Many discussions are had about the killstack, and although the content of this blog isn't one of them it stems from one such discussion. Namely where suggestions of nerfing the Piling On skill were met by the claim that this would have a greater impact on the likes of Humans, and the other races with pomb but no claws. Apparently Humans live and die by the pomb, and need it to be competitive.

This made me wonder about about my history with the piling on skill within my Sons of Brutus. As the team is on the homeward march to 1000 games I thought it timely to start reflecting on where we have been. One of those questions is what sort of relationship between the SoB and Piling On exists?

Currently we have Harm Fulentent on the roster. Harm is a frenzy pomber who has been tearing it up since he joined us back in game 890. Frenzy, like Piling On is a skill I've struggled with in the past, and the aim is to try and get better in the use and application of these two skills. I still get suckered into a position where a frenzy block is going to be ugly if the first hit is a double push, and I still find the pile on prompt far too tempting and I hit it too often. I'm a work in progress.

In terms of past players I did a quick survey and found thirteen pombers here, but four of those were Ogre's so I'm not sure they count. The other nine of course were blitzers. A total fourteen players with the Piling On skill after 941 games seems pretty modest, especially in the box.

Of the nine blitzer pombers, three made it to legend, which is a pretty good conversion rate. We've had 17 legends in the franchise history, so it's not the most traveled road to glory. That said a third of the pombers getting to legend is testament to Piling On being the best defensive skill in the game. You want to live a long time in the box? Just lay down son.

Adding the tally from the Ogres and the past and current Blitzers, our pombers have produced 718 casualties from a franchise total of 2252, or approximately 32%. The past players page has 668 entries, so including past and current players the pombers are 14 from a population of 684, so make up about 2% of the players that have been issued an SoB uniform (excluding journeymen). One individual has a big impact on these numbers as his 274 cas accounts for 12% of the franchise total.

Combined the SoB pombers have appeared in 833 games - which is less that the franchise total of 941. The past and current players list provides a total of 11,041 game appearances, so pombers account for 7.5% of appearances (again excluding the impact of journeymen). This doesn't help work out the number of games I've played without Piling On as some of the pombers collected the skill surprising late in their careers, and there was a period of time when I would field more than one pomber at a time.

Before I looked at these numbers I'd felt I'd mostly avoided the Piling On skill. As I said earlier I find that it's a skill that stretches my judgement, and I felt often led to losing games I should have won. My suspicion was that I probably only had it available in about half of my games - although this suspicion might still hold true.

In hindsight Piling On has probably played a bigger role than I've given it credit for, especially when you consider the proportion of casualties collected by those few pombers that have served the Sons.

Yet I still can't shake the feeling it's lost me as many games as it's won.

Link to Sons of Pombers table