Thought to talk a little about team development.

I just, once again, found a thread where player asks what skill to take for a player. And a nice poll of course. Nothing wrong with asking, I have done the same thing in #fumbbl many times.

I usually ask for advice in chat just to get opinions from better coaches. I might have it almost decided, but sometimes they give me good arguments to take other skill than the original plan was.

The thing that disturbs me is that coaches often forget that not all teams play with same playbook. If I have a Human team, and my blitzer rolls a doubles, I usually get answered with Stand Firm. It IS a great choice, but does it help my team as much as some other skill might be? The coaches that give opinions about choosing skills rarely know how I am playing my Humans.

That is one beauty of Blood Bowl. There are no "sure tactics", that you need to play to win games, It's all about team development. You can even play passing game with Chaos, if you build your team to do that. I have seen many teams where the skill choices are the obvious ones. Block, Guard and so on. Coach might have 3 Orcs teams, and they all look like the same.

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing bad about that. But is it really that awarding to make the same team all over again? Or would it be nice to make each team different? In my opinion, it would. This is something that I am working on myself, as I have noticed that my teams within the same race start to look like each other.

It is true that in Orc teams BoB's should have Block, Guard, Mighty Blow and/or Stand Firm. That's what they are there for. But you can alter your team's playbook with Blitzers. They are the ones who are the core of your playbook. If you give them all Guard, Tackle and Mighty Blow, they are just another basic Orc team.

I think some skills are like tools. Tackle is a tool against Dodgers. Diving Tackle is a tool against Dodgers. Dirty Player is a tool against every "above the average" player. Pass Block is a tool against passing. And so on.

If you don't have a single Tackle or Diving Tackle, and you face team with Blodgers, you are in trouble. That's why I sometimes took Tackle to linos before Block. Just to give me at least one threat against Blodgers. I even took Diving Tackle to my Khemri Skeleton on doubles. And haven't regretted it at all. The team is in league, and faces some dodgy teams every now and then. I think it's good if a team has one of the following skills: Kick, Tackle, Pass Block, Strip Ball. That gives some tools to threat any opposing team.

(This is why I love IRL League. All the skills are randomized, so you get a lot of different tools. It takes some coaching to be able to use them.)

Another thing that I see a lot, is bad team balancing. This is one thing that I have learned the hard way. If your team has 10 rookies, and 3 multiskilled players, that usually means that those 3 skilled ones are making the plays. And therefore they get all the spp's. It's nice to play with them, until some of them is booted to death. Or the opponent isolates your stars, and leaves you those rookies against skilled players.

It's good to have those skilled ones. They can make the plays that other players can't. But if the core of your team (linos) are all unskilled, you are in trouble when opponent has skilled core. And when your ball handlers are 51+spp's, it's hard to start giving your linos some spp's.

It was nice to read JanMattys Blog where he found out that Khemri teaches about team work. I totally agree. It's easy to just bash and smash with Khemri, and take only bashing skills to the whole team. And usually it's fun to just kill and maim stuff. But if you are planning to win games with Khemri, you need to think outside the bashing box. And once again it all comes to team development and balancing. This guy has one amazing record with Khemri. I don't if it's skill, luck, cherry picking or all of them, but seems to me that I need to watch some replays and see if he know a lot more about Khemri than I do... ;)