Monday 23 October 2017

Dark or the light? High elves and Dark Elves in Blood bowl


So after a week off in Tenerife time to get back to blood bowl.

Focus on this week Is two very similar teams and two Warhammer fantasy adversaries. No idea if these guys exist anymore! But in fantasy they were the bitterest of enemies.

Of course, in the Blood bowl universe this matchup is simply the blood bowl version of Arsenal vs Tottenham…. I wonder if Malekith watches from the stands with Tyrion and Teclis? Now wandering what all the thousands of years of bother was about? Perhaps a wager or something?

So which are you light or dark? Well that’s see…





Elves

First a quick note on elves. Elves are all ag 4. This makes them play so differently to any other team I’ve mentioned. Every player is good at passing and catching. This makes them all adept at the passing games

This also means your average lineman is also better than average. In a team like this getting spp with these linemen certainly isn’t a bad idea (unlike all the other races I’ve reviewed!)

What’s more all the elf teams have the ability to easily 2 turn touchdowns. What I mean is they can pick up the ball in the back field spread 5 or 6 players into the opponent’s half in scoring positions, they can then only blitz one meaning there are 5 other players at a minimum in scoring positions. That’s difficult for anyone to defend against.

Most of these elf teams don’t have a big guy and as such the way they pull apart a cage is different to other teams. They require a bit of guile and leaping. Don’t expect to outmuscle a team!

Anyway, let’s start and go to the dark side!

Dark Elves

I’ll go with Dark elves first. The linemen here are like a human with ag 4 and they have no access to big guys.

However, the team really comes into its own with its positionals. Witch Elves start with jump up frenzy and doge and are mv 7 jump up is very irritating for the opposition as them being put on their arse doesn’t stock them block and moving full speed to help a defence. Having frenzy from the start as well narrows the defence (you don’t want the corner of the cage next to the board edge after all!)

Blitzers are the same as the human counter parts. They sacrifice the strength skills for agility skills and +AG. Best thing about these guys is you can have 4 and they score easily. Their lack of strength skills as a normal skill shouldn’t be a problem skills such as dodge and jump up make these players nasty. Roll a double? That’s when you can start turning these guys into normal blitzers (Mighty blow etc)

Runners are ok, id resist taking both as taking too much av 7 makes your team fragile especially as a positional. Dump off is great as if he is blitzed he can pass off to a blitzer.

Assassins are the weak players in the team for me. Shadowing is next to useless on mv 6 as the people dodging away are likely to be players who are faster or just as fast. By shadowing as well it can pull your defence unintentionally out of position. Stab pretty rubbish unless you’re up against fragile ball carriers. There is potential for a throw away cage buster with leap maybe? The other players however in my opinion are a lot better.

The main issue with this team is cost. There cheapest player is 70k. Human, and Orc teams almost have a full roster straight away. Dark elves (and high elves later) can only start with a few positionals meaning you need to choose carefully.

This is a top team with some very fast and agile players. With AV 8 as well is relatively resilient. This is definitely a softer introduction into elf ball and easier than the other three. A good option for a newbie who fancies something different to just smashing their way down the pitch!

Mikes starter team:
Blitzers 4
Linemen 6
Runner 1
2 Rerolls

I’m not a fan with starting with 2 rerolls. However, with dark elves starting and levelling the blitzers up probably offsets the need for rerolls at the start anyway. Rerolls are cheapest of any other team as well so cheaper to buy in the future.

Get an apothecary then another reroll. Then get the witch elves. I’m leaving these till last because they come so well skilled that they don’t need skills to slot into an experienced team. Therefore, you can have 4 blitzers each with 2 skills and witch elves turning up and getting one skill (Block) and then there almost as good as wardancers! Get an assassin last if you want but I wouldn’t bother!

Id mould your blitzers in what you want them to do so a couple of tackles a couple as cage annoyers (dodge and sidestep, guard if you get a double) Maybe even make one a cage busted…. Leap and strip ball.) I wouldn’t just focus on positionals here either. Having 3 linemen with dodge makes the front line irritating to take out and believe me when I say you’re going to be dodging A LOT. You also can’t be relying on big guys to toughen your line up so having a dodging front line isn’t a bad shout.

High Elves

A lot of what I’ve said about dark elves is applicable here the differences here are in the positionals.
Instead of runners High elves get a thrower who has pass and safe throw. Sacrificing speed for armour and good passing skills I don’t think is a great trade off. He’s basically a bog-standard thrower now. He’s probably never going to get intercepted mind! This offsets the lack of speed a bit meaning you can throw the ball over heads a lot easier allowing the catchers to score.

High elves get blitzers as above however they only get 2. However, they do get 4 movement 8 catchers. These guys are nice and they remain at strength 3 unlike most catchers who get a strength decrease. They don’t however start with dodge which is a drawback however these players have a lot of potential.

The difference between dark elves and high elves is that high elves are better suited to passing and dark elves to running. The lack of skills like dodge and block make them harder initially to use which is why they are a tier lower than dark elves.

This team is a little harder to use than dark elves but an experienced player will have great fun with the catchers.

What edges dark elves here though is high elves don’t really have aggressive cage breakers. No witch elves and a limited number of blitzers means defence against stronger teams is a lot harder. This is why they need a bit of experience before using them.

Mikes starter team:
Blitzers 2
Catchers 2
Linemen 6
Thrower 1
2 Rerolls

As with dark elves get the apothecary follow by another reroll. Then get the final 2 catchers and thrower. I’d say in terms of levelling get the catchers and blitzers scoring and get them both blodging as quick as possible and again get 3 dodging linemen as your front line.

A lot of what I said about dark elves also apply to dark elves… hence the small write up…. I’m not just biased towards the dark!


Next time I think I may finish the elf quartet! Until then!

No comments:

Post a Comment