Forced to catch the ball

Longshot · Post by **Longshot** » Tue Oct 22, 2002 12:07 am

Well,
In Spiky tournament , i was forced to catch the ball...
In fact, i blitzed a thrower, i wanted the ball scatter and my thrower would have been able to throw...
But i Blocked the Thrower (with both down) and the ball went on my Dragon Warrior who has blitzed. and my move was out. (anyway i couldt hand off cos i had blitzed).
And my opponent that i cannot try to catch the ball cos it would mean a turnover...is it true? cos this screwed up my tactic to get a safe 1/0

Balrog · Post by **Balrog** » Tue Oct 22, 2002 12:15 am

Yep it's true. Silly, but true.

Relborn · Post by **Relborn** » Tue Oct 22, 2002 7:52 am

yes true, that's the reason I liked the old Hand-off rule better. But well I admit that i am biased as I usually play wood elves.

Casper · Post by **Casper** » Tue Oct 22, 2002 10:21 pm

But hopefully "MUST catch" is one the things that the BBRC are discussing very soon (now?)

Marcus · Post by **Marcus** » Wed Oct 23, 2002 10:05 am

Re-review the "MUST try to catch the ball rule". This creates a situation where I might use a team re-roll to FAIL a roll to make sure the wrong player doesn't get the ball (like the blitzer that just knocked it lose). Is the only reason this is there is because of the "must pick-up the ball rule" seems wierd to have situations where I'd want to reroll to fail. In hand in hand with this is of course the question, why do I HAVE to try and pick up the ball?

http://www.blood-bowl.net/BBRC_HotList.html

Post by **GalakStarscraper** » Wed Oct 23, 2002 10:15 am

Neo told me that the first thing the BBRC did this session was everyone grabbed a print-out of the BBRC Hot Topics page and went through the items.

Some went by very quickly, others got decent air time.

When Andy gets back, they plan on going through the entire list a 2nd time to make sure they are in agreement on whatever they are in agreement on with the topic ...

Anyway, Marcus is right, this one is on the list, and they are at least considering it.

Galak

Grumbledook · Post by **Grumbledook** » Wed Oct 23, 2002 2:17 pm

If you must catch the ball why do my players insist on failing catch rolls?

Longshot · Post by **Longshot** » Wed Oct 23, 2002 2:50 pm

because they dont have arms anymore....
Undeads are loke this...

Skummy · Post by **Skummy** » Thu Oct 24, 2002 2:39 pm

I had a nasty related experience recently - I was recieving the ball on the last turn of the game, and thought I would try to throw my brand new goblin over some dwarves for a one turn touchdown attempt. Unfortunately, the kickoff result was a bad kick - directly to my troll, who caught the ball. There was no way he could give it to the goblin and throw him at the same time, so I had to settle for fouling.

My goblin got caught.

My coach got thown out.

Game over.

Babs · Post by **Babs** » Sat Oct 26, 2002 12:50 am

As a BBRC member,

I volunteer to take a lot of flack over this issue. (Just maybe I was adamant on this issue a year ago, posting again and again on it.)

The concern is valid. The issue, however is that if voluntary pickup returns to the pitch, you open up an even greater travesty of justice than the issue you are describing.

The 'kick' of the ball. Those old enough to remember Chet/Acerak's great Dr. Seuss-ish poem about 'kicking the ball' and Gall the Thrall will remember the argument. (if you don't know it - pester him for a copy - it's priceless!) Stand firm guys dodging into 6 tackle zones to scatter the ball to a better location.

Admittedly, Stand firm has changed, however the issue has not. 'scattering' the ball to a more preferable solution is decidedly cheesy/beardy.

If you're still not understanding what I'm saying, it's about moving a player into a sqiuare with the ball, with no intention of picking it up. You just want the ball to scatter to a location which is easier for another player to get to it and pick it up.

The issue as I see it is really to do with another, seemingly unrelated issue: Making handoffs a seperate action.

While this clarifies Handoffs, and simplifies the categories of actions, this change has brought about the situation you are stuck with.

So we either change handoffs back to not be a seperate action (which is a very nice change for the large part) or change pickups to be voluntary, leading to wholesale abuses by people scattering the ball around.

The only other way around it would be for there to be a 'exception clause' where if the ball scatters to you, you can choose not to attempt to catch it, but if it is a 'pickup' you must try to pick it up.

There's the issues. How the BBRC votes is up in the air.

Deathwing · Post by **Deathwing** » Sat Oct 26, 2002 1:02 am

Hey Babs!
This one's a Bugbear of mine. Forced catches are a whole different thing to forced pick-ups!
I'll see if I can find the thread....

Babs · Post by **Babs** » Sat Oct 26, 2002 1:44 am

Deathwing / Woody

Please do. We need to iron out this problem in a way which is beneficial to all BB players - including those in leagues who have players who do anything cheesy/beardy they can get away with.

I'm interested in ways to solve the problem, not just discussing it.

Anthony_TBBF · Post by **Anthony_TBBF** » Sat Oct 26, 2002 1:50 am

We've been playing with no forced catches ever since the new rules came out and I can say without a doubt that it has caused no cheesiness whatsoever. I like the forced pickup rule, but as far as catches go I have seen nothing that convinces me that it needs to be in the rules.

Khail · Post by **Khail** » Sat Oct 26, 2002 2:25 am

I'd have to say I like forced pickups, but dispise forced catches. Picking up the ball is something you CHOSE to do when you move into the square. Catching a bouncing ball is something random that happens when the ball is jumping around all over the place. In the first situation you can control who tries to get the ball, in the second you have no choice, just roll and accept. Nobody likes to have their options taken away from them by a rule that doesn't make sense. Everything else a player can do you have a choice on weither or not they attempt it...except this (well...and wild animals/ball and chain users =P).

Just make catches voluntary and keep pickups mandatory. Solves the issue nicely.

-Khail

Grumbledook · Post by **Grumbledook** » Sat Oct 26, 2002 8:03 am

The biggest problem with this is the following. A member of your team passes the ball to a team mate who hasn't had an action this turn. Now the pass is inaccurate and it actually ends up going to the square of a player next to the intended target. This player has allready taken an action and is yet forced to catch it. If he does catch it you then can't do anything else with the ball this turn as he has had his action.

A way aroud this to stop it being too beardy (which i can't really see happening anyway forced pick ups stopped mostof this) is that if a player has taken an action allready, then you should be able to let him decide not to catch it.

In the above example if he could have decided not to catch it, then you would have had a 1 in 8 chance of it scattering again to the player you intended it to go to in the first place. If this happens then that player can take his action with the ball, possibly for a TD run.

There may be an arguement for letting any player refuse to catch it (like he is surrounded but then is likely to fail the catch anyway) I think that just allowing players who have taken an action allready to automatically fail their catch, seems like a fair proposal.

Some people may think this is unfair because you can just throw to a group of your own players and get lucky. I would say to them this is good coaching for the player to have got into such a position, he still would have needed the lucky scatter.

What does everyone else feel about this?

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