Death Zone Season Two
New Star Players
garion wrote:
Willow Shame her stats and skills didnt change a bit though as she is still pretty much pointless
Karla very much - Zara light. I cant imagine I will ever bother taking Zara again though
Willow is useful for Halflings and if nothing else is linefodder for the other teams.
I agree Karla pretty much replaces Zara unless you are facing an Undead team and want to stab some Blodge Ghouls. Zara does play for a few more teams who might still want to hire her since they cannot have Karla.
Pact/Reengages and Goblins
The Orc, like the Skaven, is an extra option for the team but no Strength skill access will limit his usefulness. I can understand that giving all the Big Guys Mutation access would be too good but still think the Minotour should have been a Chaos Minotour with Mutation acsess.
While not removing Loner from the Trolls is a shame the lack of change to the Sneaky Git skill is the main problem here. At least with all the skills being presented in the book there is a chance of a skill update in Season 3 or 4. If Sneaky Git was a 4+ to escape from the Dungeon or even a +2 on Argue the Call Goblins would be much more playable in a League.
New Inducement: (In)Famous Coaches
I really like these they are costed cheaply enough to be used. The main problem with the Skaven and Shaman is they both cost the same as the Wizarrd and have a chance of making your situation worse. If a roll of 1 had been "No Effect" these would have been much more appealing.
Master Mage - Two scattering Fireballs is great and this seems a much better impelmentation of Wizards than the old 150k to, mostly, Zap one player. The big change for me, that most people seem to have overlooked, is that effectivly this Mage can also cast a Counter-spell. If players hire him then neither get to cast Fireballs where as when both players hire a LRB Wizard they cannot stop each other.
Goblin PA - He is my favourite and I think I would take him over the third bribe if I only had 150k to spend with Goblins. He is also cheap enough, being half a bribe for the other teams, to be worth taking if you plan on playing the Fouling game.
Papa Skullbones - For a Big Guy on a Renagade team you have Tail/Tentacles, Claw/Horn and Foul App is not completly useless. Add in option 8 for coaches choice and you have 40-50% chance of a useful result. You also have the option of turning a Beastman into a ball carrier with extra arms/head. Given how weak Chaos teams start I could see using this and hoping to get lucky. Shame he was not 50-60k as he seems too expensive.
Krot Shockwiskers -
garion wrote:80k only 50% chance of success, and only 1 in 6 chance of actually being useful. I doubt anyone will ever use it.
I agree he costs the same a Merc Linerat and only just less than an Wandering Apo both of whom will be more use. If it is the Playoffs/Final I might consider him for bringing back the teams star Runner or ROgre. Really needed to be 50k to be a useful option.
Rostering Star Players
You pay the cost to hire the Star Player and they join your team and gain Fan Fave skill. I can see myself hiring a star near the end of the Season so you have them for all the play off matches. The appearance fee makes this seem balanced. I expect to see a lot of teams with Chainsaws and resloving who is 'first' will be an issue for League management. The best option is to have a draft order for coaches so the worst players, or totally random, get the first pick at the Star Players.
Sponsorship
They found a use for the D16 which makes these difficult to get as you need 20+ with modifiers to get sponsored. Without stadiums teams are only likely to get Sponsors when they win in the playoffs/finals. Having a sponsor is a great way to pay for rostering a star player. I like the rule but it could end up making the split between good and bad teams in the league even more apparant.
Famous Refs
I am not impressed by this one they all* make fouling weaker and it is pretty weak already. If there special rules has been instead of being sent off on a doulbe rather than as well as they could have been interesting. I am sure plenty of undead coaches would rather have a +2 Injury roll on a Regenerating Zombie rather than a straight up sent off.
*Sure the Flings have a chance to send the foulee not the fouler off but there is still a greater chance of the fouler being sent off than with the standard rules as the Flings rule is in addition to the normal double roll on armour/injury not instead.
Stadiums
This is the big addition with seven pages of rules for playing at none-standard stadiums. There is a lot of rules and dice rolls and even once you have a stadium there is only about a 30% you will play a match at your home ground. It is a nice addition for long term leagues to give a team something to aim for but given how often players forget Weather I am not sure how much they will be used? Depending on what team you play there should be about half the options useful so teams should be able to find a stadium they like if not the one they really want. Maybe we will get things like the Weather Dome and Security Gate from the Computer game being available in the next edition.
Conclusions
There are a few annoying errors (Skullbones roll a D6 on this D8 chart and the picture of Scrapper not having a pogo stick) but overall much better than DZ1. I was also expecting an updated pre/post match sequence page. I look forward to playing these new rules in one of our local leagues.