Hi Shteve0 and all,
I looked through my NTBB website, because I thought it said what kind of balance I was looking for, and was quite surprised to not see it anywhere. I know I've written it in discussion plenty of times.
It has, however, possible to piece something together. As Shteve0 notes, the amazon (and previously the undead) tweak had an eye on both the short and the long term. And then the website does say this:
The BBRC seem to have managed to get all the tier 1 teams into the 55-45% win zone that they wanted. But a handful of teams start out stronger than this, then fall down into the tier 1 zone in prolonged league play. In tournament play and short league play these teams are at a notable advantage - so I've introduced some minor changes to lessen their short term power without weakening their long term performance.
But to put it clearly:
My main focus is on short term play, because all leagues go through that phase - and lots never move beyond it but just start over. If a team starts strong and finishes weak, then that's a problem if you never get to the finishing bit. Short term play is also connected to tournament play, but I find tournament data to be unreliable, mainly because of skill distribution and the resurrection format.
For the record, the data I used when starting this whole thing a long time ago was the data I collected from the BBRC from lots of playtest leagues. So it was league play data, and slanted towards short term play. It can be seen here. The data isn't perfect by any means, so as always it has been combined with thought and discussion.
http://www.plasmoids.dk/bbowl/LRB6Stats.htm
Now, even though the focus is on the short term, I also try to deal with the long term. In the long term I'm less worried about teams being a bit weak - they either had their day, or they can sweetspot. But I've tried to keep an eye on which teams would become overly strong in the extreme long term: The elfses and the big heavies. That's what the Bank adresses, as well as some of the other changes.
In my vision of the tiers, there are just 2. It almost doesn't make sense to put percentages on them, because I'm unlikely to ever get enough data to work on this, nor will I keep making small changes to nudge teams in a certain direction. BB stats are simply too unreliable for that.
But, in a nutshell, I'd have tier 1 (55-45%) and tier 2 (around 40%) - with old tier 2 teams at the very bottom of tier 1, and old tier 3 making up the new tier 2.
This is the specific intention of the NTBB (house) rules, and anyone not keen on that premise is probably better off just using the CRP+ list - or straight CRP for that matter.
Now, finally, to explain the team tweaks:
Narrowing Tier 1
*Human: May well have been left alone at the very bottom of tier 1. But there has been lots of discussion that fluff has humans as one of the top races. That, and as the box team with orcs it's a problem that they don't really measure up to orcs. Finally, Galak, Ian and Babs are all OK with an 'ideological' buff to humans.
*Khemri: Khemri too could have been left at the very bottom of tier 1. Again, much has been made of the decay making them unenjoyable. I would have been fine with just ditching decay. But Galak has revealed that the BBRC was very torn on these, and that the roster was a boring compromise. The NTBB roster was one that had been playtested in the MBBL, and which was popular among the testers, but somehow got vetoed in the final meetings of the BBRC.
Those 2 are actually on the CRP+(10) list.
The rest are my (optional) tweaks:
*Undead & Wood Elfs: Super awesome in short term and tournament play.
*Orcs & Dwarfs: In CRP they have long term problems due to cpomb dominance, so I think their league stats to some extent mask their true starting power. More importantly, we know from previous editions that without CRP-Claw these guys are strong long term teams. With the CRP+ nerf of the killstack, these guys will become long term monsters again, so I wanted to reduce their power ever so slightly.
*Amazon: These are tricky, and they weren't in my original 2011 rules. But the feedback was rather clear that I had missed these obvious offenders. I took the discussion here, and while not completely convinced I was eventually swayed by the accusation that they were both short term overpowered and boooring.
Narrowing the Gap:
As stated, I wanted to push current tier 2 close to the bottom of tier 1.
That's where the small buffs to Underworld, Vampire and eventually Slann came from.
Other teams might have been targetted, but they were either in dispute (Pact) or held long term power (Chaos, Nurgle). Slann could arguably have been left alone - the tweak was suggested by playtesters, and so far the reaction has been nothing but positive (with you being the lone exception?)
As for current tier 3, (Gobbo, Halflings, Ogres) at least the candidates were clear. And if it is any consolation then so far in playtest they are still clearly infirior. But - so I'm told - infirior in a more enjoyable way.
Cheers
Martin
