Informal Glossary of Common Maneuvers

[mattgslater]

OK, so we're working on placements and defenses in other threads. And in those same threads we've covered jargon for movement and maneuvers a little bit. What I'd like to do here is establish a vocabulary for common techniques in the game, and to codify what already exists so we have a minimum of miscommunication by building a glossary of BB jargon. If you take issue with a term, have at it: I want this to be a community effort. This top post will be edited frequently.

Marking
Mark: To hinder a player's movement by putting a TZ on the player ("man-coverage").
Edge-Mark: To mark a player on the diagonal. This exerts TZs on two of the marked player's seven remaining liberties.
Square-Mark: To mark a player on the horizontal or vertical. This exerts TZs on four of the marked player's seven remaining liberties.
Front: To square-mark a player in an effort to keep him from going forward.

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Marking  
Square Mark    Edge Mark      Front (offense starts at top)
- - x - -      - x - - -      - - - - -
- - o - -      - - o - -      - - o - -
- - - - -      - - - - -      - - x - -

Double-Mark: To mark a player with two players.
Triple-Mark: To cover a marked opponent with at least three players, including markers.

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Three of the many possible triple-marks
Bracket Triple Square Triple  Fence Triple 
- x - - -      - - - x -      - - - x -
- - o - x      x o - - -      - x o - -
- x - - -      - - - - -      - - - - -
- - - - -      - - x - -      - - x - -

Mob: To lock a player by marking him with three or more players.

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Two sample Mobs
- x x - -      - - x - -      
- - o - -      - - o x -      
- - x - -      - x - - -      

Free-Mark: To double-mark so that the player who would be blocked will get an assist unless actively pulled off.

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Sample free-mark A against player 1.
- - - - -
- B - C -
2 - 1 A - 
- - - - -

Wall-Off: To double-mark a player so that the marking players exert a tackle zone on each other.

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Walling Off  
Square Wall    Edge Wall      
- x x - -      - - x - -      
- - o - -      - - o x -      
- - - - -      - - - - -      

Bracket: To double-mark a player on the diagonal. A bracket may be "square" or "edge": a square bracket forms a straight line in front of the opponent, and an edge bracket covers opposite edges, as per the diagram.

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Bracketing  
Square Bracket  Edge Bracket    
- x - x -      - x - - -      
- - o - -      - - o - -      
- - - - -      - - - x -      

Bookend: To square-mark a player on opposite sides.
Fence Off: To square-mark a player on one side and edge-mark him on another.

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Bookends and Fences  
Bookend        Fence      
- - x - -      - x - - -      
- - o - -      - - o x -      
- - x - -      - - - - -      

Covering
Cover:To hinder a player's movement by interposing TZs between the player and his likely route ("zone-coverage").
Wall: To cover a route with players who exert TZs on each other.

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Walls
Square Wall    Edge Wall      
- - - - -      - - x - -      
- x x - -      - - - x -      
- - - - -      - - - - -      

Screen: Two players positioned within two squares of each other. From weakest to strongest, the screens are called oblique, edge, and square.

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Screens  
Oblique Screen Edge Screen    Square Screen  Not a Screen
- x - - -      - x - - -      - - x - -      x - - - -      
- - - - -      - - - - -      - - - - -      - - - - -      
- - - - -      - - - - -      - - - - -      - - - - -      
- - - x -      - - x - -      - - x - -      - - - x -      

Fence: Two players positioned within one square of each other. May be edge, oblique or square.

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Fences  
Oblique Fence  Edge Fence     Square Fence
- x - - -      - x - - -      - - x - -      
- - - - -      - - - - -      - - - - -      
- - - x -      - - x - -      - - x - -

Picket: A player who covers a route that would be open if he were pushed out of position.
Free Picket: A picket who can be blitzed, but cannot be hit with a Block action.
Lynchpin: A picket whose route only opens if the player is knocked down.
Hedge: To cover the ball or the ball-carrier from would-be sackers.
Seal: To prevent a player from taking the desired Move or special action.
Lock: To put tackle zones, your players, or immobile players on all an opponent's liberties.
Lockdown: To prevent a player from taking any action (other than standing up and exerting a zone) without taking an unreasonable risk or an unaffordable Blitz action.
Note the difference between "lock" and "lockdown". Locking a player down means different things to different guys. Bookending a player locks him, and if you bookend or otherwise lock a prone Human Lineman, you've locked him down. But the only way to lock down a Wardancer is to stun him. Locking him just makes his job a little harder. Wanna lock down a Mummy? Knock him down and don't follow. He'll stand up, but if you're prone a square away, MA3 is a better blitz-deterrent than if you marked him with a Bloodthirster. Different strokes for different folks, as they say.

Blocking
Square Block: A block against a square-marked opponent.
Edge Block: A block against an edge-marked opponent.

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Square vs. Edge-Blocking
A=Attacker, 1=Defender.
Square Block   Edge Block
- - A - -      - A - - -      
- - 1 - -      - - 1 - -      
- - - - -      - - - - -      

Chain-Block: To block a player so as to set up another block after the push.
Chain-Push: To block a player so as to cause him to push another player.

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Chain-Block vs. Chain-Push.
A=Attacker, 1=Defender.  Letters are Attackers.
Chain Block    Chain Push    Both
- - - - -      - - - 2 -      - - - 2 - -
- A 1 B -      - A 1 B -      - A 1 B - -
- - - - -      - - - C -      - - - C - 3

Chain-Scatter: To push a player onto the ball.
Ball-Push: Synonymous with chain-scatter.
Crowd-Push: To push a player out-of-bounds.
Crowd-Surf: Synonymous with crowd-push; also just called "surfing".

The Ball
Carrier: The player holding the ball. A receiver is not a carrier until the catch is successful.
Sack: To cause an opposing carrier to drop the ball by means of blocking or marking.
Jam: To mark a would-be receiver or interceptor.
Drop: To fail a catch attempt.
Pass-Defense: As noun, a failed pass (at any stage, for any reason) that would have been successful were there no coverage, including all interceptions, and all fumbles, drops and incomplete inaccurates caused by TZ penalties. It does not include passes that failed because they were longer than they needed to be in order to avoid interceptions or to throw to open receivers.
Bobble: To fail a pick-up attempt.
Pressing: Marking the ball.
Pressuring: Marking or covering an opposing carrier.
Pressure: Pressing and Pressuring, collectively. Pressure can be called the same way as other types of coverage; there is "bookend pressure" and the ball can be "locked".
Hawk: To attempt to pick up the ball after a sack.
Hook: To attempt to pick up the ball in an enemy tackle zone.
Triple-Hook: To attempt to pick up the ball in three enemy TZs.

Team Management

[mattgslater]

Next, to comb the "canon" articles (like Ian's article on blocking) looking for specific terms. That might be awhile before I get started on that.

Edit: Looked through Ian's article, didn't get much of anything in terms of terminology (good article, though). Would love a bit of input. We can totally have multiple overlapping terms. It's better to have too much jargon than not enough; the stuff that's less applicable will fall out of practice.

[DoubleSkulls]

I've never tried to use any sort of consistent terminology myself so my articles are unlikely to shed any light - and anything you did extract I might not even recognise as a term.

To be quite frank I'm not going to learn those expressions and if someone starting asking me what an oblique screen was I'd have to look it up.

[PubBowler]

.
To be quite frank I'm not going to learn those expressions

+1

[Magic Dave]

I like the idea for bringing some form of consistency to BB terms, but as your asking the community then it probably never really work. If your terms were used in a context where people had to learn them, then I think it could really take off.

Try getting people that talk about BB on podcast's to use your terms then the rest of us will have to learn then to listen to the podcast's.

I use the term "then I popped the ball" instead of sacking the ball carrier, but both are good.

[SillySod]

I think that this would have very little value because:
- it makes it harder for new players to get into the game
- its alot of effort for current players to learn
- its hard to see the benefits of saying "square mark the lynchpin to create a hedge", tactics articles generally aim at a higher level than that

[Joemanji]

Matt, if you want to take people with you you should have taken this a whole lot slower.

And I agree with SillySod. These threads seems designed mainly to create a "code" to exclude new players. It seems a bit like high level academia, which creates a load of needless jargon (it seems) only to impress other academics and exclude the layman.

Also, this community can't agree on anything. So good luck on getting them using a common vocabulary.

[mattgslater]

The objective isn't to create a firm common "code": the terms can flop around and change from one person to the next. The objective is to put a vocabulary to what we do so we can see how we do it. I don't care if one man's "edge mark" is another's "man-coverage on the diagonal" or if there are two unrelated definitions for "hedge" depending on who you ask. But there's a power in being able to put what you do in context with a vocabulary. It can be a loose, living vocabulary... in which case the "glossary" will be huge (the less formal, the more terms, as informality produces overlap).

It's silly to say "a total newbie wouldn't get this conversation, so let's not have it." You can't develop advanced concepts if you're trying to look at everything from a beginner's perspective. This game is challenging enough to incorporate many levels of strategic depth at a time. Like Chess: I don't know the names for all the funny little maneuvers everyone ends up making, and somebody who does know those names and how to apply them will have a big advantage over me even if he's not the same level of raw tactician, because he'll be able to shoehorn what I'm doing into a vocabulary, so he can then relate it to his other knowledge and come up with a plan to beat me. Pretty much any team sport is this way too.

Sadly, I'm at the point where I'm no longer getting better by playing more, at least not with the available competition. I am, however, striving to continue to improve my coaching skills by improving my awareness of the unspoken conventions of BB. The day I stop improving is the day I hang up my block dice; at that point, this brilliant game might as well be Chutes and Ladders. Now there's a game that doesn't give any benefit for delineating common techniques.

FWIW, I don't think anybody will be taking over TBB with a new secret code of BB speak. If a few new terms creep in, it'll probably be the most useful ones, and the board will be improved by it. If some terms form bridges to new concepts but seldom get expressed directly, then the glossary is doing its job.

[Oxynot]

I dread the next thread will be about the secret BB handshake

I do appreciate the effort you've put into this, but like others, I'm hard pressed to see the advantages of learning this new slang.

[mattgslater]

This is a little taste of what I'm on about.

http://www.talkbloodbowl.com/phpBB2/vie ... hp?t=29040

[SillySod]

Sadly, I'm at the point where I'm no longer getting better by playing more, at least not with the available competition.

Play on FUMBBL.

[mattgslater]

Yeah... I guess. Not the same, though: I find that if I let myself game on my computer, even in my off hours, I get less done, so I have a strict "face-to-face" policy (shame, too: I really enjoy Go, but Go night at the local coffeehouse is Monday and I'm always working Monday nights). I'm hoping really to build enough action that the old coaches decide it's worth hazarding the new rules. Once 10 or 12 coaches are playing off of each other, I'll be happy. But I'll still want to put a term to each of the unspoken conventions of the game.

[Smeborg]

I dread the next thread will be about the secret BB handshake

Requisite step in the secret BB handshake: "First remove hand from anorak...".

All the best.