Tips and Tricks?

[丂ㄩ卩乇尺爪ㄖ几Ҝ乇ㄚ]

Hey guys I am new to this game and I was wondering if anyone had any good tips and strategies for a beginner to improve. Thanks for anything!

[Emoge]

I recommend checking out the articles on BBtactics.com, also there's a guide in the Guides section titled: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Habits of Blood Bowl, this guide seems to have basic tips which are good for new players.

Try playing against AI first. No average player will lose to AI. The AI sucks but... it can teach you basics which is good if you're new. Also, if you haven't done so yet, the campaign is a decent tutorial in my opinion.

You first team... expect it to die and lose a lot... a lot... this is ok.

I HIGHLY recommend leagues. NAF and perpetual leagues are full of kill teams and not condusice to new players. If you want to play ina perpetual league, play in CHampions League in NAF. Sure, some people play for the championship but 90% play just to play real games, because conceding is a bannable offense.

If you have any questions, reply and we'll try to answer or point you in the right direction

[Döktor Jönes]

Protip: Don't get salty

[丂ㄩ卩乇尺爪ㄖ几Ҝ乇ㄚ]

Originally posted by Spiked-Wall Man:

Protip: Don't get salty

Games don't irritate me too much its just a game

[丂ㄩ卩乇尺爪ㄖ几Ҝ乇ㄚ]

Originally posted by Emoge:

I recommend checking out the articles on BBtactics.com, also there's a guide in the Guides section titled: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Habits of Blood Bowl, this guide seems to have basic tips which are good for new players.

Try playing against AI first. No average player will lose to AI. The AI sucks but... it can teach you basics which is good if you're new. Also, if you haven't done so yet, the campaign is a decent tutorial in my opinion.

You first team... expect it to die and lose a lot... a lot... this is ok.

I HIGHLY recommend leagues. NAF and perpetual leagues are full of kill teams and not condusice to new players. If you want to play ina perpetual league, play in CHampions League in NAF. Sure, some people play for the championship but 90% play just to play real games, because conceding is a bannable offense.

If you have any questions, reply and we'll try to answer or point you in the right direction

Do you have like a specific race i should use?

[Kejiruze]

Everyone recommends Orcs, as they're almost entirely AV9 and have a great spread of stats and skills. Humans as they're "average" again have all the tools available to them, maybe a bit faster than Orcs. Dark Elfs are a third quite forgiving team, and with blanket AG4 you can attempt some Elf BS.


There's more newer 0layer friendly teams, you could just pick which bunch of pixels you like the look of and ask for help.


The help page on fumbbl.com, teams rosters and strategies, is a good resource.


Welcome to the game!

[Azrael]

Play Dwarfs. Why? They can sustain some damage, so you can learn blocking without taking too much damage in the ranks of your team and you can learn something about positioning your players the hard way. Because if you make a mistake with the dwarfs, you get punished hard by faster teams, since you can't catch up.

Except for that general hints:

-Make actions, where you don't need to roll a dice, first, e.g. moving players, standing up proned players.
-Try to create situations, where you have two block dice at your disposal, not only one, increases your chance for a succesful block.
-Don't become greedy. If you wanted to beat up a player and only get Push dice, accept it. Don't reroll such things. You'll need the rerolls for more important situations (e.g. curing a double skull dice roll).
-Take your time planning your round, look at the field and identify, what you could do to achieve what you want to do.
-Losing a match is fine, it's part of the game and you get SPP and a MVP out of it, so don't ragequit aka. concede the match. I know you said, that you don't rage but it's just a general hint.
-Foul only with expendable players, e.g. one of your linemen.

[Kejiruze]

Did you just recommend Dorfs?! The slowest least dynamic team?!

[Ethelred]

Dreadful team to start with - yes it will teach you positional play (tip - always have a sweeper/safety), but I'd start with Humans, Orcs or Undead to learn the basics.

Dorfs for new players would be (IMHO) too hard as positioning is too far along the skill tree for a new coach.

Learn the blocking basics, 2-1 grind, column defence, handoff & shortpass, when to foul etc first.

Also, they are dismally boring.

[-Turbu-]

Undead is a pretty good starting team for a new player.

They got mummies for punching and tieing down key players, wights for blocks and backup ball handling and ghouls for ball handling and carrying.

[Kejiruze]

Undead are a recommendation I missed, thanks Turbu.

They also have a movement disparity and cheap foulers. Regen means you don't need to think about the apothecary either!

[Hairy Coo]

Do not start with dorfs, they are very limited and one-sided. They will teach you lots of bad habits and give you a wrong impression about how to win in BB.

Orks or Undead are good to start. Personally I'd go undead (because mummies), but orks are probably more forgiving to mistakes.

When you get a bit familiar with bb and would want to try aglity play, try dark elves. They are the most relyable elves.

Beside that, check some guides, watch out though, lots of guides on bbtactics and such are very out of date or just silly.

Also watching how good streamers play bb really helps. It is also a good way to be integrated into the community. Personally I find bb2 community to be one of the major game features. =)

Anyhow, good luck and welcome to blood bowl!

[licker34]

It sort of doesn't matter what you start with honestly, you need to familiarize yourself with the rules and very basic concepts, so any team will do really. Granted, some are more forgiving or less forgiving depending on what your natural inclination is. Dwarfs suit someone who doesn't want to take many risks and try to keep everything in one place and win through attrition and a slow advance. Wood elfs (or skaven, but WE are better) are better for someone who wants to take a lot of risks and try to score quickly while still being able to scramble back on defense and recover positions.

Orcs, Humans, Undead, Dark Elfs... just fall in between, and are certainly good teams (well Humans are pretty poor comparatively), but the lie is that you can do a little bit of everything. It's sort of true, but until you understand the nuances of various matchups it's not that helpful, because you don't have the experience to understand when to shift gears, or even what gear to shift into!

Which is why starting with a team that really only has one approach can be beneficial at the beginning, there's only one gear, and the matchup doesn't matter as much, you need to dictate the game on your terms, not react to the opponent.

[Hairy Coo]

Well when u just start u tend to roll a lot of risky and unnecessary dice. If one wishes to learn, these dice must not either fail or succeed alot. Undead and orks are somewhat in this goldilocks zone. Starting with dorfs or wood elves could surely be fun when dice are good. It will just take longer to learn all sides of the game. BB for me is about all about gameplay improvement though. Orks and undies are the best stepping stone on this path imo.

[Azrael]

I suggested Dwarfs, because they're the hardest team to begin with and errors are punished hard.
This leads you to memorize them better.
Besides that, if you're good with dwarfs, you can be good with every team.

Yes, other teams maybe a lot more forgiving and easier to start with and have a somewhat different playstyle or option, but then you wouldn't learn the basics of the game that good, if you can easily fix your errors ingame, would you? ;)

[licker34]

One could argue that you will improve more quickly by playing a less forgiving team as you don't have any crutches available to you, so you will be forced to learn 'proper' play sooner.

Of course it all depends on the individual. If you jump into the game without any kind of knowledge of anything and plan on just learning on the fly you will probably be disappointed no matter what you choose.

If you read/watch/ask to learn about the rules and basic tactics, well, again, it won't matter so much what you choose either because your level of understanding will be greater to begin with.

I think there are two different questions though really. One is, what is the 'best' way to learn the game, and for that I don't think it matters what race you choose, because the implication is that you want to learn, and so will endeavor to find external information to speed the process.

The other is, what is the team with which a new coach will have the most 'success'. Now that clearly will lean towards certain races, but 'success' is not the same thing as 'learning'.

In any case, you will want to actually play several different teams anyway, that's the best way to gain the experience necessary to understand how to employ different tactics, and what tactics work best for and against certain races.

The 'starter' race is largely irrelevant, pick something you think is interesting, realize you will struggle with anything anyway, and after you feel you have picked up the basics, start over with a different race that now appeals to you for reasons of having learned more about the game generally.

When I started I choose Dark Elfs and then Skaven. I was terrible with both! So I said, screw it, I'll play Orcs because they won't die all the time, but I couldn't score with any regularity because I didn't have any AG4 or really fast players.

However, I figured out during those matches 'how to play'. So when I started my next batch of teams my win rate jumped significantly because I had simply paid my dues and finished my home work.

There is no real bad advice about what team to 'start' with (other than stunties, but they aren't an option here anyway). It's really just a matter of playing 'enough' games to figure out what you know and what you don't know, and then you move on to whatever the next team is that you suddenly want to try because you saw someone else playing them and they beat the crap out of you, or just because they looked really fun.

It's ultimately about that part, fun. Whatever you choose, if it isn't fun for you, then you won't have much impetus to continue with anything. So pick a team which seems to fit your personality, or at least what you think you want to do in game (like the dwarf, wood elf split I mentioned) and see how it goes.

But no matter what you choose, you need to do some home work if you want to improve your level of play more quickly. Read the guides people have mentioned, watch some twitch or you tube. Even ask SPECIFIC questions here. General questions generate general answers and probably are not that useful actually.