Talk Fantasy Football

While learning Go - a truly great game by the way - I've encountered a lot of constructed problems. They're simply pictures of a game situation with the question: how can you play to survive this? Some are easy, some are really tricky.

Of course, the idea came up for BB-problems. They could for example be in the form of How to score with the minimum risk of failure? or How to defend against this threatening last-turn TD? I imagine there could be some debate about pros/cons with certain tactics, and the number crunchers could prove their point (with Pariah protesting).

I have yet to use the new computer versions of the game, but from the pictures Galak posted a while ago there seems to be a complete graphic interface. That would mean that anyone who wants to construct a problem could easily just set it up, make a screen dump and crop the image to the right size.

And even better - players that come across real problems could post their situations and get advice on what they should have done!

I'm not the coach to do these things, but I think I'd learn a great deal from the kind of discussions we could have from this. Did I convince anyone to try constructing a problem?

Micke

I voted yes but I don't know if it could be as well as with games like Go or Chess. Maybe you'd have to set some limits on # of dice rolled or what numbers come up on the dice.

Tried to put a couple together a while ago but, franky, BB isn't the game for it. Chess and Bridge have "correct" ways to approach a problem, BB doesn't.

It's pretty much the same reason you don't see poker problems in the paper - there are so many contingencies riding on each action that a simple black and white solution is impossible to achieve

It would be fun to discuss different ways of solving them though.

Yup, there's probably something to that, Marcus. I'm just thinking that some problems could be for us mediocre coaches, like how to finish off a run for a TD in the best way. When it comes to last turn TD's there should be quite clear rights and wrong, right?

Others could more be up for discussion, like Pariah said. It might be a good start for a discussion on different playing styles?

We've had a lot of team development treads here, but not much tactics. Maybe some maps could change that?

I think that because here are many different ways to approah different situations, having many people 'solve' a problem would be a really good idea. You could see how other people operate, different tactics and different approaches. It could allow you to work on your less well developed areas of the game, you don't think your defence is up to scratch, go and see the advice for playing defence with X team against Y offence.

Probably the best way to do it would be to have fairly simple scenarios. Use only 3 or 4 players on either side and show how to go through a turn with the best possible chance of success. If people like it, you can get more complicated.

I've prepared about two weeks ago some beginner lessons, with problems to solve and all. A girl in my league really needs it and i hate seeing her lose all her games.

Zombie, would you be prepared to share those, as I would like to help our youngest member out due to the same reason.

This sounds like a really cool idea, I'm in.

-Balrog

The only thing i've written down is the subjects (13 total). The lessons themselves and the problems are only in my head. If you want the list of subjects, i could post that here.

Mostly I would like to see starting positions, or Gambits. How to stop the one turn scorers, or OTS with a TTM team. Blocking schemes, Pass/Block/Dodge studies, and the like could also be good subjects. I allways hate to see a noob with 3 figs around one end up throwing one 2 die block, then get stuck even up.

Best way to stop 1 turn touchdowns is give everyone tackle and pray to the blood bowl gods you roll a Blitz! on the kick off table!

Zombie wrote:The only thing i've written down is the subjects (13 total). The lessons themselves and the problems are only in my head. If you want the list of subjects, i could post that here.

If you'd write them down and make screendumps, somebody would probably put it on a homepage for you, and then everybody would say "Need newbie lessons? Go check out Zombies!".

And then whenever someone asks you a follow-up question you could sneeze them off and say their tactics sucks.

Micke

I think that it'd be a good idea. Things like Chess and Bridge are good for papers because they need a single answer. Just because there is more than one way in BB doesn't make it any less interesting! You would have to keep it to single turn plays and reasonably few models though, as there is alot of variables. Some things we could do:

Score from this position in 1 turn:
Defend this position as well as possible:
Maximise No. of blocks on a ball carrier:
Put more than one person into the crowd (my favourite!):
Create a turnover and score:
Work a blocking system to maximise knockdowns:

Max