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MrCushtie
Last seen 25 minutes ago
mrcushtie (26269)
Overall
Star
Overall
Record
57/54/105
Win Percentage
39%
Archive

2023

2022

2022-12-13 23:10:21
rating 6
2022-10-31 18:39:47
rating 6
2022-01-02 19:32:20
rating 5.7

2021

2021-07-23 02:20:53
rating 5.9
2021-03-14 07:10:59
rating 5.4
2021-02-26 23:24:42
rating 5.8
2021-01-20 08:11:58
rating 6

2020

2020-10-13 06:19:30
rating 6
2020-09-24 06:44:00
rating 5.6
2020-08-20 08:10:37
rating 5.6
2020-08-11 01:51:58
rating 5.8
2020-07-02 03:40:43
rating 5.6
2020-05-23 01:51:54
rating 6
2020-05-12 09:19:27
rating 5.5
2020-04-20 20:22:50
rating 5.5
2020-03-30 05:53:58
rating 6
2020-01-22 06:16:19
rating 6

2019

2019-06-08 07:08:24
rating 5.9
2019-05-13 07:09:56
rating 6
2019-04-09 17:41:29
rating 5.9
2019-02-27 17:15:19
rating 5.9
2019-01-29 15:32:11
rating 6
2019-01-13 14:15:24
rating 5

2018

2018-11-05 18:29:07
rating 6
2018-10-21 15:47:08
rating 5.9
2018-10-17 15:49:27
rating 6
2021-02-26 23:24:42
9 votes, rating 5.8
A future for Nurgle
If you want a vision of Second Season, imagine a snotling stamping on a Bloater - forever
Gorge Not-well

What is a Nurgle?
Blood Bowl is a game about managing frustrations, and what team is more frustrating than Nurgle? Played right, your opponent burns through their rerolls while failing to deal with Foul Appearance, Tentacles prevent them dodging away to safety, and the passing game is ruined by the clouds of stink emanating from those Bloaters.

Team building philosophy
So in building a team, you want skills that will accentuate that: Guard makes the Bloaters harder to shift, and so does Stand Firm, so they should be prioritised over Mighty Blow and Claw. Bloaters don't need to get good, they need to get in the way. Maybe Tackle is a good third skill after Block and Guard, to deny Dodge rerolls, but equally some Prehensile Tail might be good to deal with higher AG sides.

Meanwhile, the Pestigors have the mobility and speed to be the hard hitters of the team; lower AV and a lack of Foul Appearance means they're more vulnerable than Bloaters, so they're slightly glass cannons, at least compared to the bigger lumps. So you probably want two of them, and as you can't be sure if you're meeting bash teams or dash, build one Block/Mighty Blow/Tackle and the other with Claw instead. Fourth score is either Juggernaut, so you don't get trapped if you run into a dwarf and roll Both Downs, or Frenzy, because, well, Frenzy is fun.

Rotspawn we won't mention, because the point of playing Nurgle is to strip reliability from your opponent. It's not to induce unreliability in your own team.

Seasons and compromises
In a perpetual league, there's no reason not to let Nurgle TV go up and up and up, but then they seem to converge to the same thing: four murderous Bloaters and then at least a brace of killer Pestigors, and my supposition is that Blood Bowl is meant to be about choices and living with compromise; a tricked out army of superstars avoids compromise, and so you're doing something different. That's not to disparage the high-TV teams, just to argue that I think I like operating at a lower TV. (I think it might be more fun to play against as well, but that's harder to determine)

Testing this out
But I wanted to kick the tires and see what this felt like, so at the start of January I opened the Gastro Pub, a Nurgle team that I planned to keep in the shallow end of the TV pool. I didn't want to make some min-max atrocity, but something that wouldn't make big sacrifices at season rebuy time.

It's not a perfect rendition of Second Season play: MVP allocation is still targeted, Tentacles will play differently and the jury is still out on Foul Appearance side effects, but I think it's about as close as I can get for the moment.

So far, it's been (mostly) fun. There have been some horrid games against Snotlings (at low TV they feel horribly OP against Nurgle, but again, Blood Bowl is about choices) but there aren't many nasty high ST teams at low TV, so it's been nice to avoid crowds of claw monstrosities. With my last Nurgle Box team I was running 180TV higher after 13 games (probably because I was choosing to run all available positionals and lots of Rotters, whereas now I'm keeping to an 11 man squad, three Pestigors, three Bloater build and not spending any of my treasury because I'm saving it for rebuy.

Future plans
After fifteen games, assuming no regen-less slaughters, I expect to have three Block Bloaters, of which two have Guard, and one gets an additional skill. I can't decide if that's Stand Firm, Tackle or Tentacles at this point, but I'm eschewing kill skills for the moment. The killer Pestigors only need Juggernaut now and they're done, Contemptible Cheese Platter is being groomed as the superstar of the team, and that's about it. One Rotter has Kick, there's no commitment to Dirty Player on the team, and then when we hit rebuy, we'll try to keep everyone, prioritizing Bloaters, then Pestigors, then Rotters. (If he lasts, the Kicker definitely gets sacked at the end of the second season because we don't want to pay a 40k premium when we can build another Kicker to replace him over the next season).

Over the long term, a lot of players may be too expensive to hold onto. This is a reason to not add skills to the Bloaters beyond their second, as they're good enough by then anyway. If Cheese Platter survives, I'm only taking stat ups from now on (prioritise MA, then AG, AV is silly and ST is expensive enough that I hope it discourages everyone else from taking it). If people think Second Season means less characterful teams, wait till you meet a MA8, AG4, Blodge Sure Hands Pestigor.

So, two matches until they go into hibernation ahead of the new era. I'm excited to see how it turns out. Also keen to see what flaws people can see in this strategy that I'm too close to this to see.
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Comments
Posted by MattDakka on 2021-02-27 00:34:49
"After fifteen games, assuming no regen-less slaughters, I expect to have three Block Bloaters, of which two have Guard, and one gets an additional skill."
Well, if you are happy to play for 15 games to get 3 Block, Guard Bloaters while Dwarfs, Chaos Dwarfs and Norse will have more skills than them, good for you!
I'd like to be pleased so easily by low-standard builds.
Nurgle will be a race always lagging behind the top tier 1 teams in BB2020. If you enjoy masochistic pleasure, have fun with your Nurgle team, although Slaanesh would be a more fitting team for that.
Posted by garyt1 on 2021-02-27 00:45:04
I don't often see Nurgle teams without spawn, even if they are a bit unreliable. Not having four bloaters is odd too. So the team is lower TV but lost a significant amount of strength. Interesting test.
Posted by Nelphine on 2021-02-27 01:24:36
If I do this kind of thing in bb2020, it will be 4 pests and 2 bloaters (and no rotspawn). The more strength this team has, the more you think 'why an I not just playing chaos' followed immediately by 'actually why not orcs?'
Posted by MrCushtie on 2021-02-27 02:01:10
Thanks Nelphine. Two Bloaters sounds like it might also be workable; my concern has been that as they skill up so slowly, it's nice to have the third as a spare (started with four, lost one to an unregenerated -AV, didn't find the team played much worse).

As there's a bit of time left, I might go build a 2x4 team top and see if I can get that ready for the dawning of the new age
Posted by BeanBelly on 2021-02-27 09:07:41
I agree with your comment about making choices and living with compromise. I enjoy different TV games, but like the challenge of coaches having to make hard choices (obvious example: NAF builds) rather than just having everything.

Never played Nurgle - do play [SL]Beastmen - and it looks like seasons will make it harder for that type of low starting-skill team to compete as strongly. But of course it’s fine to take a team you just like, rather than have to have THE top tier team.
Posted by ClayInfinity on 2021-02-27 09:18:32
I love Nurgle as a concept and I agree with the notion that Bloaters should be solid road blocks with spoiling rather than kill skills. And yes, the one pestigor with a kill stack is attractive... but I dont know if its necessary. I think survivabilty (blodge) and ball handling are more important to win games.

Also, if you really want to play the spoiling Nurgle game, then the Rotspawn is thematically very important albeit, not very TV bloat friendly.

We had a good game MrCushtie yesterday and yes, your tackle frenzy pestigor was a worry for my Zons, but I found him easy to mark (sacrificial linewoman) or take him out (he was KO'ed a fair bit). I think in general the high value killer is overplayed in this game and I think a generally better "team" is better than a star plus makeweights.

Interested in what you think re random skills too... MVP is a free intial random skill. If it falls on a rotter, do you take a rando and hope for something useful?

I do agree Nurgle got the shaft in the 2020 ruleset but I dont think they're unplayable and not "fun". But maybe I am a masochist haha
Posted by jdm on 2021-02-27 10:15:01
I'm not a nurgle coach and am undecided if I'll be playing bb2020 so this blog post in theory has little to interest me.

However, I like MrCushtie a lot and want to encourage him and other coaches to share their thoughts, even if others don't agree with them. More of this please!

Take my 6
Posted by awambawamb on 2021-02-27 10:36:20
"...ah, but it's Nurgle!"
(waves hand)

that's a nice reading - Nurgle is my team of choice for perpetual leagues, because it gets better with age. And while trying to reach for a "legit" TV3k, I've discovered that each game from 1800TV is like walking on broken glass: for every KO, or worse, you lose so much more that just a player. you lose the meatshield, or vital components of the team - Nurgle is love, it embraces all, tillsammans, and has to do a lot of TEAMWORK! no piece is expandable, not even the rotters since you're going to field only 2 of them in a beast, 4 bloaters and 4 cows formation.
All in all, I love it and it's truly the budding seed of legends, just a slight harder than the 6 legend ogres team.
Posted by Kondor on 2021-02-27 21:01:56
Nurgle is one of my favorite teams to play with but at low TV it is so very painful. So very frustrating as they have no reliable core blocking skills.

On Fumbbl they will be stuck perpetually in low TV so they will be a perpetual frustration to use.

As such I will be one of the first to move over and use teams that come with core blocking skill out of the box.
Posted by ben_awesome on 2021-02-28 02:07:46
You can always stores spps, not skill until after the rebuild and then pick everyone that didn't do that and be dominatr for a season.
Posted by MrCushtie on 2021-02-28 06:10:41
SPP banking is going to be all kinds of fun. I foresee some strange things with Nurgle, where depending on which season the team is in, they can start very strong, or pretty weak - first season for a predeveloped team in Second Season, coming in from 2016 rules will be one where they can be fairly good out of the gate (but only if they've been managed to be lean, as per my Pub), and first season for a fresh Nurgle team in Second Season will probably be misery. Beyond that, I'm rather excited to see where it goes.

Random skills on Rotters could be wonderful, or could be one of the most annoying things to come from the change. Masochistically, looking forward to it either way :-)
Posted by mekutata on 2021-02-28 10:31:15
They should all get the vomit skill that the Trolls get.
Posted by Halfabrain on 2021-02-28 23:08:50
No more hoards of high tv Nurgle infesting the box... what a shame