How powerful would 40K AG4 halflings be?

[garion]

The treemen are already different, one has loner the other doesn't allowing one to have access to General skills on the fling one wouldnt change anything on the base roster. It would just give them better skills to pick. I dont think anyone could argue that giving tree men general skills would make flings too good, because they are still uber slow, cant standup and have take root.

[DoubleSkulls]

I think there are two arguments

1) Don't make them better
2) If you have to make them better, make them more fun at the same time, G access on trees isn't fun. Custard pies are fun

[garion]

I dunno, frenzy trees sounds fun to me

But yeah custard pies sounds more fun

[plasmoid]

Hi guys,
Garion - I see what you're getting at, but currently it's a established thing that a player can have loner on one roster and be lonerless on another (Halfling and Ogre team). So, beyond that, I really don't want to mess with a player type present on multiple rosters.

@Doubleskulls.
I understand the arguments.
Re #1 I know I'm in house rules territory, for me and anyone else who thinks it would be good for the game to have more teams (somewhat) competitive.
Re #2 - I get it. I just know that homemade skills are a turn-off for a lot of people. And without that, you don't really have a pie-thrower. You have a halfling with hypnotic gaze. Some will no doubt get it. Others will just go 'WTF?'

Either way, just to say how this thread has impacted my thinking, I'm leaning towards:
0-16 30K Halflings 5237 dodge, stunty, right stuff
0-6? 50K Halflings 5246 dodge, stunty, right stuff
0-2 Treeman

Cheers
Martin

[Thadrin]

Only related insomuch as we're talking about Halflings, but it did occur to me what would happen if the Halfling team, ratehr than being given an Ag boost, were given a player who was a hardened BB playing Halfling - a Veteran if you will.

0-16 Halfling Lineman 5/2/3/6 Dodge, Stunty, Right Stuff A/GSP 30k
0-4 Halfling Blitzer 6/2/3/7 Dodge, Stunty, Right Stuff G/ASP 50k
0-2 Treeman 2/6/1/10 Stand Firm, Take Root S/GAP 120k (or whatever Trees cost)
RR 60k
Rostered Chef: 250k

Puggy Baconbreath would become "Star Halfling Blitzer"
Th Blitzers would all of a sudden become the team's focus, gaining the ability to Block, Frenzy, Strip Ball, Wrestle, Tackle, Sure hands etc.
They still go squish though, and only a few Halflings would have this sort of ability. They would sacrifice their ability to Sidestep, Sprint, DT etc in return. This could potentially push other halflings into a more Catcher-like role.

No idea if it would be busted or not, but it's a very definite buff that would even allow the occasional creation of a Halfling Thrower, as Linemen would no longer be auto-taking Block, Sure Hands and whatever else. Pass, NoS, Leader...hell, why not Piling on...might all become viable.

[DoubleSkulls]

Re #1 I know I'm in house rules territory, for me and anyone else who thinks it would be good for the game to have more teams (somewhat) competitive.

Just for the avoidance of doubt, I have no issues with trying to make Tier 1 more even, I just don't want to make tier 2 & tier 3 teams better. I like having them at the level they are at, providing variety for those coaches who want to try something less competitive for whatever reason.

[Geoff Watson]

Re #1 I know I'm in house rules territory, for me and anyone else who thinks it would be good for the game to have more teams (somewhat) competitive.

Just for the avoidance of doubt, I have no issues with trying to make Tier 1 more even, I just don't want to make tier 2 & tier 3 teams better. I like having them at the level they are at, providing variety for those coaches who want to try something less competitive for whatever reason.

I don't like that argument for having bad teams. Coaches who want a challenge could take an all-lineman team, or leave off the best positionals, or take unusual skills, etc.

Geoff.

[MattDakka]

Re #1 I know I'm in house rules territory, for me and anyone else who thinks it would be good for the game to have more teams (somewhat) competitive.

Just for the avoidance of doubt, I have no issues with trying to make Tier 1 more even, I just don't want to make tier 2 & tier 3 teams better. I like having them at the level they are at, providing variety for those coaches who want to try something less competitive for whatever reason.

I don't like that argument for having bad teams. Coaches who want a challenge could take an all-lineman team, or leave off the best positionals, or take unusual skills, etc.

Geoff.

+1. Or taking less rerolls, forgoing some inducements, using no reserves, etc. there are many ways for an expert coach to handicap himself.
Joke teams are not so popular because people like to win, therefore in private and perpetual leagues they are not going to be represented (at least in quite competitive ones).
With some tweaks and boosts more coaches would be encouraged to play them.
The roster suggested would not be overpowered. They are still AV 6-7 and Stunty, they are not AV 9 blodgers clawpombers!
As plasmoid said, joke teams are not played enough. I very rarely played against them, on Cyanide and on FUMBBL (and it's a shame because I like to play with, and against them). After a while, when teams start to have Tackle and Mighty Blow, they are not challenging anymore, they are nigh-on impossible to play for the win.
So they lose their appeal, because people generally want to win, not to give free wins.
With Ag 4 they could have a chance of getting some more wins.
They would remain a niche team even after the roster buff: simply less uncompetitive, but still uncompetitive.

[Dave]

I think joke teams are quite popular.
We have several goblin, halfling and ogre teams in our league and whilst they are not the teams played most often, I know I really, really enjoy my two teams (Halfling and Ogres).

Don't forget everybody is entitled his own wat to tackle challenges in this game, one chooses an all lino team (interesting idea BTW) and the other takes Ogres. Each to his own I suppose ...

[DoubleSkulls]

I don't think by most measures I can think of Halflings are under represented.

The table below shows all the NAF tournament games under LRB6 with the columns showing: % of total games including the race, Popularity of the team (1-24), performance of the team (1-24), average record of the team (1 = win, 0.5 = draw, 0 = loss)

Code: Select all

Race           Pop    P  # Rec
Orc            10.4%  1 12 0.477
Undead          8.5%  2  1 0.559
Wood Elves      8.2%  3  2 0.556
Skaven          7.6%  4  6 0.528
Dwarves         7.5%  5  7 0.527
Dark Elves      7.0%  6  8 0.52
Norse           6.5%  7  9 0.515
Lizardmen       5.6%  8  4 0.537
Chaos Dwarves   5.4%  9  5 0.534
Amazons         5.1% 10  3 0.543
Necromantic     4.2% 11 11 0.499
Humans          3.9% 12 19 0.439
Goblins         3.2% 13 24 0.311
Elves           2.3% 14 10 0.505
Halflings       2.3% 15 22 0.342
Chaos Pact      1.9% 16 14 0.469
Chaos           1.8% 17 20 0.438
Ogres           1.6% 18 23 0.315
High Elves      1.5% 19 15 0.463
Slann           1.3% 20 21 0.425
Vampires        1.2% 21 16 0.456
Khemri          1.1% 22 13 0.469
Nurgle's Rotte  1.1% 23 17 0.453
Underworld      0.9% 24 18 0.452

From that I take away that for the top half the table there is a correlation between performance and popularity, with the exception of Orcs and Humans. It is interesting that 'zons, CDs and lizards are unrepresented. After that though it seems very arbitrary. My summation is that people who want to be competitive take a team from the top half of the performance spectrum. However below that popularity is driven by other factors than those shown - i.e. there is only a very weak relationship between popularity of the weaker teams and their performance.

So for me the problem areas I'd want to fix first would be the under performing tier 1 teams - Nurgle, Khemri, High Elves, Chaos, rather than the reasonably popular tier 3 teams (which are the bottom 3 by performance but 13th, 15th and 18th by popularity).

[dode74]

That's mostly tournaments though, right? So very low TV and often regen?

[TalonBay]

One of the charms of blood bowl for me is the variety of team strengths, but not just at the starting tv's.

I've got myself a goblin project and am painting an ogre team over the Xmas break, I'd rather take a weaker team and try to squeeze the most out of it than take a strong team and cut out much of the flavour to make it challenging.

I can see perpetual leagues being an issue for these teams but losing the current level of imbalance to fix higher tv matches would beg the question whether the plan is to rebalance high tv strong teams too?

[DoubleSkulls]

That's mostly tournaments though, right? So very low TV and often regen?

Yes. If you've got equivalent data for Cyanide and/or FUMBBL it would be really interesting to compare.

The ECBBL data seems to show very weak relationship between performance and popularity. The 10 most popular races average a performance around 10th out of 24. Elves the 2nd most successful team are 15th in popularity and Dwarves, the 5th most successful team are 12th in popularity.

[MattDakka]

I don't think by most measures I can think of Halflings are under represented.

The table below shows all the NAF tournament games under LRB6 with the columns showing: % of total games including the race, Popularity of the team (1-24), performance of the team (1-24), average record of the team (1 = win, 0.5 = draw, 0 = loss)

Code: Select all

Race           Pop    P  # Rec
Orc            10.4%  1 12 0.477
Undead          8.5%  2  1 0.559
Wood Elves      8.2%  3  2 0.556
Skaven          7.6%  4  6 0.528
Dwarves         7.5%  5  7 0.527
Dark Elves      7.0%  6  8 0.52
Norse           6.5%  7  9 0.515
Lizardmen       5.6%  8  4 0.537
Chaos Dwarves   5.4%  9  5 0.534
Amazons         5.1% 10  3 0.543
Necromantic     4.2% 11 11 0.499
Humans          3.9% 12 19 0.439
Goblins         3.2% 13 24 0.311
Elves           2.3% 14 10 0.505
Halflings       2.3% 15 22 0.342
Chaos Pact      1.9% 16 14 0.469
Chaos           1.8% 17 20 0.438
Ogres           1.6% 18 23 0.315
High Elves      1.5% 19 15 0.463
Slann           1.3% 20 21 0.425
Vampires        1.2% 21 16 0.456
Khemri          1.1% 22 13 0.469
Nurgle's Rotte  1.1% 23 17 0.453
Underworld      0.9% 24 18 0.452

From that I take away that for the top half the table there is a correlation between performance and popularity, with the exception of Orcs and Humans. It is interesting that 'zons, CDs and lizards are unrepresented. After that though it seems very arbitrary. My summation is that people who want to be competitive take a team from the top half of the performance spectrum. However below that popularity is driven by other factors than those shown - i.e. there is only a very weak relationship between popularity of the weaker teams and their performance.

So for me the problem areas I'd want to fix first would be the under performing tier 1 teams - Nurgle, Khemri, High Elves, Chaos, rather than the reasonably popular tier 3 teams (which are the bottom 3 by performance but 13th, 15th and 18th by popularity).

That's interesting, but tournaments are not BB. BB is about private and perpetual leagues. Tournaments are a BB house rule (I'm not discrediting tournaments at all, just stating they are another dimension).
Tournaments are different. Around TV 1000 halflings are challenging but still playable (except against Dwarfs and Chaos Dwarfs, with their trademark Tackle spam). I guess they can be played with a reasonable chance to win (for a joke team) till TV 1300-1350.
I was talking about the rarity of stunty teams in private and perpetual leagues.
On FUMBBL and Cyanide they are not as popular as the other teams.
I have no graphs to show, but, if you play on FUMBBL or Cyanide for a while you will find that.
About the tier 1 teams you would improve: Nurgle, Khemri, High Elves, Chaos.
Nurgle and Chaos suck at low TV by design, but they gain power when they get high TV (assuming it's not a bloated TV, obviously). In a perpetual league they perform well, Chaos is better than Nurgle, though.
Khemri: in my opinion they really need some love. Maybe removing Decay on the Tomb Guardian and reducing the BlitzRa price to 80k.
High Elves: at TV 1000 their lack of skills is a problem, but they are not a weak team after a bit of development. For sure they are not as good as Wood Elves at TV 1000 (possibly the best Elf roster out of the box).

[plasmoid]

Hi Ian, Geoff and MattDakka,
Ian - you know I understand your viewpoint . I'm just happy that Matt and Geoff decided to chip in, to show that I'm not alone in this. Not that I'll be claiming we're an invisible majority or something, but merely that the thoughts behind NTBB aren't unwarranted/pointless.

Either way I got all the feedback I was hoping for in this thread - thanks all

Interesting stats you posted. As Matt has already stated, tournament games aren't really the core of BB - nor the focus of my NTBB. But I still think it would be nice of there would be a more even distribution of races in such a tournament. That 6 teams account for almost 50% of the teams is a bit sad in my book.

I don't think there are too many surprises in the table. Teams at the bottom are either sucky starting teams, or sucky throughout. As an aside I do think it's worth noting that in a swiss format tournament, there is a heavy gravitational pull towards 50% - so I'd suspect that the top teams are even better, and the bottom teams even worse, than the numbers indicate.

Cheers
Martin