Forced to catch the ball

[D'Arquebus]

The point remains that this is the ONLY (one of only a few?) moments in Blood Bowl where you may find yourself wishing to outright fail a roll, or wanting to then use a team reroll to try to fail a successfully completed action. Other then angling for pushbacks for a player with Frenzy instead of for example knock downs, I cannot think of any similar situation. The rule has itself evolved from simply requiring a 'free' Hand Off action to give the correct player the ball (under the old (3rd Ed etc) rules) to potentially completely knobbling a coachs's turn.

To have an action that is already usually difficult succeed , ie the knocking down of a defended ball carrier, and to then have to try to second guess the random scattering of a ball or not succeed in your goal is ridiculous.

I could point out that scoring is not the only time it can be an issue. Against a team with several players deep in your half about to score you knock the ball carrier down only to have it scatter to one of your players. With them potentially having already moved and thus not being able to move it safely back up the field! Leaving you in range of the opponent's competent scorers and in danger of being knocked down and scored on. Again you could argue that you could in theory move so that the ball could not scatter at all to one of your players. But then I would ask how would you you go about tieing up the opposition so that if your blitz were to fail it would not be a nice stroll into the end zone for your opponent? Doing safe moves to put tackle zones on opponenets at this point becomes a liability. The same result could happen almost anywhere where your player is surrounded and catches a ball you would rather they didn't. Against any team in certain circumstances, but particularily fast teams like elves and skaven almost nowhere would be safe for such a blunder to occur. At which point the "high percentage" plays which to my mind are the key to winning Blood Bowl become a liability everywhere. How does this benefit the game? Your players should be scared of the opponent's players not of randomly having the ball bounce to them!

And so again, with noone having pointed out how the option to not try to catch the ball could be made into a "beardy" or "cheesy" ploy. And indeed only increases the risk to the moving coach that they will not in fact retrieve the ball at all. I fail to see why this rule should not be removed.

Personally, I love the LRB 4 rules with only this particular exception. Were it to be removed I would find very little to "always...complain about." I have not even had it happen to me that I can particularily recall. But having won one game and seen others decided by this single rule in situations where the clever work of the opponent would otherwise have won them the match, I house ruled it out. I certainly didn't feel particulary happy with my win derived from the ridiculous situation my opponent found himself in.

[kynde]

I completely agree:
The forced catch rule could go away with my blessing.

I would not change the forced pick-up or the current hand-off rule though.

I have once been in the situation that my opponent had a one turner to tie the game with me (a quaterfinal) and take it into overtime.
He had the fastest gutter runner (11 MA and sure feet).
Then I get a blitz, and although I fail to take the fast runner out of the pitcture (bad play by me) I manage to catch the kick-off with Count Luthor.

But this did not stop my opponent who managed to take this ST 5 blodger down, but then the ball bounces on to one of his assisting runners who catches it on a 3, and even with a RR he did not manage to fail the catch, and I win!

I was, of course, happy at the time, but I agree now that it is a ridiculous situation. He may have failed later or I may have won in overtime, but it should not habe been like this because he actually manage to roll 3+ two times in a row...

What are Galak and the rest from BBRC waiting for here?