New Chaos coach and the quality of advice.

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Kent Brockman
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New Chaos coach and the quality of advice.

Post by Kent Brockman »

This isn't really a question, more of a commentary....

I played humans for three seasons....probably due to some sort of masochistic trait in my personality....And from it I learned how to play the game, and some very tough but valuable lessons.

Now I'm playing my first season as a Chaos team coach, and its been interesting.

Some of the lessons i've learned is you have to have a really good reason to do a one die block, 3 ag is great, but not reliable.....and weigh advice according to who the advice is coming from.

When I was a new coach, i used to listen to nearly all the advise that was thrown at me, good and bad....over time I've learned to separate the wheat from the chaff.

This might be a shocker to some, but there's been a few people in my league who give bad advice on purpose, some who give equal amounts of good advice and BS, advice from those who have a unique style that only works for them, and some who really should play the game more before they start passing on tidbits to others.

Equally, there's people who take good advice and build on it, some who take advice good and bad, some who take good advice and do the opposite, and to a large extent....people that consider free advice to be worth what you pay for it.

Something that poker's taught me is everyone lives inside their own heads and generally acts according to what they take in and what they think is happening. As such, Blood Bowl advice falls into almost a "he said, she said" thing that happens every time I show up at game days.

So....what I end up doing, is whenever I have a nebulous question that I have to answer, I ask people in the league what they think. Since I've been around the block at least once or twice in dealing with people, I tend to listen to all advice, if its from someone I think is worth listening to, and then weighing it according to its own merits, how it could affect my team, and the point of view of the person giving the advice. As such, I often do the opposite of what many people advise me to, not to be contrary, but according to what I think I should do as a coach and the source of the advice.

OTOH, advice I've gotten from TFF as well as most of the BB Podcasts has been pretty top notch.

At the end of the day, its my team i'm building and its my prerogative.

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besters
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Re: New Chaos coach and the quality of advice.

Post by besters »

Sounds like you are having fun, which is the most important thing anyway.

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spubbbba
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Re: New Chaos coach and the quality of advice.

Post by spubbbba »

It's a little disappointing that someone would give deliberately bad advice and it really annoys me when people to that to newbies in their local league to cheat them or get some kind of tactical advantage in any game. You have a big enough advantage over a less experienced player as it is and it is pretty lame to win solely due to the fact that your opponent wasn't aware of all the rules or got some of them wrong.

Far too often when asking for tactical advice the local environment in ignored. Some advice is just plain better than others, for instance block is a much better doubles choice for a Mummy than diving catch. Whilst others will depend on the types of team you will face and the attitude of the other players in your league. Taking Claw/PO/MB on every player may well sweep you to victory but it won't be much fun if you single-handedly kill your fellow league-mates enthusiasm for the game.

Overall the advice given here is pretty good and even when it is contradictory you can get some interesting discussions (the huge Nurgle thread springs to mind) and a seemingly less effective strategy may work for you, or not be quite as good but a hell of a lot more fun. FUMBBL is probably slightly better for pure maximising your chances to win, but there is a tendency there to assume that all environments are bashy matches of roughly equal TV.

I really like coach's website, though wide advise steering well clear of warseer's Bloodbowl section as they don't have a clue about BB.

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Re: New Chaos coach and the quality of advice.

Post by Odium Khan »

I think your observations can be applied to life in general, not only Blood Bowl. Your recipe for tackling advice too.

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Re: New Chaos coach and the quality of advice.

Post by Skurk78 »

There are a lot of people here who can give you loads of good advice. I would also recommend checking out http://bbtactics.com/ I think it is concentrated on LRB5 (please correct me if I'm wrong) but a lot of the stuff on the site works just as well in LRB6.

I feel really bad when I'm playing a trailing newbie and try giving him helpful advice and Nuffle decides the noob's going to fail at everything. I haven't come up with any good advice on how to successfully roll dice yet. Except for the "throw less dice-rule" of course.

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New Chaos coach and the quality of advice.

Post by Dwarven Allstar »

As a new player myself it has been interesting to read your comments and views. I have sat down with a good friend of mine who let me borrow a dwarf team for the afternoon. We played a few games and the advice in playing the game was offered positively as I am now a bb enthusiast and am more likely to take part in competitions and leagues, even if I don't win a game I will be having a good laugh with friends. When learning 40k I was taught by someone who made the rule up to suit them winning, once I realised this I was very sceptical and have very rarely played. However as mentioned before I can't wait to bang some heads on the bb field and build a team that gives me abit of an outlet from the daily stress.

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Re: New Chaos coach and the quality of advice.

Post by spubbbba »

By far the best way to learn how to play is if a more experienced coach takes you through it. That way they can initially concentrate on teaching the rules before going on to tactics and team development.

It does require the new player to put in a fair amount of effort and at least try to learn the basics themselves. Cyanide’s forum had quite a few new players who mistakenly thought BB could be picked up and played straight away like other computer games, or would ask silly questions that were clearly pointed out in the rules.

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Re: New Chaos coach and the quality of advice.

Post by Heff »

Welcome. Oh and if you want respect never play dwarf cheese again.

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If you cannot stall out for an 8 turn drive to score with dwarves then you need to go and play canasta with your dad..if you can find him.
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Skurk78
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Re: New Chaos coach and the quality of advice.

Post by Skurk78 »

Dwarven Allstar wrote:As a new player myself it has been interesting to read your comments and views. I have sat down with a good friend of mine who let me borrow a dwarf team for the afternoon. We played a few games and the advice in playing the game was offered positively as I am now a bb enthusiast and am more likely to take part in competitions and leagues, even if I don't win a game I will be having a good laugh with friends. When learning 40k I was taught by someone who made the rule up to suit them winning, once I realised this I was very sceptical and have very rarely played. However as mentioned before I can't wait to bang some heads on the bb field and build a team that gives me abit of an outlet from the daily stress.
If you're going to stick to dwarves I recommend mastering the cage. A dwarf cage is a pain to play against and many of the players you run against the bearded cage will experience the pain first hand. There's a lot of stuff about cages and cage breaking on bbtactics. And don't let anybody tell you you've picked the wrong team. Personally, I think dwarves are a bit boring to play and tough to play against. I've still experienced many funny moments involving dwarves.

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Re: New Chaos coach and the quality of advice.

Post by spubbbba »

Heff wrote:Welcome. Oh and if you want respect never play dwarf cheese again.
I really don’t think those kind of comments are helpful in the newbies section.

If someone is just starting out playing the game then they should pick the teams they like to start with. If they ask for advice on what team to use then by all means mention that dwarfs are slow and really only have 1 tactic of cage and stall which can get dull.

But criticising a new player for the race they chose to start with is really not cool. If they follow that advice then they risk getting pushed towards the cool (i.e. crap) races as someone else will say Undead are cheesy, another elves are lame and someone else that Orcs are too good. So they risk getting pressured into playing goblins, which have the potential to be fun, but not if the poor newbie gets stomped though both not knowing the game and playing a tier 3 team.

Plus that joke is real old and was never very funny in the 1st place.

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New Chaos coach and the quality of advice.

Post by Dwarven Allstar »

I decided to play dwarves as the figures, 2nd edition are really cool, no other reason. When I chose the team I didn't even know that they had block and were tough as old boots. I also have looked at other races and am keen to put together a halfling and ogre team as well.

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Re: New Chaos coach and the quality of advice.

Post by Skurk78 »

Halflings are very fun to play and a halfling coach has to be creative (just to save his players' lives :D). Just don't expect your funny food loving 'flings to wrap up a lot of wins. Make sure you have two trees on the team and let them do the blocking.

I've never played Ogres myself, so don't know much about them.

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Heff
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Re: New Chaos coach and the quality of advice.

Post by Heff »

Well that told me. Haters gonna hate.

Ogres are sometimes fun but often not. Check out plasmoids site its good. That and don't listen to me, after all a dwarf stole my gold.

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New Chaos coach and the quality of advice.

Post by Dwarven Allstar »

Well I haven't got your gold lol but thanks for the advice on ogres.

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