f13.net

Sometime, dreams come true :

Blood Bowl trailer (http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=V2elZwhAzpQ&eurl=http://trollitc.com/2009/01/new-extended-blood-bowl-trailer-for-your-orc-smashing-pleasure/)

Watch it in HD.

Huh, real-time Blood Bowl.

Hell yes.

There's 2 options:  Real time or turn base.  It's a strange choice to go with both and it rarely ends well but with a bit of luck it's the real time option that's going to be botched.

They really seem to have pulled out all the stops with customization, too.  I just hope they don't limit the teams to something like 4 races only.  The great thing about Blood Bowl was all the different team configurations.

Google has totally wigged out.

Searching on "Blood Bowl" marks every site returned with the "This site may harm your computer." warning. This is true even on my Mac so it's unlikely to be some sort of malware infection.

Edit: okay *every* search is returning that...

Teams look to be at least:

Skaven
Chaos
Goblins
Orcs
Dwarfs
Lizardmen
Human
Elf (not sure which one)

Grats on your new friend!

I've been getting that message all morning looking up Python info. Google has indeed shat the bed.

Whew.  I'm doing a thorough virus scan right now because of that.  Glad to know it's not just on my end.

Wheeee!!!!

We need a halfling team!  AKA:  the Glass Joe of Blood Bowl teams.

Looks like things are back to normal again.

Your friend is just... sleeping.

That's why I like my Mac. Even though I mostly use it as a Unix development machine it's nice to have something I know is free from the vast amounts of Windows malware out there.

When I first heard about this I could have sworn they said they were just going with turn based. Real time is needed so that they at least sell a decent number of copies.

I am so all over this. Da Blak Flag will rise again!

What platform are people here getting this on?

I'll get it ton PC since I don't have a 360 or ps3.

Their 'alternate' gameplay mode is really weird.  You can play the turn based game on PC or 360 but the alternate gameplay mode (might has well call it dumb casual friendly mode) is different.  The PC version plays like an RTS and the 360 version plays like madden (you control one guy at a time in real time).

Yeah, I'm wondering how much it'll cost on PC. Especially since it's going to be on XBLA, so I can't see that version costing too much.. What are the top-priced games on XBLA? The overpriced Penny-Arcade games? Maybe SFIIHDRemix?

Watching that trailer makes me wish someone would make a next gen mutant league game. Football or Hockey.

I played the hell out of MUDS and Brutal Sports Football. A good brutal fantasy sports title is a joy. (Never got into Speedball / Speedball 2 though.)

quoted for motherfucking truth

Holy, holy, holy fuck.

Awesome stuff.

Quoted the motherfucking truth quote. My old Genesis died not too long ago, so I can't play any Mutant League Football any more.

There ya go (http://gens.consolemul.com/).

A friend mentioned this, appearently it was due to a goof at google, where the google engine itself was accidently set to flag the ENTIRE internet as malicious links.  Googling for Google itself would give you the same "malicious site" error.

Yes it was:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/this-site-may-harm-your-computer-on.html

Damn DRM! I bet all the people who use the pirated internet didn't have this problem!

Avast! Don your eyepatch and ready to sail the 7 ISPs!

http://www.bloodbowl-game.com/beta_registration/index.php

http://www.bloodbowl-game.com/index.php?rub=news-info&id=34

Thanks! Signed up now!

Signing up when I get home.

I bet UK people can get to fuck though.

Don't remember that, but then it's been a while since I played blood bowl.

There were briefly rules for Slaanesh teams.  :why_so_serious:

UK people don't fuck - they sit side by side, drinking tea while complaining about everything. 9 months later a baby appears, which gives them more to complain about.  :grin:

Hm. I registered and put in my email, should I have gotten any kind of response ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifgHHhw_6g8

Not until beta actually starts I don't think.

A new volley of invites has been apparently sent out today.

Yes, yes they have.  :awesome_for_real:

Someone tell me how it is. I have the invite, but I'm too busy installing 11GB of an MMOG I probably won't last two weeks in.

I'll try to have a report later tonight.

I think there's an NDA. Be sekrit.

Duh, yep. There's an NDA. Cancel the report.  :oh_i_see:

 :awesome_for_real:

Interview with the CEO of Cyanide Studio .

http://www.gameshark.com/features/569/Blood-Bowl-Q&A-with-Cyanide-CEO-Patrick-Pligersdorffer.htm

This June ship date he mentioned, that still sound right, anyone know?

Part II

http://www.gameshark.com/features/574/Blood-Bowl-Q&A-Part-II-Community-Questions.htm

It better be right, cause I can't fucking wait!!!

Ditto.

We are so going to have the internal f13 league, right? Right?!!

 :drill:

I got in, will try to remember to install this week but I promise nothing.  Bad sign that they seem to have let everyone in, must not have gotten that many requests.

It's a specialist game.

I fucking forgot to sign up so now I can't get in. I'm really heartbroken by this fact.

Prepare your dice and your team for June, MA. I think this is going to be epic!

What race are you all thinking on getting, by the way? I think I'll go Chaos for my main team.

I was wondering, who else played the real thing (tabletop) back in the days, and what was your favourite team?

I'm thinking I'll go Chaos, because as anyone who's played GW games will know, HUMANS SUCK.

Skaven.

Got six teams upstairs. To whet your appetite, go check out the Java FUMBBL program. Tens of thousands playing BB everyday. Join in.

I bet I'm one of the few to play Cyanide's games which got them in trouble back in the early aughts. They were fucking good so I'm pretty sure this will be fucking good, too.

Modern Angel's comment made me go poking. Looks promising for Blood Bowl. GW being general dicks and sueing them wasn't news, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_League

Edit:
I'm sure this was old news for most of you or something. Easy now.  :why_so_serious:

The games weren't terribly polished but they were good. The lack of a big budget showed. I mean, they had money for Starforce but...

When all's said and done, though, I'm excited almost solely because it's Cyanide and I saw what they did. I don't know if I'd be excited if they'd shunted it off to Relic or whoever.

Hm.. that interview linked said they were only going to sell it in stores. I'd always seen info indicating it was going to be an XBLA game.

I get the feeling that the Steam/XBLA mid-low priced route would be much more successful for BB, much as I love it. I'd have bought it both for PC to play with you guys (assuming a PC league) and also on XBLA for hot-seat play with friends.

wish there wasn't an NDA cause there is all kinds of stuff to talk about here.

You have no idea how much I want to hear about it.

So, i just found out that there is no Halfling team. I would just like to say












































FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK.


SNUFFY BANDYLEGS WILL HAVE HIS REVENGE!

Ahm, dwarfs?

You have no idea how much I want to talk about it.

Dwarfs are announced for launch, aren't they? The races didn't make the cut are Dark Elves, Vampires, Undead, Norses, Amazons, Halflings, what else? Anyway, missing races are why I am already frothing about an expansion.

A small Dark Elf team with a fuckton of Cheerleaders was always the way to go in BloodBowl. Or Skaven.

Yes, that's kind of my point. Who would want to play halflings when dwarfs are available?

RACIST

My favourite Bloodblowl team was a Halfling team but then I've always had a soft spot for Halflings - at one time I had an Empire army entirely composed of Halflings. I even had a Halfling Steam Tank painted up like a canal boat with planting troughs on the top.

Sorry, but I refuse to play this without a 1920x1200 option. Gonna go see if I can "hack" around with some of the cfg files.

Ouch, dealbreaker. Hopefully it is just a beta limitation of some kind.

Uninstalling. Highest resolution is 1680x1050, it won't save my refresh rate and manually configuring config.xml does NOTHING.

What sloppy programming. Even for a beta. Don't people realize now that a beta is just a marketing scheme? Sigh.

ended up playing windowed mode anyhow as it is less buggy.

Then for chrissake send me your key, schild, because I will play the fuck out of it until doomsday on my 1680x1050 monitor.

Can't. Can only be installed once.

That is fucking heartbreaking.

It's Blood Bowl, dammit. It's a turn based game and it is eyecandy enough to me in 1280x960. It's all about gameplay anyway.

Does it support 1600x1200?

Does it make sense to write you a PM regarding new PMs?

yip.  Does, anyone have a league started?

Uhm. Yes, but :nda: ?

How bout, whats our league going to be once this thing goes retail?  Someone in beta should really test that league name out too so we know it works!

I think it will be easy to guess, and find.  :awesome_for_real:

of course!

I head the beta is ending this sunday  :ye_gods:

Bye bye f13 test league  :uhrr:   :heartbreak:

You all can tell me after release if they support 1920x1200. Even then I probably still won't buy it. They screwed the pooch on this one.

The pooch is NDA breaking!

No, seriously. What does that mean?

Making a game targeting old school table top players in a world that the youth of today doesn't know is likely to end up with you having a reasonable number of tech savvy folks and computer types, a result of which is a lot of people having 24" monitors. The standard resolution on a 24" monitor is 1920x1200. Blood Bowl doesn't seem to support it.

"Screwed the pooch" is a colloquialism. It means 'they done fucked up.'

Send them an email to that contact address thingy, at least let them know.

That is weird.  1920x1200 is pretty standard nowadays.  I run at 1920x1080 and it's rare that I have a problem with games unless they're very old.

Kind of gave a pass on this game when I saw there was no PS3 version (playing sports games on a PC seems yuck).

This is not a sport game Hayduke, although it's hard to tell what the RTS version will be like.
This is a board game. Or, if you prefer, it's Disgaea Football. It's a turn based, Tactical RPG, not a sport game.

Anyway, gotcha on the 1920 topic. I still stand by my gameplay claim (I played Diablo 2 800x600 for too long to care about resolution when a game is good), but I can see your point. Since so many complained about it, I wonder if they can put better options in before launch. Other than that, and some obvious bugs, the game is anything but screwed. It's a dream came true actually.

Next, Car Wars please.

I heard that this has Starforce. Confirm, y/n?

:ye_gods:

From the interview Arthur Parker linked (http://www.gameshark.com/features/574/p_20/Blood-Bowl-Q&A-Part-II-Community-Questions.htm), the guy answering is the CEO of Cyanide software:

Starforce would be about the only thing that would prevent me from buying this game.

What's the point of Starforce anyway? It's basically an MMO, so you need the cd-key more than anything else. Or will people really get this for the single player?  :awesome_for_real:

This would be a game that would probably produce more revenue if they gave it away and charged a $25 yearly fee to unlock internet/network play.  I can think of a shit ton of people that would like this game and won't be willing to shell out cash up front because they don't think it is their type of thing.

The funny thing is that to a degree Blood Bowl, and the whole GW catalogue of miniature games, is BORN for RMT. Their tabletops requires you to spend real money on improvements for your team.
And still, this won't be the case with the videogame. Colour me happy.

But seriously Salamok: 60 - 120 minutes a game? Free or not, this will always be a specialist game. The niche of a niche.

The game is decent. Not sure I'd want to pay full price for it though.

I think it'll be most fun when you have proper leagues with friends up and running, because fighting some anonymous internetguy for 2hrs is just not a good time investment for me with this game.

As for the visuals, they're okay. Animations could have been much more visceral and fun, and the commentary could be much better. Overall I'd say the game is just "okay". Well worth it if you're a blood bowl fan I guess.

If you are under NDA, don't talk about the game.

Someone needs to take a speeded up blood bowl concept (like 15-30 min games), ditch the leveling/gear/fantasy aspect and link player stats to fantasy football, sell it to espn and have it be a mini-game within your FF league.  Maybe call it "FF Coach's Revenge" your team is based on your last FF resolved match up (basically a new line up + stats on every Tuesday).  Use your real player performance to add stat bonuses to the equivalent toon players and give all the FF guys a chance to actually coach a game each week as opposed to just setting a lineup.

No.  I'll take the Blood Bowl adaption.

Yeah, that sounds pretty terrible.

That sounds just not Blood Bowl. So shooo, shooo!

The GW MMO would be the first MMO where every character starts off either grey or white and every colour costs a $1 to use.


This is the important bit. I played BB matches that lasted 4 hours. I'm not really looking to recreate that experience online.

That's not the case with this videogame. Half that time, take away some more, and you'll be closer to the real thing. And there are ways to force speedups in leagues without maiming the 100% original formula.

I'm sure that if this doesn't suck I'll be able to get together at least 4 people from RL for a league, hopefully more.  Then I can contact the two game stores I have history with from when i was younger and have them put up a 3x5 asking for players/league to join.  Plus f13 before everyone /quits?  Should be pretty damn fun.  Games need to be 2hrs or less though, or I guess you could play one half per night.

Games are about 1- 1 1/2 hours long.

Hoping for a f13 league.

So what's the deal with the release of this? It's remarkably opaque... or my headache is preventing me from seeing it easily. The best I could see is that a digital download release is sometime in June with the box coming out later?

Also: absolutely no Starforce. That is confirmed.

Sounds about right. The publisher sucks at getting information out. Astorax rants on a regular basis about their evils. Apparently no Steam release either, which makes me  :heartbreak:

No Steam release? FUCK.

I just poked around a bit, and they have released games on Steam before. Methinks they will do what Samwise suggested when we were chatting about it last week; milk all the money they can out of their own download site, and then make it broadly available.

I just want the 360 for pretty solo play, and the DS for Dwarf Shenanigans on the go.  The Stunty Doctors will live again!
And if Lizardmen are finally interesting, Dinobots United.

This is the most hyped I've been about a game in quite some time.

Same.

I saw a  6/18 release for the digital. Is that confirmed?

Hype hype hype wantz wantz wantz.   :drillf:

Release date, it says a lot that the only Amazon featuring it is the French one (http://www.amazon.fr/Focus-Blood-bowl/dp/B001FOPLKE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1243889253&sr=8-1) (developer is French). You can't find it on Amazon.co.uk or Play.com either.

So, maybe june 18th will be France stores and download only for everyone else, but right now I'd say it is confirmed.

From what I can glean from their website the physical release will be in france on the 18th and that day world wide digital release will occur as well.  If you want the 360 version or physical PC version that should be out in the US in early september.

Preorder up (Digital download only) (http://bloodbowl.nexway.com/index2.html?REF=671320&Cur=978).

Get it there and play crush right away on the 26th of this month.

Remember the f13 league. I am tempted of putting up prizes, you know? As in stuff you win and I send straight to your place... mmmmm...

The UK download price is £40  :ye_gods:

I'm interested in this but I'll wait until the boxed version comes out, it'll be almost half the price.

I don't think I've ever avoided buying a game purely because of the price before, but then I've never seen a PC game priced this high before either.

Maybe they let the GW minis guys set the download price.  :oh_i_see:

edit- nevermind.

I'll wait for the Steam or Boxed version.

Tell me about the resolution situation.

Tell me about the copy protection situation.

Some form of SecuROM on the boxed version, Steam and other releases in September. Resolution dunno. Bought mine for a flat 49.99 and I would say if you saw the price change try it again; it looks like they were having some issues with exchange rates or something which was changing the prices in the lead up to pre-order/release but those seem to be sorted.

September? Meh. Too much stuff coming out around then. Shame.

It's still £39.99 here, which is something like $66.

That has to be with VAT. If you're in Europe, you get charged VAT. My condolences.

Yes it is with VAT but so is every other game, and every other game is cheaper (with the possible exception of the EA store  :oh_i_see: )

However I'm sure they've calculated that they will make more money from the high price than they will lose from borderline interested people like me, who may be put off.

Blood Bowl is live, and beyond cool.

Resolution, I don't know what to say: my monitor is a CRT and doesn't support 1920 res, but the option is there in the dropdown menu.

It's honestly everything I ever wanted. You know how we're always like "oh, if only a GW game would come out that's just the tabletop game in a computer so I don't need to buy miniatures" and all that? Yeah, this is that game.

Has the 360 version come out yet?

Totally agree with Modern Angel. I keep saying that this is just perfect if you are into Blood Bowl. Can't wait to play with it someday and see if the realtime thing is even remotely fun, but honestly I don't have the slightest interest in it.

So, f13 League wise, how many are getting it now? I have a feeling that it will be much easier to try something like that on September, with the major international release, but if we are even only 5 or 6 it might be fun to do a trial run.

Who got it? Account name please, so we can friend-up in game. I am Falconeer there.


P.S: It's download only for now, and honestly I know nothing about copy protection. I can I tell if there's Starforce/SecuROM/ScrewYou or not?

I'd pick it up if they'd just released on Steam and I had the money. :oh_i_see:

Seriously though, they're going to be limiting their customer base with this silly crap.

So wait until September.

No really silly copy protection stuff that I can see. There's a supposed limit on time for your download link in your email before it expires but they've stated that you can get another when it does via a quick email. Or burn the .bins you received. Some people got worked up over it but meh... European companies are obsessed with doing weird shit like that and Cyanide are good people. Trackmania's version irritated me more and it pales in comparison to Spore's nonsense.

Download was flawless once I got my email and I went at abou 1.8MB/s from across the ocean.

Just bought the pre-order today. I know almost nothing about Blood Bowl, but this looks like fun.

Have not created anything accountlike yet, will do once I get home.

Is it downloadable right now or does that start at midnight ?

You can download and play immediately. I've been playing since last night.

Viator here. Add me.

 :awesome_for_real:

So, what is that timer that is counting down on the pre-order page for then ?

It was supposed to not go live until tonight but apparently they had so many preorders they decided to kick it off last night and start letting people grab it so their servers don't choke tonight bastards. Hehe my friend got it last night and I did not know it was already live /cry.

My friend is pretty picky and so far he has been very pleased with it playing turn based mode says it is very very faithful to the game.

It's a carbon copy of the tt game. Exact. Just missing some teams which are expansion material

Yeah, that. The demo was a fantastic representation of the miniature game. I will however, be waiting for the Steam version.

I never played the tabletop version (or any tableop game whatsoever).  :ye_gods:

This game is brutal. The AI keeps kicking my ass. :ye_gods:

Am I supposed to lose the first (few) games when I start the campaign or am I doing it wrong ?  :ye_gods:

Fun game, though. :awesome_for_real:

Helm, we DEFINITELY have to setup a friendly online game. We can even get on Vent. I'll give you the few insights I possess and explain to you the realy beauty of it. What's your ingame account name?

Anyway, it can be hard especially for one reason, which is my ONLY complaint with the game: they should have displayed BIG rolling dice for your armour/dodge rolls with the target result on the right and the actual one on the left. Instead, you can only see the result of the rolls on the field, but to look at the actual numbers you have to pay attention to the crammed chat and learn how to decipher the "Blood Bowl Code". This is just plain wrong: noit only it makes the game much less accessible, but it is just NOT cool. I want the computer to show me in big block letters what number should I get on how many dice (1 or 2? different actions take different # of dice) and I definitely want to see the dice rolling and giving me a big block result, not an obscure plain dull set of letters and numbers in the unfriendly ugly looking chat box.

Done with the complaint, on with the awesome!

It's Helm.  :awesome_for_real:


Completely missed the chat box, will have a look at it. :-)

When I ordered, I got dropped into the French download section, although the purchase form (correctly) listed country as US.  Did you guys have this?  Or am I downloading the French-only version as we speak?

EDIT: nevermind, I managed to modify the url to the correct one, and I see that the files that are downloaded are the same regardless of language.  In case you are reading this, just change the end of the download url to "Langue=en" and you'll see it in English

As far as I know the in-game language can be changed by via options menu, so versions should all be the same.

Yegads, I'd been looking forward to this, and just got an email telling me it was available to buy. Put me in the 'they want to charge HOW much?!' camp.

Will definitely buy later, when saner minds prevail on the pricing.

Downloading it right now.  If I'd remembered it was out today, I'd have taken the damn day off for this one.

This game is amazing.  They finally did a direct port of a tabletop game.

AezZea in game.

Block seems overpowered, but maybe that's just because I've only played the game for 3 hours and don't know what the fuck I'm doing (GO CHAOS!!! GO TOOTHSOME HORRORS!!! KILL!!!!  doh, should have named my team TOOTHSOME TERRORS, dammit!).  I am starting to win though, which makes me much less stabby.  Good game, very well done.  The low-rez logos and when starting the game up, etc, are just a stylistic choice as I'm running the graphics at 1920x1200 and they look great. 

Block is overpowered. It's why you should strive to give everyone on your team the unsexy but vital skill of Block as they level up.

I also remember when I first realized this. I was playing in the FUMBBL Java league and came up against an experienced team that had Block on every player. This struck me as odd for about two minutes before I ran into a buzzsaw

Block is more like a basic (bread and butter) skill than an overpowered skill.  So far, tackle and guard make a much bigger difference for strength type player.  Frenzy is also amazing as long as it's combined with block.

I want this.

I'm so short on monies but I'll get it anyway.  Not home home until the middle of this week though.  I hope to get myself and at least two IRL friends on this by the end of July.

I hate you guys for doing this to me. I've bought enough games lately.

So far in the game:

Falconeer
Viator
Helm
AezZea


Who am I missing? Usernames please! Cadaverine and Typhon?

EDIT: Created the f13 League, please join it for test purposes. Remember you need a NEW team not applied to the Public League to join. To find the f13 league you have to go to the League list and scroll down as they are sorted with Caps names first and non-caps last  :awesome_for_real:

Pass is: bazooko

I got this last night. Been messing around with the single player campaign but would be up for some online league action.

After you have one team in the public league further teams will be autojoined to it. So to app you have to leave the public league.

Trying to join now with coach name "Typhon"... but it's teh hard!  Going to read manual to try to figure out how to create a non-public team.  :P

EDIT 3:
Ok, I thnk I figured it out.

0) Create a Team!  Delete Team cause it's public!
1) Find f13 League and hit "Apply"
2) Wait
3) Twitch
4) Wait
5) Success!
6) Create a team in the f13 League
7) Play!

Yellow  - I am here

Same here, I applied with my Lizard team the "Lucious Lizards"... yummy  :awesome_for_real:

Not actually hit the shops yet and Digital Download from my house would be a joke not worthy of the telling.

I may pick this up in work tomorrow.

I'll probably be on as Ironwood once I remember my youth and how to play Bloodbowl.

 :awesome_for_real:

Winner of the first test f13 league will receive a free copy of The Path. Sign up now!

I applied with a Skaven team.  What are the rules? Any general explanation of how it works?

How does one find the F13 league? The Private Leagues button is greyed out for me on the lobby.

NM Found it and I think I applied. Clearly UI feedback is for pussies.

Ok, the test league has 8 spots and 4 are already filled. 5 if Iain applies, but as of now no, your application didn't go through. You want to check that again :(

Roster, so far:

1) Bat Country - Falconeer
2) Lucious Lizards - Helm
3) Estalia Crushers - Modern Angel
4) Fraggers - Aez
5) ? - IainC
6) .
7) .
8) .

It doesn't start until all 8 spots are taken.

How do I apply?

I made a team and found the f13 league, tried to apply and was told that I couldn't apply with my team because it was public.
I deleted the team and tried again. Spammed the apply button a few times until it went away.
Now I can see the f13 league in the search list but there's no apply button.

What do I need to do? The manual is no help at all.

Edit: Just logged back in and now there's a 'cancel application' button. However I went to a different screen then came back and it's now missing. This game could have used a bit more QA loving.

I'm in the same boat as IainC, I thought I did it correctly this afternoon, but I can see I'm not in the roster.  I'm currently doing the following and it's NOT working:

1) Search
2) Scroll through to f13 League.  Click on it
3) Click "Apply for League" - get a "you need a team, moron" dialog
4) Create a Team, click on "Apply for League" - get a "you cannot apply for league with a public team"
5) beat head against monitor.

Although amusing, after the third of fouth time this gets a bit old.  Can someone layout step-by-step in utlra-stoopid vision what they did to apply for the league?  I agree with the QA-loving comment because each time through the game has responded a bit differently.

Make team
Teams are automatically in the Public League
Leave league on the right. Your team will go red on the left
Find f13 league under private league search
Highlight team
Apply

This game needs Youtube videos that are not 1) cinematic trailers, 2) by people who don't know how to play, and 3) boring + old.

Heh. Took me a good while to figure that one out  :awesome_for_real:

So I am reserving the 6th spot for Typhon, I am sure you guys will eventually find a way to apply.

We still need 2 more geeks though.

Lurker signing up, I should purchase the game once I get some cash, in a week or so. Keep a spot open for an BB Old-timer!

You want a spot open for a week? Sorry but we are starting as soon as we are 8... which could be in a week or never. Get the game now, you maggot!

Protips: N brings up names/roles. G brings up the grid and tackle zones.

Hehe yes the block skill is very very good. Its one reason why on paper the lizard men team looks so strong but none of the players starts with much in the way of skills and even throwing two dice at somebody them having block and you not having block there is a good chance your big leezard is going to wind up on its ass.

Its not overpowered but it is pretty much expected for a competent lineman to have the block skill. The only thing that annoyed me was that two of my saurus rolled doubles but I took block for both of them anyway.

So far I have been plinking around in the campaigns and been enjoying it quite a lot. The lizard man team so far has been very fun for me its a pretty odd combo of big ass brusiers with no skills and a bunch of really pansy skinks who are lightning fast. The skinks at least level up very quickly due to their crazy movement powers so they wind up being pretty useful pretty fast. I have one skink with MA9 sure feet and the talent that lets you push an extra square. That lil bugger can cover a HUGE amount of the board per turn.

All the skills are pretty useful but some come into play more often and dodge and block are two of them. Due to how the dice are setup block is just very very nice.

Block being very very good was especially noticeable given that I've been playing Chaos and I'm frequently being matched up against dwarves.  Seems like all the dwarves start wtih block (but maybe it's just the dwarf linemen).

Downloading now :)

So count me in if you got a spot open

Will be in as Cadaverine later tonight once I get home.  I'll join the league, and provide fodder for people.

As a player of the board game, I'm thoroughly impressed by how faithful the game is to the Table top. I just picked it straight up and got the rules, even though I had not played it for years. They also really captured the Blood Bowl style and artwork, very nice.

Username is Krummi, but I didnt have any luck finding the f13 league. Don't tell me it's EU/NA split or something stupid?

No splitness. You should find a list of the private leagues somewhere. Sort them alphabetically and then scroll down beyond Z. You'll notice they start again from A to Z but this time uncapitalized. Since it's not F13 but f13, you'll find it at the bottom of that sorted list.

The first test f13 league has 5 signed up members and 3 reserved spots, so it should start very soon!

1) Bat Country - Falconeer (Orcs)
2) Lucious Lizards - Helm (Lizardmen)
3) Estalia Crushers - Modern Angel (Dwarves)
4) Fraggers - Aez (Skavens)
5) Tlachtlan Tornadoes - IainC (Lizardmen)
6) ? - Cadaverine
7) ? - Scadente
8) ? - Typhon

Hurry up with those applications and go go go!

I sorted by "trainer" and looked for "Falconeer". Worked like a charm.

7 of 8.

The only missing team is Typhon's. Hurry up!

So ... how does this work, once Typhon signes up ?

I have no idea.  :awesome_for_real:

Me neither! That's why it's a TEST league.
I guess, you can play against whoever you want in the league, whenever you want, up to 7 matches. After 7 matches the team with the best score is the winner.

We'll see.

Ya that is the nastiest thing about the dwarves. A ton of their characters start with block and many have tackle as well. They are expensive lil buggers but until I could get my saurus some skills a str 4 leezard vs a default str 3 dwarf the dwarf will still knock the lizard down most of the times even though the lizard is throwing two dice due to their starting skills.

If you want a character who really does not get knocked down try the combo of block and dodge and stand firm. That is the screw you I ain't moving talent setup.

Goddamn Wood Elf Wardancers with Block, Dodge and Sidestep. You need to be really lucky to make them hit the floor.

Nope. It schedules them and you play according to the schedule. There may or may not be playoffs at the end, I am unsure.

Ah, cool. I like the schedule! Playoffs, I guess it was up to me setting them up. And I have no idea what I clicked...

Typhon?

So make sure and update how this game roster business works with people in different time zones..

Seems like a game i would want to play on my PS3. Its PC only isn't it?

If the league works, I'll Radicalthon it.

Should come out for DS, PSP and 360 later this year. No PS3.

Sorry! work got craptacular suddenly yesterday and put in a 14hour day, didn't turn the pc on at all, just went to bed.  At work now, will log in and register tonight.  If someone beats me to it, I'll be in the next round.  Sorry for the delay.

I'm playing Dwarves, though I can't recall the name I chose.

And yes, having everyone but my runners with Block is very nice.  Would be helpful if I had some sort of tripping skill though.  Played a one off game against a Human team, and they just danced right past me all night long.

Get tackle dwarves with a lot of folks who have tackle are one of the harder races to dance around. Dwarves are really nasty and they are a seriously good way to learn about positioning and setting up your starting lines. If you mess up you will wind up with somebody running the ball right past you for a score. I had one game with my lizards vs the dwarves and it went 24 turns before I finally managed to score. They had like 4 people left standing I had about 3 it was ugly it took me a couple games to recover from that. I always dread the dwarven blood baths I get into when I face them.

Any reliable tactics on breaking the "cage" some of the runner teams build around their ball carrier ?

Cage are mostly used by strong races like lizards and orcs.  Runner use cage has a one or two round protection until their runner can reach the TD line.

Strong team cage : put your guy square in front of the cage, don't charge it.  They'll only get one hit with their blitz if they want to past your barrier and you'll be able to hit all your guy once they reach you.

Runner cage : charge it and try to get the ball carrier, keep 2 good runners close to the TD line to attack a lone runner.

Apply sent!  Wow the UI wasn't at all straight-foward to get a team into a private league.  Or I'm just st00pit.  Thanks for the clear instructions.

THE LEAGUE HAS STARTED!

This is the Team setup:

(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2659/3676397465_4ba8eea66a_o.jpg)

As you can see we have 2 Dwarves teams, 2 Chaos, 2 Lizardmen, 1 Skaven and 1 Orcs.
Would be nice to do some betting but as of now it's hard to figure the odds.

Here's the first day, out of seven:

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3542/3676397539_8651aa7ecd_o.jpg)

It's Scadente vs. Falconeer
IainC vs. Cadaverine
Typhon vs. Modern Angel
Aez vs. Helm

Now, how to play? As we are still in test don't expect me to have the answer, I am pretty sure Modern Angel knows mych more than me.
What I could figure out is that once you go to My Leagues you can actually switch on the chat channel of the f13 league which should feature any manager of such league presently online. If your opponent is online you get a warning there. Plus, it's definitely a good idea to put all the other league members in your friend list so you can easily see what they are doing and/or message them. When you challenge your opponent be sure to use the team you signed up for the league, otherwise you risk to challenge him with another team and it would be painfully useless.

Anyway, for the league to work a certain coordination between the managers is required, so either in game, here or via PM I invite everyone to contact his opponent and try to setup a date for the match kindly as soon as possible. I don't think there's a time limit but as you can easily imagine the League can't proceed to day 2 until all the matches from day 1 has been played (the League Manager, me, can force a result though so we can advance even if someone gives up).

Now, Scadente-Krummi... when are we playing? What about thursday night around 5pm East Coast time? I can stay up as late as an 8pm starter if 5pm is too early.

I sent an ingame mail to Typhon. The ingame GUI is fucking abysmal but functional. Once both people are on, you just highlight your team and then your match. Click the start match button, voila.

Under Free scheduling I think you'll have to click to advance days, Falc.

Damn. Now I want the game. >_<

Yeah.  Fuckers.  I haven't seen my home machine for over two weeks though and I'm not getting back there until late next week.

Not having access to play it is easier than not being able to afford it, sucka.

We could make an Age of Conan f13 PvP duel league and the first prize is a copy of Blood Bowl...

Now that is just cruel. Funny. But cruel.  :awesome_for_real:

You should just give it to me. OBVIOUSLY. (not because I'm broke but because, you know, I'm a hair from 50, on a character without magic handmedown funcom lootz)

Or do I have to wait for everyone to catch up?

:why_so_serious:

Purchased, Downloaded, Installed, Patched and Registered.

Just after the nick of time.

 :oh_i_see:

The best way to break it is if you have enough speedy people is to hit it hard before it can fully form. With teams like the dwarves it takes them a few turns to get everybody into position to really lock the cage down. If you can blitz a hole or two in it before they can form it you can make them cough the ball up. Kinda depends on your own race though. Sometimes with lizard men I just have a saurus blitz in fast before they form it to disrupt the cage and try to pop the ball out other times I just have to surround it and just bash like crazy to try to break it open.

I am so far 13-0 in the single player campaign with my lizards and by far the hardest teams for me are the dwarves. With all the skills their players have if they can get the cage formed up its really hard to get that ball out from them again which makes for long lasting slug fests. I had one game go 24 turns vs them before I finally managed to score and that was pretty much after damn near everybody on both sides were KO'ed or injured.

The best way to break the cage is the same tactic that you should be using for everything - make the opponent take as many tests as possible. The more dice he has to roll, the more likely he is to fail something in a comical/painful manner and either gift you the ball or at least leave himself wide open for an asskicking. Dwarfs are hard to knock over but they fall/i] over pretty easily.

I can't afford it either, but I will anyways.  No night cap drinking for awhile  :cry:

Falconeer, I'm in GMT timewise. So is east coast +5 hours? 5pm would be about 10 in the evening here? I'll be online on thursday to crack some skulls then!

I'm not working at the moment, just poopsocking games, so I'm ready almost at any time, bar 4 in the night to 10 in the morning

edit: go it the wrong way around.

Oh, GMT? Sweet! So let's meet thursday night, which is tomorrow. I am GMT+1 so my night is pretty much your night. I'll be on from GMT 9pm for about 4 hours.

I'll be on tonight, probably till about 10PM (-4 GMT = EDT).  I like the new patch cause you can toggle away from the game to hit a browser, etc.  Friday is also good as I'm off.  ... probably you already told me your schedule via the in-game email and I'm just being a twat for posting this.

  :why_so_serious:

It's cool. I'll definitely be on by 8:30 or so Eastern so I'll try to catch you then.

I started messing about with the campaign, and ended up missing IanC as a result as it wouldn't let me back into multiplayer for some reason, and I was shocked at the weirdness of playing against the CPU.  The first match, I lost to the humans against my dwarf team, which didn't come as much surprise.  The second match, though, I was playing against a 740 pt Dwarf team vs my 940 pt Dwarf team.  I figure I should be able to eek out a win, but no.  They where stomping me on blocks/tackles, but the worst insult was that the CPU dwarves kept running right past my players.  I checked the rolls, and sure as shit, I had to roll a 6+ to dodge, vs their 3+, and they didn't have any different skills than I did.

Same thing with the Human Linebackers with no skills at all, that managed to consistently put my Dwarves on their asses on top of waltzing right past them with nary a problem.  I know I suck at football, and all, but I really seem to be on the losing end of the dice an inordinate amount of the time.

Is it possible that the 6+ roll you had to make for a dodge was when you were dodging into another tacklezone (or -zones), but he only had to dodge out of a -zone into the clear - hence the 3+ roll? Every overlapping tacklezone you dodge into adds one to the number you have to hit.

Of course you may already know all this.

I didn't know this game was even in production until I saw this thread. I immediately bought it and so have all my friends who I used to play with back in the day. Fun times ahead.

Seems like the ingame chat/mail is so wonky that playing those League games will prove harder than we thought. Maybe we should use some kind of external chatter, like IRC, Skype, MSN or whateva, to coordinate or simply see who's online. Right now, or you are so lucky that you shoot an invitation to someone who is idling in the chat window and see your invite which only stays up for 10 seconds, or you will never get that league match. How stupid.

No. When your opponent is online it's different. There's a Play Match button in the lower right when you're both on and have your team highlighted. There's still the weenie accept button but it's not the crapshoot pub games are.

Ok MA, but still if I hit "Play Match" it only appears as an invitation to my opponent, and that invitation stays on screen for 10 seconds, am I wrong? Does he get the invite even if he's playing another game? And what if he's just idling? When he comes back my invitation will be long gone (10 seconds).

Basically there are no easy ways to simply attract your opponent's attention and make him notice you are online and willing to play, even if he is online too. Even mails or instant messages are almost invisible, and that bothers me.

Am I doing something wrong?

And I suck! The league is on, and in the very first match Scadente/Krummi and his Chaos team, Black Amnesty, dispatched my orcs 1 to nil.

(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2665/3682651748_fe27dc5798_o.jpg)


PICTURES!

Some fun facts about the game:

- Schild wins the disappointment award: out of the action for pretty much the whole game, he touches his first ball for an easy pass and fails it. Boohoo!
- Numtini has been Bat Country MVP!
- Signe has been sent off for roughing a knocked down player... and getting noticed by the ref! Evil Signe.
- Ironwood chopped heads.
- I suck.

On the game, a nail biter! Scadente and his team scored on me on turn 14 (something like the last 2 minutes in a football match!), but then he managed to botch it and give me an unbelievable chance to even it. With no rerolls he went to the desperation blitz on my open field ballcarrier... A whole 16 turns match, roughly 90 minutes, decided by a single die roll! 1 dice, 50% he wins the game 50% I score and we are even.... and he made it. I lose  :drillf:

That was simply exhilarating!

Now, please, everyone else, on with your games.

Been online for an hour staring at the lobby screen waiting for my opponent. Twice I've been stood up now. If we don't get a chance to play tomorrow I'll have to drop out and Ironwood can have my place as I don't think I'll be around for the end of the league otherwise.

If Aez is ready, I am idling in the lobby right now, but he has been "playing" since I got home.  :drill:

I am getting the shit kicked out of my orc team 'Whaaaambulance'.

I can't win a single game.

Loving it.

See what I mean, Modern Angel? Your opponent is in the game, but you can't do anything to let him know YOOOOOOOO I AM HERE STOP THAT WHATEVER YOU ARE DOING AND PLAY WITH ME! This sucks.

OK, i'm up for the game.

I wasn't playing even if I was logged own, I was winning a daring contest about who would quit/disconnect first from a bugged game.  I won after 24h  :drill:

Got disconnected a few hours ago and could not log back in, I am back in game now. I will take a quick shower and will then be ready for the game.

Yay I'm on somebody's team :awesome_for_real:

You people really need to be coordinating through Steam PM's, or AIM, or hell text msg's on your cell phones.

Right. Aez just logged of as I came back from my shower.  :drill:

Still here.

edit : will be in the west chat.

My fault.  The time zone conversion site I used to first time led me to the wrong time by about 3 hours.  I think I have the CET to CST conversion down now, so everything should get sorted tomorrow.  If not, I'll just forfeit the match, since it's my inability to figure out time zones that screwed the pooch.

Hm. Looks like I can't connect to other players, everytime I start a challenge I time out. It worked before. No idea whats going on. Anyway. It is 2:34 am over here, I get a few hours of sleep. Sorry if you just waited for me, Aez  :ye_gods:

Sit tight on that. There's a bug where when their servers fart it doesn't look like it and instead puts the onus on you. It's periodic and (for me) infrequent.

I agree we need some kinda communication effort.

I think most here are on Steam, so we ought to use that.

If my steam is on at the weekend, I'll probably be at the machine.  Feel free to throw me a squirt for a game or two.

Be aware, however, that I haven't won a single game yet - I would appear to suck mightily.  It could be easy points for someone.

 :oh_i_see:

I'm on steam as Mananog.

Ok, so new rule: whenever you are up for a game log in Steam too, is it ok for everyone? Who doesn't have a Steam account or is against this policy?

I can be found there as "[f13] Falconeer"

Doh... Singapore!

Modern Angel 2 - Typhon 0

Good job there.

We only need Aez vs. Helm and Iainc vs. Cadaverine to be done with day #1

Yeah, I didn't want to victory dance too much since I'm a gentleman. But I beat the shit out of him.  :grin:

Oh, you can find me as Brocktoon. I'm sure there are other Brocktoons.

Got the game in against Cadaverine. Final score was 1-0 to him. He spent the first half of the match committing genocide on Skinks and taking the opportunity to score while everything on my team that could pick up a ball reliably was in the injury pen. I was playing with 7 or fewer lizards for most of the match. The second half was characterised by the utter failure of my remaining Skink to be able to pick up a ball. On the very last turn of the game the ball was in his TD zone and free with no tackle zones near it. I had a Skink two squares away who just had to make a dodge roll and a pickup roll to even the match, he successfully dodged away from his marker but fumbled the ball and the whistle blew.

Good game and once again Dwarfs are my nemesis team.

Breaking News :  Whaaambulance still can't defeat anyone.  Yet to score.

I'm doing something REALLY WRONG.

The dice did not like IainC's Lizardmen.  His big guy got confused twice at rather inopportune times, and his poor skinks didn't fare very well at all.  I thought he'd tie it up after the throw in to my endzone, though, but then the skink dropped the ball.  Even I winced when that happened. 

Still, I had fun, and learned a bit more about the game, which is good.  It would be nice if there was a bit more detailed summary page for your team after each game so you could check players stats, and such.

Someone want to give us a little more info on the skills on level up, beyond Block ?

I came, I saw, I got my ass kicked!  Didn't have much luck with the dice, and even when it did, I managed to not take advantage of it.  WARNING: if you are playing single player, don't get used to having a lot of time to make up your mind - the timer in the league is currently set to 2 minutes.  Don't dawdle.

My minotaur pissed me off right proper, to bad I really wanted to play Chaos.  Loner + Wild Animal = sound and fury significant of nothing.

http://www.bloodbowlonline.com/Rules.shtml

Skills are on page 45 of the PDF.

If you want to know what skills work well together, take a look at the Star Players on p53 and the high-end players from page 55 onwards. From memory, something like a Witch Elf is nasty. Had a friend who turned them into blocking machines that would push opponents into the crowd.

... don't make me want this game.  :grin:

Why not? We need more people for the September Steam-powered f13 League.

Looks like fun.  Bought the PC version and am downloading it now.

Yay Quinton!

Add us on ingame friend list and on Steam.

Ingame names so far:

Falconeer
Viator
Krummi
IainC
Typhon
Cadaverine
AezZea
Helm
Ironwood

Kaid and Hakeldaima, would you please give us your ingame name? Same for whoever else is in game but not in the f13 league.

Installed. Patched. Need to learn how to play.

Ingame name is Quinton.

All friends added.

All offline.

 :awesome_for_real:

Just created a Steam group for us Bowlers. Name is f13 Bloodbowlers, abbreviation is f13BB.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/f13bb

(http://media.steampowered.com/steamcommunity/public/images/avatars/fc/fce6224300d1141584f974e1cd972d03be2da8e4_full.jpg)
(f13 logo used hopefully with permission)


I suggest everyone to join it, will be much easier to keep track of each other.

Also, protip: Go to options and switch the game to windowed mode, same resolution as your desktop. The windowed version of Blood Bowl is totally borderless, so it will look exactly like the fullscreen one, but alt-tabbing will be working again. This made me happy.

I've been going through the tutorials and am trying a one-player vs computer game to get a feel for things.

Is the load time really really bad for everyone or just me?  I think I may need to dial back the video settings a bit as the machine is struggling a bit at 1920x1200.

I've joined the Steam group.  While I've had a Steam account a couple of years, I mostly just use it to play games.  If I look like I'm online but I'm not responding to chat it's because I don't know what I'm doing.

Aez - Helm: 2:0

Aez scored really quick with his dodge little gutter runners.

Then I got disconnected and the interface forced me to "quit game". So I lost the game, got no money and no SP. GO Team Lizzard!  :grin:

At least I now know that I made some stupid mistakes when I created the team.

No rerolls ? lol.   :awesome_for_real:

Falconeer taught me a couple of things.

1 - He's better at the game than me.
2 - Chaos is actually really, really boring to play.  The game was fun, but I missed the tricksy Orksies.

I think it's time for a shakeup.

Day #1 is over. Here are the standing after 1 match.

(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2640/3687702400_fcbf0615bb_o.jpg)

On with



Day #2

(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2622/3687511250_de18472b4c_o.jpg)
Nice tiebreaker for the lead between Cadaverine and Krummi!


Modern Angel, would you be available later tonight for our game? Or tomorrow, what's your favourite time?

Ugh. This can't come to Steam soon enough. I can only assume the developers are afraid of money.

Can I ask why you're waiting till steam ?

Short of GOG.com for incredibly old games, it's the only place I get my downloadable games (if you don't count MMOGs, which I always get straight from whatever company).

Same here.  I made the mistake of buying from Direct2Drive when the whole online delivery thing first started to get big, and I regret it.  They pull shit like not validating your game key if you download a game more than 5 times (some of us believe in frequent OS reinstalls).  Steam has never burned me, and besides, I like having all of my games coming from one trusted, convenient source.  I'm not going to go hunting through various company's websites to redownload shit I already bought.

Am I wrong in thinking that if a game is on Steam you can download it from there even if you didn't originally buy it that way as long as you've registered it with Steam?

I believe you're wrong in thinking that, although that's just an assumption on my part...

Isn't that the way steam usually works ?

Very cool to know!  I stand corrected. 

I'm not in your timezone and can't play from 1am - 4am just to get a Blood Bowl fix.

I'll consider it when 1) it comes to Steam and 2) they implement more team types. My previous experience was with Undead (although I used Mummies, not Wearwolves) and I'd like to try out a Dark Elf team.

Timezones differences are overrated. I am flexible and yes I can play you 1am to 4am if needed.
Just saying, it's a 90 minutes effort every few days, shouldn't be that hard. If it is for you, chances are it won't be for your opponent and not everyone is from Europe anyway.

Not trying to convince you, just writing this in case anyone else is thinking a league wouldn't work due to timezones.

My supa-sekret reason 3) hope the BB devs get the multiplayer interface better worked out and 4) let's see if it makes it past the 30 day honeymoon period on F13.

I'm more interested now than I was, so this thread has been good for something.

Falc, I *should* be on later tonight. What time would be good? I'm Eastern and hungover so don't confuse me with your stupid Euro timezones. American English please.

If I'm not needed for Naxx tonight, I'll be on and give someone a Skaven Bashing.

That said, I still blow.

I am STILL to win a single game.  No Joke.   :ye_gods:

The game has no sub to pay for, so the honeymoon could end tomorrow but the game will stay live for everyone here for a long time I guess. You shouldn't run out of opponents anyway. Although, sure... the League is the League...

MA, today it's gaming day for me so I am good whenever you are. Just tell me a time good for you and I'll be there. I'll be on Steam too so you can message me whenever you are ready. Use your timezones, I can read them.

Ironwood, I'll be glad to face you with a brand new Skaven team of my own, so we can see what we (both) are doing wrong.

So far I have tied one and lost 2 matches coaching a Dwarf team vs campaign mode.  I then went on to lose one match as Dwarves online against some random guy, though I *almost* made a crazy last turn of the game touchdown that would have resulted in a 1-2 loss instead of 0-2.  I've now won my first match as Skaven in campaign mode.

So I'm pretty lousy, but I'm starting to get a little better.

I like the basic feel of the game -- it really is a nice implementation of a tabletop turn based wargame.  I wish the game were a little snappier on my win32 machine (maybe more RAM would help), but while it's sluggish at times, it's not unplayable.

EDIT: Would it be worthwhile to stick the replays of the F13 League matches somewhere where people could grab them and watch them?  Looks like replays are 100-130KB or so and live under ~/My Documents/BloodBowl/Saves/Replays

Also, I just discovered G (display grid), T (display tackle zones), N (display names), and ctrl+mouse to rotate.  These and other useful things listed on the last page of the PDF manual...  The strategy guide PDF has a bunch of interesting tidbits (probably some overlap with the 5th edition rules).

Cheers for that Quinton, I think it'll help.

As for me, I am doing better when I test with Dwarves and Skaven.  I actually suspect Orcs are harder than they appear.  They don't seem to be as Tough as advertised and almost everyone else save the Dwarves run rings around them.

Well I just got schooled 4-1 by Helm in a lizard v lizard showdown. He was 2-0 up at half time after I'd thrown away a couple of scoring chances by being unable to pick up the ball. I scored just after half time with and the subsequent kick-off was marked by a pitch invasion that left my entire team bar three Skinks concussed. With no defence possible for two turns, it wasn't hard for him to walk in a third TD. There was a bit of scrapping as I tried to salvage something from the wreckage but again, the ham-fistedness of my Skinks gifted a fourth and final TD to Helm just before the final whistle.

Dwarves are fun because they're tough little buggers, but I'm still sorting out how to deal with much faster opponents (Wood Elves are crazy-fast by comparison, and once they got past my defensive line, there was pretty much no way to catch 'em).

Skaven vs Humans was interesting in that the Skaven are very fast moving, but relatively weak.  The computer player would tend to cluster the humans in a clump around the ball-carrier which made it very hard to get control of the ball.

The core turnover mechanic is fun -- makes you have to strategerize a bit and be careful about when in a turn you're going to take a risk, and helps keep things somewhat unpredictable.

Fuck Block being overpowered :  Re-rolls are where it's at.

You're going to fuck up.  LOTS.  That's just the reality.

Having that re-roll available when it really counts helps enormously.

Edited to Add :  This makes PRO an enormously useful skill.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

fuck you guys, I'm getting this the second I get home should be between Wednesday and Sunday.

Dance, puppets, dance...

Assuming a 1 dice block:

Block skill will reduce your chance of being knocked over from 50% when you are defending down to 33% and when you are the one throwing the block, it takes the chance from 33% down to 17%.

If you have two dice and are throwing the block you'll get knocked down 1 time in 36 rather than 1 time in 12.

By contrast Pro only helps when you are making the active roll (i.e. not when you are being blocked) and it reduces your chance of being knocked down from 33% to 22% with a one dice block ad from 1 in 12 to 1 in 24 with a 2 dice block.

Pro is useful for other things except blocking to be fair but for guys who you are likely to want to block with, get Block first then Pro.

Yeah, I don't disagree at all.  On the skill selection.

What I was more thrusting my virile and spurting point at was the global half rerolls you get.

Took on a dwarf team on the campaign who had FIVE rerolls.

I got stomped worse than that time I tried to put it in the wifes pooper 'by accident.'

Rerolls in our league are capped to 4, by the way. Just in case anyone is planning/building on massive rerolls.

I did not know about re-rolls when I created my team. I got zero.  :ye_gods:

IanC lost only because I had an unbelievable amount of luck.

I agree, the game really does seem to hate IainC.

Though, I am up in the air about my being matched up against a Chaos team.  Outside of the game deciding it's going to just give you shit for dice rolls, it should be an interesting match.  Especially since I'm strategically retarded.  :awesome_for_real:

Skaven are MUCH MORE FUN.

They die like fleas tho.

I can't seem to make any money in the campaign. I'm not spending anything on inducements and I'm winning most of my games. I seem to make 20-40k per match but in every game I play my opponent is dropping 400-600k on star players, bribes, bonus rerolls etc. What am I doing wrong?

If your team is of higher value, the opponent gets a bunch of gold to buy inducements and stars and such to balance out the match.  It gets pretty annoying at times. 

Modern Angel's Estalia Crushers crushed Falconeer's Bat Country 1 - 0

The game has been.... intense. I played 15 turns on defense (8% ball possession says the post-game screen) and managed to hold until the very last second. His dwarves had to "go for it" on the 16th and last turn.. and did it. I almost stole him the game, but the result is honest. He deserved it, and I suck.

Falconeer is now 0 - 2 and MA is 2 - 0 and still running for the title.

That was a slow, grinding game... JUST AS DWARVES LIKE

S+++in Stunties!  :awesome_for_real:

It really did come down to the last turn after an entire game of us pushing each other around in the middle of the field. I had one go for it square on turn 16 and I knew KNEW I was going to fail it and probably break my leg.

Typhon lost with extreme bad luck.  I killed is minotaur...

Where is the league going?  It's a 4 match leagues?  Do we continue with a new season after?  What if people want to change their team between the seasons?

Second game that I've had bad luck, but my strat is wrong, wrong, wrong.  Trying to hit on multiple fronts = getting your ass REALLY kicked when you have bad rolls.  Both Aez and MA really know how to play in general.

Even without the bad rolls, my strategy/gameplay needs massive improvement.  GG Aez, even with great luck I don't think I would have beat you.

... which is why I think they are bad for leagues. Ultimately you want a team that will improve with experience - losing several a game really eats into that potential and sees you end up with base stat characters all the way through the league. Plus it is just free stat points to the opposing team.

In one off matches, low armour teams are fine and fun. Long term you want characters who will survive.

Orcs are a slower team, but work by playing a ground-and-pound, crush the other team style. Skaven are fast, but it can easily end up being a meat grinder for them too.

Day #2 so far:

Modern Angel 1 - Falconeer 0
Aez 2 - Typhon 0
Helm 4 - IainC 1

Cadaverine ? - Scadente ?

We only need Cadaverine vs Scadente to advance to Day #3.
Is everyone with the game already in the f13 Bloodbowlers Steam group (http://steamcommunity.com/groups/f13bb)? I suggest everyone who is not in it to join. Like Ironwood, on Steam but not in the group. You don't have to be in the League, should make it easier to arrange friendly matches too.

Where is the League going? The League is a 7 days League. Meaning we all have to face each opponent once. After 7 matches/days it is supposed to end and there's a price of 100000 to the first team and 50000 for the runner up. Plus the prize offered by me which is a copy of The Path (http://tale-of-tales.com/ThePath/). I am aiming for a bigger price for the second league, in september, which will certainly last more and will probably have more teams and rules. This is, after all, the first f13 TEST League.

Do we continue with another season? Hell yeah!
What if people want to change their team? It's ok, especially since we'll have more people starting from zero (1000) so I can't see how that could be a problem.
Another important reminder, the TEST league has TV (Team Value) capped at 1400. We'll see how that works and if it needs to be removed/adjusted for Season 2. Inducements or not, rich get richer mechanic has to be kept under control (nothing is written in stone, we'll decide democratically. So don't panic!).

How do those of us who aren't already in get involved?  (other than wait until September ^^)

Any interest in posting replays of any particularly interesting games, should people want to watch?

I don't even know how to take replays

The game saves a replay every time, under: ~/My Documents/BloodBowl/Saves/Replays

They appear to be sqlite3 databases:
% sqlite3 Replay_2009-07-05_02-03-48.db
sqlite> .tables
Away_AI_Positions                      
Away_AI_Tactics                        
Away_Equipment_Listing                  
Away_Player_Casualties                  
Away_Player_Listing                    
Away_Player_Skills                      
...

sqlite> select * from Away_Player_Types ;
6|Team_Dwarf_Blocker|2|1|13|558||33.333|50.0|33.333|83.333|70000|16
7|Team_Dwarf_Runner|2|2|13|34||50.0|50.0|50.0|72.222|80000|2
8|Team_Dwarf_Blitzer|2|4|13|1143||41.665|50.0|50.0|83.333|80000|2
9|Team_Dwarf_TrollSlayer|2|1|14|118||41.665|50.0|33.333|72.222|90000|2
10|Team_Dwarf_DeathRoller|2|5|13|102337||33.333|90.0|16.666|91.666|160000|1
38|AllStar_Dwarf_GrimIronjaw|2|5||907|Grim Ironjaw|41.665|60.0|50.0|72.222|220000|1

sqlite> select * from Home_Player_Listing ;
534584|0|Sequoia|15|50300|0|7|0|0|1|2|100.|1|16.6669979095459|80.|16.6660003662109|91.6660079956055|1|0|58|59|60|61|0|0|0|0|120000|0|0|0|0|0|120|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0
534585|0|Zebeydyn|14|50300|0|7|0|0|1|4|100.|2|66.6670074462891|50.|66.6660003662109|58.3330001831055|1|0|54|55|56|57|0|0|0|0|120000|0|0|0|0|0|120|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0
534586|0|Learnedyn|14|50300|0|7|0|0|1|2|100.|3|66.6670074462891|50.|66.6660003662109|58.3330001831055|1|0|54|55|56|57|0|0|0|0|120000|0|0|0|0|0|120|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0
...

Some fun to be had here, I think...

Always spend as much of the inducement as you can, if I remember correctly that is free money to balance the match that goes away if you don't spend it.  I could be wrong but I think that is how it works.

Saw him in the game earlier today, but must have been away, or playing a match already since he didn't respond to the match request.  I sent him an IM here, though, and can hopefully hook up with him tomorrow.  Not sure if he has joined the f13 bloodbowlers, or not.

I'm fucking tempted to download this - how does the online purchase work from these guys? Can you download it again forever and ever if you need to? Or is it one of those "one-download" kind of deals?

Hard to say. So far, I downloaded it three times on three different computers over 5 days, but I still don't know what to answer. Maybe it is limited but couldn't see any number anywhere.

And they say our download code will work with Steam, letting us add the game there in September. Can't find documentation proving it though. Aez should be able to.

Now I'm even more confused...  :uhrr:

Does it work on all three computers? Or is it one at a time? Obviously you need to connect to their servers to play online. But could you for example play SP on one PC while another plays online? Can you LAN-play with the one copy on 2 local computers?

I might go dig out my never-finished teams, actually...

I'm not 100% certain but I don't think it hits the network at all unless you fire up a multiplayer mode.  It's possible that for LAN or direct IP mode it might check and complain if both copies are using the same key (Falconeer should try, for SCIENCE!).

Interestingly, you get two different keys when you buy the game.  One is required to validate the game before you can play.  The other is used when you create your online league play account.

You get two keys:
Activation key = needed to INSTALL the game. It checks onilne every time you install.
Account key = needed to create a unique online account, as per your average MMORPG (doesn't require monthly sub though)

My three installations work perfectly on all the three computers. Everytime I installed them it asked me for the "activation" key, which made an online check. I can imagine there's a number of given checks/installs you can do with a single key (until the promised free Steam upgrade) but I don't know that number and so far 3 worked without a flaw.


Will check it tonight. Since it doesn't ask for the account/pass needed for online leagues, it is safe to assume it should work as lan games are just advanced Hotseat anyway (which is supported, yay!), but I'll let you know for sure.


I think so. I'll test it tonight.

I don't know about the whole linking your code to steam situation.  All I can find on their forums is a quote saying that they "don't think you will be able to link your CD-key to your Steam account". (http://www.cyanide-studio.com/forumBB/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1450)

Maybe there's a more recent update I missed though.

One trick with the skaven team that helps them survive long enough to get skills is do not have anybody in a tackle zone who does not need to be there. Skaven are not there to brawl they are there to score like crazy fast rats. With their high agility breaking out of tackle zones is laughably easy so you can make it so that the only folks who are in hand to hand with somebody are those you intend to be there. Everybody else should back out of any tackle zone they are in that way you strongly limit the amount of hits you can possibly take. One guy I played after doing his main actions went around pulling all skaven out of tackle zones its hard to brawl on an opposing team when all you can do in a turn is one blitz action.

You will typically still take a few losses but they are pretty inexpesnive to replace unlike the wood elves. It may seem a bit cowardly but it works pretty well for them. VS people like humans or elves you can even stay in there and brawl some to level up your line rats but vs CHAOS or lizard men the skaven want NOTHING to do with hand to hand vs the lines of those teams as they will pick you up AND BREAK YOU.

Chaos starts a bit boring. 1 mino a bunch of chaos warriors and beast men with limited skills. They get fun fast though as people get skills as they all have access to mutation. During the course of a leage a chaos team goes from being pretty generic across the board to highly specialized depending how you mutated/trained them. I saw one guy train his chaos warrior to be his main ball handler. That guy was NASTY. not super fast but a high armor str 4 guy with block is a PITA to knock over.

If you want fun with your first skill up on your MINO get it claws. This way you have mighty blow aka +1 to armor roll for injury and claws makes it so that anybody with an armor rating over 7 gets treated like AV 7. So black orks, saurus, big critters are all as weakly armored as an elf to your mino. This combo means that mino will be KILLING THE HELL out of people.

The lizards are somewhat similar excellent base stats for players but no skills to speak of which makes the first couple games kinda boring compared to what they are like once they get skilled up

Well, fuck me. I can't remember where I read the confirmation.

Uh, this is from a dev/mod:


Screw them!

But, on the same post:


Who cares if the download expires? Burn the files on a DVD or keep them on a drive and you are done.
Activations: you can activate it as many times you want.

Meaning, the single player game is basically completely unprotected as long as you have a friend activation key. For the online multiplayer you still need to purchase a valid key.

Lan gaming, it works on two computers with the same activation code. Just tested it. Me and kiddo are bashing each other senseless.

So, to sum it up, buying it online now does all the things you expect a game you bought to do, other than letting it download forever. You have 21 days to burn your files on a DvD or store them on a drive though.


Finally... REPLAYS WORK!
The game saves automatically every single match you play, and to watch them you just have to go on Single Player ---> Load ---> Replays. This is  :awesome_for_real: :awesome_for_real: :awesome_for_real: :awesome_for_real: :awesome_for_real:

I just reviewed my last second loss against Modern Angel and it still stings, ouch.
I should probably fraps them up and edit some highlights from the League to put on youtube.
(Tip: "+" and "-" speed up and slow down the replay)
 


(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3612/3694174433_fecb7e7d0d_o.jpg)
This is me, Bat Country, vs Modern Angel, Estalia Crushers.

christ fuck now I want the game

Signe is a Black Orc?  :drill:

That's a GENIUS idea....

Alright, this is the best I could do without any prior experience in video converting, cutting, recording and all. Sucks, so advices are welcome.

These are the highlights from my game with Modern Angel of yesterday night. Sped up to kill dead-ponder times.

Schild heroically stops a dwarf from scoring a touchdown. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czxiCSQNHcM)

Modern Angel's dwarves score on the very last move of the very last turn for a stunning 1 - 0 victory! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbEpi3MtjfU)

Need music. Preferably horrible rap-metal or something to make sure none of us ever actually watches your shame.

Nice, I tried frap but I can't get it to record audio.

Dumb question: How did Aez's Skaven get such a high team value?  Even the Estalia Crushers, who are also 2-0, only have a TV of 1070? 

Helm disconnect in my first game.  It gave me 100% of the game money + the two 5ssp(xp point) awarded  to the player of the game (MVP).
None of my players are injured or dead and I have three lvl 2 players.

Ah.  Hmm, how best to cause a disconnect of my opponent as a strategic move?    :drill:

and you kilt my mino, you fucker!

Now where the fuck is Scadente?

Cadaverine vs. Scadente: 0 - 3.

I got slaughtered by the forces of Chaos.  The dwarves either had too much Bugmans, or not enough, as they couldn't tackle squat.  Clearly the Chaos team was in Tzeentch's favor tonight with 3 extra turns on the kick off, and me not able to tackle a damn thing.  I have, however, got a lock on the "Attacker Down" LVP trophy.   :awesome_for_real:

Not forgetting that a pair of dwarf jaws have been cracked for good measure!

Yeah.  I'd like to meet the cat that wrote the dwarf blurb, and crack his jaw.   :awesome_for_real:

They're incredibly top heavy, it would seem, despite the tackle, block, and all.  And having foot long legs, that makes sure they do fall down a lot.

Edit: My runner did level up this time, and got Dodge, so I'm now slightly dangerous on the running game.

Wow, Scadente can play! Are you in the Steam group, by the way, Scad? Which name? And dammit. Money on Aez, Scad and MA at this point!

Scadente is LoveTruncheon on Steam, fyi.  And, yeah, he can play.  Even taking my crap rolls into account, it still would have been 1 - 2, or 2 - 3 in his favor.

This was probably karma for going after IainC's skinks with a vengeance last match.  :grin:

Edit:  And if you haven't gotten the game yet, what the hell are you waiting for?  It's more fun than a barrel full of goths with razor blades.  Hell, even if they don't let me link it too steam, I'd buy it twice, just out of support for a good game.  Same thing I did with Steam, and Dawn of War, actually.

Day #2 is over.

Results are:
Modern Angel 1 - Falconeer 0
Aez 2 - Typhon 0
Helm 4 - IainC 1
Cadaverine 0 - Scadente 3

Here's the standings after 2 matches.

(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2498/3696461728_d4de07dc30_o.jpg)

Scadente, Modern Angel and Aez leading with 2 wins.
Falconeer, Typon and IainC trailing with 2 losses, boo!

Now, on with

Day #3

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3531/3696461780_ff7c555789_o.jpg)

Big match between Scad and MA! One of them will fly high with 3 wins!
Easy round for Aez, against the big bluff Falc.
Cadaverine vs. Helm to consolidate a good spot.
And finally, one between IainC and Typhon will get some point, at last.

For posterity : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovhu30UWIUY (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovhu30UWIUY)
 :grin:

So much money down the drain.
That hurts...

In the single player campaign if the match in the last round is a draw, the game adds 4 turns of extra time on. If it's still a draw after that it just keeps adding four turns at a time until one side wins. Yesterday I was 3-3 against a Chaos team at full time, after nine consecutive failures for my Skink with Agility 4, and Sure hands to pick up a ball in the open I finally scored the winner on turn 32. Luckily the Chaos team was mostly busy getting a Lustrian Massage so they weren't able to get close to the ball themselves but I was getting pretty pissed off by the end.

Are internet league teams stored locally or on a central server? I'm going to the US for three weeks on Thursday and I can take the game install files with me on my phone so that I can finish the league. Just wondering if I need to export my team or whether I can access it from anywhere.

Central server, 99% positive. I'll check in a couple of hours though.

Server.

Krumi, tonight's no good for me but any other time is good. Just name a time.

I can be online tomorrow from about 12:00 - 01:00 GMT tomorrow, that's from noon till about midnight.

What timezone are you in?

I'm Eastern. Want to say 10 Eastern?

Wanting to ask you this for a coupe of days, MA.
Eastern means East Coast of the USA, Eastern Europe or Asia?

10 in the morning? That's pretty much perfect for me.

Or did you mean 10 in the evening? Cause by then it's 03:00 (am) here in GMT land (which I can do in a pinch, but something slightly earlier would be prefferential!)

(I'm Assuming Eastern USA)

Eastern US. Yeah, 10 at night would be too late for you. I could do 10 in the morning, easy.

I stopped Aez!

In a bloody battle, Falconeer's Bat Country managed to snag a draw against the mighty Aez's skavens Fraggers, which are now 2-1-0

Falconeer 1 - Aez 1

First draw of the league. More on it tomorrow. 3am now, I need sleep.

You gents think the game'll retain your interest for more than a couple of months? Pondering buying it, but man, 20 bucks is a lot of cash.

Where can you get it for $20? :(

I have no idea. Nothing ever retained my interest for more than two months straight other than Love & Rockets. Since there's no sub though, and you can make the League as flexible as you want with games occurring whenever you feel like, there's a chance whoever bought it will stick with it for a while. Even if only for the weekly League match.

Me, as the self-appointed Leagues organizer, barring August cause I'll be abroad for 20 days, I'll stick around until everyone here tells me to shutup and die.
And for the September f13 League (Season 2) I am planning to offer a 50$ prize, anything you like up to 50$ on Steam. Don't think anyone will buy the game for the prize anyway. Just showing off how serious I am about this whole Blood Bowl thing...


I don't know how can you pay just 20 for it, but lots of cash? Not this time, man, not this time. For that money it's a deal, it's a steal. It's the sale of the fucking century.

There's a really iffy website selling Asian keys for 20 bucks somehow. Cyanide is looking into blacklisting those keys. Probably a keygen.

I heard it's game boxes sold in countries where they are very cheap. This happened before with many other games, they can't blacklist those keys as they are legit.

They say this is from Singapore


Of course, it's a risky bet.

This isn't Demon's Souls. Comeon now.

Demon's Souls was 60$ and was still a steal!
This, at 20$ would be incredible bang for your bucks.

Games, day #3
MA and Scadente are playing as we speak.

Still need:
Cadaverine vs Helm
IainC vs Typhon

Broke down and bought this. Obviously too late for this league but trying it out in single player. I've not played Blood Bowl before and know nothing about handegg and am very much getting my ass handed to me in single player (on easy :ye_gods:) including having 3 players hospitalised in a match against Skaven (I picked Wood Elves since having a mobile game sounded good). That match finished 1-0 with me having a player with the ball on my turn 3 squares from the end zone which was annoying. It's good fun but I don't know if I'll actually be able to get good enough to bother with online play.

Poke me on Steam if you want a gentle game with some tuition involved. I don't claim to be an uber player (as my performance in the f13 league should attest) but I can explain why things happen and what you should be doing about them. It's a deceptively simple game but very much non-intuitive if you've not played the boardgame (the Franglais in the manual is pretty bad at explaining the core systems).

Ditto for me.  Be aware, though, that if you poke me for a game, it might get interrupted at some point.

I had to quit a game with Falc (why, yes, he was winning) due to Elena pressures.

Yes, the biggest problem of this game is that it is NOT noob friendly. Basically you have to know the rules that are explained in a 60 pages Games Workshop manual otherwise things will happen without you understanding why. The UI does a good job helping you to learn, after a few bashes, but nothing like having soemone explaining you in a single friendly match. Then it suddenly becomes easy and addictive. And Leagues, because of the persistence and leveling up, are where the fun is.

More, as much as the offline campaign can be fun, nothing tops playing against a human. Yes, please, sign up to our Steam group (http://steamcommunity.com/groups/f13bb). I'd love to have a tutorial match with you.

Fake edit: waiting for their report, but seems like Modern Angel regulated Scadente and is now the only leader with 3 wins and 0 losses.

Incidentally, I only recently found out you can save a game in mid game on the single player campaign.

Is this an option online ?

Ni (http://www.g2play.net/store/Blood-Bowl-Retail-CD-Key.html) fucken hao. (http://www.onlinekeystore.com/Blood-Bowl.html)

Pick your poison. Bought conan from onlinekeystore, methinks.

A better format to see the rules and what all the abilities do is to download a copy of the bloodbowl living rule book. The video game is I believe using the 5th edition living ruleset and is pretty close to identical to it baring a few bugs.

http://www.bloodbowlonline.com/Rules.shtml

Its a lot easier to understand than the franglish manual.

Before buying it from a place like that I would recommend reading the below warning from the official bloodbowl forums.

Re: Warning: illegal keys !

Postby JessicaFromFocus on Today, 11:17
Hello everyone,

After reading your different reactions concerning the non-legal keys, I wanted to state some things :

- all our partners are selling game AND codes. If a website sells serials and only serials, take care because Focus only provide game + serials.

- black listed keys were stolen. We know now that the stolen codes come from one of our publishers. Focus have never established any partnership with G2play or any other G2play-like websites. Furthermore, I read that these websites provided keys taken from retail versions of the game which is totally wrong: these codes come from the digital versions.

After many persons complained for being victim of swindle, it seems that G2play admitted that the keys were not legal… So they’re proposing either to reimburse the “victims” by Paypal or to give a different game or to provide new key.

I advise you NOT TO ACCEPT THESE NEW KEYS, you would take the risk of being blacklisted again!

We also know that a player who paid by Paypal has been reimbursed - by Paypal as well - while explaining the swindle.

Jessica

G2play is reimbursing people. Also, credit card. Not that hard to cancel something. Would go with onlinekeystore due to precedent, if they still had the damn thing in stock.

But yes, there's a bit of risk associated with this method. Still, 20 bucks.


Also, that quote has been pulled from a forum post, so could be completely fake.

You can also learn to play in the public, general league. There's always action and you can pick up some tips by watching.

IainC
Scrubs Matchup!

Wednesday July 8th - got to help my sister-in-law this evening, not sure if/when I'll be online, but I'll look for you when I am.
Thusday - I'll be online after 7PM EST but usually I'm offline by 9:30 (up at 5AM)
Friday - I'll be online after 7PM EST
Sat/Sunday - if you want to play during the day, let me know

Tonight is good for me. PM me here when you have an idea of what time you'll be around (I'm in the Central Europe timezone for reference which would be 6 hours ahead of you).

Tomorrow is a bad day for me because I'll be flying to the UK and in a hotel with no laptop. Friday is an even worse day because I'll be flying to the US. Saturday and Sunday I may be around but it depends on my father-in-law's schedule. After that I'm in Vegas for four days so most of next week is lost to me too.

Whats the time commitment per game? this is the only thing keeping me away from buying this game, i can play long single player games just fine since i can always wander away from them and pick them up when i feel like it, or alt tab constantly during them, but if i have to sit there for three hours to play someone else i don't think my attention span can handle that.

Anywhere from thirty minutes to one hour/

Anyone ever tried a game with 40 second turns ? Sounds hectic  :awesome_for_real:

Damn a 40 second turn would be nasty. That would really favor teams like skaven or wood elves I would think. A whole lot of run and gun. With dwarves or a brawly team you need some time to setup your blocks and knock people around with a wood elf or skaven team if people don't have time to try to block down all your guys you are just mainly running one maybe two guys around the field at high speed.

I don't know. I can get in under a minute with my dwarves if I'm not playing another bashy team. If it's against other dwarves or Chaos it takes a little longer.

I've had plenty of turns that only lasted until the first dice roll.

 :awesome_for_real:

Also I think I've improved somewhat. I can now beat the AI on easy more than 50% of the time! Though my last match left 6 Wood Elves injured, 1 dead and 2 spent most of the match unconscious. That one wasn't so good (who knew Skaven could be so lethal?) Kind of getting the hang of the whole thing of maximising the opponent's dice rolls, like IainC said turns might only last one of them. I'm enjoying the Wood Elves simply for the capacity for flashy play, grabbing the ball in my own half, running and throwing a long pass to someone who can run it into the end zone is fucking awesome. The AI seems to try to stick to forming up on the ball holder and pushing it to the end zone though.

I also got round to joining the Steam group.

Bought it.  Played one one-off game on easy.  I know GW products fairly well though I never played any BB.

Stuff:
People who have never played or liked Table Top games aren't going to like this, everyone who wishes they would just put them online so people could actually play versus other humans?  Fucking love it.

I'm going to play another game or 3 and re-read the manual and lookup that post with the keyboard shortcuts to show more info then I'll post whatever nub questions I've got left.  I need to join the Steam group too, is it public?

The AI has two tactics that it knows. Usually it tries both of them at once.

Firstly it will insert catchers deep into your half so that if all of its defensive line are suddenly face down on the pitch there's a scoring opportunity still, also teams that don't completely suck at throwing will try and get the ball to them
Secondly it will form a cage around the ball carrier and tank all the way down to your touch line.

Kill all but one receiver and mark the remaining one with guys who can catch and there's a very good chance the AI will gift you an interception - that's a turnover, possession of the ball and 2 SPP all in one handy package.

Breaking up cages is trickier, especially if it's a tough team like Dwarfs or Chaos. Main thing is to make them take a lot of dodge rolls by putting your own cage around their cage but one square away so that they are surrounded by tackle zones and can't block their way out of them. Teams that can tank tend not to dodge too well.

Typhon and I tried to play our game tonight but we couldn't start the game despite several restarts. Apparently it's a big problem as a lot of people in chat were complaining about it. We'll hopefully get it done at the weekend.

My match with Helm was a win for Helm, as my ISP decided to crap out on turn 2.   :awesome_for_real:

Dammit, 2 matches botched by technicalities? This sucks!

Yeah.  Like I said to Helm, it'd be nice if they at least gave you the chance to reconnect, and continue the game, rather than just quit, and eat a loss.  Maybe some day.

Supposedly that's on their to do list. But I'd take a fucking new internet UI over that.

Someone in a League I am playing had his key banned. He bought it through G2play. So it wasn't an empty threat  :awesome_for_real:

Good.

Yup their throwing and running teams try the first tactic all the time of trying to penetrate catchers deep. Most teams cannot pull it off correctly but you REALLY have to watch out for those damn elves and skaven. If they get people deep baring horrible luck they will score on you next turn guaranteed. The wood elves can make some truly sick and wrong pass plays and with their high agility they dance through tackle zones like they were not even there. For my lizard team the only way I have ever stopped the woodie team was to let them score fast off the opening kick off if they get the ball then grind it for the rest of the half and try to score on the last turn of the half if possible and for second half grind it the whole time trying to score only at the very end.

Skaven can pull something similar not as much of a passing threat but they will do the hand off train like crazy bastards and they can move it from their endzone to yours in a turn if they have gutter runners penetrated deep into your half and due to their agility they probably do.

Their caging tactics with their more bashy teams are pretty well done although once in a while the AI makes some WEIRD choices. In one game vs chaos the mino kept going deep to my endzone. The only thing I can figure is they were trying to use it as a receiver if they ever got an opening but why you would waste a mino by using it as a potential receiver is beyond me.

I just keep the Skaven on their backs, and keep at least one person on them at all times, to knock them back down.  Granted, I play Dwarves, so that's about the only viable tactic, since if their thrower gets loose with a receiver in my half of the pitch, it's all over but the crying.

Also, I have learned just how useless the bloody Deathroller is.  Absolutely not worth the money.

Anyone tried the goblins? I had a lan fun match yesterday with a clueless friend and realized what a crazy, useless and hilarious team they are. Looneys with chainsaws, Fanatics with Ball & Chain and Pogoers with... pogos?  :awesome_for_real:

Seriously, props for the mad mechanics. Love to chainsaw people to death or to ballandchain 3 players at once.

EDIT: Two trolls? Gimme!

The problem with the wood elves and skaven is when the computer is doing it right on offense there should be almost nobody for you to block aside from one blitz action. The computer at least so far has been pretty good at getting people down field then extracting most others from tackle zones on their turn. If you play yourself as a skaven or elf team it is a very good tactic once you have done all the actions you want to do get as many people out of tackle zones as possible the elves and skaven for the most part are not strong enough to brawl against the harder hitting teams but if you get everybody out of tackle zones they can at worst knock down one of your players per turn.

Where the elves and skaven get ground down though is when they are on defense. Breaking the cage for them can be VERY hard.

Honestly of all the teams so far the game is pretty good with the wood elves and skaven and dwarves and chaos. The teams at the far end of the spectrums can pull off best what the computer tries to do. The middle of the line ones like humans and orks tend to get mauled by me and the humans are not quite agile enough to do all the dodging he tries to do with them which leads to a lot of turn overs.

Goblins are a good team to play for fun. You are highly unlikely to win a lot but you can have fun killing the hell out of players people would really rather did not die horribly. Its a lot of fun and since your team value will be low so you can sometimes field the star player and having three trolls on the field at once is pretty funny.

You can make teams HATE playing you in tournies because while they will probably win you have a high chance of taking out and injuring some very high value opponents.

I'm 2-0-2 after playing one practice game in my easy mode league.  I still make a retarded TD costing or giving mistake per game it feels like but I'm getting the hand of picking up the visual cues more.  Work in progress to be sure but I'm almost at the point that I want to get into a public league and start getting face stomped there.

My main pub league team is goblins. I love them.

You use them for the "kill all their guys and then score" tactic?

The AI, on easy (:awesome_for_real:) seems pretty well done and from Iain's post I'm guessing that the basic tactics don't change much. Getting your players out of tackle zones as a Wood Elf is an absolute must. I also think getting a catcher player is worth it for the extra movement points they get (I've got a lvl 3 one in my SP campaign with block, dodge and an extra movement point who can penetrate opposition lines like a motherfucker and survive if necessary). The only team I really don't like are Skaven since they manage to do as much running/distance play as me but their Stormvermin also give them the capacity to do a decent cage run. Combined, they can grind out a cage and manage a deep pass if I make a mistake. Playing against Dwarves often feels unfair since I basically just have to wait for them to make a mistake or get an unlucky roll and it's a semi-garuanteed TD.

I'm undecided on the big guy players, the Dwarf one is horrible as the best you can hope for is to kill or wound a couple of your opponent's scrimmage line before getting sent off. The elf treant frequently loses the ability to move, though at least he remains a slight danger wherever you left him (and in one game he managed to kill the opponent's star player on the first turn which was cool). Seems like they're more useful with weaker teams like Elves or Skaven as they give you a heavy hitter to keep your scrimmage line secure. They don't seem as worth it for Chaos or Orcs, though I'd be interested to see what others think.

Sort of. At this point I have a full slate of 16: one of each secret weapon, two trolls, the rest goblins. I basically double the trolls with one offensive secret weapon per half to clear the middle of the field and then stunty/dodge my way around the opponent. There's no middle ground to this; it's either devastating or I get my shit pushed in. But goblins are surprisingly maneuverable, maybe more than elves due to the entire team having dodge and stunty.

Yup like the skinks goblins even at agil 3 are a LOT more manuverable around opponents than you would expect. Unless the dice gods are angry you can dance through 3 or 4 tackle zones without much problem.  Goblin tactics are the big win or the crushing defeat. It really does go one way or the other if the moons align and your secret weapons and trolls act comptent you can do some amazing things. If the force is not with you it can be pretty embarassing but hell if you lose you are playing a GOBLIN team so its a phyrric victory for your opponent anyway so laugh and point!

Make sure you blitz with your chainsaw their most expensive player everybody loves a good chainsaw massacre and people start crying when you murder their pricey players and their tears taste sweet to goblins.

The ball and chain guy I try to save until I am on defense. If you are playing a team who forms a cage and the moons align that guy is a one goblin cage breaking machine. Also if you have inducements and as a goblin you damn well should buy bribe a ref things. Using a bribe a ref usage will keep one secret weapon from being ejected after a drive/half. So you can milk the death longer. Remember you are goblins Foul the hell out of people hack them up with chansaws smash them with your balls and pray you get enough of them down.

I know dwarves are supposed to be one of the toughest teams in Bloodbowl, but my Chaos warriors + minotaur have literally spent the entire second half of a game actively running away so as not to add to my already substantial injured/killed list. What's the trick here? Even with comparatively equal armor skills, they seem to be wounding an ungodly amount.

Also, what's the mechanic for fouling? Strength vs. armor? The manual isn't too clear.

Got to say that's been my experience with Chaos as well, pretty disappointed with how they play - especially the mino.  He's a big fucking pussy.

Chaos are incredibly slow starting. Think of them as the anti-dwarves. Dwarves are the best team early on but really peter out against other teams that load up on maneuverability and match them in Block. Chaos are fucking terrible early on but with Mutations they can ramp up to dangerous levels; a friend of mine has a Minotaur with Tentacle and Claw. It's absurd.

Yup as others have said dwarves start out very nasty. Their players are highly skilled almost all have at least block and many have tackle and they also all have thick skull. This means vs a new chaos team they will win most matchups even if you are throwing two dice at them so you will get knocked around more and more chances for injury.

Chaos catches up FAST though and once you start getting guys with block/claws and if you can mighty blow you will start opening dwarves like a can opener. Chaos eventually gets to be the most deadly opponent for high armor value teams. With a mino with claws anybody he blocks basically has the equivilant of armor 6. The first skill up for any mino unless you roll doubles for block probably should be claws. With claws he starts causing a ton of injuries vs the harder teams and mightly blow does it for the weaker teams which allows him to skill up more and more.

Chaos like the lizards are a very very good team for long campaigns but start off very skill lacking.

If anyone is wondering where are the usual annoying updates, the f13 League is definitely alive, just waiting for the last match of day #3 between IainC and Typhon, postponed due to IainC being out until monday. We can't advance to day #4 until all matches have been played, and I guess everyone agrees we are in no hurry at all.

I disagree.

MOVE YOUR ASSES.

Incidentally, I will be away until Sunday afternoon. Babby shower.

For the record, Iain stayed up late Wed night to get the game done and we couldn't get past the "open port 16962" error while connecting.  We tried everything that was suggested, restarted both games three times.  No luck.

We're targeting this weekend to try again.

That bug is on their end three quarters of the time. It's just an erroneous error message that's ended up meaning every server issue.

There were a bunch of people bitching in chat about it at the same time, so that is the conclusion that we came to as well.  Sorry for the delay.

Fuck.  I wondered about that.

Me and my mate get it all the time.

They really, really have to sort out the Multiplayer.  It's supposed to be the whole point.
 :oh_i_see:

With that error I find that a wait and a relog usually fixes it. It's pretty infrequent.

When installing this, i assume that i download all four parts before running the .exe?

(Also, /wrists aus internet)

Got that on my first attempt to connect to a network game.  Forwarded 16962 through the firewall to the win32 box (tcp and udp) and then things worked.  Necessary?  Dunno.

Yeah. You're basically downloading a DVD in three .bins and an .exe.

Ok, ta. Download should hopefully be finished in time for the second f13 league.

I really need help on building a cage and running an effective running game.

What's your team?  I could be more specific.

For cage, the basic is to not commit 100% of your team.  If B is the ball carrier and P a regular player, the good simple cage would be :

P   P
  B
P   P

I play with Skavens so I rarely cage but I like to add an other layer on hte side where I'm expecting an attack :

   P   P
 P  B
   P   P
 P

Yeah what race you play impacts cage breaking alot.

When I play Agile I always attempt to just harrass the cage (if its in his half or close to LOS), frustrate the guy. Leave none of your players open to free blocks. Eventually the cage will advance so slowly that he'll see that his only chance is to make a break for it. Otherwise you can attempt to break the cage before it ever materializes; Press the ball hard with 2-3 players (not only low STR guys), force him to make as many dice rolls as possible (one will fail, eventually), try to keep is players occupied via. clever use of tackle zones, if you are the faster side, try to get behind the line of scrimmage, between his main blockers and his ball-carrier. Splitting his team up this way can be risky, but it puts pressure on him, forcing him to throw blocks or blitzes that aren't advancing his team down the field.

Of course, he might get a lucky pass off and cage the ball early. In that case your superior movement should allow you to regroup fast (and by clever positioning) the cage won't be overly strong.

If you are winning the STR war, just charge head first in with your strongest player (who preferably has Standing Firm / Side Step), prevent the cage from advancing (often by NOT engaging). Eventually you will get a block on the ball-carrier or his cage will be so tight that you should be able to chain-block the ball carrier out of the cage, leaving him open for a blitz, just remember to leave safeties, in case he does something out of the ordinary and makes a break for it!

This can be harder to pull of with a slow side, and very much not recommended versus agile teams (they will punish you for your mistakes).

I generally make a small cage, preferably with one side two to three squares from a sideline. That way I only have to devote protection to the one side. Once that's done, I stick as close to one person right on each standing opposition player that I can in order to head things off.

I think i've finally gotten the hang of this. Apparently i'm pretty  :awesome_for_real: with humans. Put me down for the next league whenever it starts.

I am aiming at September for the next league, right after the Steam release, to include all those waiting for it to purchase the game. If the Steam thing will get postponed, then we'll start the last week of August anyway.

This is supposed to be the big league, "f13 League season 2". But if we can finish Season 1 soon enough, then maybe there will be time for a "Season 1.5, Summer Extravaganza"  to keep things running and to let everyone's feet wet while we wait. The Summer Extravaganza would be with all new teams. Season 1 teams will get frozen until Season 2 starts (we'll sign them all up to a dead-league to be sure no one gets the temptation to cheat).

Cheat ? How ?  :awesome_for_real:

In other news I might not be able to play until I got my hardware problems sorted out, right now my PC reboots everytime I do something as stressfull as running a virus scan...

Already ordered a new PSU which should fix this problem. Most hopefully.  :awesome_for_real:

"Cheat" as in improving your team after League 1 is over and before 2 starts. When f13 League 1 ends, you can sign your team to Public League and get Money and SPs out of it. THAT would be cheating. I want all teams in the f13 league to freeze at the end of Season 1 and to start untouched at the beginning of Season 2. To make sure that happens, as soon as League 1 ends, we'll sign up those teams to a placeholder league until the real thing starts again.

Oh well, I will probably roll a new team anyway. Orcs or Chaos for the win.  :drill:

Typhon and I played our round 3 game this evening, final score was 3-1 to my Lizzies. I capitalised on a couple of breakaways with some unusual throwing accuracy from my Skinks. 2 completed passes and a bit of scrambling gave me a comfortable 2-0 lead at half time. I scored again within a few turns of the restart, again by breaking the ball out of a brawl and Typhon salvaged some pride with a touchdown on the very last turn of the game.

Neither of us really attracted much in the way of attention from the dice gods, long passes were always dropped, close ones worked about as often as they should have. Blocks mostly worked as expected too, there were no game changing moments of extreme jamminess or misfortune so it was a good clean game. Typhon only fielded ten men but myKOs didn't recover for the last drive meaning I only had 7 Lizards on the pitch for most of the second half. I was quite surprised that Typhon decided to score actually, I was expecting him to take advantage of his numerical advantage and try for some SPPs by beating my team into pulp. As it was I escaped without any injuries at all which was a nice change.

Well this thread got me to buy the game, along with playing 4 tabletop games on the weekend and recalling all the rules from 10 years ago off the top of my head.

I play humans with a fast passing style: the goal is a 2 turn touchdown. I have a lot of problems if a strong team like orcs or chaos forms a good cage. I found the AI pretty decent myself.

Yell out when the new F13 League starts!

Day #3 is over.

Results are:
Scadente (Black Amnesty) 0 - Modern Angel (Estalia Crushers) 3
Cadaverine (Team Bugman's) 0 - Helm (Luscious Lizards) 2
Falconeer (Bat Country) 1 - Aez  1
IainC (Tlachtlan Tornadoes) 3 - Typhon (Toothsome Terrors) 1

Here's the standings after 3 matches.

(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2617/3715518345_683bf7ef11_o.jpg)

Modern Angel solid #1 followed by Aez with 2 wins and a tie. Typhon gets the bottom with 0 points, with a slightly better Falconeer with 1.
Interestingly enough, Falconeer's orcs are the third team when it comes to TV with 1110. Modern Angel's Estalia Crushers are only 4th with 1100 despite being the league leaders with 3 wins and 0 losses. Typhon's Toothsome Terrors are worrying with a timid 840 after only 4 games. Next week I'll track Team Values fluctuations too.


Now, on with

Day #4

(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2447/3716329810_c8da87249e_o.jpg)

Aez challenges Modern Angel in a fight between the only 2 unbeaten teams in the league. Aez team is 100 points of TV better than Modern Angel's, but this means the leading dwarves will have 100k inducements to spend in a very unpredictable game. Definitely replay material.
Helm vs. Scadente, both with 2 wins, will be a good match to watch too.
Typhon vs. Cadaverine and IainC vs. Falconeer complete the day with matches between losing teams.



IainC, any chance we can play tonight or something? You still in the US? I am in no hurry, and pretty flexible as long as it's not in the euro morning.

P.S: Comstar, with an avatar like that it was a shame for you to be Bloodbowl-less! Welcome to the League (and join the Steam group).

Hehe thats one trick in bloodbowl the different teams favor different play styles so its always good to try out different ones till you find what works for you. Humans are pretty damn solid all around very fun team to play where you can do both the passing and running game. Scary combo my friend has which drives me nuts is both of his passers have nerves of steel and dump off. So they pick up the ball and if you try to blitz one to get the ball out they just dump pass it to a nearby catcher and play keep away from my leezards.

Heh, I learned that I'm not really a great Chaos player since whenever I try them I end up spending almost the whole match just bashing up the other team rather than trying to score. It's just too damned tempting.

Having gone scoreless in every game that I played, and frequent poor rolls, I felt it was more prudent to break my streak then beat you up.  Especially since I only seemed to be knocking your little guys down only 1 out of 3 tries.

Toothsome Terror Status Update:  My mino is dead, and a chaos warrior is out for the next game... the chaos warrior who leveled!   :|  Fortunately I had enough cash to buy a goatman.

Next match is the one where I turn it all around!

@NowhereMan: sounds to me like you are made to be a Chaos player, that has basically been the only strategy that seems like it has any chance for success - beat the other team to death.

The great thing about the inducement system is even the poorest player has a chance for some fun. You'll get big money every next game you play, would be nice to see a Star Player fielded in the League.

There are two nice balancing factors inducments help cause even if you really suck you can have fun with the extra star player or spells. The lizard man spell is pretty fun I was messing around with it and you give all opponents in a pretty big aoe area bone headed for a turn. That thing is almost a free score with skinks vs some teams.

The other balancing thing is if you go below 11 players you get a free journeyman lineman. That player has loner so is not great and won't skill up but you will never start a game with less than 11 people so you will at very least always be fielding a full team no matter how bad you get mauled.

I'm off to Vegas this afternoon and will be back Thursday afternoon. I can play you then, let me know a time when you're around from that point and I'll try and be there. I'm in Mountain Time which is 8 hours behind you.

Maybe I'm not understanding what you are saying, but I didn't get a lineman, I got a goatman.  I lost my mino, and had purchased exactly 11 to start, leaving me with 10.  I still had 4 linemen (chaos warriors).  When the game startd it looked like I had an extra goatman, not an extra lineman.  For Chaos, goatmen are the scrubs.

In most teams, Linemen are the scrubs. You get the equivalent of that for free - so you get Beastmen, I'd get a Skink and so forth.

Anyone who plays Dwarves well available on Wednesday for some practice w/ 1k teams?  I've got a West Coast league game on Thursday and I need to practice the matchup.   :awesome_for_real:

I found a flaw of a direct port from table top:

No balancing/nerfing (Could be a quality, I can't decide).

Look at the top 50 teams, Wood Elf a ridiculous.

I looked back a few pages and can't find the name for both the League or the Steam Group?

Steam group, just do a search for f13 and pick the groups results.

And yeah, it seems that Wood Elves are somewhat unbalanced in terms of their ability to capitalise on opponent's mistakes/unlucky rolls to make a quick touch down. I don't think the imbalance is enormous though, in general the better coach is going to win and other teams are capable of ruining their opponent's line up. Game balance wise that doesn't matter though because Wood Elves can still manage to get a luck TD in 2 turns with 5 players left on the field, if they're being played well and are reasonably lucky with the dice rolls. I'd guess that's why they're generally doing better in the Leagues.

Ignore the public league rankings. They're gamed to shit.

Also remember that a Wood Elf team is punished by people in the league killing their players.  Public league players just reroll the team until they get 5 or 6 wins w/ no bad injuries.  You don't get that option in a closed league any injury is one you have to deal with.

The thrust of the complaints with the game being centered around the public league rankings is irritating. I don't want to be all fanboy here (and I'd love some decent matchmaking) but the meat of the game was always going to be the private leagues. Fuck, I didn't even know there was going to be a public league at all until I got the game.

So the pubbie rankings are false, cheated, oh the forums we're crying blah, blah, blah fuck you Frenchie, go make some friends and shut the fuck up. You weren't going to place first out of 30000 teams anyway.

F13 Bloodbowlers Steam group: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/f13bb

The purpose of the group is just to tell at a quick glance who is online of the Bloodbowlers and maybe throw him a game invite, out of the game (in game messaging sucks beyond recognition).

I repeat the MANDATORY protip: Go to option and uncheck fullscreen, play windowed. As long as it's the same resolution as your desktop it'll look fullscreen as it's a borderless window. And ALT+TAB will finally work. Perfect for Steam communication while playing.

P.S: Any game #4 going?
P.S.2: IainC, we can make it thursday yes. Just let me know what's the better time for you. Say, 7pm GMT? Later? Earlier?

Woodelf teams are the best scorers in the game bar none. If you don't let them get the ball back however its pretty easy to win against one. Their team is SQUISHY they are very strong at the start of the league due to their high starting abilities. Once they face one of the more brawling teams though typically they are checked pretty quickly due to their players being VERY expensive and very easy to injure kill. In one game against a wood elf player in the league at the end of the game when I scored my last TD of the game to win with my lizards my opponent had 1 lineman left on the field. Every other person on his team was in the injured or KO'ed box.

Honestly in playing them more and more I am surpised people would even try them in a league. The longer you play the farther they will fall behind as their players get destroyed by chaos/lizards and orks. Scoring in 2 turns is all fun and games but once the opponent gets the ball and decides to sit on it the tricky part is getting the weak and low armored guys in there to kick the ball out again. VS my lizards its a near complete wall of STR 4 lizards so everything is throwing 2 or 3 dice against the wood elves and when they try to push my guys around they are throwing two dice my pick constantly.

The tactic for a brawling team if at all possible let them get the ball first. They will get it and they will get a turn 2 TD almost guaranteed. Once you get the ball cage up and spend the next 3 or 4 turns just killing people and if they are not being agressive moving slowly down the field. Basically you want to score only on the 8th turn.

On the second half you will then get the ball back probably with a bunch of their guys KO'ed so now grab the ball cage up and spend the next 8 turns BREAKING THEM. by the end of the game unless they give up and run away you will have killed or maimed half their team and won the game 2-1.

Wait, why does that Steam Group not have me in it ?

Ironwood, I posted that link like 4 times. I felt redundant every time I've done it, and still I knew you weren't in it and I was wondering if you were expecting some sort of payment to join.

I really quite like Wood Elf teams but not having played it in a private league and since the computer doesn't really concentrate on trying to kill as many players as it can I'm not sure how survivable they'll be. That said properly played Wood Elves really shouldn't be giving their opponents too many opportunities to bash their players. Defence all comes down to trying to force the opponent to make as many tackle checks as possible if they want to try moving the ball player and hoping that they trip up when the ball player's exposed since if you can get your hands on the ball there's a good chance you'll be able to score.

My brother was playing a team where he gave just about every motherfucking elf on his team Fend. It was incredibly obnoxious.

Cadaverine vs Typhon came out 1-0.  Many injuries were were had, mostly by Chaos, who couldn't catch a break the first half.

I stand by my belief that the dice are biased.

Depending on the time, I can throw together a new Dwarf team, and play a practice match, or three.

Again, if you judge by my track record, Chaos are the biggest bunch of pussies out there.  4 injuries before the first half.  NONE of those injuries got up for the second half.  NONE of those injuries got up when Cad scored.  Then two more injuries after that.  Fortunately Cad's luck had pretty much gone into the crapper by this point or it would have been 3-0.

Having to wait unitl season two or three... or five or six, to have a squad that doesn't blow is an odd design choice, imo.

My teams value is 800 right now.  Nice.

Modern Angel, what's your steam name?

Brocktoon

I have a scheduled game in a different league at 6 eastern tomorrow and curry to cook and serve until 8:30 or so. I can play after however.

Ok, 9 PM tomorrow?

I always enjoyed playing against Wood Elves with my Orcs. Of course, I play Orcs with an Orcish mentality, in that the winner of the game isn't always the team who got the most touchdowns.   :drill:

I will be there. I'd suggest bringing a couple extra body bags. My dwarves are feeling mean.  :why_so_serious:

No, I mean that's now about 3 times I've gone to steam and pressed the JOIN GROUP button.

I was thinking it needed someone to nominate me or something, because it just plain doesn't work.

 :uhrr: :oh_i_see:

Annnnnd Now it works first time.

Making me look like a cock.

Hmmmm.

I'll take that payment now though.

That Star Player is closer and closer. Are you planning to field it against me?  :awesome_for_real:

I'm pretty sure he used the Star Player Mino in our match.  I didn't notice him being any better than a normal minotaur, to be honest.  Then, from my experiences with the big guys, they're generally fairly useless for their price compared to another Blitzer, or Blocker.

I just played a game in the public "league". My Chaos team (Murder Squad) against a Wood Elf team. I won 2-1.  :oh_i_see:

His only player left standing was the tree thing.  :uhrr:

I killed 1 and injured 8 his players.  :ye_gods:

And now I got claws.  :awesome_for_real:

The main advantage to the star player mino/rat ogre/trolls is they are not damn morons so you can count on the big bad ass to do what you tell him to do. 

Claws on a minotaur is just about the most frightening thing in the goddamned game. They're dumb UNLESS they're blitzing/blocking. So just blitz them everywhere. It'll be fine.

I understand that claws help with injuring people, but could you explain to me how ? Math is hard, you know  :awesome_for_real:

The target's armor is capped at 6. I think it's 6. Someone will correct me. But they get Mighty Blow, Claws... that's a killing machine right there.

Yeah, some of the stats geeks on the official forums were reviewing mighty blow vs. claws and both improve chances of injuring with claws having the edge when you get to AV 9 players. Both together make it massively more likely that you're going to be injuring opposition players.

Got this game today and started playing. Will join the steamgroup and hope for a few matches versus you guys and of course a bit of nice leagueplay.
My chaosteam lost it's first match but at least harvested a good amount of skavenheads.  :grin:

That's where it's ugly since Minotaurs get Mighty Blow by default.

I gave mine block, because I rolled a double.  :awesome_for_real:

Aez: I need to postpone tomorrow if possible. I'm having some wrongbad problems with my PC that I need to get sorted before I can play.

Ok. Can't play Friday.  After that it's Saturday morning or Sunday.

Anyone found a way to remove the top corner match score (in the general menu interface)?  I swear it's fucking evil.  I have 17 win a 4 loss yet it always shows the loss, it's pissing me off.

Cool. We'll shoot for same time tomorrow? Worst case I'm reinstalling Vista tonight (my sound has spazzed out into a popping thing which has slowed all my games to a crawl) so it won't linger past tonight.

Oh snap. Forgot that I will be out of town for the weekend.  :ye_gods:

Whoever my opponent is, do you habe time later today ?  :grin:

(I am in Germany)

Your opponent is Scadente (Krummi). Let's keep the thing going!

Looks like he is from "that island" , lets see if I can get hold of him tonight. GMT is only one hour of to germany.

Seriously, Dwarves are bullshit at the start in a league.  Hella skills and good bashy statlines, I'm not sure how Orcs are supposed to compete with them.  I mean I can imagine slowing them down enough so that they don't score if I get some good blocks but how am I supposed to score on them exactly?  Tips would be appreciated.

Honestly it seems early on some teams (Chaos and Lizardmen especially) suffer relative weakness. Dwarves and Elves are two of the stronger starting teams, Dwarves because of the plethora of bashy skills and Elves because their high AG mean you've got a whole team that play the passing game well. Early on I think you've got to accept you're outmatched somewhat by Dwarves and from what I can glean from more experienced coaches giving advice your best bet is just to try and avoid getting drawn into a massive bashing game involving your whole team. Try and keep the ball moving and hope they open up a gap or two you can run people through. Orcs aren't really suited for a passing game but you can outrun Dwarves so just try for that.

Dwarves are supposed to be weak against long passes. Time to pull out that goblin catcher, outmanouver the dwarves faking/attempting a good caged run (orcs can definitely bury the ball if they so wish) and boom, go for the long pass when the goblin gets an opening. Orcs can pass well with the thrower/catcher combo. Protect and solwly push the ball while keeping your catcher(s) moving and have the dwarf cornerbacks worried for good reasons.

This is how I won a couple of games in beta, not a proven working tactics. Makes sense to me though.

early on lizardmen and dwarves if played well are pretty comparable. Dwarves have way more skills but lizards have a ton of STR 4 guys so they throw more dice so its pretty even on blocks. Skinks are very quick so if you can pop a whole in the line they can score past dwarves fairly easily. Dwarves are one of those teams though that starts really tough and is kinda flat after that.

Lizards and chaos start with really good stats but no skills so once they start to acquire those skills they start to dominate.

Woodelves are just pretty nuts but its made up for by the fact in a league after a couple games your team is going to be dead or injured in very bad ways hehe.

My last two games in SP have left my team with 3 stat debilitating injuries and 1 death. I'm not bothering to count the badly hurts and miss next game injuries either and that was (attempting) to play very cautiously. I also officially hate failing on 2+ dodges, especially when it's the first roll in a play and leaves the most of the rest of my team in bashy bashy range.

So yeah, Wood Elves don't like any kind of injury roll (the death came from failing a 2+ dodge roll vs. beastman on the last play of the match, sob)

OK, hit me up on steam when you are ready.

Going to have to postpone yet again. It's a hardware issue of some sort. Taking it to repair guy tomorrow. I know you're busy this weekend so it may have to wait until Monday.

I am out of town as well (http://dong.walismus.de/). No sign of my opponent before I went to bed.

See you all sunday evening.  :awesome_for_real:

Just finished a league game v dwarves as orcs.

Fuck that shit.  He took a very vanilla team, fan factor of like 9 and mostly blockers.  No slayers, 1 runner and I think 2-3 blitzers.  First turn he causes 2 casualties after a fan throws a rock ko'ing one of my blitzers.  So for the first two turns I was down 3 players.  The game pretty much went like that.  He got the 10+ on armor roles at least 7 times.  Caused 3 injuries, only one injury was permanent (-1av to a blitzer, woo) but still was a really fucking weaksauce game.  Down two players versus a team with stupid stats and everybody has block + thick skull it was a slaughter.  Esp since I have 3 black orcs 2 throwers so its not even a max strength orc team and I was down a blitzer and black orc from turn one on.

I also manged to get two players sent off.  Foul roll w/ +4?  I get double 1's and sent off.  Fuck you very much game.  I failed another foul w/ double 3's and sent off again.  Managed to cause no injuries.  Meanwhile this fuck playing dwarves which btw are the lamest WH race of all time and always have been gets +18 SPP overall and gets his fucking runner to L2 in one game taking no injuries himself.  Also he's got a buddy in our division which means one of the games I've got a feeling will have much less risk of damaging his team. 

I'm pretty annoyed.  What a waste of 2 ninety minutes of my life, never stood any chance at all.  Fucking hate dwarves.

On the upside, you took the defeat gracefully. 

 :awesome_for_real:

I haven't played this since beta but I played Blood Bowl years ago in a league.  I played dwarves due to the high armour value, considering they are slower you sorta have to focus on damaging the other team rather than play the ball.  High armour also means your players won't get hurt as much, which over a long league season, means they get gradually better at inflicting damage.  Very nasty.

If losing at Blood Bowl or getting fucked by the RNG gets you extremely hot and bothered this is really not the game for you. That's Blood Bowl.

Yeah.  The RNG/Dice are right vindicative cocksuckers in Bloodbowl.   You can play the best game ever, and still get totally fucked by the dice.

Sunday afternoon-evening is good for me!

I'm going away to Italy next week to get some sun on my "glow-in-the-dark"-body. But I'm good for Sunday, can you give me a time-frame Helm?

Aez, name a time. I can go Sunday night if you want. But on my wife's computer. :( My video card is slowly dying and the replacement won't be here for a week or so.

Right now?

Seriously? Don't do that, mate.

It is 2:43 Eastern right now. I need to hit the store. Want to give it a whirl this evening? 8:00 or so?

I'm about right now. On Steam

Timezones  :awesome_for_real:

Me and IainC are postponing to tuesday.

What's up with the other two games?

Modern Angel vs. AeZ
Der Helm vs. Scadente

Back in town, but I have to sort some things out before I can concentrate on Blood Bowl again. Like writing a 5 page essay about "notions of madness in Shakespeare's plays".   :why_so_serious:

"Shakespeare was a Blood Bowl player". Done.

I managed to win a game where my opponent had nobody left on the field, he started the final drive with 2 players, elves versus humans.  That was strange and convinced me to never play as elves.

Aez doesn't love me  :uhrr:

You went offline as I was sending you a msg on steam...

Dangit. Tonight? 8?

I'm becoming convinced that this game is much, much too dependent upon the RNG. Luck dwarfs strategy to such a monumental degree that, assuming the players are even remotely matched in terms of skill, they might as well just flip a coin at the start of the match and decide the winner that way.

Or maybe i'm just bitter after seeing a blitzer throw a field-length pass to a lineman in the bottom of the sixteenth.

I think I'll come back too late.  I'm playing until 4 pm east today, hit me on steam if you are still here.

Can you play tomorrow afternoon then? Or else I can't till next week or so! In which case I'll just forfeit the match.

I just got in the door so let me hop on Steam

Got my shit pushed in hard. When you lose two dorfs on the first turn there's really not enough speed to recover. The field was littered with bodies at the end from both sides.

Entertaining match for sure.  I'll try to post the replay later tonight.

My team is worth more than 1400 now.  How does the league rules handle this?  I'm assuming the 1400 limit was just for entrance and now there is no limit?

That's my understanding, yeah.

I can't upload my replay because it's bugged, it starts looping on turn 7.

Whoa! There's a new sheriff in town. And he's not a dwarf!

It was fucking brutal. If a couple dwarves go down against a fast team then there is REALLY not much you can do to cover the inevitable run around.

Just got a quick break from work, I'd be up for our match around midnight, if things go according to plan.  :awesome_for_real:

My rat ogre, with claw, had time to shred a couple of dwarfs before you fouled him out of the match.

Midnight is not doable for me, so....

Either I forfeit if you guys can't be arsed to wait, or else I'm back on the 30th and able to play again!

The 30th?! Sigh, I am leaving (for 3 weeks) August the 3rd!

If we are not done by then I will be forfeiting the last games too (it was a test league anyway), but waiting until the 30th just to complete Day#4 seems too much to me UNLESS we all agree to postpone the second half of the League until I come back August 24th.

So, vote:

1) We go on like now, waiting about a week to 10 days before forcing the forfeit and moving to the next Day. Means Scadente would be forfeiting games #4 and #5 and I will be probably fofeiting games #6 and#7

2) We freeze the league at this point and wait until everyone is back from holidays to resume. August 24th for me. Who else is going somewhere without a computer at that point?

I am totally ok with both options but I want to hear from you all fellas.

Eh, I'm fine with waiting.  But, I'm good either way.

For me neither, too tired. I ain't 20 no more  :ye_gods:

Since I do not have much love for my lizzard team (barley had any real games, most got decided by connection problems  :oh_i_see:) , I'd be ok with just finishing this league asap.
*shrugs*

Waiting would be ok as well, though.

I'd prefer finishing ASAP.  Especially if we want to move on and keep a decent pace with the next leagues.

Same.

If a game is forfeited or a draw is desired, the commish hits the little dice button on the game in question. That let's him set the score manually.

We still need IainC, Scadente and Typhon's votes but seems to me like the tendency is more about going on, having few people forfeit a few matches, or "force" some draws, and eventually getting to the end of this one fresh and ready in september for the Second&Serious f13 League.

Anyway, me and IainC are trying to have our game #4 today so we are not dead. If Scadente vs Helm is off until the 30th then we'll move on as soon as me and Iain are done. Or, if we can't manage to play for the next 3 days we'll force a draw to finally go on with Day #5. I am leaning toward enforcing a draw both for me and IainC match and Scadente vs. Helm, since I wouldn't know who to put the blame on for the delays.

For the next League I think we might want to put a limit of 10 - 14 days for matches to be played. No problem in waiting, but if we get more people the pace could become so slow that people end up losing interest.

About Aez concerns for 1400 Team Value, it's ok. Team Values limits apparently only matter at the start of a League. We'll see how and if to deal with it next League.

Given that there might be a few more of us playing in the next league, it might make sense to start from scratch so that the playing field is even.

Do this. Make it a weekly league. I think (stressing think) you can force roll it over if people finish before the week's up. But I just went through the horseshit of people fleeing in a large league I was running. You must have balls of steel.

Yeah, I am convinced it'll be much more fun to start out from scratch with the new League after the Steam release.

And yes, 10 day limit will be kindly enforced in the next League.

One the one hand, it's a TEST league, so it's makes more sense to push ahead.  On the other hand, we didn't set time limit rules up front.  I bring those two hands together and wring them and cannot decide whether i think we should push forward or wait.  Clearly I'm a big pussy - I'm ok with whatever you decide.

I agree with the 10 day rule for the next league.

By the way, in the Italian League my wood elves are being swatted like flies. Today's comedy highlight is not even a Wardancer failing a simple 2+ dodge roll (They have the DODGE skill, meaning to fail it they have to roll a fucking 1... and then ANOTHER 1!), no... much better: My thrower goes to pick up the ball following my opponent's kick off. So, it's the absolute first move of the game and my thrower goes for it (2+) and scores a 1, falls, gets injured!, leaves the pitch and turns over! 3 seconds into the game I am down a Thrower who injured himself and it's my opponent turn with a loose ball. I lost.

I've been getting absolutely crushed in my West Coast league, can't even cause injuries versus wood elves (I needed practice versus a tree, it kinda mixed me up).  I get a game versus the bottom dwelling Skaven in my division next but he's got such a low team value he's going to get a free rat ogre which blows.  After that I get the Chaos team that is ranking up and skilling up and then another pro dwarf team, joy.

Btw, I just learned to see your full schedule for a league go to manage team and then click games or whatever on the top right.

Never, never,  NEVER pick up the ball has your first move.

If you have skill like surehand or dodge, you wont get a reroll.  The game never gives you 3 chances.

If me and IainC can't play today I'll move the League forward with a draw, for both us and Scadente vs. Helm.

Sorry for the wait.

As an elf, my bad for making a team without rerolls. Other than that, there wasn't much more else I could do againts lizardmen. Red dice everywhere.

PATCH:

On the skill vs. luck, luck is crucial in Blood Bowl in the sense that you can make insane plays that really never should have succeeded if you luck out on the RNG or your sure fire game can be totally fucked by double failing 2+ rolls. On the other hand preparing for things you do to go horribly wrong is a large part of the skill of the game along with minimising the number of rolls you make and maximising the number your opponent needs to. Literally a crucial aspect of the game is making your opponent roll dice since every time he does (aside from blocking) is a chance that he's going to turn over for no gain.

That said it's depressing seeing a whole orc team making 3 and 4+ dodge checks and then double failing on my first 2+ dodge check. That said as Elves most of my dodge checks are 2+ so of course I get to see myself fail plenty of those.

Ouch! Damn!

I don't know what to do other than pick up the ball, it seems the most sensible thing to do.  But clearly my play needs improvement.  So, what should I be doing?  Hitting people or trying to move catchers to the backfield?

Go in this order:

1) Moves that absolutely cannot fail.
2) Blocks with two or more dice
3) Dodges that are extremely likely to succeed (hi goblins)
4) Pick up the fucking ball
5) Blocks with one die
6) Throwing the ball.

Don't forget to factor in the block skill when your deciding when in your turn to throw a block.  I often throw a single die I have block he doesn't before a two dice he has block I don't.

To add to this, after Unsub's post below:

You can tell how good a player you are by some general guidelines.

-The amount of 4+ and 5+ rolls you make (and to a lesser extent 3+), more = worse player

-The amount of players each round whose position only makes sense if you pass a test that is higher then 2+

-The amount of players each round you leave unused, sure sometimes its due to a terrible terrible roll but often you'll realize there was a better move to make first and even some contingency positioning you should have done either way

As Modern Angel says, the first thing to worry about in Blood Bowl is positioning. Assume that whatever roll you are going to make is going to fail and have your side positioned to make life hard for your opponent.

Is this even out in the NA market? I havent seen it anywhere.

Download-only at the moment.

Given this wise list, that's what happened in my Elf (me) vs Lizardman game in turn 1.

1) Moves that absolutely cannot fail. Ok, moving around. And I did, I placed a couple men out of tackle zones on the side I was going to call my "strong side"
2) Blocks with two or more dice - I had none. Wood elves are frustrating, especially against a team of 5 saurus and a big guy or something.
3) Dodges that are extremely likely to succeed (hi goblins) - They were all at least 2 or 3 dodge rolls to push my catcher deep into enemy territory. Was I supposed to try and fail a dodge BEFORE trying and getting the ball? Wouldn't that be a turnover with a loose ball anyway? So I wanted to get the ball and then, eventually, try the riskiest move.
4) Pick up the fucking ball - This where I fell, and my thrower died because of the falling. Didn't fail to pick up, he fell on a going for it of 2+ trying to get to the ball (nasty kick), and died.


Finally, me and IainC couldn't meet yesterday. I am advancing the League to Day #5.

So I was unlucky, not much to add on that. Just saying that I didn't have much else to do other than what I did. My biggest, stupidest mistake, has been going into the game without rerolls, but honestly the ball was kinda covered so I wouldn't have spent it anyway. What I couldn't predict was the dead of the thrower because of the failed go for it. That's what pissed me the most.

Day #4 is over.

Results are:

Helm (Luscious Lizards) 1 - Scadente (Black Amnesty) 1 - Not played - forced draw
Aez 4 - Modern Angel (Estalia Crushers) 0
Typhon (Toothsome Terrors) 0 - Cadaverine (Team Bugman's) 1
IainC (Tlachtlan Tornadoes) 1 - Falconeer (Bat Country) 1 - Not played - forced draw


Here's the standings after 4 matches.

(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2501/3751248743_77d62cc2fd_o.jpg)

Aez gets the top, winning soundly the big match with Modern Angel. Bad news for the Estalia Crushers as they get out of the match with a few broken bones, dropping to 7th place in the Team Value chart (below). Good win for Cadaverine, at the expensive of the extremely unlucky Typhon's chaotic bunch. With 6 points and 3 games left who says Cadaverine's dwarves can't aspire to the title?
Not so much to tell about the other matches with two unplayed (forced draws), let's hope for a better week 5.



Team Value fluctuations:

Team           -          This week TV         -          Last week TV         -        Last week TV position       -         TV Variation

1) Aez                            1440                               1200                                       1                                    +240
2) Scadente                    1120                               1120                                       2                                        -
3) Falconeer                    1110                               1110                                       3                                        -
4) IainC                          1090                               1090                                       6                                        -
5) Cadaverine                  1040                               1100                                       5                                       -60
6) Helm                           960                                 960                                       7                                         -
7) Modern Angel               940                                1100                                      4                                       -160
8) Typhon                       800                                 840                                       8                                        -40

--- League Total               8500                              8520                                       -                                        -20



Now, on with

Day #5

(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2667/3752032868_d22d05bcd0_o.jpg)

Scadente challenges Aezl. Another challenge for the unbeaten Aez, with lots at stakes as a win is needed to keep the top spot. Scadente has a healthy team, but the impressive TV of the skaven team might be too much of a factor.
Helm vs. Typhon, the first needs points, the second needs a morale boost. Will Typhon finally get a win?
Modern Angel vs. IainC While the standings say MA should win easily, the Team Value will be all at IainC's advantage. Interesting matchup.
Cadaverine vs. a mostly harmless Falconeer to keep on dreaming about the comeback.




P.S: Cadaverine, would you be on to play this sunday?

The only thing I find annoying is knowing what I'll have to roll for dodges, sometimes I make what I think is going to be a 2+ dodge roll move and discover it's actually 3 or 4+. Is there any way of seeing what I'll need before making it or is it just a case of memorising the rules for dodges?

No, and that has been my biggest gripe since early beta. It is seriously ridiculous that they haven't changed that yet.

Random image of the upcoming Dark Elves. This is the Heartripper.

(http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/6131/heartripper.jpg)

God I love this game.

Iain, whenever you want to play is good for me except tomorrow mid-day.

Oh yes this is one of my biggest bitches about the game. There really should be some display of the numbers needed to dodge so you have some gauge of how hard it will be specially for the non runty teams.

Could play today Scadente.  What's your steam name?

The worst part is the dodge table doesn't even make sense in the living rulebook so I'm not sure how the rule even works in all honesty.  I assume anything that isn't AG3+ and only trying to dodge Out of 1 tackle zone into 0 tackle zones will be a 5+ and only worth going for on a prayer, that isn't a great way to play but since I stick to bashy teams it works ok.

Yes, I can, sir.  Any particular time that works for you?  I'm free all day, and have no life in particular.  :grin:

Waiting for you on steam.

I just checked the Dark elf team in the rulebook.  They look completely overpowered.

They have :

2 assassins with the stab skill :  armor roll every time they hit with out a chance a rolling an attacker down or both down.
4 blitzers with 8 AV, 4 AG and block - sigh.
regular linemans with 8 AV and 4 AG - sad.

Don't they have ridiculously high point values, though?  Much like Chaos typically does.  Or did, anyway.

Awesome Day 4/Day 5 post Falc, thanks for all the effort.

Thanks all for the coaching.

Helm!  I can play pretty much any time this weekend.  I'm GMT -4 (US DST), so early your morning is not doable.  Statistically speaking, I'm a force to be reckoned with!

Absurdly high points values. They're good but holy fuck you can't start loaded.

IAIN IMA CALLING YOU OUT FOR TOMORROW

I'm good for tomorrow except for the evening (i'm in Colorado still so on Mountain Time). Let me know when you'll be around via f13 as I don't have Steam and I'll make sure I'm there.

With players that powerful I would expect to see a lot of people abusing the fuck out of the journeyman system (free players to fill your team up to 11, which can be used instead of spending money) in order to save up the cash for a full team.

As previously said Im in the boot-shaped-country untill the 30th, and I only have a five year old powerbook as a computer here. Im not back till the 30th (+1 day realistically). So if you can wait, great, but If Im holding you all back I will just forfeit the match!

I should be on a good part of the day cadaverine.  Hit me on steam if you want to play.

I have a family function until about 2 Eastern. Would 4 Eastern work? That's 2 Mountain, I think.

You are against Scadente, Aez. I am against Cadaverine.

Anything between 8pm to 1am Center European Time (should be 2pm to 7pm US East time) would work. I'll be on Steam.

I'll be home sometime tomorow, I'll let you know.

Modern Angel and I played our game this afternoon. Final result was a fairly comfortable 2-0 victory to me. To be fair to MA, he suffered some atrocious luck with GFI rolls causing some badly timed turnovers. He also threw a lot of blocks with 2 dice against which generally didn't go well for him. Another shot of bad luck for him came when I pushed his ball-carrier off the pitch and the throw in landed in his TD zone and just within 2 GFI rolls of an unmarked Skink to put the win firmly out of his reach. Later on in the match I could have made it 3-0 but my Skink failed to pick up a loose ball on the very last turn.

Two very bad games in a row for me. A few bad moves on my part but holy shit the dice have hated me for two games. I'm also a man down AGAIN next game.

After lots of game, I'm starting to wonder the level of skill vs luck.

It's closer to poker that it is to chess if you ask me.

Any indication of this game ever coming out on steam?

It's coming out on Steam in September for the main release so far as I know.

It feels like that sometimes  but I'm fairly sure that over a larger sample of games the cream will rise no matter what.  I still can't beat dwarves, its starting to make me go a little crazy, I managed a 0-0 draw versus them but I was the one with 8 guys left on the pitch (one dead the rest ko'd or badly hurt) at the end of it and got 5 spp only to show for the game.  That is my real beef, the fucking thick skull skill denies me any spp since I can't hurt the little fuckers to save my life.

Sometimes the dice will just decide to take a dump all over you and there's nothing you can do about that but part of the challenge of the game is placing the odds in your favour as much as possible. Against MA, I never had a block with less than two dice, I never had a pick-up roll of more than 3+ or a throw at more than 4+ and I always had a reroll for anything that was important. There were still a few times when a 2+ Dodge with a reroll failed or a block came up with two skulls of course but making a lot of marginal moves every turn is just asking the dice to kick you in the nuts.

You are playing lizardmen, don't brag about always blocking with 2 dices  :awesome_for_real:

Skaven, Human, Goblin and to a lesser extend wood elf have to tempt fate if they want to accomplish something. 

Also, I roll two 1 in a row with a reroll or surehand/doge almost every game. My last game yesterday ended up in a draw because I rolled two 1 in a row while a was going for it to block a lone runner close to my TD line.  To get that lone runner close to my TD line : he picked up the ball on a 5+ with out surehand, made 2 going for it, threw the ball with out a pass skill and 3 agi, and the catcher caught it with out the catch skill and 3 agi. The catcher then ran and made two other going for it.

I threw more than a few blocks with Skinks as well where you need minimum 3:1 odds against anything to get 2 dice. Also my team has picked up practically no SPPs, I don't have a single player with Block or any skill that gives a reroll - off the top of my head I think I have one Skink with +1 agility and one with +1 movement and that's it for advancements. Forcing your opponent to take as many tests as possible - dodges, GFIs etc is an important part of strategy. Assume that any move will fail and position yourself to either capitalise on his failures or backstop yours.

Sorry Cadaverine, I've been out all day and I've been an ass enough to not let you know. I apologise, I am so sorry.
Can we try again today?

No worries.  I will be available a bit after 5 PM CST, which should be Midnight your time.  Gonna be the same deal through Friday, so if that's too late for you, we can do it on Sat/Sun.

No, it's late but should be fine. I'll wait until 5.30 though. Beyond that it would be definitely too late.

I managed to beat Cadaverine's dwarves 2 - 0. Defintely a horrible streak of bad luck on his part. But hey... what can you do?  :grin:

(Trippy leveled up! I've given him Strip Ball. He'll be my Strong Safety now.)

Go me! :awesome_for_real:

Scadente will be back on the 30th, so we have to wait for his match vs. Aez.
Typhon vs. Helm? Any news?

We are in contact  :grin:

Friday looks like our best bet as I'm getting home too late due to work.

Aez, are you go on friday? Im not back until the middle of the night on thursday, so some sleep and Im fit for fight!

What timezone are you in? In in GMT, so sometime in the evening or the morning would be perfect for me.

Nice, I like some morning BB and I'm on vacation right now.  I'm east coast.  7 to 10 would be great.

Cancel the 7 to 10.  It's more like 7 to 8. 

7 for me is 12 for you?

Patchnotes ?

Where are they ?

Always check the Tech Support forum, the patchnotes have been stickied there for the last 3 or 4 patches.

http://www.cyanide-studio.com/forumBB/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=5566 (http://www.cyanide-studio.com/forumBB/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=5566)

Yes, but Im starving after travelling, so I need to pop out for some foods, I'll be back in an hour or two though!

Starving? After Italia? You did it wrong, mate!

Ok rdy.  Hit me on steam.

Crap too late, I have to go in less than an hour.  Can you play tomorrow?

edit : the match will be Saturday morning.

I was too busy reading this (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dark-Heart-Italy-Tobias-Jones/dp/057123593X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249045186&sr=8-1)!

edit: and as Aez said, the rat-pounding will take place tomorrow.

edit2: ordered!

Wrong again! THIS (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gomorrah-Italys-Other-Roberto-Saviano/dp/0330450999/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b/279-0857488-2892831) is the book!
 

An other lucky game for me.  Brucut the ratogre with claw is nasty.

(http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/7168/chaoself.jpg) (http://www.freecodesource.com/image-hosting/view/img150/7168/chaoself.jpg/)

Damn!  How many players did you have up at this point?

Never had less then 9 and I always started a kick/receive with 11 since I have 2 backups.

oh yeah, the supposed rat-pounding turned into getting pounded by rats!

The Highlight was when one of my CWs was about to get up and blitz the ballcarrier... he ended up... dead.

Good game!

Nice!

We only need Helm vs. Typhon now. Would be nice to advance to day #6 before I leave, but I understand if we can't make it in time.

Helm and Typhon! You are both online on Steam now! I demand your match to happen NOWW!!  :drillf:

Done.

I'm delighted! I'll push it on with day #6 in a few hours!

Day #5 is over.

Results are:

Scadente (Black Amnesty) 0 - Aez (Fraggers) 3
Helm (Luscious Lizards) 3 - Typhon (Toothsome Terrors) 0
Modern Angel (Estalia Crushers) 0 - IainC (Tlachtlan Tornadoes) 2
Cadaverine (Team Bugman's) 0 - Falconeer (Bat Country) 2


Here's the Standings after 5 matches.

(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2646/3785152852_bf3765e00e_o.jpg)

Aez keeps leading, and with two matches left he's n°1 with 3 points over the closest opponent: Der Helm! Who, win after win, turned the tables of a poor start by snagging the second place. And with the next match being an automatic win for the German due to Falconeer's holiday forfait, Aez has to stay away from hiccups against a returning and healthy IainC. Modern Angel drops to the third place for the first time since the beginning of the league, a consequence of his team getting seriously battered somewhere between games #3 and #4.



-------------------------------------------------------------
Team Value fluctuations:

Team           -          This week TV         -          Last week TV         -        Last week TV position       -         TV Variation

1) Aez                            1470                               1440                                        1                                       +30
2) Cadaverine                  1150                               1040                                       5                                       +110
3) Falconeer                    1140                               1110                                       3                                        +30
4) IainC                          1110                               1090                                       4                                        +20
5) Helm                          1110                                 960                                       6                                       +150          
6) Modern Angel              1000                                940                                      7                                         +60
7) Typhon                       980                                 800                                       8                                        +180
8) Scadente                     870                               1120                                       2                                        -250

--- League Total               8830                              8500                                       -                                        +330

Huge improvement on Typhon's Team giving some hopes for the remmaining two games, but terrible, terrible drop for Scadente's! From second place to eighth! Aez, who is responible for Scadente's demise, keeps getting better and with such a high Team Value compared to the chasers we can't see how he could lose the title at this point.

-------------------------------------------------------------


Now, on with
Day #6     ( 1 week to go! )

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3452/3784342031_0bc7b00e3b_o.jpg)

Typhon (980) vs. Scadente (870). Typhon for the honour, Scadente for a better placement. With TV advantage, this is probably the best chance for Typhon!
IainC (1110) vs. Aez (1470). The Skaven armada could get the title with a win here, but IainC is getting better game after game and his recent winning streak speaks of a force to be reckoned with.
Falconeer (1140) vs. Helm (1110) won't be a real match as your League Organizer will forfait the game. Holiday time, heh. So 3 easy points for Helm to keep hoping in some Aez stumble. Sorry for not yelding you any SP, Helm.
Cadaverine (1150) vs. Modern Angel (1000). A dwarf feud! And a match where the struggling Modern Angel, coming from a 2 losses streak, has all to lose and not much to gain. The TV difference in favour of Cadaverine could play a huge role in a surprisingly late-season surpass at the expensive of the former n° 1. This will be televised, on Monday Night Blood Bowl.

My poor dwarves.

Cad, I will need to wait until Wednesday to play our game but any time is good.

Ok.  I'll be available around 5:30 PM CST on Wed.  Just hit me up on Steam.

God dammit, why is this game not coming to steam  until late September?

Because Europe is beta testing it.

It's sitting there, waiting to be bought.

Was the US$ price always $49.95? I thought it was $10 less, but it may be my imaginationings.

Also, how long do games take to play? Several hours like real Bloodbowl?

I might just be able to afford this thing this week. Hopefully.

It probably takes up to about two hours per game, but it mostly depends on how quickly each player takes their turn. My friends and i have been playing with the default 4-minute/turn timer - so whereas i tend to play my turns out quickly (usually sub one minute), one friend sometimes takes nearly all four to make his moves. I think that if you're thinking of getting into it, even the most time-strapped person should be able to find space for one game every couple of days. 

We play the f13 League with a two minute timer and I must say you get used to it pretty soon. While sometimes it happens that you cry for a few seconds more, all in all it's a much more spontaneous experience, much quicker, with less waiting definitely resulting in shorter games and more fun.

I play in the Italian League with a 4 minutes timer and games often stretch to 2 hours and change. Plus I hate having to wait 4 minutes. In the f13 League games range from 1 hour to 90 minutes, max. Don't think I've ever passed the 1 1/2 hour mark with a 2 minutes timer. Much, much healthier.

I just bought it tonight. I haven't played in years. Most of my play was done during 3rd ed proper, none of this Living Rulebook guff (which was just changed so they could sell the miniatures without the cards that came in the box).

What are the rules around fouls? I can't for the life of me remember, but I seem to keep getting sent off. I may have even just quit a game in disgust right now. (Did win my first game back, against the PC though).

 :why_so_serious:

Fouls are a roll against the armour value with a +1 for each assisting player. If the armour roll is a double then you are sent off (Dirty Tricks skill means you are only sent off on a double if the armour roll is failed).

They have nerfed fouls, it is no longer a good idea at all to use a foul action each turn.  Its a purely situational tactic now not a b&b part of each turn.  They have made Sneaky Git such a terrible skill as a result that I can't imagine when you would bother to take it except on a team like Goblins.

You referring to Sean or me?  In challenge options you can opt for 1 minute turns!!  he'll hit accept then realise when he's only moved 2 players  :drill:

Played Aez tonight and the dice gods remembered that I need to be punished for something once again. Twice I had two dice blocks that came up two skulls followed by two more skulls on the reroll. I even had a three dice block that came up two skulls and a both down (on my Krox so no Block skill). Of the three fouls I threw, two resulted in a sending off and only once did I successfully manage to pick up the ball during the whole match. Not a great game for me but Aez did everything right and scored two TDs in the first half for a comfortable victory.

I remembered the first part, wasn't sure about the second.

I'm already finding the "no visible dice" thing around armour and injury rolls annoying. I'll add fouls to that annoyance.


Now trying to figure out how this player account buisiness works online..

Also, does anyone have any idea whatsoever why BloodBowl has a poor remix of the Battlefield1942/Battlefield2 music as it's theme?  :uhrr:

You can mouse over the target to see his stats and therefore his armour value. In most cases it's a straight roll unless you are fouling. Injury rolls are a separate 2d6 roll once the armour roll is failed so there's way to give you an idea of the injury you might cause before you've made your move.

Yeah, I know how it works (I'm an old school minis gamer). I just like to see the dice And the chart. Probably because I'm an old-school minis gamer.  :grin:


Anyone up for a quick friendly game? I'm on now.

Not sure if this is what you're after but, in case you hadn't seen it, you can toggle the chat window in the bottom left to display all dice rolls. The only annoying thing about this setup is I often miss chat since I almost never leave the results tab.

Not a huge problem, the chat icon start blinking when the opponent write something.

Azazel, make sure you are in the Steam f13 bb group whenever I feel like playing a public game I check who is online and start sending msg's.  Also make sure you switch from chat window to dice window like others have said.  You will still feel abused by the game since you and your opponent are standing there rolling the dice themselves but eventually you get over it when the feeling of "I've seen it all before" starts to set in.

So, Aez is basically the first f13 BB champion unless a miracle happens in Day #7. Cool!


EDIT: I suck, but I am the only one who didn`t lose with him so far  :grin:

You got me all excited that the game is on Steam.  But. . uh, no.  Still waiting until September.

I won but goddammit my star kicker got killed on the last turn.

Went up 260 points after the game and got me The Proletarian, the death roller.

2 injuries in a row on the 2nd or 3rd round, followed up with a KO a bit later.  I think someone slipped something in their stout before the game.   I did get the kill on his kicker, though.

Now to decide what team to use for the next league.  And also hire Tom Osbourne to provide coaching tips on football.

I finally won a game in my west coast private league (NAWBBL, I was 0-3 going into today), my orcs were up against a Chaos player who was down a CW to injury.  It was the perfect remedy since I out bashed him and the whole thing devolved into a giant scrum rather quickly.  I actually did a good job pushing my cage forward and forcing him to make desperate plays and the dice finally came to my rescue and punished him for them.  Once I was up 1-0 I stalled him out for 4 turns by just stacking vertical lines and making 2 dice blocks in front of him and threatening his beasty w/ the ball.  Since he only had one beast w/ agility 4 if I knocked it on the ground he was pretty much screwed so he had to be cautious and time ran out.  But not before I put a CW on a stretcher (thanks mighty blow!) which really turned the odds in my favor as I had ko'd another beast.

So I started the second half on defense but with a 1 player advantage and him down 2 CW's from the maximum and no mino btw.  I stalled him with vertical lines again and when he tried to run it right I pinned him on the sideline the second the block dice didn't go his way which thankfully happened quickly.  I ended up putting 3 of his players into the stands before he tried to run the ball to the left flank for a desperation pass.  He needed a blitz to clear the way and it wasn't to be, my orc grabbed the beastman by the horns and threw him to the ground.  I grabbed the ball, stalled at the goaline for another couple of turns and put in the insurance touchdown, I also smashed the knee of another CW.

Nobody grinds out a nasty face smashing win like orcs.  I got a second blitzer mighty blow and now I need to figure out how I'm going to contend with a goddamn rat ogre with juggernaut distracting me from the typical skaven silliness (thrower runs 7, passes it 3 squares for free to GR w/ block, who blitzes and runs 9 for easy td) sigh.

***

I can't wait to play against you guys since my starting team spending is so much more refined then it was when I made my team for this league.  I had read some idiot saying that you shouldn't worry about fan factor and I'm currently at fan factor 1 and always broke as a result.

Yep, will continue to do. Only problem is that not many are online when I get home - I'm at GMT+10

still re-learning the ropes so far, particularly on initial team setup.

Is there an easy way to tell during setup if you're kicking or recieving? I keep setting up in order to give the opposition a whalloping, only to find that I set up first and they're completely reorganised afterwards.

You can read in the "system messages window" if you won the coin throw.


I also think there is a message on the screen telling you if you are setting up for kicking or recieving.

It says on the screen "ORGANIZE PLAYERS BEFORE KICKING OFF" or "ORGANIZE PLAYERS BEFORE RECEIVING KICKOFF"

The most important thing is to have at least 3 rerolls, 4 if possible.  Also, for most team, it's better to avoid the big guy for the first few game.  They are a huge source of turnover with their loner skill and lack of block.

Well, the number of rerolls depends on the team. More expensive teams are going to end up with less rerolls just to get enough people on the field. I suppose there's an argument for letting your linemen be filled with mercs but fuck a bunch of taking my MVP awards away from people I keep.

Wood Elves could be an exception to that. Since your big guy won't ever be trying to pick up, catch or throw the ball lack of rerolls isn't such an issue and even without block it's really nice to have someone on your team who can give bashing a go. Of course he's probably not as useful as an extra 2 rerolls (which cost as much as him when setting up the team)

You can't start a team with merc I think.  You need at least 11 players.  Expensive team should simply use more linemans.

What the fuck???

Playing the AI - a skaven team threw the ball and then handed off the ball later on..

Yes you can hand off in the same turn that you throw. You can't do more than one of each however.

Fuck that makes Skaven unpleasant. I assume it also makes WE's unpleasant as well.

for my latest "I don't know what my buttons do" question - is there a way to view my team roster once I'm in a game? I can't figure out how to or if it's even possible. That was always an important aspect of managing your players' SPP.

If you hit N 3-4 times you get the SPP readout which I think will do what you want it to do.

Come on fellas, get to the finals already. And post the replays, dammit!

We are kinda waiting to get into the next league!

We still have one game to play I think.

Oh god yes they are the kings of the fast TD due to this. Its really darn hard to keep them from scoring unless the game gods are against them. One long throw a run and a hand off can score from one end of the field to the other.

Should we force a draw and advance to the final round?

Thats me and Typhon, Im ready to play, but never catch him on steam

The Forces of Chaos clashed (with a total of five chaos warriors on field)...

Black Amnesty won 2-0 and killed one of the beasts in the process!

Sorry it took so long, work/personal life has been rough this week.  Work especially, quiet during the day (while at work), then stressful/tedious after hours. 

Took another ass-beating, I think I had three men on the field by the end of the game.

(http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/1442/32537021.jpg) (http://www.freecodesource.com/image-hosting/view/img504/1442/32537021.jpg/)

Think I can make it?  Those stats are insane.  I think there's only one Skaven team in the top 50, they are random with their low armor so it's really hard to NEVER lose a game.  Also, I'm playing against all races, even if my draw is of course VS a dwarf team.

The people at the top game the system. You won't make it.

I'll be back home in 4 days. Then we'll finally advance to day #7 to conclude the league and advance to the next one. Thanks for your patience.

Mwahahahahhahaahha

I just stomped some dwarves with the help of crazy generous block dice and receiving the initial kick, he had 3 player left on the field by the last turn.  I didn't cause any lasting damage but it got me an important 6 points which makes it conceivable I could earn promotion to the second division in Season 2 of our league (32 team west coast only league, top 2 teams in each randomly assigned division go to the top flight, 2nd and 3rd go to the 2nd division etc) though its still a bit of a long shot and I still need help.

Mostly though, stomping dwarves feels good.  Also getting 2 td's with my top player (should have been 3 he missed a catch and a pickup on turns 15 and 16) to get him to L3 was satisfying.  Can't wait for the f13 league to start up public league games are so bleh compared to private.

Day #7, the last one, is on. Let's do this and advance to the next season!

Scadente vs. IainC
Typhon vs. Falconeer
Aez vs. Cadaverine
Helm vs. Modern Angel

Helm, I have a babby now but I'm still flexible enough to work around most anything you need as far as scheduling. I'm East Coast so let's work out an amenable time.

IanC, Im back home on the 27th, after that Im ready when you are (GMT timezone), Im guessing you are in Europe too, unless my cyberstalking skills are on their decline.

COol, Yeah I'm in Germany so CET timezone. Looks like we'll get ours done at the weekend barring multiplayer connection problems.

I am up on Steam pretty much all day Typhon, if you feel like playing our match. How's the other three going?

I should be on tonight and tomorrow night between 7PM and 9PM EST, I'll see if I can find you.

If anyone wants to get into a private league and lives on the West Coast (PST/MST timezones are accepted, PST is the standard for scheduling games) I'm in a 32 team league that has its second season starting next week.

Here's the thread to get considered and put your name in line. (http://www.bloodbowldigital.com/forum/index.php?f=7&t=336&view=unread&rb_v=viewtopic#unread)

Its a good league, we've got something like 8 drops out of 32 teams, we're completely reforming the league based on Season 1 standings, so top 2 teams in each of the 4 divisions are  going to the first division 3rd and 4th to second division etc.  So Divisions 3 and 4 will have new coaches and old coaches rerolling teams along with a few of the weakest teams from season 1.

Hm. I somehow forgot to burn my Blood Bowl files to CD before I upgraded to Vista and a new HD.

I did send an Email to Tech support, maybe they will reactivate my download rights ?

Me vs. Typhon, 1 - 1.

I am the only one who didn't lose against the Aez juggernaut, and I'm the only one who didn't win against Typhon. I am happy he scored some points, though.

What's up with the remaining games, guys? You all bored/dead or what? Last match to advance to Season 2 or something.

Steam says Cadaverine has not been online for 22 days...

I have not heard from Der Helm. I am ready to play whenever.

Scadente and I have tried to play three or four times so far but we keep getting stymied by the multiplayer issue. We can both play other random people and we've been able to play other league games but no amount of spamming invite, restarting the client, bouncing our routers etc will let us connect in game. We've decided that if we can't get past it by the time the last game from the rest of you is finished, we'll call it a draw.

Yeah, I've been busy with work for the last month or so.  And I rarely log in to Steam on top of that.  Anytime after 5:30 PM CST during the week, or whenever on the weekend, and we can get my loss wrapped up.   :awesome_for_real:

When is this going to be available through steam?

September, supposedly.

Scadente and I finally played our game tonight after several frustrating failures to get the game to connect over the past few days. He outplayed me for a 2-0 victory. I had a couple of scoring opportunities but they weren't reliable, requiring that Skinks managed to throw a ball accurately and then catch same. Unfortunately I never got to test the strength of their throwing arms as I managed to fail stupid stuff like dodge rolls or two dice blocks with a reroll every time I was setting the move up. Also my team were clearly wearing their training armour as I could only field half a team for most of the match due to injuries and terrible recovery rolls.

I don't think I'll finish last though so I'm pretty happy with things overall.

I've got last locked up tight!

It's September!  Make it happen. 

In the event that it hasn't been done already, I'm going to forfeit my match, as I no longer have the time to play.

Ouch! What happened, Cadaverine? Good or bad stuff?

Little of both.  Lost about half our team at work, so things are a bit hairy while waiting for management to get it's act together, and replace people.  Since our manager, and the two asst managers will be leaving, I figure I might actually put in some extra effort, and shoot for one of their jobs.

Der Helm, am I to presume that we won't be playing our match?

I wish it were so. The September release is rumoured to be bringing in Dark Elves (which happen to be my favourite team), along with a host of other fixes.

So, I cannot find any info about when the fuck this game is going to be released on steam.  Anybody know anything?

Well,


And still no Steam. What the hell.

Almost missed this, from the previous patch:

Yeah, just got that e-mail too.

And I have two weeks holiday starting tomorrow.

 :why_so_serious:

Ask and thou shalt receive (http://store.steampowered.com/app/11170/)

f13 league now plox.  I abandoned a really cool league when I moved because I hate online commitments.

I take it that the current f13 league is dead? Also, Dark Elves were released last night (see above).

* Edit: derp, read Prospero's post.

Wait no, it was actually Falconeer. Jesus christ i'm slow today.

If this got put on Steam, I'd play it. In fact, it's the only game ever I really "liked" Dark Elves in. So uhhhh, this is lame.

The last league lost its momentum at the end of July, summer hit, I left for the States and a few others had prolonged absences due to holidays. More, the game never made it easy for people to arrange games and our f13 Bloodbowlers Steam group didn't completely solved the problem, and I'm sure at some point everyone got tired to use slow forum PMs or unanswered Steam IMs. The league has been a success in my opinion, even without its final chapter. The funny thing is that we don't have a winner despite 6 and an half weeks played. in fact, with just one match to play, the standing is:

#1 Aez - 16 points
#2 Helm - 13 points

If Aez loses his last match (vs. Cadaverine) and Helm wins (vs. Modern Angel), then we need a final tiebreaking match to declare a winner.
I'd love if you people would try and play those two finale games.


I'm all up for a new, better league. Of course we need at least 8 players and I am not sure it can be done. Who would be up for it?

Oh wow, I haven't played in age.  I'm on steam allot - Cadaverine : simply send me a msg and we can play.

(http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/2793/panel09.jpg) (http://www.freecodesource.com/image-hosting/view/img254/2793/panel09.jpg/)

Someone should gift me it because I just bought Armored Princess without looking at coming soon.

Not because I'm a whore though.