Long term success in a league

[swilhelm73]

So, if you were to take part in a large league and looking to play over many seasons, what team would you pick to give you the best chance of winning year after year?

[dode74]

Well the only example I have of that happening is Wood Elves which won the OCC (200-300 team Cyanide league) 5 seasons on the trot coached by Flix.

[pauli42]

Experienced Chaos teams playing an attrition play with lots of Guard, MB, Claw, Piling on, Tackle are a pain. But they need a lot of time to develop they deadly game.

[MKL]

Ime H-Elves, once developed, can age well. But you need to skill the whole team, not only the Catchers.
The Orcs are solid over time, especially if you develop a backup game to outplay the bashiest (claw) opponents (ie some throwing game, or anti-cage goblin, etc).
Not the Dwarves. Once you are the king, many opponents will steer towards claw+mb to topple you from the throne. And the Dwarves are less flexible than Orcs.
I harbor some doubts about Necros or Chaos Dwarves. They got some great players who need careful development: when a star Wolf/B-Centaur is killed, the team performance is at risk (more the Necros than the C-Dwarves, really).

Prolly W-Elves are the best option. They are frail, but replacement W-Dancers really don't need any build-up (unlike rookie WereWolves or Bull-Ceantaurs). If you spread your spp, the team can survive the inevitable losses.

-Edit: I forgot about D-Elves. I'm a bit on the fence here: they look somewhat frail to me, but in my experience (as opponent) they are fearsome performer especially on the long run.

[dines]

Dark- and high elves, they tend to keep their skills because of the blodge, AV8
Chaos, nurgle and c dwarves as they have reasonable armor and can develop nasty killers
Orcs, high ST and AV. They are a pain to face at high TVs, but they might run into serious trouble against chaos and nurgle killers

[the.tok]

So, if you were to take part in a large league and looking to play over many seasons, what team would you pick to give you the best chance of winning year after year?

A team I like playing, because you'll be playing a long time !

Wood elves seems a very sensible choice, so does chaos or Necro, but I'd rather go with undead or dark elves

[garion]

Depends how long term, all the elves and the CPOMB teams are best over a long period.

[Hitonagashi]

Lizardmen!

[garion]

Lizardmen!

Hehe we cant all roll 6 doubles on our Saurii

[Aliboon]

Nurgle or Chaos.

Elf teams and especially woodies are only one or two games from retirement at high TVs imo, but with luck they can remain good for a while.

Out of interest, what are the rules for the OCC?

[dode74]

Out of interest, what are the rules for the OCC?

Currently there are 21 main divisions (one Div 1, then tiers 2-6 with divisions A-D) on a weekly round robin where each team plays the other once. T1 sees top 2 stay and the other 8 go down. T2 sees 2 up and 3 down from each div. In T3-T5 it's 3 up and 3 down from each div. T7 sees 3 go up. Otherwise it's fairly standard (as far as it can be for the Cyanide version) classic rules. You can find more here-> http://www.orca-cola.com/beta/index.php ... -rulebook/
We've recently introduced a full feeder championship (Snotling Soda Championship - similar structure) where people can build teams a bit before bringing them into the main divisions.

Full results and tables from season 4 onwards (we're now on S11) can be found on BBManager if you want to look.

[mattgslater]

Play what you're good at, keep them at their intended TV, give or take, and if you take teams that peak low, make sure you get maximum mileage from inducements. The old saws about which teams are better than which over the long haul are not so true anymore. You can succeed with Humans if you don't let them get over about 1.6M, because Humans like Wizards and Apothecaries and skilled Mercs and Zug so much. Amazons suffer a little over the long haul, because their problem isn't keeping up in the arms race so much as losing their key edge after their opponents get better. But their inducements are just superb: Wizards, Willow, Bertha, Apothecaries, Babes. Ditto Skaven: sure, they take a whopping, but rookies are competitive and inducements are game-breakers. Plus, they're mostly Claw-proof. Norse may be the exception: Norse teams are great at low values, but they have poor economics and don't get great inducements.

Conversely, some teams that have always been thought of as reliable over the long haul aren't really so great anymore. Orcs are the best example. in LRB4, a two-skill BOB was just a wonderful thing: ageing was a distant concern, and he had everything he needed to play his role to the hilt. In LRB5, they take a lot more damage, and it's harder to maintain a good Power Nine than it used to be. This is important, and it makes Orcs much harder to maintain over a long time. Combine that with a lack of great low-end inducement options (lacking the mobility to get the best use of Wizards, being too tough for WApo and Babe to be much help; good value saw, but saws suck; it's only at 270k that you get the good stuff), and Orcs aren't nearly the long-haul team they used to be. Dwarfs too.

[RogueThirteen]

This question is very difficult to answer without knowing how many games in each season (how many games a year).

It's true Chaos can get really good after a lot of development, but 20 games will only get them part of the way there, for instance. And getting there will be painful and heavy with losses (lost games, not players).

Lizardmen tend to be better out of the gate, decent a mid-TV, and then start to lose their luster after your sauruses get to 6 or 16 SPP. Getting to 31 / 51 SPP on CAS alone will take a long, long time, and you really won't have many opportunities to score TDs with your sauruses against most skilled opponents, unless you don't mind giving up wins to try and skill sauri (but that ain't my cup of tea). Being AG1 really grinds your development to a halt once you hit the easy skill up levels. As some reference, I've got a current lizardmen league team that's played 25 games and it has 4 saurus with 1 skill, 1 saurus with 2 skills, and 1 saurus with 3 skills (thanks only to 4 fortunate MVPs landing on him).

Comparatively, my High Elf league team only played 11 games (less than 1/2 of the lizards) but they had a thrower, two blitzers, and 3 catchers who each had leveled up an average of three times. Then a handful of linemen all had 1-2 skills.

So the big, tough, heavy-hitting teams will survive better and get kind of scary with some leveling up, but you'll quickly push past the spot where leveling up any of the big tough players because really, really slow. Alternatively, teams like elf and skaven will level up really fast, will need the occasional replacements, but even at high TVs there will be plenty of opportunity to cultivate players to the next level. That's not to say any teams are advantaged or disadvantaged - it's just the nature of the agile vs bash dichotomy and it's built into the game. Both are fun experiences and offer their own challenges and rewards, so it's up to you to decide which playstyle is more tempting.

[dr. evil]

I'm a big fan of dark elves. Their easy to skill up, have 6 player that can get blodge after just one skill up, can run or throw well, and if your ball carrier get hit you can just dump it to an open player.

They are not as good out of the box as wood elves and don't throw as well as high or pro elves but they can stand up to the bash better, plus they have AV8.

Just a better all round team.

[mattgslater]

Edited for a page of comments and a little reflection, and because I forgot Pro Elves.
I'm going to assume a perpetual format with no outlier racial groups: about 25-30% Claw, 15-20% Dwarf/CD, and a rough balance of heavy, medium, and light teams. I'm also assuming you've played BB before, and are just trying to figure out the balance of the new environment. Therefore "Winners" means "winners in LRB6 rules, relative to what a coach from the old days may think, looking at the profile. I'm not calling Wood Elves an average team, nor am I saying that Skaven are the best team or Dwarfs are the worst. But Dwarfs got their shorts handed to them by LRB5, Rats got the moon and all its green cheese, and Woodies went both up and down in roughly equal proportion.

Winners (biggest winners first)
* Skaven: Skaven are the team that has gained the most from the new rules. All the skill cheese, Journeymen to let them keep just 11 men on the roster, the best list of Star Playes on any T1 team, and the best possible advantage from all the standard inducements, including Mercenaries. If you can hang out around 1.4M, then a PO RO for 230k is a great complement to Glart, Fezglitch, and a Wizard against a 2.1M bash opponent. Chaos hate that more than anything, because their own Claw is useless. Then, when you face the 1.7M elves, you trade all that for Skritter, a Bribe, and a Babe, or Fezglitch and two Bribes. Nobody gets any inducements against you unless they're a lot younger, which is brutal on some teams. And then you get all the cheesy skill combos except the elf/Zon ST3 BDGSS. The rats even get CPOMB! Zons are your kryptonite, but otherwise you're stylin'.

* Amazons: Really good against rookie teams, and they hold their own vs high value if they manage their TV. The key is being an underdog: they've just got too much ≤150k goodness not to get maximum mileage of any handicap. Assisting in this is the fact that on 1M gold you can hire everything you'll ever need (4 Blitzers, 2 Catchers, 6 Linos, Apo, 3RR); Treasury is strictly for replacements!

* Chaos: They start out pretty sucky, but better than they look. AG3/ST4 is brutal against rookie teams. (Okay, it's brutal against anybody.) They don't peak fast, but they do peak high, and when you get them going, you can use them to beat even vastly superior coaches just by getting lucky... so long as you stay lean and efficient and only give away Wizards after nice long runs of health.

* Vampires: Okay, this is somewhat subjective. But Vampires have some nifty institutional advantages. Cheap linos with skills you want to give them, a way to protect those same players when the game goes wrong (as it often does), and a set of awesome, easy-to-protect core players. Things go disastrously wrong once in awhile, but they get good use out of inducements.

* Nurgle: Nurgle are like Chaos, only less vulnerable to elves, and more vulnerable to a bad day. Your TV will spiral up and up and up, which is fine, because you want to get skills on your tough guys. Still, living by the sword will eventually kill you, and the destiny of Power Nine teams seems to be to go through rebuilding periods, where you will just get your butt kicked. They have a harder time as big favorites or underdogs than they do at even odds, except as/vs. rookies.

* Pro Elves: Pro Elves are the most advantaged of all the elf teams, in terms of the new rules. Good Star Players at every level make them very competitive as 'dogs. Don't laugh at Dolfar until you've played rookie Pro Elves against 1300 bash and seen the damage that Dolfar, a Wizard, and some Catcher/Blitzer action can do. Moranion used to suck, way back when. Remember that card? ST4 Dauntless Blitzer. Yawn. But now he's awesome! Cheap Linos let you engineer low TV, and regular lino turnover is no longer so frustrating. In fact, the new rules really reward building 2-3 super-players, which is what Pro Elves have the easiest time doing anyway.

* Dark and High Elves: Dark and High Elves play well at all levels. They're good underdogs, which is nice because they get blown up a lot. They're good in the lead, which is nice because their players are expensive. Managing TV in the old days was about spreading the survival skills and not getting hurt. That still works, but it's less important: getting wrecked usually only screws you up for a game or two, until you get your toolbox back in order. After that, Wizards and stars make the difference! High Elves are better underdogs and have a better TV curve; Dark Elves bounce back better from lost positionals, because they can build in more redundancy (6 Blitzers, hunter skills out of the box).

* Humans: Humans are excellent against all levels, so long as you manage your own TV tightly. I like to hang out at 1500, but I'll totally take on much higher-value opposition. The key is loading up on Block and Guard, and letting skill quality, fouling, and inducements do your dirty work. The best part is that you don't miss lost stars, but you get to make the most of them while you've got them. My [R] Human team keeps losing its second- or third- most experienced guy, but they keep winning games because they never develop out of control.

Losers (starting with the most screwed)

* Dwarfs: Dwarfs have been crippled by the new rules, and are probably the single biggest loser. (Yes, they're still viable, but they're no longer one of the better teams.) Their high AV makes it easy for their TV to skyrocket while they're facing young teams, but they're terrible at coping with enemy inducements (I'm talking about you, Wizard). The tendency for the guys who don't get Guard as a matter of course to hog all the points, plus the need to spam Guard, forces the team out of TV trimming, and the expensive reserves and the need for MB on the pitch to counter opposing ST or inducements, plus the inability of the low speed team to come back from man-down, keep Dwarfs from getting Wandering Apos and such, leading to the team taking more damage on its skilled Blockers, exactly the guys Dwarfs really need to keep intact. This is unfortunate, because Dwarfs are the source of the game's immune response to elfballitis.

* Orcs: Orcs have been hurt badly by the new rules, though perhaps not as badly as Dwarfs. The Mighty Wall of Green is still every bit as deadly as it used to be... here and now. The problem is that it has become almost impossible to maintain. The slow-building BOB was relatively invulnerable to Ageing, but ClawPOMB hits him harder than any other player position in the game. I know, some coaches can make Orcs win even without good BOBs, but I have to say that art is lost on me. Orcs are pretty mediocre with inducements (average or better as big underdogs) and average against them: TV disparities are really about the other guy (Ugroth vs Amazons, WApo vs Chaos).

* Khemri: I'm not considering roster changes, just rules changes and their impact. Khemri are a sucker's bet. They can generate a coin-toss against all the bash teams, but they turn over really fast, and are comparatively poor underdogs, except at 80k-90k and 130k-140k. Setekh and Sinnedbad are fair values, but won't save you from compounding on a bad loss. And you will have those losses, because Regeneration doesn't let you protect one guy over the other, and Decay is evil. They're also bad underdogs, because Wizards are really brutal on them. So, pick your poison.

* Undead: Undead used to be great. But the old problem of not being able to protect specific players via Apothecary is now magnified, and Undead can't really take huge advantage of the new inducements, either (except Sinnedbad vs low-value teams). They're quite playable, but sometimes you'll just get hosed, in a way that happens less to many other teams.

Others (roughly from best to worst)

* Necromantic: Necromantic are the best perpetual team among the Undead. Zombies are speedbumps, with little expected of them and a bunch of skill options to do it. Flesh Golems start out overpriced, but at just 16 SPP, they become excellent players. Werewolves start off vulnerable, but they're great, and they go up quickly. Ghouls and Wights are useful players with tight profiles; if the Wights are a little overpriced, they're great to start with and much tougher than Ghouls. All three positions die a lot... but they do well with rookies. Their only real league problems are their lack of low-end inducement quality, the difficulty in balancing Guard and Tackle, the vulnerability and slow early progression of Flesh Golems, and the inherent penalty in playing a Dodge-poor positioning team in the era of numbers game.

* Chaos Dwarfs: Good at all levels, except as big underdog rookies, and as little underdogs vs bash teams. Once they get some TV under their belt (and some critical early skills on the AG2 players), they can play way up in TV okay; it's the small gaps that hurt them. They're good against equal bash, but without a big handicap they're not good underdogs to those teams, which makes them a better team for a good coach in a new league, where you can get an immediate TV edge and keep it.

* Wood Elves: Because Dwarfs now stink, Wood Elves rock. They do get cleared out sometimes, but they're great underdogs. They can't build a bench, which sometimes costs them winnable games. Rookie positionals are good, which is nice. The new Catcher doesn't look like a big step down, but he's gone from "cheese machine" to "viable player" on one little change. Wood Elves are still the most competitive of the elf teams, but they're no longer clearly the best at what they do, and the other elf teams have gained at least as much and lost a good deal less.

* Norse: Norse are great if you keep them lean. If you get some injury luck and hire too many positionals, you can pace the league in TV, but this is a terrible mistake, because giving up Wizards and taking on heavy teams without help will kick your tail. Instead, pick 3-5 position players you want to keep on a squad of linos, focus on toolbox skills, and be ready to rumble with Babes, Wizards, Apos, Bribes, Helmut, Boomer, Icepelt....

* Lizardmen: Lizardmen are kind of strange. They're good at all levels against their own experience level, whether or not at a handicap. But they have a heck of a time if they have a bunch of rookies and have to play a high-value team. They also are highly subject to league composition. If they share a league with a lot of elves and 'Zons, they tend to get creamed, because the elves run over them (at least the Lizards have a Stabber), and the other teams that have to build vs. elves are only happy to use all that Tackle on Skinks, too. On the other hand, Journeymen are a great boon to Lizardmen, moreso than to other teams.