Blood Bowl: Mini-League

Earlier this week 4 of us started up a short league in the Blood Bowl client. We each made a starting team at TR 1000 and the game automatically builds a double round robin schedule with a cut to a final game. So each team gets to play 6 or 7 games and then we're done. What happens at that point is up in the air. We could run it back. We could start new teams. We could call it a day. The bottom line is it's fun to play games and this gives some structure and an obvious goal without actually tying up too much time.

What are the consequences of playing such a short schedule? Well, leveling up seems fairly rare. In general it can take a lot of games to level up some of the players on your team and you're not going to get those games in. So ideally you want to play a team which has good default guys. As Duncan commented on an earlier post chaos teams can turn into real monsters with enough play... They have access to mutation skills and you can build some pretty sick dudes. But if you aren't going to gain many levels they're just going to be a bunch of mediocre thugs with absolutely no ability to play football. Similarly you're not going to earn enough money to buy a full roster of awesome dudes so some of the more expensive teams aren't going to have time to come into their own.

Another consequence is winning matters a lot more. We all want to win in general, but in a long league format sometimes you're happier just skilling up some dudes and surviving. In a format where half the teams don't make the play-offs and there is no long term? Just win, baby. Again, this means a team with some ability to play actual football should be a plus.

Dying matters less. With the new loaner system the game gives you enough dudes to field 11 guys. So while I'm still sad that one of my players died in game 1 and two more suffered permanent injuries in game 3 it isn't the end of the world. My team is still playable with a bunch of loaners. In a long term open league I'd probably have started a new team after that first game since losing an 80k guy off the hop is crippling in the long term. But here I'll just run with a loaner dude on the front lines and be ok. I'll whine about it, of course, but the team can play on. You get loaned a lineman so this means it seems like you want a team with good linemen. Getting a free halfling is pretty pathetic. Getting a free 70k dwarf or elf seems a-ok.

Inflicting damage on a future opponent, oddly enough, matters more. Especially if you know you're playing the same team two weeks in a row... After my game with Sceadeau was getting out of reach you better believe I was trying to foul his skilled-up players in an attempt to knock them out for the next game!

I ended up playing a dark elf team in this short league. I figured I was happy getting free 70k linemen when guys went down. I figured they'd have a decent shot of pulling out wins with crazy passing plays if it came down to it. I hoped having 8 armour would be enough to stop complete blow-outs. I wanted to get better with agility teams. Perhaps most importantly I had a good theme lined up for a dark elf team (I started one in the open league but it had a bunch of guys die in the first 2 games so I deleted them). I figured deep space is pretty dark, so my team is the Deep Space Elves, named after characters from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Elim Garak, my assassin, got killed in the very first game. Poor guy. Odo, my runner, is leading the league in running yards, passing yards, catches, and touchdowns. The team is only 2-2 and I'm catching brutal game losing mistakes before I make them... And then making them anyway. Eventually I'll get the discipline to actually skip stupid actions that I know are stupid!