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All in for Blood Bowl here. Took 2nd in my league’s Fall season with Chaos, somehow leading in both casualties caused and players who died despite playing in a league with Halflings and Skaven (who in turn had to deal with 3 orc teams, dwarfs, undead, and Chaos), and getting ready for the Spring season with the new rules. My team, the Dankrumble Dodgy Gitz, is a full batch of custom sculpts because there’s no way I’m paying FW prices for Secret Weapons, and none of the 3rd party teams really appealed to me. Gotta say that the plastic BB kits are fantastic, though - really knocks out some of the lower end 3rd party teams.  First five based Gitz: Deadly Don Merrydeath, ‘Ooligan Dave, Gob Brady, Saz Not-so-tuff, and Dimlight Frenzy.  The full team, in various stages of completion. Going with an eye-searing fluorescent purple with red-and-yellow checkers along the bottom and sleeves and a spiral on the hoods, because I’m playing goblins to suffer, not to win.
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Nov 28, 2020 04:45
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I can't believe they've introduced more special rules whose only purpose is to slow down the game and infuriate players. No wait, what I can't believe is that they haven't done more of that...
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Nov 28, 2020 12:11
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are you talking about star players and their special abilites?
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Nov 28, 2020 15:14
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Vulpes Vulpes posted:Roadmap for Direchasm is up. If I'm reading it right, it looks like That Vampire silhouette just screams Harkon to me, a small warband seems a good fit for the vampirates they tease every now and then.
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Nov 28, 2020 18:28
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Mr Owl posted:That's the one! I have a welf team that I painted up just before lockdown for the underworld University and then I'm bad with money so I have Greebo games masterpiece to paint this month while I'm excited for the dbl proper 👌 Doooooon't worry about the animosity. It is not even slightly a big deal. MUCH more significant is the fact that your Big Uns are 25% faster than they used to be when they were called Black Orcs. Add to that the general benefit that armour gets from the new injury table (eg. by not having to roll on it as much) and Orcs are going to be an even more top tier team than they were before. I'm sadly fully off the run from the tabletop community while Covid remains a thing due to health concerns, but looking forward to playing again whenever it becomes possible again. Squibsy fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Nov 28, 2020 |
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Nov 28, 2020 18:33
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Slaapaav posted:are you talking about star players and their special abilites? Specifically putting animosity on the old orc team... not something that will ever really come up much, but just a stupid extra diceroll to remember, solely to dissuade passing?
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Nov 28, 2020 18:39
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Is Necromunda something you can play with a rulebook and a gang or do you kind of need the big box with all the doodads and stuff? I have tons of terrain including Warcry stuff. And is Blood Bowl honestly that good? I heard in the past it was pretty swingy, but honestly at the price point for the second season box I'd be willing to give it a shot.
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Nov 28, 2020 20:28
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food court bailiff posted:And is Blood Bowl honestly that good? I heard in the past it was pretty swingy, but honestly at the price point for the second season box I'd be willing to give it a shot. The new edition is the same game. The changes are largely superficial. So, with that in mind: Cease to Hope posted:Blood Bowl is middling complexity as a board game. However, it's designed in a way that you'll most likely never get any better at it unless you learn from other players. It's also not a chill game, due to how long it takes, how random it can be, and how it encourages a personal investment in your dudes.
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Nov 28, 2020 20:44
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food court bailiff posted:Is Necromunda something you can play with a rulebook and a gang or do you kind of need the big box with all the doodads and stuff? I have tons of terrain including Warcry stuff. You can play Necromunda with a gang and the rulebook, yeah. You need lots of terrain but as long as you have that you don't really need the big box. It comes with some handy tokens and lots of terrain, and there's one version that has a board instead of using terrain pieces, but you can enjoy necromunda action of some sort with just the rules and a gang yeah. I think blood bowl is more fun and better balanced than 40k ever was. The old joke was that BB looks like a mess but is actually balanced, while 40k looks balanced but is actually a mess. That's not entirely true but  It is still super random and sometimes wildly cruel. Especially when you're playing in a league with a built-up team and then your star player just dies because of an unlucky roll.I think its a much more focused game than having tons of people shooting back and forth, driving the ball creates way more focus and strategy. There's a pretty solid PC game if you wanna try it out and see what it plays like, with the same rules as the tabletop and the same figures and stuff. BB2 (pc game) is good and BB3 is coming soon.
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Nov 28, 2020 20:45
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Zaphod42 posted:The old joke was that BB looks like a mess but is actually balanced It's really not. Blood Bowl doesn't have good balance among the teams, doesn't have good balance among the many options to (mis)spend your resources, and teams can quickly become mismatched due to how your players earn XP.
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Nov 28, 2020 21:03
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Inducements go a long way to balancing teams in league play and the new edition looks pretty promising overall. I'm excited to see Fumble move over to it. Here's a deep analysis of 10,000+ games and faction balance. It's pretty drat good even if individual games can be swingy (true to sports IMO). https://bloodbowlstrategies.com/en/relative-strength-of-teams/ The worst teams have ~33% win rate which is bad but the best teams aren't oppressive at only 56%. 19 factions are above 45% overall too, so it's really just about staying away from the really bad teams if you care about that. but really just play Snotlings because look at them 
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Nov 28, 2020 21:18
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Bottom Liner posted:The worst teams have ~33% win rate which is bad but the best teams aren't oppressive at only 56%. 19 factions are above 45% overall too, so it's really just about staying away from the really bad teams if you care about that. Which is a consequence of having a fantasy setting and wanting to explore a few gimmicky teams which are fun but ultimately not very good. The official blood bowl site even rates teams with a 'difficulty' level, so just stay away from the "hard" teams and you're pretty much fine. Cease to Hope posted:It's really not. Blood Bowl doesn't have good balance among the teams, doesn't have good balance among the many options to (mis)spend your resources, and teams can quickly become mismatched due to how your players earn XP. Yeah but look at 40k. This is relative.
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Nov 28, 2020 21:53
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:That Vampire silhouette just screams Harkon to me, a small warband seems a good fit for the vampirates they tease every now and then. Boy, that would be great. I'm curious what the Ossiarch warband will be like- I have zero interest in them as an AOS faction, but Underworlds warbands often have more interesting takes, given how few models there are.
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Nov 28, 2020 22:17
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Well, BB2 with all the DLC is like eight bucks right now so I'm giving it a try. There's also a Necromunda game that apparently came out this year, is that a pretty faithful adaptation of the tabletop game or is it more video-game-y?
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Nov 28, 2020 22:29
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The BB2 PC is really fun and I need to get back into it. I also just picked up my copy of BB 2nd edition  it's neat living near an official Warham store
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Nov 28, 2020 22:32
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food court bailiff posted:Well, BB2 with all the DLC is like eight bucks right now so I'm giving it a try. Bloodbowl PC is exactly Bloodbowl tabletop, all the same rules and turns and squares, and if you buy the DLC pretty much all of the teams. Necromunda PC is NOT Necromunda tabletop. It has the same flavor and the same units and weapons, but its a very different videogamey playing sort of beast. Its closer to Valkyria Chronicles. It looks okay, I haven't bought it yet though. It also only has a couple of the gangs. GW is very very wary of letting anybody make a 40k tabletop PC game (so dumb) and so Bloodbowl is like as close as they seem willing to go. I imagine a ton of people playing bloodbowl tabletop now started with the PC game, just like how lots of people who play 40k started with dawn of war, so they really should just make a PC game of 40k but they're terrified of cannibalizing model sales. Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Nov 28, 2020 |
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Nov 28, 2020 22:47
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Zaphod42 posted:Necromunda PC is NOT Necromunda tabletop. It has the same flavor and the same units and weapons, but its a very different videogamey playing sort of beast. Its closer to Valkyria Chronicles. the Necromunda PC game is incredibly bad. it's basically not even half-finished. Zaphod42 posted:Yeah but look at 40k. This is relative. There's no 40K army as bad as a BB joke team. Even Tau and Chaos Knights. And you always get the same points as your opponent in 40K. Inducements help mismatched teams, but a gross mismatch is still going to be a stomp. And getting your team stomped may end up making it permanently weaker, since injuries can disable and kill players. On top of this, the new edition of Blood Bowl makes "miss next game" injuries even more common, pushing teams down the death spiral.
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Nov 28, 2020 23:08
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I don't have time to make a counter argument to Cease To Hope's extremely negative tirade of a review of Blood Bowl but a lot of people really really like the game. It can have a pretty tough learning curve, but it's also a rewarding game to get good at. I've mostly gravitated away from almost all other GW games by now and Blood Bowl continues to be my main one. It gets a lot of flak for taking a long time to play but compared to most Games Workshop games it's pretty short. That's obviously no defence if you're comparing it to snappy modern board games, but ... well, it isn't that and has never claimed to be.
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Nov 28, 2020 23:38
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Blitz Bowl is also a lot of fun for a quicker and much simpler version. Now that it has a variety of teams and a second season as well it's a great alternative.
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Nov 28, 2020 23:44
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I don't know, it seems to me that if you don't like that the bottom tier teams in BB are at a disadvantage you've rather missed the point of BB. Those teams are meant to be at a disadvantage. They are (somewhat viable) comedy options who're there to take a kicking.ineptmule posted:I don't have time to make a counter argument to Cease To Hope's extremely negative tirade of a review of Blood Bowl but a lot of people really really like the game. That's his gimmick. Someone asks a question about a GW game, he posts a negative reply that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Lovely Joe Stalin fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Nov 28, 2020 |
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Nov 28, 2020 23:45
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Some of the rules that accompany blood bowl definitely demonstrate thats it not meant to be taken completely seriously (im thinking of that rule where sometimes a troll eats one of his goblin teammates...) I kind of think of it as the Pratchett of the GW brand
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Nov 28, 2020 23:58
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And for those of us who like swingy, push-your-luck games, that isn't a negative review of Blood Bowl.
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Nov 29, 2020 00:14
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Cease to Hope posted:do not play blood bowl with anyone you are not willing to grow to hate I don't wanna play blood bowl but I would love to paint up the new Necromantic Horror Team: The Wolfenburg Crypt-Stealers
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Nov 29, 2020 00:34
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The Lord of the Rings skirmish game is a decent ruleset and it's tied to an IP that isn't going to disappear overnight. It actually feels like a good long term hobby investment. You absolutely need a way of keeping easy track of Might/ Will/ Fate/ Wounds/ Applicable Special Rules for each of your hero-class models in the scenario . At some point one of those in the right situation can get you within one lucky die roll of a sudden death win. A clear dashboard for you and your opponent reduces the odds of a loggerheads interpretation. It's also the major limiting factor in the workable size of a scenario. When you are recreating the Fellowship or Thorin's Company together, that's committing to tracking them all for their tactical synergies. That plus model cost considering the sheer variety of factions to collect if you want to not miss out on any Middle Earth fun. I and local gaming buddy have been collecting and painting gradually since the first movie came out. We've done Helm's Deep and Pellennor Fields in various edition iterations, and hundreds of tactical scenarios and battle company meetups. It's a good sandbox big tactical system, plus your cinematic scenario recreations. We still have to do some creative substitutes. A Stonehorn is a Mumak if you squint because the scenario calls for three and between us we have two. FB/AoS Treemen and Dryads make good Ents and Huorns. Aragon is a rabid chainsaw in combat, and he can also fall to a Troll in one combat round, if the rolls are brutally against him. Faramir can fall quickly under one Ringwraith while one of his unhorsed knights can pass his Courage roll to sacrifice himself to pin it for a round and defeat it instead. Another Ringwraith pounced next turn and was outduelled as well. We decided afterwards Faramir and one of his men had traded armor to give him the element of surprise. Xlorp fucked around with this message at 07:17 on Nov 29, 2020 |
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Nov 29, 2020 01:16
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Bottom Liner posted:Blitz Bowl is also a lot of fun for a quicker and much simpler version. Now that it has a variety of teams and a second season as well it's a great alternative. I'm ready to love Blitz Bowl (hell, I invested heavily in obtaining several copies so I can intro people in the London scene to it) but it's frankly infuriating that the release is so limited. It's not at all easy to get hold of in most of the world. Lovely Joe Stalin posted:I don't know, it seems to me that if you don't like that the bottom tier teams in BB are at a disadvantage you've rather missed the point of BB. Those teams are meant to be at a disadvantage. They are (somewhat viable) comedy options who're there to take a kicking. Yeah it's a part of the mindset that you just have to accept. It shouldn't matter a great deal unless you really love hobbits I guess?
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Nov 29, 2020 01:17
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Lovely Joe Stalin posted:That's his gimmick. Someone asks a question about a GW game, he posts a negative reply that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. And what exactly did he say that "doesn't stand up to scrutiny"? Nothing he said is wrong. The game rewards skillful play and risk mitigation, but it's also incredibly luck dependent and harsh. BB is a wonderful 80s GW mess, but still a mess. Crackbone fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Nov 29, 2020 |
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Nov 29, 2020 01:25
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mllaneza posted:And for those of us who like swingy, push-your-luck games, that isn't a negative review of Blood Bowl. That reminds me of what initially drew me to GW in the first place- games like Epic or early 40k always had a bunch of safe armies that then spiraled away into increasingly difficult but also fun-if-this-long-shot-works-out armies like the orks.
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Nov 29, 2020 02:37
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Mr Owl posted:Some of the rules that accompany blood bowl definitely demonstrate thats it not meant to be taken completely seriously (im thinking of that rule where sometimes a troll eats one of his goblin teammates...) If it were meant to just be a goofy party game, that would be fine. But a tabletop match is easily an investment of an hour, and a league is a commitment of a half-dozen games at least. Plus, it's trolling your opponent to concede a match or a league early. (They get usually get less XP from a bye or concession, and XP is precious.) So you're stuck in what you know will be a losing game or losing league for quite a long while. On top of this, losing in Blood Bowl is very oppressive, because against many teams it means you don't get to do anything. Every turn, if you fail an action, your turn ends. If you're losing to a team that out-bashes you (any strong team, as opposed to an agile team), you're usually losing because your opponent is knocking your players off the field. It gets harder and harder to actually do anything without taking huge risks, and huge risks inevitably fail most of the time. So you get fewer actions you can actually take, as your team slowly gets ground off the field. This also means the joke teams don't just lose, but you only get to play about half a game with one against a player of comparable skill. Since they usually get outbashed even by agile teams, by the end of the game you often don't even get a turn. It would be one thing if silly teams like goblins or halflings went 0-10 in every season; they're joke teams, that's fine. But if you get outbashed, you don't even really get to play. And it's still rude to concede. In practice, I find most people who keep playing Blood Bowl longer than one league end up taking Blood Bowl fairly seriously. Losing in that game is just miserable, above and beyond the simple feeling of wanting to win the game. It's a very punishing game if you don't take it seriously. Crackbone posted:And what exactly did he say that "doesn't stand up to scrutiny"? Nothing he said is wrong. The game rewards skillful play and risk mitigation, but it's also incredibly luck dependent and harsh. I was critical of a GW game.
Cease to Hope fucked around with this message at 08:19 on Nov 29, 2020 |
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Nov 29, 2020 08:11
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Crackbone posted:And what exactly did he say that "doesn't stand up to scrutiny"? Nothing he said is wrong. The game rewards skillful play and risk mitigation, but it's also incredibly luck dependent and harsh. The only thing he said was wrong is the statement that there's nothing you can do to mitigate against the 11% chance of a human failing to pick up the ball. But that statement illustrates a lot that is different about his perspective and why I think it should be taken with a grain of salt. You mitigate against that chance of failure by: - understanding the golden rule of taking actions without a chance of failure first, then necessary ones, then least risky, then riskier - positioning screening players to defend the ball in case of failing to pick it up - understanding when it's necessary to risk picking up the ball early, eg. if there are opposing players in the deep field that threaten to take possession It's true that sometimes, but pretty rarely, you'll fail that pickup multiple turns in a row, and because Blood Bowl is a game that is defined by your bad rolls instead of your good ones, those events will stick in your memory. Cease To Hope obviously dislikes Blood Bowl which clearly is a position that is allowed, and their review should be considered by a new player who is interested in the game. But the perspective with which they illustrate their dislike indicates a number of viewpoints that suggest they haven't learned how to play it properly because of their dislike, which is why I think their words shouldn't be taken as much more than just "I don't like this game." It's why I pointed out in my first response that I would have liked to have time to respond properly because as a giant wall of text that goes unchallenged it is likely to be seen as the only authoritative review ITT and turn people who are interested off without a balancing opinion being presented.
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Nov 29, 2020 10:48
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ineptmule posted:Cease To Hope obviously dislikes Blood Bowl which clearly is a position that is allowed, and their review should be considered by a new player who is interested in the game. But the perspective with which they illustrate their dislike indicates a number of viewpoints that suggest they haven't learned how to play it properly because of their dislike, which is why I think their words shouldn't be taken as much more than just "I don't like this game." It also has a super toxic online community, I gotta add. I wasn't totally kidding when I said it's a game you shouldn't play except with people you're willing to grow to hate. And I do believe a lot of that toxicity is because it is a high-variance, counter-intuitive game with a steep skill cliff and a punishing experience when you lose. It's perfectly possible to get good at Blood Bowl; it's not Chutes & Ladders, despite the high variance. It has a very steep skill cliff, because of the mechanics I described. You need to learn that while it feels bullshit that you missed a 83% roll, it's perfectly normal and expected that you will eventually fail one of those 98% and 89% and 83% and 67% rolls. Like I said before, most players do not improve without advice because it's hard to ever feel like it was your fault, because you feel like should have succeeded all of those rolls. This is counter-intuitive! You are rolling dice in series, and thus need to unlearn your usual understanding of rolling dice in parallel. It's a game designed to make you feel dicefucked when you lose, which obscures the mistakes you actually made in not making safe moves first and not prioritizing your moves correctly. However, because the game makes people feel dicefucked when they lose and they are noisily sore about that, Blood Bowl has an obnoxious, elitist "git gud" community. Pointing out that it sucks inordinately badly to lose will generally get you a flurry of replies telling you that if you weren't bad, you wouldn't lose. But you will get blown out, and it will feel really bad, because oftentimes by the end of the game you won't have any productive moves to make. And because the skill cliff is so steep, you will get blown out, many times, while you learn the game. On top of all of this, sometimes you will also get dicefucked! It just happens. Sometimes you will make it so that your opponent has a <1% chance to score and they score anyway. Sometimes you will lose your entire turn on the first action, and there wasn't a correct play you could've made to mitigate the inherent risk of taking actions. Sometimes you will do everything correctly and lose anyway. But because it takes a significant amount of game skill to understand the difference between a game where you genuinely got diced and a game where you didn't play conservatively enough, you again get that same elitist community downplaying the existence of how variable the game genuinely is because low-skilled players complain about the variance. Blood Bowl is a very punishing game that involves a significant amount of time to get over the counter-intuitive skill curve involved in pressing your luck with rolls in series. If there's any disparity in skill or tryhard-y-ness among the players you play with, it quickly can become a miserable experience while you catch up in skill. It involves a fair amount of paperwork for building and progressing your team, and matches among experienced players run around an hour (with heavy pressure to not concede in the context of a league), with inexperienced players easily doubling that. If you go into it knowing what to expect and with a supportive group of fellow players, then Blood Bowl can be a fine game. If you go into it wanting a goofy funtimes party game, or expecting anything resembling American football, or with the intent of playing one of the silly joke teams, you will very likely be disappointed. Cease to Hope fucked around with this message at 11:50 on Nov 29, 2020 |
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Nov 29, 2020 11:38
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You make a lot of statements of fact which I take issue with. I don't know which online community/ies you're referring to but I admittedly don't engage much with anything other than FUMBBL. But I play in a large and busy tabletop BB community, in which dozens of new players have learned to play in the last several years, quite a few of them I've taught to play myself, and many of these players have become very competent players in our leagues. Almost nobody who has joined this community has ended up hating anybody else and never for any in-game reasons. I also have rarely seen players conclude that they got dicefucked through no fault of their own. Circumstances where this truly happens are rare, and maybe it's part of learning in person with the tabletop game instead of learning on the Cyanide PC game*, but recognising the difference between bad luck and poor planning is usually something that I've seen new players develop pretty quickly. I'm not aware of many games where you truly could learn to play better without observing how other people play, either in the form of being specifically coached or just by picking it up from watching. It feels to me like stating that BB is a game where you won't get better without other people taking the time to teach you indicates more about your approach to games in general than anything particular to this one. My experience as a new player was almost exactly the opposite of what you describe. I find that generally speaking, outside of tournament play, Blood Bowl is one of the only games I've ever played where a relative newbie can play against a serious competitive player and the game still be reasonably even. Certainly much more so than in any other Games Workshop game, an example of which might be competitive 40k where the game doesn't look or play anything like how it is imagined to from a narrative point of view. BB has no ambiguity in the rules at any point and a very simple objective, and most serious players I know are usually pretty happy to spare some time to help newer ones learn from their experience. * I personally think that Cyanide's BB2 is a really bad way to play and to learn this game, because it pretty much enforces the turn time limits and allows no scope for talking through decisions in a coaching game. There are different schools of thought on this though. Squibsy fucked around with this message at 12:23 on Nov 29, 2020 |
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Nov 29, 2020 12:17
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ineptmule posted:You make a lot of statements of fact which I take issue with. FumBBL and the Cyanide communities mostly. But also, y'know, your post, the part I quoted. ineptmule posted:But the perspective with which they illustrate their dislike indicates a number of viewpoints that suggest they haven't learned how to play it properly because of their dislike, which is why I think their words shouldn't be taken as much more than just "I don't like this game." This nonsense where anyone who criticizes how punishing Blood Bowl is just must be a bad player? That's toxic garbage, and I think the structure of BB encourages it. Cease to Hope fucked around with this message at 12:26 on Nov 29, 2020 |
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Nov 29, 2020 12:23
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Are you accusing me of saying that? Because I don't believe that's what I'm doing. In the part of my post that you didn't quote I explained in more detail the parts of your statement that I disagreed with, and if you're presenting my position as saying 'if you don't like it you must be bad' then I think that's being unfair. You'll notice I haven't disputed your statement that BB is punishing. It is, and that's not for everyone. The game absolutely has a steep learning curve and punishes poor decision making very harshly. I know many people who have come into this game and not been turned off by that, which is why I am trying to make a counter argument. You're entirely entitled to your opinion, but you emptyquoted yourself with a long screed of negative opinions in response to a person saying they are interested in the game. As someone who is passionate about this game, I feel quite strongly that a balancing opinion should be presented ITT, especially when people might or might not give it a try on the basis of what is said. Squibsy fucked around with this message at 12:38 on Nov 29, 2020 |
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Nov 29, 2020 12:35
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ineptmule posted:Are you accusing me of saying that? Because I don't believe that's what I'm doing. In the part of my post that you didn't quote I explained in more detail the parts of your statement that that disagreed with, and if you're presenting my position as saying 'if you don't like it you must be bad' then I think that's being unfair. You accused me of disliking it because I hadn't learned to play it properly. It's exactly the sort of "git gud" mentality bullcrap that infests any discussion of the game, and new players considering it should definitely be warned of that, along with the skill curve and play time.
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Nov 29, 2020 12:41
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I still think your underselling it. The steep learning curve is basically a cliff if your are playing with experienced players. Some people will love that and push past it and I can see that payoff over the horizon. I played my first two leagues of BB this year and after losing pretty much every single game, reading a bucket of online strategy guides, and then working out I would have to sink a whole heap of time into getting anywhere near competitive at the game personally turned me off it. Still neat to think about playing it though.
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Nov 29, 2020 12:48
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You stated that there's nothing you can do to mitigate against an 11% chance of failure. It's completely incorrect, and I detailed why. As you use it as an illustration of what is wrong with the game, its quite an important piece of your argument. If you're going to use that as your example and not talk about the other aspects of gameplay that are relevant then you're either selectively presenting an argument that leans on bits of the game you hate or you didn't learn to play in the sense of developing a risk management approach. I'm not saying you need to 'git gud' and that if you do the game will magically click for you. If you're hating your experience of learning the game, then stop! I've never refuted that disliking the game is a valid perspective, and even if you do put in the time to learn and still dislike it that's totally fine. I have my own experience of teaching lots of people how to play this game and almost none of them concluding that they didn't like it, which suggests to me that you've been unlucky in your experience. For what it's worth I think one of the neat innovations in Blitz Bowl is doing away entirely with the roll to pick up rule. It certainly makes for a cool change and I wouldn't be opposed to seeing some kind of future integration of details like that into Blood Bowl.
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Nov 29, 2020 12:57
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I picked up the game a few years ago and I’ve found the Blood Bowl community to be lovely, with my experience focusing on tabletop and fumbbl. There’s the odd person who whinges about dice, but I’ve found there to be a lot of patience with new players and an excellent community of people with whom to spend time. There’s a steep learning curve if you want to get really good no doubt, but there’s plenty of resources out there to help new players get decent. It’s been my way in to the GW world, and still my favourite.
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Nov 29, 2020 13:00
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ineptmule posted:You stated that there's nothing you can do to mitigate against an 11% chance of failure. No, you actually didn't. There's really nothing you can do it guarantee that a given play will succeed, even when it's a competent character with relevant skills. There's always a margin for failure. Getting good at Blood Bowl involves learning to understand that there is always a margin of failure and you need to prepare to have your move fail and your turn end right there. That's the crucial skill: understanding that even the important, low-risk plays can fail, and constantly thinking ahead to what would happen if this must-succeed, high-%-of-success roll fails anyway. If you don't find a 11% chance to end your turn randomly through no fault of your own fun, Blood Bowl is not the game for you. Once you get a good grasp on the game, you can understand that yes, your player will fail to pick up the ball often enough that you need to have a plan to screen the inevitable fumble against the enemy team just charging in to pick it up for themselves. It isn't a problem with the pick-up-the-ball rules in particular (although they are very silly), but rather a core quality of the entire game. Blood Bowl is a game of pressing your luck, and winning involves not rolling perfectly forever, but having good plans for when you inevitably fail.
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Nov 29, 2020 13:10
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Summarising it as push your luck is great. I will keep that for future newbies. I think your summary here is pretty good and I agree that with all that said if it doesn't appeal then it's probably not the game for you. Far too many words on either side of this now so I'll leave it there. Edit: Actually no, there is one more thing to say. I should clarify that I am by no means a great or even good player of this game. I need to git gud myself. It's all the same username so you can check out my NAF stats or my FUMBBL win rate but I'll save you some time: it's well, well below 50%. I understand the game and how it works, and most of the people I teach as newbies end up better than me. What I was objecting to was a misrepresentation of how the game functions, which usually comes in my experience from people not engaging with the fundamentals of the game and expecting it to be something different. That is a failure of teaching (which I agree with you is something that this game needs, although I don't see that as a downside because most games do to some degree.) Squibsy fucked around with this message at 13:39 on Nov 29, 2020 |
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Nov 29, 2020 13:19
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I’ve mostly played bb through fumbbl, and my take is that it’s a good idea to play a dozen or two games on fumbbl or the cyanide (?) game first, as the computer streamlines the process. If you don’t have to try to remember every little rule and how the skills interact, you can focus on getting a grasp on the actual tactics: prioritizing moved, not position yourself in a super vulnerable way, etc. As a bonus the games will be like, 30-40 mins instead of 1-2 hours, and you can quit if the opponent is an rear end in a top hat. So losing a game or even scrapping a team after two games is way less stressful. Learning the game using the actual tabletop game sounds awful to me in comparison. Make all the noob mistake on the computer, then you’ll also know whether you love or hate a team’s playstyle before buying and painting it. That’s my take on bbl.
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Nov 29, 2020 17:06
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