SKABB League

This past Saturday was one of the regular events held at Troll Trader in Bromley. The Skull Cup 2 was first held last August  and was run by my fellow host of the Blood Bowl Tavern podcast. Chris Whitehot.  As always with the Troll Trader events, Chris had a series of Really Stupid plays as the first tiebreaker. These are things which you might not do as the most optimum play to help you win the game but are fun things that will keep it interesting.  This time there as a 1200TV build and on the list for me was Chaos Dwarfs which I borrowed from BeardedLucha Stu to play before the change. This was for a few reasons - I would be able to get all the teams played by the end of the year (my painting schedule probably wouldn't allow another team on the table before the end of December), I would be able to play chaos dwarfs before the upcoming change so I would have something to compare them to, and also because 1200TV allows you to get in lots of stuff for them. There were only 5 skills

The second pairs tournament run by the BriBBe league was this last weekend. For the first event last year , Tommy and I went as an all stunty team. In quite a competitive field, we didn't fair so well.  This year, Tommy wasn't able to make it so I paired up with Damology and we went for a pairing of undead teams - he took shambling undead and I took vampires. There was a rule that meant you couldn't have two tier one teams and we've both played these teams during the league so we were rather confident. We called ourselves the Evil Dead 2 and got these snazzy t-shirts!   For my vampire build, I had all 6 vampires and took dodge and leader on the throwers, strip ball and block on the blitzers, and dodge on both the runners. I had 8 thralls, one with kick and three re-rolls. And as I was told during the day, one coach. I really need to check these sorts of details before the first game.  I normally make notes as I go along, although I didn't do so for various reasons,

On Saturday, I made the trek up to 4TK Gaming in Colchester for what I think was my fourth visit there. Events are put on by Sam (scs.sam) and Coutney (myrmedon) and are always enjoyable and attract a strong group of coaches. Recently I've taken to working out "Seeding" for events based on coaches maximum ELO on the NAF database - for this all of the top 10 coaches had at least one race at 180 or higher. For anyone who doesn't understand the ELO system, this is a blog for another time - suffice to say that it is a good ranking. This was the 6th event out of 11 in the South East Tournament Series, so we're past the halfway point, and we've been thinking about next year. Dodge22, TSO for the Midlands Series was here and we had a good chat about our series for next year. We're looking to align rulesets, although more of that in the near future hopefully. I picked up DimmyGee at Ashford on the way and a couple of hours of chatting about BloodBowl made the time

I hadn't intended to go to UKTC this year. The date change from last year (April to August) and initially the thought it might clash with Thrudball meant that a number from our league were unable to attend for various reasons. Then two weeks ago I saw some messages from Mike (sann0638) and Alex (dementor/pegleg) saying that they were looking to put in a last minute team to even up the numbers. I looked into whether I could make the logistics work, and with a car share from St Albans with our other team mate Tom (chicken, 23rd of his kind) booked in, along with a little jiggery pokery with nursery pick ups from my partner, it became a possibility.  I rejigged my calendar of what teams I will be taking to what tournaments so I could use one that is currently painted and I settled on an amazon build with 2 blitzers (block and wrestle), 2 blockers (guard and block), 2 throwers, linewomen to 13 (1 with block and 1 with guard), 3 re-rolls, an apothecary and (apparently - I forgot about i

 I’m looking at taking Amazons to a tournament soon and have been thinking about the best way to utilise the throwers’ innate On the Ball skill. Assuming I remember that they have it, that is. When I played Lizardmen recently I had to write a post it note and put it in my dugout to remind me. The first thing to think about is what the skill allows you to do. On a kick-off, a player may move three squares prior to the ball landing as long as there wasn’t a touchback, and it doesn’t allow a player to cross into the opposition’s half. There are then really two primary uses of this skill on the kick off. 1.        To reposition 1 player slightly 2.        To attempt to get nearer to – ideally underneath – the ball. Simple repositioning doesn’t need to be looked at in any great depth. It might allow you to do things such as screen where the ball is landing, or offer an assist for a key block without having to decide where to position the player beforehand. What I’m mostly intere

Unfortunately, this isn’t a dissection of getting a good mentor to help you train for Blood Bowl in a Rocky-esque montage, but instead an analysis of the value of hiring a coach for your team. Like Einstein’s best theory, it is all relative. It really depends on the number of coaches you have compared to your opponent. If they have 2 and you have 2, then the net effect is the same as if you both hadn’t bothered to bring along any coaching staff. Let’s first consider when coaches come into play during the game. The only time that they directly affect the on-field game is when Brilliant Coaching is rolled on the kick-off table. This is a result of 7 which has a 17% probability of occurring, just below 1 in 5. When this happens, both coaches roll a D6 and add the number of coaches. If one coach scores higher than the other, they gain a re-roll for the drive. If both coaches score the same, then there is no effect. Below is a table which shows, based on how many coaches you have more