Talk Fantasy Football

The match report in BBMag #10 playtests a new negative skill for Vampires; Blood Lust (...or, Stop For a Bite). Here it is:

Blood Lust (...or, Stop For a Bite)
After the player has declared his action roll a D6. On a 2+ the player may act normally. On a 1, however, the player is overcome with the desire for blood. The player losses (sic) his nominated action for that turn and gets a free Blitz action instead (this doesn’t count as the team’s blitz for the turn). The player must block the closest enemy player (you may choose which if several are equally close). After throwing the block the player may not move any further other than to follow up, as he wants to try and drink his victim’s blood! If the player cannot or will not throw a block then he instead drops the ball (if he has it) and runs off into the reserves box to drink the blood of an innocent maiden – remove the player from the pitch and the team suffers a turnover.

What do people think of this as a replacement for COFAB?

A few questions immediately spring to mind though:

• - Does a vampire have to follow up? Logic would dictate that you would need to be in an adjacent square to a player if you want to drink his blood.
  - On a failed Blood Lust roll, does the team loose the action, or just the player? The description says just the player. So a vamp could declare a blitz, roll a one, get a free blitz and then another vamp on the team could still use the team's allocated 'blitz' action.
  - Does a stunned vampire still have to roll in order to turn over? Turning over does count as an action for the purposes of negative traits, according to the LRB.

Also, and this effect all versions of OFAB etc; what happens if a coach forgets to roll for the nega-trait? Can the opposing coach call an illegal procedure?

Aehm, anyone else who thinks that "negative" skill is a bit positive at the first glance? Reminds me of Frenzy which has a good and a bad part as well.

As long as there are enough opponents in range (and vamps have quite a range with MA6) and most of them have at most equal strength to a vamp it gives the vamps free blitzes! Just get 4 vamps next to that dwarven cage and then pray for lots of 1s! Then you still have a controlled blitz to extract the ball!!!

This the good part of the old WA (considered not negative enough by many) without the frenzy, but also without the the must move first penalty!!!

It's worded unlogicly, as it seems to be enough to throw the block, but not to succeed in throwiung the opponent over to avoid having to go to the dugout. (that would make more sense) ...

So, even if i manage to keep my Troll close to a vampire and he fails his roll and has to go 2 dice against, the chance of turning over is quite small, esp. as vamps have block to protect them ...

i smell OVERPOWERED again ... seems Jervis has not given up his quest for having vampires rule the BB world ...

This flat out sucks.

Galak

I'm still wondering what the "negative" side of this skill is. I'd be quite happy to have 4 or 5 blitzing vampires every turn!

Although, I am in agreement that the present OFAB is very harsh, perhaps too harsh. It doesn't take to put over half of your team in the dugout. And if some of those are deaths.... It isn't a situation that a team can survive on a regular basis. Sure, once all your vamps have Pro you are in a much better position. But doesn't that strike you as kind of missing the point? I'd much rather find a version that is balanced to start with than finding patches to cover existing patches...

This new SFAB though, looks silly. We haven't playtested though....

Wow...with this rule I would take all my Pro using vampires and reroll my bloodthirsts until I got a 1. Give them all Piling On or Mighty Blow and you would have a nice little moving strike force that could crush other teams that depend on you only getting one blitz against them a turn.

GalakStarscraper wrote:This flat out sucks.

Galak

Don't hide behind words, Galak, tell us how you really feel.

Personally, I like the concept but hate the implementation. It is way over-powered- I would actually want to roll as many ones a possible in 90% of the circumstances. Against an Elf team this could be endless waves of blitzes.

This might be a little more balanced, making the vampires themselves unreliable but more combative.

Blood Lust (...or, Stop For a Bite)
After the player has declared his action roll a D6. On a 2+ the player may act normally. On a 1, however, the player is overcome with the desire for blood. The player losses (sic) his nominated action for that turn and must block the closest enemy player even if this consumes the Blitz action. The coach may choose which if several are equally close.

After throwing the block the player may not move any further other than to follow up, as he wants to try and drink his victim’s blood! If the player has the ball they will drop it and the team suffers a turnover.

GalakStarscraper wrote:This flat out sucks.

Galak

Yep. Pro to "fail" blood lust anyone?

Presumably this a consequence of Chet (JJ? AH?) perceiving COFAB as too negative? Typical overeaction.

Nazgit wrote: This new SFAB though, looks silly. We haven't playtested though....

Actually yes we have. It the old WA skill and that was decided to be broken way back when.

Galak

I really, really, really want to see a working (and hopefully official) Vampire team. With this in mind here are a couple of alternative negative traits.

All the negative traits for vampires so far have tended to suggest that they need a regular intake of blood to maintain their high levels of performance on the field. It seems sensible to assume that they will ‘have a drink’ between drives, and so will be fresh to start the next one. But that the longer a drive goes on, the more they will suffer.

With this in mind:

Alternative OFAB #1
Roll a D6 before taking an action with the player. On a 2+ the player may act normally. On a roll of 1, however, the player is overcome with the desire for blood, and will be considerably weakened until he is sated – either on or off the pitch! The player will not be able to Regenerate any injuries he suffers until either the drive ends, or he injures an opposing player (by blocking or fouling).

Alternative OFAB #2
Roll a D6 before taking an action with the player. On a 2+ the player may act normally. On a roll of 1, however, the player is overcome with the desire for blood, and will be particularly vulnerable until he is sated – either on or off the pitch! If the player is injured, he will treat any results of ‘Stunned’ on the as ‘Knocked Out’ instead. This effect last until either the drive ends, or the player injures an opposing player (by blocking or fouling).

Alternative OFAB #3
Roll a D6 before taking an action with the player. On a 2+ the player may act normally. On a roll of 1, however, the player is overcome with the desire for blood, and will be considerably weakened until he is sated – either on or off the pitch! The player must deduct 1 from each of his characteristics (MV, ST, AG and AV) until either the drive ends, or he injures an opposing player (by blocking or fouling).

With all of these nega-traits, the detriment to the team as a whole will increase the longer the drive goes on – i.e. the longer the vampires go without blood. If the vampires have to play out a long drive, then the team as a whole will begin to weaken.

Obviously, I haven’t playtested any of these skills. What do you reckon, is this heading in the right direction?

I think COFAB is the best option still. I don't see a problem with that at all.

Gift blitzes in any form is a bad idea.
Let's hope that the rest of the BBRC decide to ignore Andy's ideas and give us a sensible solution to OFAB.
Martin

mrcoffee182 wrote:I think COFAB is the best option still. I don't see a problem with that at all.

Agreed. Both FUMBBL and the MBBL have a small pile now of very real playtest data to show that the COFAB Vampire teams are very balanced and that no other new OFAB idea is required because this one already works very well.

Galak

Nazgit wrote:Obviously, I haven’t playtested any of these skills. What do you reckon, is this heading in the right direction?

And Nazgit ... I'm not downgrading your suggestions ... its just that I've spent almost a year testing COFAB now and found it to be very balanced. I just don't see the need to test something new when a working solution has already been discovered.

Galak

With the vamp teams in question, is it a case of losing their first few games (with loads of cas) just so they can get to a stage where all their vamp players have Pro? I have tested the vamps in 6 or 7 games, and in 2 or 3 of those they have ended up taking 5 or 6 cas just from OFAB. Which clearly isn't workable.

By the way, what does the C in COFAB stand for?