Blood Bowl: Unbalanced Teams

One of the things I love doing with games is finding ways to be overpowered. Kill hundreds of monsters in an underwater submarine with the morph ability in order to max out my stats? I'm in! Working to refine the optimal British play in A Few Acres of Snow was a ton of fun and something I'm pretty proud of. So it should have come as a surprised to no one when I went over the linemen for every Blood Bowl team to try to find the best ones earlier this week. The conclusion I came up with is that the price of block compared to other stats was too low and that I should play the dwarf team or the norse team. I have since played a few games with both teams and have really liked having block all over the place. I'm still learning small scale tactics so my win-loss record has been pretty poor but my guys have been surviving and I've been having fun.

I did an unrelated web search yesterday in an attempt to figure how the game ranks teams in the league. I never did find the answer to that question but I did stumble across a page for someone who posted guidelines for designing your own teams by building your own players. He went over a bunch of rules for how to make sure your invented team wasn't underpowered or overpowered. Most of the rules he gave have been followed by the published teams but he listed a few exceptions where some players are too good or too bad for their cost.

In the category of too bad for their cost we have halflings, hobgoblins, and the amazon thrower. Halflings are very cheap but what you get for that small price isn't justified. They really do need an extra movement or armour to justify their cost. Halflings and hobgoblins were apparently intentionally overcosted just to be mean. The amazon thrower pays too much for pass in what was probably an accident. But you're only paying a little extra and only on one or two players so it's not really terrible.

In the category of too good you have dwarves, norse, undead, and high elves. Dwarves and norse are too good because it turns out block on their linemen doesn't cost enough. Hurray for my guess! Undead were too good because zombies only cost 30k when this guy wrote his webpage. They cost 40k now which brings them more in line. I was thinking zombies looked pretty sweet as it was... For 30k that would be ridiculous! High elves have one undercosted roster player (the catcher) and they changed the team at some point to allow 4 catchers. 8/3/4/7 catch for 90k seems pretty good.

Once I saw that he was listing undercosted teams I figured I'd give the best ones a spin... Turns out I already am! Block is so good and not costed enough on the dwarf/norse linemen for whatever reason. A quick search for norse linemen online turned up a guy actually suggesting you fire any lineman that gained 3 levels without getting a good level roll. Because they already have block so you don't need 3 more normal skills! Seems like a decent way to keep your team value low. I don't currently have to worry about that since only one of my guys has a level so far. I need to get some more games in with them this weekend to see if I can't rectify that situation.

One issue is that they both play similar games. They're not trying to play football so much as they're trying to beat people up and score when convenient. Maybe I should try a 4 catcher high elf team or something... Maybe some dirty skavens!