MattDakka
Joined: Oct 09, 2007
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 Posted:
Aug 05, 2025 - 15:23 |
 
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I had this idea for a house rule making deep stalling harder:
After the kicked off ball landed, draw an imaginary line in the attacking team's half pitch, parallel to the half line, 2 squares away from the ball position and towards the attacking team's End Zone: for the rest of the drive the ball can't trespass this imaginary line when carried by an attacking team's player. Ball will be randomly dropped with turnover in 1 of 3 possible squares adjacent to the line if the attacking ball carrier crosses it. Ball can't be handed off/passed through the line by an attacking player. Defending players carrying the ball are not affected by the line. |
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koadah
Joined: Mar 30, 2005
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Aug 05, 2025 - 16:04 |
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MattDakka
Joined: Oct 09, 2007
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Aug 05, 2025 - 16:09 |
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Yes, also known as "Withdrawn offence".
Stalling often comes in 3 guises: deep, middle or close to opponent End Zone.
This is the idea to make the deep one a bit harder (especially with Kick). |
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Carthage
Joined: Mar 18, 2021
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Aug 05, 2025 - 16:39 |
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I do have to appreciate that you are willing to talk about how to fix this gameplay method even though you are famous on the site for doing it. Its rare for someone to ask for their optimal exploit to be patched.
This tactic is unfun because of its lack of interaction. But elves optimally play that way because removals snowball pretty badly in this game, especially this edition with terrible passing rules. So either the elves play without interacting here, or they play without interacting because their team is dead/dying.
I wonder if treating the symptom of removal snowballs would help fix both of those non-interaction cases. Maybe KO's don't roll to come back, they just automatically come back? |
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MattDakka
Joined: Oct 09, 2007
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Aug 05, 2025 - 16:44 |
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In my ruleset KO rolls get +1 after each failed attempt and at start of 2nd Half 11 players are assured (using Loner Linemen as fillers). Injury table is less severe as well. Attrition strategy is thus nerfed a bit.
About Elves: I would change a bit their rosters, for example Blitzers with S access and increasing each Elf's PA by 1. |
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Chingis
Joined: Jul 09, 2007
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Aug 05, 2025 - 18:16 |
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I would frame it as there being nothing particularly special about this: it's just one example of the more general incentive for stalling, or "clock management", which, to my mind, is the biggest design flaw in Blood Bowl. Players being heavily incentivised *not* to score is counterintuitive, unfun and immersion-breaking.
An elf team with no incentivise to stall wouldn't be avoiding getting hit by running away, they'd be avoiding getting hit by running in to score!
And so I think the big picture rebalancing you ought to think in terms if you wanted to change the incentives isn't in terms of "bash" versus "ball" it's in terms of the team in possession versus the team without possession. Whatever the actual change in game mechanic, the effect would need to be to somehow make posession generally less secure and the ball more easily contestable, regardless of the playstyle of the two teams. Rugby union, not rugby league.
Stalling happens because players have an incredibly high level of confidence that as the team in posession they can ensure the score anyway and that if they score and kick posession to the opponent after a kick-off, that's far more likely to result in a TD for the opponent than another TD for themselves.
(Another way of messing with this incentive structure would be for the scoring team to receive the kick-off, not the team who conceded. If you want to retain a big in-posession advantage, reward scoring a TD with posession to encourage TDs!) |
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Carthage
Joined: Mar 18, 2021
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Aug 05, 2025 - 22:29 |
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I mean if we want to change rules wholesale. We could make it more (American) football than rugby as the advertising alleges which gets close to Dakka's suggestion.
Make a "first down" line that is halfway between where the ball lands after the bounce and the endzone. If you don't make it to that point before your 4 turns are up, you have to immediately do a kickoff from the boardstate you are in right now (punt). If you make it to the first down, you get 4 more turns to try to score.
Now you get elves engaging on defense to try to stop people from getting to the first down line. And you get elves not deep stalling for forever so they don't lose possession.
Kick becomes a pretty powerful skill.
You could do some tiering jank if you want where the First Down Line moves X squares closer to the ball after determining the halfway point where X is their tier if you want to help stunties out some. |
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