Are Chaos Dwarves too good? (Tournaments Only)

TiMuN · Post by **TiMuN** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 5:56 pm

Yep, and that large number of inexperienced coaches is what makes Orc go down on stats, i think.

So there is this guy in Canada who have also won with CDs .. twice, but that's 4 coaches winning tourneys, ... not that many, can be a luck matter, or call it better strategy skills.

Mestari, Ian, thanx for all the input on analising stats at the NAF site. Still, the results of BarnaBowl have to be counted in, and there was only one CD team there. Not that they are that popular over here i guess .. and not that they were that popular 8 years ago, when i first bought them. (in fact, the life of a CD coach has been hectic and tough for much too long, to be now considered 'power gamers')

ljm · Post by **ljm** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 6:28 pm

TiMuN wrote: So there is this guy in Canada who have also won with CDs .. twice, but that's 4 coaches winning tourneys, ... not that many, can be a luck matter, or call it better strategy skills.

Mestari won a tournament in Finland with CDs.

ljm

Melifaxis · Post by **Melifaxis** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 6:58 pm

I love CD's but are you asking if they are too powerful at TR100 or too powerful overall? Most tournaments are TR100, right?

p.s. Leave the Big Hats alone!!

Post by **DoubleSkulls** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 9:12 pm

Melifaxis wrote:I love CD's but are you asking if they are too powerful at TR100 or too powerful overall? Most tournaments are TR100, right?

p.s. Leave the Big Hats alone!!

I'm thinking mainly of TR100 tournaments. I don't think they are broken in league play at all.

Deathwing · Post by **Deathwing** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 9:56 pm

ljm wrote:
Deathwing wrote:The Orc stat there is *huge*. There's the old adage that Orcs are forgiving, solid, relatively easy to play and come with the box set to consider. Let's face it, they are far and away the most played team overall.
Maybe their popularity is the reason. A larger percentage of inexperienced coaches choose to field orcs in a tournament when compared to chaos dwarves.

ljm

Which was indeed my point.

(Apologies for not being clearer).
There's no way that even the best CD coaches will come out winners 88% of the time against well coached Orcs.

Matsu · Post by **Matsu** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 10:45 pm

I would guess that there are a number of factors involved with a good winning percentage being seen at the tournament level.

1. I think the biggest one is probably what someone of you brought up - CDs are a team that are played by experienced coaches. There are experienced coaches playing other races as well, of course, but I'm sure that there are fewer inexperienced coaches playing CDs than many other factions (like the very popular orcs). Additionally, I think CDs are really hard to play by inexperienced coaches - If you can't control the flow of the game and movement of the game on the field you would lose disastrously with the CDs. We're talking about a team that relies on (essentially) human linemen to do their ball handling, fer crissakes!

2. Gameplay Flexibility - the Bull Centaurs can largely mitigate the largest disadvantage that dwarves have in general - lack of speed for defense. Additionally, they can take the mino to play safety for even more defensive strength. This flexibility means they are unlikely to have serious matchup problems against any team - the bane of a good coach. There's nothing worse in a tournament than losing to an inferior coach because you don't match up well.

3. Team Flexibility - while every decent CD coach will take their 2 BCs for a tourney, the cheap gobbos and rerolls means there are several options for building the starting team so you can "metagame" against the type of teams you expect to face. Additionally, the cheap players give you a little bit of cushion against the bad luck that you'll certainly face at some point during the tourney.

4. Matchups - While the CDs are able to matchup fairly well against almost any team, there are some teams that don't matchup well against them at all - free wins in a tournament are a great thing. Whether it's teams that can't handle the pounding of the dwarves or who can't catch up to a bull centaur who's gotten his mitts on the ball, creating and exploiting mismatches wins games and the CDs are pretty good at it.

All-in-all, I'm not concerned. They're not easy to play and some of the factors that make them successful are true for a couple other teams as well (undead in particular, although I think they're easier to play as a rookie coach). I expect that the numbers will smooth out over time, but I wouldn't be surprised to see top-flight players continue to be successful with them.

wesleytj · Post by **wesleytj** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 11:03 pm

chaos dwarf teams have always been relatively good at the start, making them greta tourney teams. however in the league setting i don't think they're overpowered in the least. if anything they become weaker as they grow, as hobgoblins become more and more of a liability. I do not beleive they should be changed.

Xtreme · Post by **Xtreme** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 12:13 am

noodle wrote: ... But don't have AG4, surehands, an abundance of speed WITH agility OR toughness, a natural thrower, access to agility skills or a hugely overpowered bug guy/star player..

[/quote]

What about Hthark?

can we just see results of tournaments that had no stars?

Boss · Post by **Boss** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 9:19 am

I've been playing Chaos Dwarves in our local league since we restarted and things have been going quite well here early on. Though I think it's getting more and more complicated ... coping with highly developed elves is not easily done ... so I think in the longer run my team will not progress as quickly as some of the more agile teams who can easier get skills for whoever they need.

I would like to see other stats on these socalled succesful Chaos Dwarf coaches ... like stats on how well they do when playing other races ...

Deathwing · Post by **Deathwing** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 9:21 am

This is about tournament teams (as it says in the title). Highly developed Elf teams aren't an issue here.

Tim · Post by **Tim** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 11:27 am

Hmm, nice stats Ian did there.

Did you notice there was a loss to Halflings in there? Poor guy, Hashut will make him serve at the deepest furnace in hell!

My personal tournament stats (W-T-L) with CDs:

03 BloodBowl (TR100, Stars, Got Hthrak, 6 CDs, 5 HGs, 3RRs):
3(Gobbo, Orc, Chaos) - 1(Human) - 2(CD, WE)

*Made a mistake in the lineup imo. A BC would have been useful. Team was definitly not overpowered.

03 Rendezvous (TR110, 2 BCs, 1 Troll, 6 CDs, 4 HGs, 3RRs):
4(Orc, Orc, WE, Human) - 1(WE) - 1(CD)

*Success based on reducing opponents: piling on troll and a dirty player, lotsa fouling (2 full half get-the-refs). Very strong lineup.

03 T5:2 (TR100, 2 BCs, 6 CDs, 4 HGs, 3 RRs)
5(Orc, Norse, Human, Gobbo, WE) - 0 - 0

*Fearsome TR100 team, very strong lineup. Random skills was good for the team as well, as they only have 3 positions so all types of players are likely to advance.

I think the good results of CDs in a tournament environment is a combo of certain effects:

- A few good coaches play them through many tournaments, definitly not team attractive to rookies or players who want a team with "cool" looking minis. There are only 18 CD coaches in NAF, but 27 WE, 33 Humans and 49 Orcs.

- It's a team that (if coached correctly) has no weaknesses. It can keep up with the quick teams and bash with the stronger ones. However, they are not the best at both, so "specialist" teams can be tough to play.

- The team is the strongest when they start (tournament level) and go relatively downhill when the others start to gain experience and skills.

- Skill allocation without starplayer points also helps, because you can give skills to the CDs -which develop slowly in a league environment- easily.

- It's a team that's very sensitive to dice rolls. Good Chaos Dwarf coaches know how to live with failure, a fact that helps in the low TR tournament environment as well, because with few skills and low RRs failure is present all the time. I can imagine that it could be tough for a coach used to his skill loaded TR250 Orc, Human or even Elf (2+RR on everything) team to take this into account.

This all adds to the good tournament performance of CD teams we can see right now ... what to do and when the point is reached to react, i'll leave that to others, as i'm obviously baised.

Personally, i'm not sure if it's me or the teamlist that's the reason for good perfomance (or which is more influencial). I'll know more in about a year, when i tryed different teams in other tournaments (but 2003 remains the year of Hashut to me

).

Sputnik · Post by **Sputnik** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 11:42 am

Personally, i'm not sure if it's me or the teamlist that's the reason for good perfomance (or which is more influencial)

Just a thought (and I am also biased here

)What about neither of them?

What about the dice? I know many players using bashy teams that are used to get numerical advantage during the first turns. In a tournament, where you don't have any additional skills, it might come down to who can roll more 10s in a row....

...and if they don't break the armor or the opponent manages to dodge away, they find it very difficult to score at all.

Nevertheless back to the topic with another question: if CD do well in tourneys, why didn't we see a fair amount of various good performances with dwarfs then? Is it really the bull centaurs making the difference? The number of AG3 players is obviously not a factor, nor is the big guy.

Sputnik

Post by **DoubleSkulls** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 11:47 am

Sputnik wrote:why didn't we see a fair amount of various good performances with dwarfs then? Is it really the bull centaurs making the difference?

Actually I think its a combination of the BC strength and pace and cheap hob gobs. Dwarves have to pay 70k for every player. Swap two Longbeards for 3 hob gobs and you've got an extra 20k so spend plus and extra player.

noodle · Post by **noodle** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 12:27 pm

- Skill allocation without starplayer points also helps, because you can give skills to the CDs -which develop slowly in a league environment- easily.

That's a VERY good point.

TiMuN · Post by **TiMuN** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 1:58 pm

In the same way as Tim, i'll post my only tourney stats with my CD team.

BarnaBowl'03 (TR100, no stars) (2BC, 5CD, 5Hob, 3RR, 4FF)
5wins (2 skaven, 1 orc, 1 chaos, 1 woodelves) - 1lost (dark elves)
Order was DarkElves, Chaos, Skavens, Orc, Skavens and Elves.

Those Darkies cought me with a Blitz on turn 0, i recieved, and managed to get a Witch Elf just where the ball ended at kickoff. I could make her release the ball, but after that, she had 7 dice rolls to get a TD (jump up, dodge 3+, get in, pick ball 5+, dodge 4+, dodge 3+, dodge 2+, run, and gfi 2+, gfi 2+). No one can stand against such a lucky player!