Monday 18 September 2017

Blood Bowl! - A beginners guide to teams! Part 1 The tier system



I'm back


Hey Everyone!

It's been a while i know three years almost to the day when i gave up on Warhammer 40k.

When you have been so into a hobby for ages and you get out its really difficult to motivate yourself to get into the hobby again as its difficult to get myself back to the same sort of level i was at and the huge amount of time i put into it.

As such despite games workshop getting their act together i doubt ill ever be able to get myself into 40k again (Although i'm following all the model releases!).

A game however I've never lost interest in was bloodbowl. How a game that was barely supported for 10 years has stayed so popular plays to the games strength. I've played this game on and off for a good 16 years and now it's once again being supported (Good on you GW) i thought it would be a great time to get back blogging.



I'm going to try and write a blog once a week whether that's random musing or on the league i'm in hopefully you will find this great if your a beginner.

This week i'm going to introduce the bloodbowl tier system and note which teams to go for as a beginner.

The tier system

During it's years of neglect, the bloodbowl community never stood idle. Tournament after tournament club after club kept the game going. In this period a system of assessing each team came about. This was known as the tier system.

This identified which of the teams were inherently stronger than others and which team would be easier to use as a beginner. The people who created bloodbowl never hid that some teams were better than others. Infact they created more challenging teams in order to test more experienced players and potentially level the playing ground.

Most clubs have different ranking based on how they run their league. I'm going to put the tier list created by the UK Team tournament. I've also noted down my own ranking as well especially as starting a team from scratch is different to a tournament team where you get to allocate your skills.

What makes a good Bloodbowl team?

Before i reveal my list i thought i'd go briefly want makes a good team. In bloodbowl there are three types of player. Lineman, Positionals and Big Guys.

Linemen will be the chaff players not expected to do anything but assist with the play of your positionals.

Positionals are players that are recognisable due to them not having a 0-16 choice. These players tend to be the flavour of the team and the ones that will score you touchdowns. An example could be a human blitzer or a black orc.

Big Guys are well the big guys. Ogres, Trolls and so on. These are tough but unreliable players that are there essentially to bolster the line.

So what makes a good team?

For starters a good team starts with a lot of inbuilt rerolls. I mean players with sure hands, pass, catch and dodge. This means that your less likely to use team rerolls on basic actions.

Secondly access to a lot of positionals off the bat mean that your best players are generating skills earlier. If all you can afford is 9 lineman and 2 positionals, your not going to be as good with a team that starts with 8 positionals and 3 lineman for example.

Thirdly positionals that are easy to skill up means your better players become useful much quicker. For example its very easy to level up a gutter runner, but not so easy to level up a blitz-ra who has ag 2.

Lastly the quality of your basic lineman. Obviously a team is easier to use if the majority of your team are of a higher quality than that of your opponant. Obviously a dwarf lineman is better than a goblin.

The tier list

With all the above in consideration this is my tier list ranking the teams from 1 being the best to 5 being the worst, and the UK Team Tournament tier list which goes from 1-4:

Mike Beginners rating UK Team Tournament ranking
Amazons 1 1
Orcs 1 1
Dwarfs 1 1
Undead 2 1
Chaos Dwarfs 2 1
Dark Elfs 2 1
Wood Elfs 2 1
Norse 2 1
Skaven 2 1
Lizardmen 2 1
Elfs 3 2
High Elfs 3 2
Humans 3 2
Necromantic 3 2
Slann 3 3
Khemri 4 2
Vampires 4 3
Nurgle 4 3
Chaos 4 3
Chaos Pact 4 3
Underworld 5 3
Halflings 5 4
Goblins 5 4
Ogres/Snotlings 5 4

Does this mean you should plump for a team in my tier 1 if your starting out? not necessarily but they are much more forgiving. The teams in my tier 2 and 3 are definitely also relatively easy to use but less forgiving. I would avoid tier 4 and 5 until you've mastered the basics. They are only going to frustrate the hell out of you otherwise!

In future weeks i will go through the reasoning behind both rankings. There are currently 21 teams so i'll discuss three teams a week. If you have any requests please write them in the comments. Until next time however keep safe sports fans!

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