| Poll |
| Do you enjoy playing againist different playstyles? |
| Yes |
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89% |
[ 42 ] |
| No |
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10% |
[ 5 ] |
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| Total Votes : 47 |
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Joost
Joined: Mar 17, 2014
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 Posted:
May 12, 2026 - 10:26 |
 
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| steinerp wrote: | | Obviously I have the right. I want to know if I am creating NPE for others or if others find playing vs different styles, fun and useful (which is my personal view) |
I doubt people will dislike it. Perhaps some people that lose to a "suboptimal" style and feel a bit humiliated get testy, but more often than not people in competitive division will be happy to get a quick score against where they can be the stalling party |
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koadah
Joined: Mar 30, 2005
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| Posted:
May 12, 2026 - 12:11 |
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Zelmor
Joined: Sep 29, 2022
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| Posted:
May 12, 2026 - 12:13 |
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| steinerp wrote: | | I was recently informed that I don't play Bloodbowl "right" |
Before reading the rest of this thread, I would like to make a guess that this was MattDakka. |
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koadah
Joined: Mar 30, 2005
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| Posted:
May 12, 2026 - 12:39 |
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Zelmor
Joined: Sep 29, 2022
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| Posted:
May 12, 2026 - 13:52 |
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He complained the first time I tied him, the complained the second time too. Third time was he was already used to it.  |
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steinerp
Joined: Sep 18, 2005
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| Posted:
May 12, 2026 - 15:19 |
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| Zelmor wrote: |
Before reading the rest of this thread, I would like to make a guess that this was XXXX. |
I would urge removal of the name. This isn't a post about a single coach. This is a dice game but "the dice let you win" is a common complaint that seems to be coming up more often and is what lead to this post. That I play a high risk, high reward style and that does involve rolling a lot of dice because I believe that one of my strengths as a coach is making mid-game adjustments to maximize the value of a good role and minimize the value of a bad roll (although obviously no one ever complains that the dice "made" me lose cause that isn't how bias works.) |
_________________
Join the E.L.F. meta league and show that elves do more than just score TDs |
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ThierryM
Joined: Mar 27, 2015
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| Posted:
May 12, 2026 - 15:46 |
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No name shaming in Zelmor's message.
In our community (Fumbbl and BB as a whole) some coaches (and sometimes teams) are "famous" for being grumpy, for being picky, for being good at playing X or Y roster, for being weak under pressure, for being themselves !!
Come as you are, be yourself. This community is one of the less judgemental you'll come across online.
I bet it comes from the maturity (read, "old" age) of most of its members. You'll come across more 50+ coaches than 25-. The older, the wiser (most of the times). |
_________________
Breeder of Bony Legends !
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Zelmor
Joined: Sep 29, 2022
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| Posted:
May 12, 2026 - 22:48 |
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| steinerp wrote: |
I would urge removal of the name. |
Nah, he is the way he is, we know it, he knows it. He won't take offence anyway, I don't think he cares for what anybody thinks.
Besides, I can be difficult too. Just asks Spookeh. haha
| ThierryM wrote: | | Come as you are, be yourself. |
I agree, with the caveat that someone being hateful or policing other people's speech should not be tolerated. I think the fumbbl community is great, and we have a lot of colourful characters around, for better or worse. Like I said, I bet some don't like me either. I can be too much at times for sure, so I cannot blame them. |
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RDaneel
Joined: Feb 24, 2023
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| Posted:
May 13, 2026 - 14:13 |
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| steinerp wrote: | | I I feel like, while suboptimal, this still meets the spirit of playing in the Competitive Division. |
What you're saying applies more to a league than to a competitive division. Playing in a competitive tournament or a competitive team competition (like the Trophy) means that the ultimate goal is to achieve the highest win rate possible, at any cost, by making the most of the game's full potential. In other words, playing at your best. Playing suboptimally isn't, in my view, what competitive play is all about.
Obviously, no one is stopping you from doing that, as long as you always try to win and don't give up easily or just pass turns if situation is gone.
Anyone who criticizes you for not playing that way for “elitist” reasons is stupid |
_________________
To judge a man, one must at least know the secret of his thoughts, his misfortunes, his emotions, Balzac |
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koadah
Joined: Mar 30, 2005
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| Posted:
May 13, 2026 - 14:32 |
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JackassRampant
Joined: Feb 26, 2011
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| Posted:
May 13, 2026 - 18:12 |
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| RDaneel wrote: | | What you're saying applies more to a league than to a competitive division. Playing in a competitive tournament or a competitive team competition (like the Trophy) means that the ultimate goal is to achieve the highest win rate possible, at any cost, by making the most of the game's full potential. In other words, playing at your best. Playing suboptimally isn't, in my view, what competitive play is all about. |
Agree with the rest, but this, I think there's something unspoken going on.
In Blood Bowl, it's okay to handicap yourself.
Play a lame roster. Play a roster with self-imposed rules or practices. Try weird strategies. This will hurt your CR, yes, but there are very good reasons we can't have people always gunning for the highest possible CRs, and there are very good big-picture reasons why CR gain later might mean CR pain now.
The key is, you can't get in the way of the main mission. The main mission looks like winning the game, but that's not quite right. It's actually a little different for everyone. For some, it's winning the game in front of them. For others, it's building skills to win future games or more important. For still others, it's doing your best, in the circumstances afforded, to demonstrate optimal play. All of these include "play to win, dammit" as their central premise, but that looks a little different for each.
Also, Box and Competitive aren't somehow super serious compared to other formats. Home leagues, frankly, matter more to me than CR. CR is just that thing I have to keep in the 1700s because if it goes lower it feels bad, and if it goes higher I can't get games: other C coaches don't evaluate you on it, and you don't really care because the coaches who matter to you are in your home league.
"Ooh, did I just come upon a new use for Shadowing? I'll take it and see!" If you do that in Open League, you'll get a skewed result.
"Alright, I got my no-big Halflings ready to take on all comers! I'm gonna prove that I'm the baddest coach on the site!" This can only be done in Box or tournaments, or by headhunting the best coaches possible. C it is.
"Ya know, I bet you don't really need position players to play Humans well." How are you going to test this hypothesis but in C? Funny enough, it turns out it's accurate. Should we be punished for innovation?
"These rules really reward coaches who can run up the score, but trying to get good at that will probably not be good for my win rate while I'm climbing the curve. Oh well." This demands an awful lot of games and a full-time commitment. You can't not do it in C and still play in C. |
_________________
Lude enixe, obliviscatur timor. |
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Chingis
Joined: Jul 09, 2007
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| Posted:
May 13, 2026 - 19:17 |
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I think there's something else about the way many people approach the idea of "competitiveness" (and also "skill") that is very interesting.
Most of the weird complaints (or 'friendly advice') that I notice from people who fixate on those particular words is not about the actual game but about team management, or even about meta-gaming the particular format they're playing, i.e. outside Blood Bowl completely. (If I understand correctly what it is trying to say, the "developed past NAF levels" in the original post falls into these categories?)
The idea that this is 'proper competitiveness' and a sign of true coach skill is a bit weird if you think about it for more than two seconds. Because the end-point of that kind of thinking, the highest goal, is to try and engineer a scenario where, after your players step over the whitewashed line and you roll for fan factor, every decision made has as little impact on the outcome of the game as possible. That the largest percentage possible of the things that will determine the game result have already happened before anyone even picks up a dice.
There might be lots of things you can say about such an aim. You may like or dislike it, find it fun or not fun. But to describe it as the height of competitive play or the ultimate show of skill as a Blood Bowl coach (rather than as a meta-gamer) seems kind of bonkers to me, when the dream accomplishment in that mindset is ensuring all the decisions made in-game are as inconsequential as possible! |
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koadah
Joined: Mar 30, 2005
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| Posted:
May 13, 2026 - 19:41 |
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JackassRampant
Joined: Feb 26, 2011
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| Posted:
May 14, 2026 - 05:24 |
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Okay, so I think there are a few things going on.
On one hand...
You can't legislate good decision-making, right? We were all rookies once, and even if we had YouTube, or if we had good coaching, or if we sniffed out the good stuff immediately, there was still a development curve for everybody, and it's a long one in this game.
If nobody's dumb (relatively), nobody's smart, and also the optimum mix moves with the meta, which tends to churn in semi-predictable patterns, so six months ago's smart is today's dumb but it might be smarter next year ... probably not as smart as what it was designed for, and being able to perceive those subtleties is a legit coaching skill.
And you can't demand that "good" be subject to the impressions of the community, because that stifles innovation and hurts everyone's development. So you have to be pretty liberal with what you'll allow, because the best stuff blindsides you. You don't want a "no blindsiding" rule, right? But stuff that hits you from the blindside usually looks unconventional, and to some smart people, it might even look stupid until they see it in practice. That was what happened with the Dakka, and frankly every workable ClawPOMB counter back in LRB5/6 looked silly in most other lights.
On the other hand...
It's really annoying to see people not playing this game seriously. Like, I positively hate it when people lay down in a winnable situation, or start the drive with a deliberately stupid position and click through their turns. It's so good that this stuff gets enforced, because it's got a terrible effect on the game. But development is also a place where you can show your poor sportsmanship, and it sucks to play a lame opponent bloated up with terrible skills, too. You can avoid them, and if you can't (Box, say), you can feast on them and offer them some help after the game, so it's not the worst thing, but I get why it'd be a problem if people were doing it on purpose.
But that leads to a simple diagnosis and fix. If you want to get all judgmental about somebody's play-style, ask them about it first.
People who are doing something fun and effective will all have one thing in common: they will have a theory for how it's going to work. You may not agree with it, but, uh, who died and made you Nuffle? People who have something they want to learn will tend to begin with a clear hypothesis, or at least a question, and a reasonable plan for tucking into it. You can tell when somebody's just having a go and when they're in earnest. |
_________________
Lude enixe, obliviscatur timor. |
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Chingis
Joined: Jul 09, 2007
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| Posted:
May 14, 2026 - 06:47 |
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| JackassRampant wrote: | | But development is also a place where you can show your poor sportsmanship, and it sucks to play a lame opponent bloated up with terrible skills, too. |
It's poor sportsmanship for people to approach team development in the way they want to, rather than the one you suggest?
What on Earth?  |
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