Mordachai
Joined: Aug 02, 2003
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Posted:
Sep 14, 2003 - 15:06 |
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The vampires are broken - and in this case I mean broken as in not functionable. The team is simply not competitive, especially in the beginning.
An example of the above statement.
This is my opinion, what is yours? |
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oeuftete
Joined: Aug 02, 2003
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  Posted:
Sep 14, 2003 - 15:29 |
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Mordachai wrote: | The vampires are broken - and in this case I mean broken as in not functionable. The team is simply not competitive, especially in the beginning. |
Not to be snide, but your broken, not functionable, not competitive team won its first match. Anybody playing any team can get shellacked 4-0 under the right (wrong) circumstances... it's not evidence in itself of a broken team.
Seriously, if you look at the result stats for vampires, it looks like they only start to get an even winning percentage on FUMBBL when playing with a 15-to-20-point strength advantage (my interpretation of the graph). But there a lot of good vampire teams out there with excellent win percentages... |
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oeuftete
Joined: Aug 02, 2003
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  Posted:
Sep 14, 2003 - 15:36 |
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The TR100 stats are interesting, too. Vampires have about the same poor record in TR100 matches as dark elves and chaos.
I guess the argument would be that dark elves and chaos become much better with skills whereas vampire teams are still going to have the same handicaps. |
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Colin
Joined: Aug 02, 2003
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  Posted:
Sep 14, 2003 - 16:00 |
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I don't believe Vampires were ever meant to be that competitive - in the 2nd ed fluff, they were explicitly mentioned as being not very good due to their blood cravings. Nevertheless, Str 4, Ag 4 and access to Strength, Agility AND General skills allows for great potential, if a coach can hang in there through the early days. The OFAB rule, in all it's various incarnations, was the only way to offset this massive potential. I haven't seen Vamps in action using the current OFAB rules, but I suspect they are either very good or very bad, and there's no way to tell which it will be
Play them with the same attitude as coaching a Goblin or Halfling team, and you'll have masses more fun. |
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Malthor
Joined: Aug 02, 2003
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  Posted:
Sep 14, 2003 - 17:27 |
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Vampires suck ;P
The OFAB rules whilst certainly fun, are heartbreaking at times. My first game with the Vamps with 3 Vamps and 3 rerolls saw them kill two of my own players and badly hurt a third plus a couple of KOs in the second half. When you have several vamps rolling 1s in the same turn, it just decimates you.
Basically it is a team that can fall apart very quickly, as the Thralls are fragile, and the Vampires are going to fail their regen rolls sooner or later, and they really start on the backfoot as they have no Block, Dodge, Sure Hands, Pass, Catch skills (like Chaos and Lizards). Whilst the Gaze can be great, play some Elf Teams with your new Vamps and watch yourself get outplayed and outrun hehehe. |
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MickeX
Joined: Aug 02, 2003
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  Posted:
Sep 15, 2003 - 01:58 |
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Yes, vampires are broken: They are overpowered in high TR. They need to be toned down somehow, or they'll be unbeatable in really high T - that's my guess.
You do have to play them right though. Some simple advice:
- Start with 2 vamps, 4 RRs and apo. Buy extra thralls & 5 th RR first, then maybe a 3rd vamp, another RR and so on.
- Get them blodge asap. All of them.
- Don't move them around too much. Go directly for the ball.
- Give all SPPs to vamps. First thrall gets kick, then block all round.
My Strigoi All-Stars are 11/3/2, and getting really hard to beat by now. The FUMBBL TS-formula underestimates them though, they'd have lost more if they'd play teams with equal TR rather than equal TS.
http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=team&op=view&showmatches=1&team_id=24323
MickeX |
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Mordachai
Joined: Aug 02, 2003
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  Posted:
Sep 15, 2003 - 12:20 |
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Not to be rude, but it is easy building up a team when faced with opponent that concede for no apparent reason.
On a more serious note, when being able to choose your opponents most teams can become good teams, but in a tournament format you will inevitably sooner or later be faced with that chaos pact team followed by khemri or something similar, and then your team will be in shambles. Or just take a tour down the Norse road. No block vs. all block is just a surefire way to go down bad. Your two-three vampires aren't much worth when they are hit to the ground more often than not.
Sure, when (if) you reach a high TR with your team, then you will probably have a good team but considering most opponents (in tournaments at least) will be at similar heights of TR (or probably higher) you are bound to go down anyway. A str 4 vampire with blodge isn't much against a troll slayer with tackle and mighty blow and that has one assist. Considering there is a risk involved in just standing the vampire up (ofab), the opponent has very little to loose in an exchange between those two players. |
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Jared
Joined: Aug 16, 2003
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  Posted:
Sep 15, 2003 - 12:34 |
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MickeX
Joined: Aug 02, 2003
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  Posted:
Sep 15, 2003 - 13:14 |
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Mordachai wrote: | Not to be rude, but it is easy building up a team when faced with opponent that concede for no apparent reason. |
That's one game out of many. Note that the Strigoi All-Stars let the opponents score 3 td total in 10 matches. The vampire defense can very harsh if played correctly.
As I said, this would have been a bit worse if it wasn't for FUMBBL TS underestimating vamps, but it sure isn't an argument for saying vamps are underpowered. Rather the reverse. Most of these matches were quite convincing wins.
Mordachai wrote: | On a more serious note, when being able to choose your opponents most teams can become good teams, but in a tournament format you will inevitably sooner or later be faced with that chaos pact team followed by khemri or something similar, and then your team will be in shambles. |
If you look again at the match record, the team played a lot of bashy teams as well. (I've tried to avoid playing the "very" experimental teams like Chaos Pact and Ogres though.) The thing is that with LRB, it's hard to really get very many kills. The Strigoi took a beating but won the games, leaving just a niggle or two.
That could be a bigger problem facing high TR PO/RSC/DP teams though.
Mordachai wrote: | A str 4 vampire with blodge isn't much against a troll slayer with tackle and mighty blow and that has one assist. Considering there is a risk involved in just standing the vampire up (ofab), the opponent has very little to loose in an exchange between those two players. |
That's a misleading abstraction. The vamp can normally dance away, leaving a thrall for the Troll Slayer to toy around with.
But yes, the vamps are vulnerable by themselves. They need thralls to put TZs around them. That's why they need short drives, to replace those KO:d & Cas thralls.
MickeX |
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tarzom
Joined: Aug 09, 2003
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  Posted:
Sep 15, 2003 - 13:17 |
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When they're good they're very good - when they're bad...well you know the results.
I recently started a vamp team in a tournament with 5 vamps!
Foolishly I thought they were using the old ofab rules so thought the more the better BIG mistake.
After 2 games and 2 losses, at least a couple of vamps have pro skill.
I still quite like them, they are difficult to play (especially if you start with 5 - what was I thinking?) but then so are goblins and halflings. Don't expect them to be world beaters and you can still have fun with them.
If you want to win every game form the start - choose a different team.
Having said that, I do think they are a bit under strength. Maybe allow 1 vamp (the captain) to start without ofab (or lose it instead of the first skill) and they could be a force to be reckoned with? |
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MickeX
Joined: Aug 02, 2003
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  Posted:
Sep 15, 2003 - 13:48 |
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Sorry Tarzom, but two games with a team that is not constructed with the necessary RRs to play Exp OFAB is no basis to draw any conclusions.
If you want to win every game form the start, vampires are a perfectly OK team to start with. You do have to play a few games with them first to get a feeling for how they work.
Vampires need to be toned downed. I'd suggest 50k tralls for example, and maybe a solution that gets rid of OFAB in favour of not letting the vampire team use RRs at all.
Besides, I'm not sure Pro is such a good skill for vampires. Maybe after Blodge, but then you want tackle, sure hands etc anyway. 6-8 RRs takes you a long way, since you seldom need to roll worse than 2+.
MickeX |
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Chickenbrain
Joined: Aug 02, 2003
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  Posted:
Sep 15, 2003 - 14:21 |
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Eh, 50k per thrall would destroy the vamps completly. They might be powerfull in the end, but they are surely weak in the beginning. And AV7 is not that big deal to break. So you usually end up with a lot of cas against you. Of course some self inflicted. But its easy to injure a Thrall. All Skaven and Woodelf teams fear the same. |
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MickeX
Joined: Aug 02, 2003
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  Posted:
Sep 18, 2003 - 22:47 |
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The Strigois two latest games were both losses, and I'm beginning to doubt that they're as overpowered as I thought. These two games I had quite some bad luck, but maybe they showed that vamps are sensitive to somekinds of bad luck. I don't know.
My blodge frenzy vamp just got +ST though, and even if he niggled by aging he'll be a fearsome player when he gets to the pitch... |
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Grumbledook
Joined: Aug 02, 2003
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  Posted:
Sep 18, 2003 - 23:32 |
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omg the vamps are great i won my first 2 and drawn my next too maybe you lamers just need to learn how to play ;] |
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TheLegend
Joined: Aug 02, 2003
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  Posted:
Oct 23, 2003 - 22:18 |
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pro? have you ever heard of pro?
I also started with 5 rerolls |
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