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I picked this game up at the weekend on Xbox 360, and played it for the first time yesterday.

I've lost 2 games so far, having played... 2 games.

I'm a human team, everything's standard. Playing a blitz style campaign. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, though have done the pretty rubbish "training" games.

Any help you guys can give would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Basically don't leave any open areas of your line and try and get 2 dice blocks. BB is a complex game though so there are quite a lot of variables. There are doubltess some training videos on youtube, thats probably a good place to start.

The Art of Blocking
Human Playbook
The main Rulebook

These should give you a basic understanding of the game:
I will say this; the PC versions of the game are far superior from every team being available to the log working correctly

BB is also a horrendous bitch and will attempt to feth you constantly.
You can get some horribly bad luck in that game.

I find the video game Blood Bowl too frustrating in any long periods of use. The AI cheats something chronic.

Have to agree with purplefood and filbert here. Stick with it, although the game will try to feth you almost constantly. I'm not familiar with the 360 version, having only played the PC and TT versions however, there are plenty of websites out there that can help you when you start out.

Try this website… http://bbtactics.com/strategy/

They also have sample starting teams that seem to work well.

Good luck!

 filbert wrote:
I find the video game Blood Bowl too frustrating in any long periods of use. The AI cheats something chronic.

Actually there's been extensive reports of players on their forums doing checking of the RNG down to individual rolls.

It's pretty much down to perception bias that people think it screws them over.



Anyways while not 100% for the game itself. This is a very handy guide for each of the races and much of the info is relevant.

http://www.plasmoids.dk/bbowl/LRB6Playbooks.htm

Yeah, it's not that it cheats...it's that it gives all the other teams a bunch of experienced players at the start. Which is nice because then you get all that sweet, sweet inducement cash, but it can be frustrating to watch half the enemy team dodge through your lines and proceed to throw your Big Guy right into the stands.

Best to play for a draw or two right at the start, I find. But then, I tend to play goblins, so I do a lot of that...

 Spinner wrote:
Yeah, it's not that it cheats...it's that it gives all the other teams a bunch of experienced players at the start. Which is nice because then you get all that sweet, sweet inducement cash, but it can be frustrating to watch half the enemy team dodge through your lines and proceed to throw your Big Guy right into the stands.

Best to play for a draw or two right at the start, I find. But then, I tend to play goblins, so I do a lot of that...

Your big guys should be nowhere the sidelines never mind getting surfed.
Bes way to avoid it is to not use the areas right next to the sidelines unless your guy has side step; even then it's a complete guarantee against surfing

Right, I know that, just a little bit of hyperbole. Didn't mean it literally.

My trolls avoid the edge of the pitch like the spectators all had Nurgle's Rot (instead of, y'know, a good third of them)!

One of the things I'm most struggling with is identifying the players, the skills they have and who should be doing what. I'll post my team specifics up tomorrow if I get time and maybe you guys can tell me where I'm going wrong?

As for turn out, what decides this? Having one guy fail an action is what it seems like now, such as tackling another guy and actually losing.

Am I right to have started with humans? I figured going with a team full of averages would be a good starting point though thinking I should have just gone with a steam roller instead (chaos?) and worried less about scoring touch downs than actually having concious players!

Dwarves can be a really easy team to start out with as most of your team starts off with block and they are fairly tough. However, I find that their strategies are not very complicated; you pretty much hit things, run the ball, and run out the time for a 2-1 win.

Nice thing about an average team like Humans is that you can practice various aspects of the game, such as passing, which is something you almost never do with Dwarves.

Also, with Humans, you can have 4 blitzers, which a lot of teams can't do, I believe.

Don't do the real time mode either. Always do classic. It's just like the TT game.

bbtactics is a great site to learn the best skills to take and starting rosters.

I also don't like the Campaign mode much. I prefer the competition mode, and then the one that has a season and the playoffs. You get a lot of games in that way and by the second season you should have a lot of skilled players.

I think Orcs might be the best starter team, but Humans are good too.

I lost my first few games and hated it. Thought it was the worst PC game I've ever played. Then I learned the BB rules and came back... loved it. Played it over 100 hours. Stick with it, it's a lot of fun. Just don't get too angry at the dice... it helps if you stack the odds in your favor.

I never played the TT game and had very little understanding of the game but I know how american football works so that helps.

Funny thing is that Bloodbowl doesn't really play like American football.

I remember reading that initially they were trying to make it like American football but it got to be too long and clunky when you had to keep reorganizing all of the minis for each down.

Bloodbowl seems to play more like rugby, in that the gameplay is more fluid and continuous; not as 'stop and go'.

Why on earth would you get this on xbox...

Anyway, I suggest you find Cknoor on youtube, probably the best BB player that has lots of content.

teamwise the best human start imo is:

6 linesmen
4 blitzers
2 throwers
4 rerolls

you get a sub, enough rerolls to cover bad random rolls, and you can play them as a nice running team.

Save up and get ogre and then if you care for them catchers. the delay on getting catchers means your players get some skills to cover the catchers poor Str and it stops the catchers hogging all your SSP's from touchdowns.

No game has ever made me ragequit like Blood Bowl has. Love this game to death, but the number of "3 dice all attacker down -> reroll -> 3 dice all attack down" instances I've run into has probably taken 3 years off my life.

I'm guessing this is completely useless, but in the PC version there is a key you can press to show the position of each player above their head (little white text saying stuff like "thrower" or "blitzer"). There's also a button to show you all your tackle zones, so you can easily see what areas are covered. Also another button to stop that dang "real time shifting camera" view that the AI turn goes into so you can actually see what was happening.

I would imagine without knowledge of those features the game would be much more obtuse.

ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Actually there's been extensive reports of players on their forums doing checking of the RNG down to individual rolls.

It's pretty much down to perception bias that people think it screws them over.

It really isn't perception bias - I have played enough Blood Bowl, both tabletop and digital, to recognise situations and examples of bad luck and 'cheating AI' for want of a better word. This is a great example:

streamdragon wrote:No game has ever made me ragequit like Blood Bowl has. Love this game to death, but the number of "3 dice all attacker down -> reroll -> 3 dice all attack down" instances I've run into has probably taken 3 years off my life.

And it happens time and time again in the digital version to the point where you can almost predict it happening - usually when you are 2 or more TD's up and the AI needs to make a crucial drive. All of a sudden, you get a 3 dice attacker down result and the opposition team makes a mazy run of dodges through your line (and through multiple tackle zones with multiple negative modifiers) before catching a long bomb pass and scoring. When the opposition does this with a skeleton or something like that, it stretches one's incredulity even more. Again, if this happened once in a blue moon then you could put it down to bad luck; the issue is it happens time and time again and it is completely unbelievable as sheer bad luck or random dice rolls. In my years of playing BB in real life, I can count on the fingers of one hand the amount of times such a catastrophic sequence of rolls has happened, yet digital BB it seems to happen as commonplace.

Soladrin wrote:Why on earth would you get this on xbox...

Anyway, I suggest you find Cknoor on youtube, probably the best BB player that has lots of content.

Gee, I dunno, maybe it has something to do with me only having an xbox... that would be my first guess anyway. Cheers for the recommendation, I'll check it out.

Duce wrote:teamwise the best human start imo is:

6 linesmen
4 blitzers
2 throwers
4 rerolls

you get a sub, enough rerolls to cover bad random rolls, and you can play them as a nice running team.

Save up and get ogre and then if you care for them catchers. the delay on getting catchers means your players get some skills to cover the catchers poor Str and it stops the catchers hogging all your SSP's from touchdowns.

I don't have my list to hand, though I can tell you it includes an ogre, 2 blitzers, maybe a catcher or 2 and I think the rest are linesmen. Also decided to get 5 cheerleaders without knowing if they're a good investment lol

dementedwombat wrote:I'm guessing this is completely useless, but in the PC version there is a key you can press to show the position of each player above their head (little white text saying stuff like "thrower" or "blitzer"). There's also a button to show you all your tackle zones, so you can easily see what areas are covered. Also another button to stop that dang "real time shifting camera" view that the AI turn goes into so you can actually see what was happening.

I would imagine without knowledge of those features the game would be much more obtuse.

That's interesting, I'll check to see if this is available - thanks! It felt like I was flying blind when I first played this, and having bought Mass Effect 3 the same day I haven't gone back to it yet!

 filbert wrote:

streamdragon wrote:No game has ever made me ragequit like Blood Bowl has. Love this game to death, but the number of "3 dice all attacker down -> reroll -> 3 dice all attack down" instances I've run into has probably taken 3 years off my life.

And it happens time and time again in the digital version to the point where you can almost predict it happening - usually when you are 2 or more TD's up and the AI needs to make a crucial drive. All of a sudden, you get a 3 dice attacker down result and the opposition team makes a mazy run of dodges through your line (and through multiple tackle zones with multiple negative modifiers) before catching a long bomb pass and scoring. When the opposition does this with a skeleton or something like that, it stretches one's incredulity even more. Again, if this happened once in a blue moon then you could put it down to bad luck; the issue is it happens time and time again and it is completely unbelievable as sheer bad luck or random dice rolls. In my years of playing BB in real life, I can count on the fingers of one hand the amount of times such a catastrophic sequence of rolls has happened, yet digital BB it seems to happen as commonplace.

"All right, I've successfully cleared my way to the ball carrier with careful tactics and no rerolls. Minotaur, go squish that snotling." Minotaur roars, rushes forward and gets gibbed in the eye by something the size of his toe.

Twice.

And that's when my minotaur just didn't decide to spend a few turns refusing Blitz orders, with rerolls, just because he liked the turf in that particular spot on the field.