll nothing but doubles. I hope I never encounter one of your human teams.

This jars with - and you may not feel the same - many players sentiments that humans should be at least amoung the best teams in blood bowl. Currently to use a comparison from the premiership what is the signiture team for bloodbowl with more iterations than any other is not one of the big 4, but rather Blackburn (no offence to any blackburn fans out there, you have it hard enough already).

It brings to light the lack of long term team development.
Why would a catcher get block as his first or second skill there are at least 5 or 6 better first and second skills to give him

Again i think your experience is quite different but I commonly give my skaven catchers block or wrestle as their first skill. Despite my best efforts they often end up next to enemy players. Or get blitzed. Possibly something to do with them have low armour and str 2.

Why would a MV 8 player have st 3

Because he trains long and hard? Because he used to be blitzer who dumped some armour and pounds to get lighter on his feet? Because its the best of a bad set of alternatives?

Leave them alone and learn how to play them long game
They should not be fast blitzers they should be great catchers (Unless you get a +1 str)

Well they certainly aren't great catchers. They are an agility 3 player with catch. Great catchers tend to have ag4 making them better at moving and handling the ball in all situations.

[Juriel]

Human Catchers shouldn't be weak kittens, especially when elf catchers surpass them in everything, but any proposed change except the AV8 one makes them too similar to Ghouls and diminishes the Blitzers, which I am not a fan of.

Right now, Catchers are sort of required for a Human Offense, as the 'break out of cage with the ball and MA8' option, but there's never any reason you'd want all 4 of them. Or hell, more than one, really, except that you're expecting that one to get punched out, so you tend to grudgingly go with 2.

As an overall boost to Humans, I like adding Fend to Human Linemen. Perhaps by making them MA5 in return. Heavy padded shoulders, like NFL linemen. Would give the team an overall defensive mobility boost (since they aren't stuck to whichever ST4 people happened to punch them the last turn).

Wouldn't really help that much in the long-term, though. The problem is the bleh base stats, since the more skills you add on top of skills, the less valuable the latter ones are, but stats are always as good.

[Chris]

Standing the Catcher alone invites him to be hit.

Protecting the Catcher, making the offence to make dodge rolls, will prevent the Catcher from being hit.

A somewhat pedantic point but in blood bowl unless you are either out of range of all the other teams players or physically completely surrounded by friendly players and none of the outer ring are in contact with the enemy (and ignoring wizards) there is always a chance of being got which varies according to who you are playing. All you can do is make it harder.

Currently it would seem people can't make it hard enough given the rest of the team and that isn't helping humanities position in the league table of successful teams.

[Chris]

Catchers shouldn't be weak kittens, especially when elf catchers surpass them in everything, but any proposed change except the AV8 one makes them too similar to Ghouls and diminishes the Blitzers, which I am not a fan of.

Well faster ghouls without dodge Many players are similar - amazons are slower ghouls.

The av 8 change, combined I think with a rejigging of blitzer costs makes them, probably does it, I just don't like the fact that it contradicts all the human catcher models. Maybe for a new team set, but not the current ones?

[spubbbba]

Well the same fluff arguments for ST3 could be used for AV8, as natural hardiness comes into armour rating as well, hence why virtually naked trollslayers and Orc throwers are still AV8. You could just say the training makes him better able to take the hits evern with less armour which he needs to have MA8. But this lack of weight and spiked gloves means his blocks/blitzes have less impact than the other humans.

If you want to make the models suit AV8 just give them a face mask, works for Pro elf blitzers.

But the main point is again balance, with a few exceptions high MA and AG tend to have lower AV and ST and vice versa. If gutters started with ST3 they’d be one of the best players in the game and totally change the skaven team, even with ST2 they are one of the best value players. More so when compared to human catchers, gaining MA, AG and mutation access for just 10K and the loss of catch.

The main issue with human catchers is that they are not all that good at their job on offence and a bit of a liability on defence. Even with the free re-roll AG3 makes throwing, dodging and catching a risky business.

[dode74]

I think they should be 0-2 and AG4.

[Oly1987]

Correct me if im wrong but if they got the av boost wouldn't that make them the only st2 av8 player? Unique and in a good way. Plus they are only 1 double away from being a good defensive piece at higher tv (blodge/ss guard)

[burgun824]

Although the egocentrist in me would really like everyone to just listen to my "because that's just the way it should be" argument, I'm not at all surprised that it hasn't phased anyone.

Let's try this. Human's are supposed to be the "good at all and great at none" team. It would stand to reason, at least in my warped mind, that this means they should be able to compare to the average player of the same position across the board. The understood average in Blood Bowl is 6338 (unless I've been missing something all these years). Now where have I seen that stat line before....OH YEAH! That's the stat line for a human lineman.

A blitzer gains +1 MA and block...makes sense. No argument from anyone.

A thrower is a lineman that can handle the ball...makes sense. No argument from anyone.

A catcher however is supposed to gain +2 MA and -1 ST. Well this is just silly because it veers too far off the given formula. A human catcher would be no faster then a human blitzer but not any weaker either. They would however have a different skill set.

Therefore 7337 catch GA is what the catchers stat line should rightfully be.

Reasons:

1- It just makes sense. But as already stated, some folks aren't buying that.

2- Because they are the "good at all and great at none" team it should stand to reason that their ST should at bare minimum match all of their positional counterparts in BB. With the exception of the WE catcher, which I've already stated should also be ST3 , all other catchers are ST3 and none are ST4. So therefore a human catcher should be ST3.

3- Because they are the "good at all and great at none" team then it should stand to reason that their MA should be on par with the the MA of their positional counterparts in BB. MA8 is an elf stat as far as I'm concerned and the only way a human should ever reach it is by stat increase. With the exception of the Amazon catcher all other non-elf catchers are MA7. So therefore a human catcher should be MA7.

4- I'm sold on losing dodge because I think it's a fair trade off for the ST3 buff and they still would have 'A' access so they could take it later anyway if the Coach so desires. I've also been thinking that Chris brought up a good point earlier about starting each human positional with it's appropriate defining skill. I think this makes perfect sense for the feel of a human team and the roll they fill. So, for this reason I would also consider dropping sure hands from the throwers and rebalancing their cost.

5- For those that argue that it makes them too boring or have too many "blitzers"; this also fits with the feel of humans. The beauty of a human team should lie in development. How do you develop your team to play to your style? Well you have lots of options with a human team. Again the theme is that they are potentialy good at everything but never great at anything. At least not without a stat increase, but that's what those are for anyway. So they should be relatively inexspensive, all have 'G' access along with access to their appropriate matching skill set.

I whole heartedly believe that Humans should be a bottom Tier 1 team. I believe that ST3 catchers would buff them right into that postion.

As for Gutter Runners - I said before I was on the fence about them. I think it's a valid argument to leave them at ST2 and I now agree that I would do just that. However, I would give them Stunty. I think it makes perfect sense for them based on the skill description and it would fit with all ST2 players having it (basing this on raising a WE catcher to ST3 of course).

[Joemanji]

The existing Catcher is fine from a play perspective (he adds something to the team). But he is just too expensive in comparison to his AG4 contemporaries. 60K for him, 80K for Blitzers, 130K for Ogres ... and Humans would be a little better. But not loads better because they can't get any more ability into their first 11. But the probable +70K net of inducements would help them in a fluffy way, and also allow coaches to buy back players than die. I don't have as much of a problem with how Humans perform in individual games as I do how they perform in leagues at higher TVs. The ridiculous overpriced and unforgiving positionals make them a soul-sapping team to run. I've lost 5 players in a game before Clawpomb came along, and if you lose 400K of players you can't carry on with 11 Human linemen, it's just not vaguely competitive.

But in a blue-sky world, we should actually make Human Catchers ST3 when being blocked only.

[garion]

The existing Catcher is fine from a play perspective (he adds something to the team). But he is just too expensive in comparison to his AG4 contemporaries. 60K for him, 80K for Blitzers, 130K for Ogres ... and Humans would be a little better. But not loads better because they can't get any more ability into their first 11.

the only problem with reducing all their players costs is that humans are imo a top tier starter race. it is only as leagues progress that things really star getting tough for them, blitzes I 100% agree with you, because there is no way they should be more expensive than Orc blitzers. But Ogres and Catchers are fine as they are i think. Dodge on the catchers is what seperates them from most elf catchers, and makes them a similar cost. It also makes them better at dodging than elves at first as well. Assuming elves dont have a spare RR anyway. The problem again with catchers is later on in leagues.

For me the best way to improve humans is making their star players cheaper, so they have great and cheap star players because their whole team starts hemoraging players later on in leagues, it also is a nice throw back to LRB4. All they would need is an ag4 catcher like Hoshi Komi to return for a reasonable price and that good be what gives htem the edge. As it stands humans have Zug who is 55% more expensive than he should be. Griff is about right, think he is 10% more than he should be which is fine, but if Zug was more affordable and reflected his ture cost more, I think humans would benefit a lot from that, that and also the return of Hoshi Komi, and since we are talking house rules here I don't see any reason why these things couldnt be incorporated in to your leagues?

[Kort]

the only problem with reducing all their players costs is that humans are imo a top tier starter race.

This is a claim that is made quite often but does not seem to backed up by the facts.

I would argue that a TV1000 Human team ranks in the bottom third of Tier 1 teams in terms of their performance on the field. The only teams that are clearly worse are Nurgle and Chaos. Khemri are quite weak overall and cannot afford a complete roster at TV1000. I would say also that High Elves and perhaps Pro Elves are far from their peak and also struggle until they get some development. The remaining 11 teams start better than Humans.

Most games tend to be played in 3 kinds of environments: Tournaments (where team evolution does not matter), Leagues (where TV differences are compensated by inducements) and black-box matchmaking (where teams are matched by TV).

In torunament play, available statistics show that Humans are just awful. This seems to support my point.

In league play, Humans have an easier time to develop than other rosters, which could explain why they are ranked so high in people's mind. I think that in that environment, Humans fare decently at the beginning.

In black-box play, the off-the-field advantage described above goes away since an increasing TV leads to harder match-ups.

[MKL]

the only problem with reducing all their players costs is that humans are imo a top tier starter race.

Well, "top tier" after Undead, Wood Elves, Dwarves, Amazons, Skaven, Orcs... just to name some teams out the top of my mind.