(stupid) Hobgoblin team

Mestari · Post by **Mestari** » Mon Jul 21, 2003 1:34 pm

There's a topic on an hobgoblin team going on, but it approaches the hobgoblins from the point of view of the chaos dwarf hobgoblins.

However, as we know that the teams that hobgoblins can pull together are the worst that there are, here is a preliminary suggestion for a other type of a hobgoblin team

HOBGOBLIN TEAMS
----------------------
Hobgoblin teams constantly face a serious problem: no sane hobgoblin wants to play in them! It usually happens that those who have any idea about the game are lining up to join the nearest chaos dwarf team! Therefore the coaches of hobgoblin teams usually find themselves dealing with utter morons and complete lunatics! Only thing that makes better hobgobs join these teams are the substantially higher salaries and more demanding positions offered to anyone who can tie up his own shoelaces!

DESIGNER NOTES:
The idea was to create a hobgoblin team that has outrageously expensive, but adequate players available. Given the current income rules and their AV7, the team should not be able to have all of them in its roster unless they are doing extremely well. Instead, they must resort to hiring from a variety of incredibly bad, but cheap players and hope they get enough cash to hire better players at some point.

The team is based on the idea that the high cost of the adequate players and the low overall AV keep the team really bad. However, the team isn't restricted from becoming quite good with only 6 bonehead players, but they really need to do well in order to stay there. More likely, injuries and low income force this team to resort to Maniacs and Idiots as alternative linemen and using them is a pretty certain way of losing games...

Thus the team has three lineman types available:
Maniacs - players hired from the local asylum. A true liability for the team - a ST3 player with frenzy and wild animal should be a downfall for any team...
Idiots - players with Very Stupid are the next best option. However, they are hardly your ideal BB players...

These two player types are meant to be available for the team whenever they really have no money and need to fill up gaps.

Linemen - Being able to count up to 'lots' (wun, too, many, lots), these players know their value to the team and take as much salary as human linemen. With bonehead they are a 100% reliable backbone for the team. If playetsting shows that the team doesn't have to resort to idiots and maniacs often enough, the price will go up to 60K.

The team has three positional player types:
Blitzers - Seem an awful lot like ordinary hobgoblins, don't they? However, in hobgoblin teams such players get to be stars, as they don't need hardly any help with their shoelaces... Also, in these teams they get paid a lot better than what the chaos dwarves give them...

Runners - Runners are already quite good players. They've agreed to play for the team in exchange of an enormous salary. Sure Hands and Shadowing makes them both the teams designated ball-carriers and a pair of taggers to mark those likely dodgers on defence.

Defensive - The defensive players are another good player type. These hobgobs have become very adept at tackling down opponents, and have grown uncontent with the meager role they receive in CD teams and are now (in exchange of a suitable fee, of course) leading the hobgoblin teams defence.

HOBGOBLIN TEAMS
---------------------
0-12 20.000 Maniacs 5 3 2 7 Frenzy, Wild Animal G,ST
0-12 30.000 Idiots 6 3 2 7 Very Stupid G
0-12 50.000 Linemen 6 3 3 7 Bonehead G
0-4 90.000 Blitzers 6 3 3 7 - G
0-2 110.000 Runners 7 3 3 7 Sure Hands,Shadowing G,P
0-4 120.000 Defensive 6 3 3 7 Tackle,Diving Tackle G

REROLLS: 90K (training is really hard to organise...)

0-1 90.000 Troll 4 5 1 9 Really Stupid, Regenerate G,S
(0-1 90.000 Kicker 6 3 3 7 Kick,Bonehead, G,K - for those using kicking rules)

Some of the prices may have to be adjusted to keep the team at an appropriate level (below halflings), but please note that they are not to reflect the actual usefulness of the player, but the fact that the team really has to pay alot to get decent players.

Opinions?

Stu · Post by **Stu** » Mon Jul 21, 2003 9:22 pm

Well for a start I think there are too many positions. Also I don't think they should have access to better hobgoblin players than chaos dwarf teams do.

Off the top of my head I'd have,

0-6 70,000 Linemen 6337 bonehead G
0-2 100,000 Freed Slaves 6337 G
0-8 50,000 Makeweights 6327 really stupid G

rerolls:90k
Big Guy: Troll

The idea being that every now and then a hobgoblin of chaos dwarf team standards ends up being freed in an act of uncharacteristic gratitude (or escapes or ends up the last surviving member of his team etc.) and not knowing anything else decides to start a team. They can round up a few almost competent players but have to make do with some real idiots to fill out the team. Like you say, the prices can be inflated to keep the quality of the side down.

Mestari · Post by **Mestari** » Tue Jul 22, 2003 9:13 am

Well, I didn't want to have my hands tied completely by the hobgoblins shown in the chaos dwarf teams. I like having interesting positions, and thought this would be a nice possibility to introduce some. Also, I like the freedom of choice that a large amount of positions give in this case.

The Don · Post by **The Don** » Tue Jul 22, 2003 9:23 am

I think that you just should add a new position to the existing Chaos Dwarf team. Don't know what it should be though, but a hobgoblin of a kind...
I don't play CD because they only have three positions. same goes with chaos and they only got two... I think it's boring...

All teams IMO should have 4 positions.

like Stu said I think your team has too many positions...

Mestari · Post by **Mestari** » Tue Jul 22, 2003 9:44 am

Given the recent success of Chaos Dwarf teams in various tournaments, I have serious doubts whether they would be given any more positions, so I don't bother thinking about that.

Basicly, the team has only four positions: Linemen, Blitzers, Runners and Defensive.
The two additional positions (Idiots and Maniacs) are there only to fill out the team when they can't afford to hire more expensive players.

This is intended to be a humour team. Should it appear too good, then the defensives could be dropped and the team would be:

0-12 20.000 Maniacs 5 3 2 7 Frenzy, Wild Animal G,ST
0-12 30.000 Idiots 6 3 2 7 Very Stupid G
0-12 60.000 Linemen 6 3 3 7 Bonehead G
0-6 100.000 Blitzers 6 3 3 7 - G
0-2 110.000 Runners 7 3 3 7 Sure Hands,Shadowing G,P

ljm · Post by **ljm** » Mon Jul 28, 2003 4:25 pm

That would surely be a bad team (just as it should be). I agree with Stu that there are too many positions in the team and would drop both Runners and Defensives. The hobgoblins playing for the chaos dwarves should be the cream of the crop

How this would affect the basic idea of the team, I don't know.

I also would like to change the names of Idiots and Maniacs to comply better with the fluff (no idea what to).

Do you think there should be a way to get rid of the nega traits?

ljm

ps. I think that a frenzying ST 3 wild animal is hilarious, keep it

Mestari · Post by **Mestari** » Tue Jul 29, 2003 7:56 am

Ok, let's drop the runners and the forwards then. But I really can't think of better names for the maniacs and idiots. The fluff would be that the coach considers the linemen and the blitzers to be players, hence the proper position names. The rest, if the team has to use them, are just "idiots" or "maniacs" that the team was forced to hire to fill in their ranks.

HOBGOBLIN TEAM
-------------------
0-12 20.000 Maniacs 5 3 2 7 Frenzy, Wild Animal G,ST
0-12 30.000 Idiots 6 3 2 7 Really Stupid G
0-12 70.000 Linemen 6 3 3 7 Bonehead G
0-6 110.000 Blitzers 6 3 3 7 - G
0-1 90.000 Troll 4 5 2 9 Regen,Really Stupid - G,ST

REROLLS 90K

morph · Post by **morph** » Thu Jul 31, 2003 11:54 am

The trouble with making a bad team is that you need some point in playing them. No-one will play them if they want to do well in a laegue. Are you going to play them because it'll be fun to have a rubbish team? It's probably not as fun as you think. It'd be much more fun just to have a pure goblin or halfling team, i.e. one that is bad but not with a lot of things to remember.

noodle · Post by **noodle** » Thu Jul 31, 2003 12:01 pm

And you would know (mmm, a slayer team....)

I agree, bad teams have to be memorable and fun to be worth playing

Mestari · Post by **Mestari** » Thu Jul 31, 2003 12:47 pm

morph wrote:The trouble with making a bad team is that you need some point in playing them. No-one will play them if they want to do well in a laegue. Are you going to play them because it'll be fun to have a rubbish team? It's probably not as fun as you think. It'd be much more fun just to have a pure goblin or halfling team, i.e. one that is bad but not with a lot of things to remember.

Some people enjoy the challenge involved. Some just want to play crappy teams. And some might prefer to play a ST3 crappy team.
And seriously, do you consider the roster above to be hard to remember?

noodle · Post by **noodle** » Thu Jul 31, 2003 12:58 pm

I know you're trying to force people to take idiots etc, but the cost for linemen is just wrong - they should be 40K max... Maybe restrict their number - thats the best way of making people take the worst players

morph · Post by **morph** » Thu Jul 31, 2003 1:03 pm

There's a challenge... then there's a pointless challenge. I've played bad teams in my time for fun (and accidentely).

I didn't mean hard to remember, so much as there's quite a lot going on with all the negative traits. It's one thing having a team that's bad and unpredictable but quite another having a team that's so bad and unpredictable it's stupid.

We have an Ogre team in our league. A proper ogre team, not the overpowered goblin/ogre team currently around. One with only ogres, who all have bonehead. It's fun to play against and I assume fun to play with (the coach seems to like it anyway) despite the fact it has lost every game. The reason is that it's unpredictable and doesn't require too much thinking about. It's a little crazy and a lot of fun.

You hobgoblin team on the other hand is difficult to play because you have to remember four types of player who have three different negatuive abilities between them. The models will be hard to distinguish (how will a maniac look different from an idiot?) and the team will just slow down play, rather than make a fast fun game.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a proper hobgolbin team that is described in the BB fluff, I just think you're going about it the wrong way.

miguel77 · Post by **miguel77** » Sun Oct 12, 2003 2:46 pm

We run a hobgoblin team in our league bases purely on the team "The Hobgoblin Team" from the 2nd edition fluff.

0-16 Hobgoblins 6 3 3 7 - Really Stupid 30k

They are purely meant as a joke team based on the fluff and diferent coaches takes turns to play them , as they are near mpossible to play. However the games are entertaining and the look on the opposing coaches face when they do occassionly score is priceless.

MickeX · Post by **MickeX** » Sun Oct 12, 2003 3:32 pm

I really liked the defender idea! How about calling them "catchers" - they just never understood what this game was about...

But wouldn't it be more fun to make the team about equal (in strength) to halflings and gobbos? To make those "he actually lost to a hobgoblin teams"-moments occur at least once in a league.

I'd go for a roster something like this:

HOBGOBLIN TEAM
-------------------
0-12 x.000 Lunatics 5 3 2 7 Dauntless, Frenzy, Wild Animal G,ST
0-12 x.000 Linemen 6 3 3 7 Bonehead G
0-6 x.000 Catchers 5 3 3 7 Tackle, Diving Tackle G
0-2 x.000 Team Captains 6 3 3 7 Block, Leader G, AG

Big Guy
0-2 90.000 Troll 4 5 2 9 Regen,Really Stupid - G,ST

Special Rule: Yes, you may have two team captains on the team. But they will be arguing with each other. You can never use a Leader Reroll when both Team Captains are on the pitch.

REROLLS 90K