Blood Bowl 2 Rulebook

[Netheos]

Hey Coaches,

On the Official Blood Bowl 2 Forum and during our AMA on Reddit last month, some of you requested a document summing up the differences between the BloodBowl 2 rules and the LRB6 (official rules of the tabletop game).

We are now releasing the "Blood Bowl 2 Rulebook" and you can find it on the Official Forum[forum.bloodbowl-game.com] or directly HERE[www.bloodbowl-game.com].
Keep in mind that this document is a summary of the current rules in the game and that it might evolve depending on your feedback and the data we collect on our servers.

We are constantly working on ironing out your Blood Bowl 2 experience. The current priority is to deliver the console update, in order to bring all fixes and improvements made on PC through 4 patches and servers updates to PS4 and Xbox One, but more updates with improvements are coming.

On Steam, the Early Players Offer will end the second week of November, after which Lizardmen and Wood Elves will be available for purchase as DLC.

Have fun on the pitch,
Cyanide Studio & Focus Home Interactive

[Jackal]

Congrats on keeping good communication with this!
Nice thing to have

[Dode]

Nice thing to have. Horrible and unjustified changes you have made. The orc team "excuse" is not backed up by the data, and you know it Cyanide.

[Ringtail♥]

Special play cards, oh my...

[Zombietron]

Finally some words, waiting for dlc, please add more races :)

[Ethelred]

Thanks for this. It would be great to see some evidence of changes e.g we have changed the price of Orc blitzers because X+Y=Z. And so on.

Please treat us with respect and for a game like this which is massively stat based, please do share the stats with us.

The LRB is a living rule book, we accept that, please, please, please just show your workings!

[Larus]

Oh wow, I have to say all the changes to the skills, especially the mandatory part, sounds pretty horrible. Always hoped it might just a couple of bugs that could be fixed or that they are at least options for custom leagues, but no they are official rules now :/

Guess I'll have to abandom the game after all if I want to play proper BB.

[Döktor Jönes]

Originally posted by Dode:

Nice thing to have. Horrible and unjustified changes you have made. The orc team "excuse" is not backed up by the data, and you know it Cyanide.

This sounds like something a conspiracy theorist would say... I mean... which reason could they have??


With this and all the other comments, I just get the impression, that the core Blood Bowl Community is pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

I mean, don't just write "the mandatory part is bad". I can't think of any case why I wouldn't want to use Side Step, Kick and Mighty Blow.

Don't get me wrong, I do not like some of these rules. The 150k treasury rule is kinda dumb (a treasury/bank system would be better in my opinion) and the randomness of who chooses his inducements first is a little bit strange. But I can life with it

[Dode]

Ok, I'll put that comment into context.

I have data for almost half a million games of Blood Bowl. About 250k are from FUMBBL B (which is an almost identical environment to matchmaking), about 25k are from a perpetual Cyanide league and about 10k from TT. The rest are from FOL, a BB1 open MM league. Not one of those environments shows orcs to be overperforming. I'm not just saying that in the hope that you will believe me (unlike Cyanide's "Orcs are top tier" comment), I've previously published the data, analysis and results so people can see for themselves. I've also said as much to Cyanide before: I was on beta for every version of BB so far and on alpha for LE onwards, including being on the design team for Khorne for CE and on a pre-alpha group for BB2. They know full well what the data says and does not say, and their wishy-washy excuse does not hold water. Yes Orcs are a top tier team, but so are 15 other teams, of which a good 10 consistently perform better than Orcs. Woodies and Lizards are excellent examples of teams which consistently do better than Orcs (better than most, actually), but they've not been nerfed at all.
So when I say "and you know it" to Cyanide, it's not a conspiracy theory, it's based on reproducible analysis of published data. It's the difference between a conspiracy theory and science.

Skill optionality is another thing which has been covered at length elsewhere. There are some skills which simply work, and Mighty Blow is one of them. Not having to use Sidestep, though, can allow you to set up chainpushes which otherwise would not work; the kick skill is designed to allow you to choose where to put the ball, with limitations, so with a roll of 3, for example, it might be more beneficial to not use the skill than to use it, and I've done just that on TT many times. It's not as if it's hard to do or can't be done in a slick manner, either: BB1 had many skills optional (and many which should have been also not optional) in a way which was easy to use and slick to manage. So what's the "excuse" this time? Not one of the skills they have nerfed in this manner is considered in any way overpowered, and some of them have been rendered toothless, particularly when used in conjunction with other skills (Juggernaut and Block vs Wrestle, for example).

Their treasury rule is broken: it allows a team with cash to be the on-pitch TV overdog simply because they have cash. That's nonsensical and pretty much the opposite of what the inducements system was intended to do (see the rulebook for the intent: it's very clear). As you say, the treasury/bank system is better.

So yeah, it's not just me being ♥♥♥♥♥♥, it's me knowing that they are talking bollocks because I've been part of their decision process (usually the dissenting part!) and know that they are being economical with the truth with some of their reasoning.

[Blinckx]

There's also NO REASON AT ALL for the AV8 Human Catcher or the Ogre discount
Also the increase of price for the blitzer COULD be a small nerf but increase the AV of a key player ( human catcher ) is not a small buff, it is a huge buff

I agree with Dode about the treasury rule. Unless you give me the option to spend my money what i'm suppose to do with 500k or more in bank ? Why i have to be penalized to win and gain money if those money only bloat my TV without any reason ? Money sitting there in the bank account don't make my team stronger or increase my skill level, so why affect my TV so much ?

To be honest i'm afraid to see those buff and nerf you're going to do in the future. Instead of wasting time to balance the game, release the special cards, it will be a LOT better than randomly buff/nerf 2 teams ( out 25 ) without any clue

[Dode]

I think you misunderstand me. I think the bank rule is good but not as they have implemented it. The aim is to force you to spend cash on, e.g., inducements so you can't hoard it and maintain high tv for overly long.

[BigBadB]

Originally posted by Dode:

Nice thing to have. Horrible and unjustified changes you have made. The orc team "excuse" is not backed up by the data, and you know it Cyanide.

This.

[darren]

Originally posted by Dode:

Ok, I'll put that comment into context.

I have data for almost half a million games of Blood Bowl. About 250k are from FUMBBL B (which is an almost identical environment to matchmaking), about 25k are from a perpetual Cyanide league and about 10k from TT. The rest are from FOL, a BB1 open MM league. Not one of those environments shows orcs to be overperforming. I'm not just saying that in the hope that you will believe me (unlike Cyanide's "Orcs are top tier" comment), I've previously published the data, analysis and results so people can see for themselves. I've also said as much to Cyanide before: I was on beta for every version of BB so far and on alpha for LE onwards, including being on the design team for Khorne for CE and on a pre-alpha group for BB2. They know full well what the data says and does not say, and their wishy-washy excuse does not hold water. Yes Orcs are a top tier team, but so are 15 other teams, of which a good 10 consistently perform better than Orcs. Woodies and Lizards are excellent examples of teams which consistently do better than Orcs (better than most, actually), but they've not been nerfed at all.
So when I say "and you know it" to Cyanide, it's not a conspiracy theory, it's based on reproducible analysis of published data. It's the difference between a conspiracy theory and science.

Skill optionality is another thing which has been covered at length elsewhere. There are some skills which simply work, and Mighty Blow is one of them. Not having to use Sidestep, though, can allow you to set up chainpushes which otherwise would not work; the kick skill is designed to allow you to choose where to put the ball, with limitations, so with a roll of 3, for example, it might be more beneficial to not use the skill than to use it, and I've done just that on TT many times. It's not as if it's hard to do or can't be done in a slick manner, either: BB1 had many skills optional (and many which should have been also not optional) in a way which was easy to use and slick to manage. So what's the "excuse" this time? Not one of the skills they have nerfed in this manner is considered in any way overpowered, and some of them have been rendered toothless, particularly when used in conjunction with other skills (Juggernaut and Block vs Wrestle, for example).

Their treasury rule is broken: it allows a team with cash to be the on-pitch TV overdog simply because they have cash. That's nonsensical and pretty much the opposite of what the inducements system was intended to do (see the rulebook for the intent: it's very clear). As you say, the treasury/bank system is better.

So yeah, it's not just me being ♥♥♥♥♥♥, it's me knowing that they are talking bollocks because I've been part of their decision process (usually the dissenting part!) and know that they are being economical with the truth with some of their reasoning.

+1000000

I dont know the full background with the folks at Cyanide, but I have been unimpressed by their previous games, and lack of patches, A.i , etc, but these changes, make no sense to me, to be honest, and some of them, would take no work at all, to change for the better, or at least allow the community to MOD them. Is this possible?

[crimsonsun]

The manditory skill use is utterly rediculious in most cases and in the case of juggernaut its crippling to the skills function and could cause a massive butterfly effect by effectively empowering agility based play against bash.

I can't comment on the Orcs, or the bank because I've simply not played BB2 since I discovered the Juggernaut issue. I guess I'll be waiting a while.

[Papalegba]

Are you kidding? Those mandatory skills? Why? Is it too hard for your company to implement a way of letting the coach choose wether or not to use the skill?

[Seenloitering]

Originally posted by Papalegba:

Are you kidding? Those mandatory skills? Why? Is it too hard for your company to implement a way of letting the coach choose wether or not to use the skill?

My guess is streamlining the UI experience. I personally prefer the choice, but I can understand the desire to make the game more accessable. Not that it's going to work... but I suspect that's the motivation.

As for the buff to humans... I frequently hear experienced players proclaim that humans "suck," and particularly catchers are useless. Well, now they don't. I personally like playing humans and appreciate the AV boost on catchers who finally look more like a Humans than Skaven lineman.