My favourite skill in Blood Bowl
This is part of this month’s Bear Blog Carnival hosted by Kami.
For the uninitiated, Blood Bowl is a tabletop miniatures game of fantasy (American) football. Think Warhammer, but on a cardboard football pitch, divided into squares, with a ball that needs to be picked up, carried and thrown from one end to the other.
You do this by counting squares and rolling dice. Want to move past an opposing player1? Roll a d6. Want to throw the ball down to the other end of the pitch? Roll a d6. Heck, do you want to pick up the ball, unthreatened in the backfield? Roll a d6.
Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Halflings, Goblins, Ogres, Skaven, Chaos, etc etc. All sorts of fantasy races from the world of Warhammer compete in Blood Bowl. Instead of wars, they take it out on the pitch.
But Quack, what is a skill?
The players of Blood Bowl interact with the game through two things: their attributes, and their skills. Attributes are their stats, how innately good they are at doing things. An elf is just really good at handling the ball and slipping away from people, whilst an ogre is really bloody strong.
Skills on the other hand are learned. They are the extra talents of the players, reflecting what they are really good at. They might let a player throw really far, or punch extra hard. They can let players do things that would otherwise break the game.
There are good skills and there are bad skills. Some are just too situational to be interesting. Some of the best skills are so good, that Games Workshop2 had to introduce an extra tax just to make coaches think about not taking them.
And your favourite one is???
Break Tackle. This is a skill that lets string players dodge away from other players more easily. Usually, an Ogre has a 50/50 chance if dodging away from a player out into the open (4+ on a d6). Once they learn Break Tackle, they are doing this 83% of the time (2+ on a d6).
This gets stronger when dodging into other players. Three players marking a square usually makes it very hard to get into. Break Tackle doesn’t mind, especially on the Ogre.
Three players is usually how many players a coach has protecting the ball carrier, using a typical cage3. Get Break Tackle involved, and that cage is not looking as safe. What was a 17% chance play, becomes a 50/50.
Break Tackle on the big guys is cool and all, and, but my favourite player to have Break Tackle on is a blitzer. Specifically the Skaven Blitzer.
Blitzers are quick, average agility, average strength players, but they come out of the gate with skills to help them hit other players. Their starting skill is usually Block, which helps them hit other players with less risk to themselves.
Break Tackle on blitzers helps them to get to places. Suddenly your average blitzer is dodging like an elf, massively increasing its threat. A Skaven Blitzer has a higher movement than all but the very quickest player, so their threat range covers a good chunk of the pitch.
Break Tackle fits my aggressive play style. I want to pile on pressure on the ball as quickly as possible and maintain that pressure. Having blitzers and big guys that can dodge away and get stuck in more reliably is a big boon, and a key part of my playbook.
So there we go! I will definitely be giving more of my thoughts on Blood Bowl and other tabletop games here, so please do come back and visit me once I have found my feet a bit more.
Quack