Talk Fantasy Football

I'm working on these house-rules where teams may replace a big guy or 1-2 positionals with other big guys/positionals/rostered stars on a list of fluffy, not-too-broken options, and then removing Loner from big guys. My goal is to experiment with alternatives to big guys instead of underpowering them (I agree with Tom's conclusion that BGs should be a take-or-leave proposition, but I don't like his methods for reaching that objective). For instance, Chaos teams could take an Ogre or a Troll in lieu of a Mino, or could take 1-2 Marauders instead, while Orcs would be able to swap the Troll for an Ogre or a rostered chainsaw. I've restrained myself when I can't think of how to get fluff and balance together (like CDs swapping the Mino for BOBs... it's very fluffy, but it's too powerful; ditto Humans on a Dwarf team).

So here is my question. If you had the option of taking 1-2 Longbeards instead of a Loner-less Ogre on a Human team, would you? It would mean all ST3, but it would also be 6 guys with Block and S access.

What about 0-1?

maybe you could make it 0-1 Big Guy or 0-1 ally and have list for each team, they allies being linemen equivalents because the other races would hold on to their best positional players.

Well, I have different ideas for different teams. I don't really think I need to get locked into an absolute 0-1 rule. But some options could be 0-1, others 0-2, others 0-4. I've been also considering the following for Human teams:

0-1 Werewolf
0-1 Flesh Golem
0-4 Halflings (in lieu of Ogre, so no TTM)
0-1 Assassin (I'm thinking 7/3/3/7 Shadowing, Stab, GA, 90k)

I didn't ask about these, 'cause I'm pretty confident that none of them are broken (the Were is definitely playable, but I'd never say it's definitively better than a non-Loner Ogre).

I've been thinking about 0-1 modified Vampires, but I'm not certain on how to make that work. I could just let them bite any teammate without Regen... but I don't like the way that would play on Undead or Necro teams (on Humans it's fine; they pay a penalty for taking the Vamp in that their guys cost more than Thralls). I've been toying around with replacing Bloodlust with a 2+/drive OFAB equivalent, a 20k price-hike, and AS/GP access on non-Vamp teams. I think that would be a good alternative to the Ogre: 2+ to field is about as bad as Bonehead, and the extra +2AG and Hypnogaze is a credible trade for +ST and MB. Hmm... maybe not....

Tricky, but for me the deciding factor was that the comparison was to a non-loner Ogre. For sure Ogre then.

8-8 so far. Encouraging.

Ogre for the strength.

Cool. It looks like this passes most of your smell tests.