Blood Bowl: Huge Team Value Gap Reversal

Turbo 2 finished up yesterday with my stupidly high valued Skaven team bringing home the gold. The semifinal featured an opponent who concede on turn 5. I'd kicked to him, scored once, and was in position to likely score a second time. His two wights were badly hurt and had failed to regenerate. I'd used my apothecary and was pretty worried that some of my good players were going to die if the game continued. But I guess my opponent was on tilt and just didn't see any point in playing on. (His comments on Facebook beforehand certainly implied he didn't see any way he could possibly win. Which tends to generate self fulfilling prophecies I think! He couldn't win because he didn't think he could win.) Afterwards he said if I keep playing this team he won't play.

The finals were closer (I kept breaking saurus armour, but could never do more than KO them and the bloodwiser babe did her job getting the guys back up) and ended 3-2. We couldn't stop each other from scoring every time we touched the ball into right near the very end when I stopped his tieing drive. After the game he also asked if I was going to keep playing this team. Not as blunt about refusing to play against them, but definitely would rather play against a different team of mine rather than this 2140 beast. (One of my gutter runners got +ST after the game! The team is pretty insane.)

On the one hand this makes me sad. I really like my theme for the team, and this was my first Skaven team so I want to keep playing them and learn about what's going on with them so I get a better handle on how to beat them myself. But I do also like my lizardman team, and I like playing Blood Bowl in general, so I'm fine with switching teams for the next continuing league. I would like to play my Skaven team again at some point, but maybe we'll reach the point where enough other people have really high TV teams and will be willing to play against me.

My experience thus far has only been being the high TV team. I'm about to get a chance to play the other side of the equation. Duncan helps run a big league on FumBBL and they had someone quit in the middle of the season. Teams were allowed to enter the season with 1500TV and 100k in cash on hand. They've since been able to play 7 games. So these teams are pretty much in the same state as our Spring season teams. There's a team over 2000TV and 6 more over 1800. Most teams are around 1500. I can tag in, but it has to be with a brand new team. So I get a chance to play down a bajillion team value!

The league runs with team caps so my options for what team I could create were very limited. I could play one of the 5 worst teams in the game (Ogres, Halflings, Goblins, Underworld, and Vampires) or I could play the best low TV team (Amazons) or I could play the best mid-high TV team (Wood Elves). Not a lot of armour available in those options! Vampires would be the 'toughest' team, but they hurt their own guys! Amazon is probably the actual toughest team of the options and I have wanted to give them a try to see if I could figure out why they're the highest winning team at low TV in the box. I worry that playing against highly developed teams means lots of people will have tackle and block and my gals will just get knocked over and die, but it's not like any of the other options would live longer! At least Amazons are only 50k!

The league has vague theme rules as well. It emulates the NFL in layout so every team needs to be from a (potentially fictional) city. I decided I liked my Dwarf theme of musicians I like, and decided to see if I could find a city related to music to use. Detroit or Nashville for motown or country would make sense, but I don't really like those styles of music. There's a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame somewhere though, right? Turns out it's in Cleveland. It also turns out it's a pretty male biased institution with a very disproportionate amount of inductees being male. Heart was only just inducted this year and it's pretty ridiculous that it took that long! But I went through the list and was able to get a team together of all female inductees who's music I like.

But now what to call them? Is there a good term for female rock and roll stars? While thinking about that I decided to check out the existing teams in the league to see if anyone else was from Cleveland. (I knew from reading about the league that there were two Detroit teams and that is annoying to Duncan who writes the match recaps but isn't illegal.) It turns out there is a Cleveland team. It's a human team, and is simply called the Cleveland Men. Well, that solved the issue of what to name my team! The Cleveland Women are definitely better at Blood Bowl than the Cleveland Men!

Match assignments for the next 7 weeks of the league just came out. I think I get credit for my predecessors record, so I get to start out at 1-2-4. The top team in the division is 3-3-1, which actually isn't that far ahead. It's not inconceivable to catch up! Ok, maybe it's pretty unlikely, but it's worth a shot. Perhaps a bigger concern is just surviving and leveling a bit for the next season. My 7 games are against 2 Dark Elf teams, 2 Undead teams, a High Elf, a Necromantic, and smelly Dwarves. All much higher TV, but other than Dwarves probably survivable. The first match is against a 1360TV High Elf team and I used my entire million starting cash so I'll have 360k in inducements. The Cyanide inducements don't exist, so I can't get agility potions. On the other hand all the star players do exist, especially a guy with a chainsaw for only 110k. I think my options are going to be chainsaw, 2 bribes, and a bloodwiser babe or chainsaw, bribe, 2 bloodwiser babes, and a random card. My goal would be to keep the chainsaw in play for both halves, which means I need to keep 11 gals and the chainsaw around in order to avoid fielding him at the end of the first half. The second babe will help with that. Or I can just use the second bribe to cover that up. Bribes can also be used if I foul. I mean when I foul. I love fouling! And with my opponent only having 11 guys on his roster it seems like I can probably get a numbers advantage if I foul with bribes.