Howdie All

Completely new to BBTM, have ordered the game and all expansions which I should receive by the weekend.

I have read up quite a bit on the game, including all the rules and errata, but tournaments still confuse me!

What I don't understand is this?

1. Do all teams compete at the same time or do 2 teams face off against two other teams (say in 4 player) and the two winners face off. I am assuming the former.

2. Is there a ball ? I am beginning to suspect there is not, which IMO sucks! Hopefully I am just not understanding here.

3. If there is no ball is there really any reason why you couldn't just add one, and make it an X way match ? Can those more experienced then me (ie everybody ) please comment if this would unbalance the game in any way. Hopefully I am just wrong about the whole thing

Really looking forward to giving this a whirl. Almost as much as I am looking forward to BB2.

Thanks everyone!!

All the teams that what to compete for the Tournament can do so, unlike highlights that can only have players from two teams.

Yes, there is a ball: "Prepare for Kickoff: Place one ball token on each Highlight card

and on the Tournament card (if present)." (p. 8)

All the teams that what to compete for the Tournament can do so, unlike highlights that can only have players from two teams.

Yes, there is a ball: "Prepare for Kickoff: Place one ball token on each Highlight card

and on the Tournament card (if present)." (p. 8)

Ahh ok. **** I searched low and high for that but kept only seeing highlights!

Thankyou very much for this. I really appreciate it.

So I still find this conceptually a little mind boggling (though I am stoked there is a ball ). If you do not mind, could you comment on the following examples please ?

1. 3 players at tournament. 2 opposing and 1 without any opposition. Do they all play one another, or do the two opposing play one another and the other team remain unopposed ?????

2. In the above example is there one ball shared between three or two balls ?

I am finding it a little difficult to understand how the flow of play works with more then 2 teams at a tournament matchup. Still a newb to card games in general so please forgive my ignorance, I am sure it is all obvious to most!

Thankyou in advance.

There are no "opposing" teams in a tournament. Everybody can beat down everybody. All teams are "in the same game". There is only one ball. Anybody with a Pass icon can grab the ball as usual or move it from any enemy to the middle.

Thankyou. That's is what I have come to suspect. It makes sense to me now, but I was all kinds of confused there for a while.

I have received the game now, but am still waiting on Foul Play to arrive.... **** postie.

Thanks to you @arwaker

Welcome to FFG's best kept secret. I preferred the variations to game play in Sudden Death over Foul Play, but the Goblins are pure mayhem, so hopefully they get into your hands soon

Nothing better than picking Morg out of you opponents hand and making them draw another card.

Thankyou. Looking forward to Monday night (when it should, by rights, arrive)!!! Pity its not a weekend but oh well.

Mind you, if it does not arrive, it might be the cause for the mother of all dummy spits.

BTW Being a bit of a stat nut, I have been playing around with analysing the teams, via a custom built database and linked spreadsheet. Pretty cool once you put all the data in.

Did you know that the humans have the least amount of PASSING skills in the league (total across all 12 base players). Sounds wrong doesn't it but it is not (not including FOUL PLAY teams). They make up for it with their ball handling abilities (ie dump off, strip ball etc IIRC). NOTE : (To be fair and accurate the humans, dwarfs, chaos and orcs all are tied in last place on 2 passing skills, but it is still surprising to me as a beginner anyway).

Another interesting stat is that the SKAVEN have a whopping 21 TOTAL skills between their players, the next highest is the CHAOS with 15 with the MEDIAN being only 12. But then again they also have the lowest total SP of all the teams. Are stats, gotta love em Again FOUL PLAY, not yet accounted for.

Sorry for rambling!

Ramble on! By the way, Humans have sneaky passing. Their blitzers get the pass ability when successfully tackling an opposing player. It makes them particularly difficult opponents because they tackle your ballcarrier, scattering the ball to the middle, and then pick it up. Just like that, a potential 4 star swing!

Dark Elves are pretty similar, in that they have more pass than it seems at first blush. Dark Elves passing trigger on downed skills, Humans get it through response.

Ramble on! By the way, Humans have sneaky passing. Their blitzers get the pass ability when successfully tackling an opposing player. It makes them particularly difficult opponents because they tackle your ballcarrier, scattering the ball to the middle, and then pick it up. Just like that, a potential 4 star swing!

Dark Elves are pretty similar, in that they have more pass than it seems at first blush. Dark Elves passing trigger on downed skills, Humans get it through response.

A free pass to ramble .... OK here goes

Thats one of things that initially surprised me. As looking at the humans they seemed to have passing strengths, then when I seen them in the stat sheet I thought I had made a mistake somewhere. Then I realized their passing strengths came in ball-handling-abilities like "strip ball" and "dump-off" not to mention the 3SP catcher that can be dumped-off to for extra fan points (admittedly can be hard to get sometimes). Gotta love the blitzer.

Yes Dark Elves are cool like that. I find usually the players that struggle with them, play them a little too conservatively and don't say use their dauntless assassins for 1-dice blocks. Not to mention downed players that flog the ball (I think thats the blitzer IIRC), witch elves that are the only player that can choose to cheat or not. They do lack in the SP department though. There are sometimes cases for undertaking 2 dice against blocks just to get the downed skill ie flog the ball IMO.

I am currently working out a way to objectively measure each team in a number of areas without making arbitrary decisions about how much each skill is worth.

For example you can objectively tally star power, and use the odds of tackling (and tackling abilities) to work out, for each player their chances of tackle success (attack and defence) against each and every player in the game. Once the data is in , the computer does all the hard work, and it is 100% objective assuming of course that the info I put in is correct.

A summation, average, and median of those probabilities will give a reasonable estimation of each teams attack and defence (not sure which provides the best measure, may need to use some other form of heuristic). It would also allow for comparisons between individual teams for greater accuracy.

From there I can factor in downed-skills, injuries etc. Probably measured separately unless it can be easily "objectively" merged with the previous results. In the end I hope to have a series of say 4-6 numbers that measure each team in different areas (ie attack, defence, resilience, passing, etc). Passing is probably the hardest to reduce to a single number IMO. Although I have an idea to come up with something reasonable, although not as meaningful as the attack/defence stats.

Star players I will measure separately ie as a union vs union comparison. AM not sure about team cards yet. Some could be evaluated easily, others not so much.

Hoping the stats will help expose those teams that are stronger or weaker, and under what circumstances (ie tournaments, matchups, fan points etc). We kinda like the info the stats provide in our group.

Just something I am interested in pursuing in my spare time, an hour here and there. Probably will never finish it, especially as I like to revise things, but will certainly try

BTW Sorry for the late response. Got sidetracked with xcom the last few weeks and did not realize anyone had responded to this thread. Apologies for the WOT!!!!!!

That sounds cool. There's another thread where someone did a fairly decent assessment of the teams. In my own experience the only team I can't win with is Dwarfs. The inability to pick up the ball, cycle players, foul, or engineer 2 dice tackles really hamstrings them.

That sounds cool. There's another thread where someone did a fairly decent assessment of the teams. In my own experience the only team I can't win with is Dwarfs. The inability to pick up the ball, cycle players, foul, or engineer 2 dice tackles really hamstrings them.

Yeah I have read the other comparisons (here and bgg). Whilst they made an interesting read, it made to many subjective assessments, which renders the analysis less useful IMO. Having a single number to represent the team as a whole is problematic to say the least, unless you are collating stats from actual games across a statistically significant number of players. I am trying to produce a series of metrics, based solely upon information that can be wholly objectively collected ie SP, DSP etc.

Ah the Dwarves, gotta love em. They are tricky I agree, but have some oft overlooked strengths IMO.

The point of Dwarves IMO, is to tackle targets that lose more SP then you do (ie take advantage of the 2SP downded SP for most players) and couple this with the copious guard ability to stop downed players being injured. That and taking advantage of the team cards. They have the highest DSP in the game (added across the entire team). I think improving the deck-manipulation abilities of the dwarves (ie sprint/foul/etc) is the prime goal of dwarves in the early game. But even if this fails, the high DSP nature of the dwarves will be there in most hands.

I play them exercising their bashy nature, and not worrying so much about tackle-fails (as it will result in a 1SP loss). "Stand firm" works well against teams that are bashy in nature, or for example stadiums that prevent passing. If an opponents has too much ball handling to cope with, I go on an all-out bash-a-thon (or choose stadiums that hamper them). Remember even a 2die bash against is still a 25% chance of a tackle. If an ogre is going to drop 3SP, in one go and your dwarf will drop 1, its worth the tackle IMO under many circumstances. I would also not worry to much about engineering 2 die blocks. The troll slayers have dauntless (or is frenzy can't remember) IIRC. 1 Die blocks are still 50% chance to succeed and ~84% of not downing your dwarf. Even if they do fail its a 1SP loss. When considering the odds you also must consider how much you lose/gain IMO. Don't underestimate the 3SP Blockers that have guard. They are there to stop your downded players from being injured and thus keeping their high DSP. If there is a team that excels at 1 Die blocks it is the dwarves. NOTE : Remember if you down 3 Dwarfs thats 3SP loss(in general with blockers/blitzers/troll slayers), if you down 3 opponent blitzers/blockers/whatever its usually a 6 SP loss. You can afford to fail more. Also the Team Cards help quite a bit.

Thats my take anyway

NOTE : I am still a newb so, perhaps my analysis is coloured my own nativity and lack of experience. You almost certainly have much more experience with this game then I, so I hope my opinion does not come off as "preachy"; its is not intended this way. I have only played the Dwarves twice. I did win once though (4 Players), but it was early on when none of our group had much experience, so take that win with a massive grain of salt . We also don't generally use stadium rewards (but do use stadiums, and their restrictions), and only have the corrupt ref on rounds 3-4. Otherwise the game is standard. So our game rules and playstyles may somehow advantage the dwarves.

No, I get how to play them. I can be quite competitive through 5 rounds with them. They just give up too many matches to ties, and tie breakers since they rarely have the ball. Stand firm is great for example, but why bother tackling a dwarf runner? Just play someone with the pass icon and the ball is back in the middle and the Dwarf coach at most has only 1 more guy in his hand that can pick that ball up.

That's the rub, with Dwarfs. Their card text skills are all too often wasted. Dwarf Blitzers have strip ball (but they'd have to choose that instead of tackle). Troll Slayers have dauntless (but it's wasted against any player with 3 SP or less). I don't think it's a problem of how they are costed, it's a problem with how those skills are deployed/synergize across the roster.

Don't even get me started on the lack of sprint when you draw the dreaded 4 dwarf lineman hand... They are just good enough to lose in a fantastically heartbreaking fashion.

A house rule we use for dwarfs since a while we are quite cofident with:

Everytime a Trollslayer tackles another playercard with higher STR (independet of the result), the dwarf player gets 2 fans.

A house rule we use for dwarfs since a while we are quite cofident with:

Everytime a Trollslayer tackles another playercard with higher STR (independet of the result), the dwarf player gets 2 fans.

I really like that.