Bloodbowl is a game played on a pitch. The field and parameters always remain the same outside of kickoff results and weather. For this reason, the game should be tweaked so every team, with the skills available, give any team a chance on any given day when equal coaching levels are employed. Playing Warhammer, other table-top games and 40K for years everyone has always talked about balance and making the game fair for all. There are so many variables in war-gaming, balance is a lot of times nigh impossible. On one table in one scenario some armies/factions will do very well but completely crumble under other circumstances. Bloodbowl is different, we should be able to balance it out and tweak it to make it as close to even as humanly possible. BUT, at the same time we cannot take out the fluff and character behind the teams or we are just playing chess. Right now the kill-stack is inevitably going to rule a lot of games. The reason for this is, it's easy. Some people are VERY good at seeing ahead, planning and eliminating most scenarios that give the opposition advantages. They also roll the least dice for their efforts-they are EFFICIENT! But there are a lot of coaches that can not really plan ahead and if they are not up 11-5 players they have probably lost the game. No one wants to lose every game or most games so they continue with this gameplan because it is the easiest and most rewarding. Even if they lose, they are usually close and have dealt out a good deal of damage so they get some conciliatory satisfaction. So we can not remove the kill-stack altogether I believe. What we can do is make the kill-stack not so career-ending for so many teams that face it. Therefore we can get more of these match-ups between agile and killer teams. As it stands those are some of the BEST games to watch and play in....the strategy involved is immense and the games are always close; one play away from either team winning. But for one of those teams, they will be recovering for a few games and probably in a lower TV. Maybe this is the design of the game, but I truly believe the game was designed for TT and teams below 150 TV. THe long-term effects were much less considered for these perpetual leagues! As a community and game I believe we have the ability to make this game great and balanced but it will take everyone in all of the different Bloodbowl communities to pull together and adjust it.....

Not all teams were created equal. Some teams are very powerful against one team but there is pretty much another team that is their kryptonite. I.E.: Dwarfs vs Amazons. In our TT leagues first year we had 2 divisions(12 teams) and 0 Dwarf teams...We had 2 Amazon teams and we ran away with the league. The next year I used a Dwarf team and there were 3 AMazon teams in the League.....I decimated 2 of them and once we realized this paradox we changed the entire make-up of our league allowing everyone to have 2 teams and go back and forth between the 2. We should not have match-ups so lopsided below 125 TV. That is a big turn off. I pretty much refuse to play against Amazons because they are really boring and incredibly broken unless you are rolling POWS or have designed your team to focus on them....


I think for BOX to be truly fair, you need to have a broad range of games with different opponents at different skill levels. Sometimes the most brutal games are against rookie coaches because they do things that are unexpected and are high risk, high reward; the consistently good coaches usually go the safe route. The problem is, not everyone wants to play a variety of teams, some only want to bash and some only want to elfball. There is little middle ground. The box could possibly be activated on a points system, where if you have enough points you can "refuse" a match up. For every refusal it costs, let's say 5 points. Once teams are above 150 TV you earn points. For every match you play versus an elf team you get a point. For every team versus a stunty team you get 0 points. Versus chaos variety teams, 2 points. Something like that. Also, if you activate a team in a "bash" category and a "baller" category you get double points to the team that was scheduled. I don't know, I just feel like there is something that could be done to make it more fair, yet keep everyone happy to their style of play.

Regen needs nerfed. Holy crap. When you regenerate you should at least go to the KO box, not the reserves. Seems to me it is too fickle and far too powerful at times. There are too many undead variety teams that are so loaded with cash they can buy their team 3 times over; obviously the mechanism for treasury coupled with regen is not working. Maybe on a whole you can only have a set number of teams and their treasury is combined? This could solve some of the problems. If you have treasury then you are not given any loners. This may inspire everyone to start playing a variety of races and activate different races. I think the cap would have to be no more than 2 of each race and you may not have a second until you fulfilled one of each race. There would need to be a mechanism added that if you did not activate all races at least once every (3?) activations you would lose gold or something? Just a thought. A lot of people would be upset because they only want to play certain races. Maybe there could be an "evil" group and a "good" group. You could choose a group you wish to play and the treasury could be based off of that group. Flings, Gobbos and Ogres should be optional though. Or fix them to be playable at all levels....

Thinking of the Tier's, teams need to be evened out in the upper echelon of the game. The TV is obviously not very accurate. A Human with kick off return is surely not as valuable as a human with block. The TV value of skills should not be so even. St is obviously worth 50K. But is +AG on a Black Orc worth 40K? Probably not. Because of the way the skills are tiered you do not see some exciting variety. Skills that affect the block dice are obviously to me, the most valuable. And then there is the counter mechanism thrown into the game, I.E. Tackle negating dodge. Here is an area that could be amended. I see no reason why an elf should have difficulty dodging away from a Dwarf. Fluff-wise this makes 0 sense. Therefore some skills should only cost 05 TV, others should cost 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 or more. If a player is going to 4 AG when the base is 3 AG, yeah, 40 K is probably accurate. But from 2 to 3, not so much. 4 to 5 is probably around 30K, so maybe the values for s so tat increases should be adjusted per player. Maybe this is too complicated for TT, but in TT we usually do not have teams with more than a dozen games or so...... Block should be the most expensive. It effects the block dice and it helps cause casualties. Not everyone in the damn game should have block.

Some of the teams are just downright broken in regards to their available slots. Orcs having so many options is weird when you compare it to other teams; why should humans not get a Fling option? Not that they would really want it, but they should have the option. Also, why do orcs get 0-4 everything and most other teams get 0-2 options. BO's should be a 0-2 option IMO. Humans should only have a 0-2 option on catchers too. Chaos needs some variety as well. Only 2 choices... exciting! Big GUys too, but with kill-stack the way it is...why bother on an unreliable burden that only works half the time. Amazons.....what a stupid team design. Norse too. What Elf team in their right mind wants to face these teams below 125 TV? These teams just need some variety. I realize they want to differentiate them from normal humans, but really? Load them up with all the stats in the world so they are brilliant below 150 TV, but then break like glass houses once they face some AV9 Hard-hitting 150+ TV teams. Nurgle; What a fun team to play against. They brutally suck at low TV and dominate at High TV. One of the best big guys for what the team wants to do (hold you in close and pummel you) and they really take CRP's faults and make it their strength.....all with Regen on their best guys! They can afford to have bench because their rotters are so unbelievably cheap and do not bloat their TV. Imagine a wood elf team with regen....I killed your Wardancer, but he regenerated. Yeah, no.

Chaos variety teams do what they do because it works. If it didn't work, they would change their game plan. It is so prevalent and simple for average coaches to use it and be moderately successful but it is downright NASTY in the hands of a good coach. I believe CLAW should be a +1 to armor rolls that may not be coupled with MB. MB may still be used for either but you may not add the 2 together. I am probably in the minority here because a lot of coaches want the simplicity of point and click winning. I am honest here in saying I enjoy playing these games against these coaches, I just don't appreciate the next game or 5. The recovery games become tough if they take out a few key pieces to your team. Losing more than 1 player a game is not affordable for most teams since you do not make much money per game. This goes back to my earlier thoughts about variety. But seriously, I just want to win games and be able to keep playing my team down the road without having a bunch of winless recovery games. So maybe the ability to cause soo much damage should be lessened? I don't mind if I have 8 guys in the injury box. I do mind if half of those 8 are SI or Dead. Those are losses an Elf coach literally cannot afford. Maybe when we retire a player that is injured we get 75% of their cost back? Starting with new players is not a big deal but a whole team of loner lineman is..... Overall, if it was not for the kill-stack we would probably lose a lot of players that are not that apt to planning ahead in the game. How do we find that balance though? A lot of people just want to kill....I mean it IS called BloodBowl. :-)

The kick-off results....what a cluster$%^&. Blitz is just damn overpowered. As much as I do not like Perfect D, that is fine with me, but I don't think anyone that is already on the LOS should be allowed to move. Pitch Invasion....wow, let's penalize the team with the higher FAME because they must not have any fans at the match. Changing weather should always go to some sort of weather conditions. Also, throw a rock should not permanently injure or kill a guy. You are taking the underdog in a lot of circumstances and hindering them worse....brilliant. Overall the kick-off table could use some tweaking so there are not results that completely inhibit one team or the other.

What if the only way teams progressed was through Tournaments, smacks and rumbles? All other games were played as one-off games? Then we could test our mettle against said teams without spiraling expenses affecting the team and casualties in pointless games. We would need more quick smacks and other things for games....some open to all levels of teams and others with the already set tiers so they would be close match-ups. This should control some of the pickers and it would lessen the amount of super teams in the upper echelon that never play anyone anyway....The gamefinder is a sea of match-ups that will never be! :-D



MattDakka was speaking about an interesting idea....all teams can field 11 players at the start of every drive. I like this idea but would they all be loners? SInce they are not really ready and on the bench, how about they get Really Stupid? This would be indicative that a regular player standing next to this rookie could point them in the right direction. I am kind of fond of this idea because it would give some more incentive to have a skilled batch of players with some depth on the bench. I think this would be well worth play-testing and may change the landscape of scoring/stalling.