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ARABY TEAMS

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Bedouin

Bedouin Thrower

Eunuchs

Dervish

Sheikh


Background
Araby is a subcontinent of the Southlands, surrounded by the Great Ocean to the West and The Land of the Dead to the East. All of the great cities of Araby lie on the west cost of the peninsula; the great desert separating them from The Land of the Dead.

The lands to the west are rich in spices, gold and slaves and the towns and cities are overrun with pirates and thieves. Araby is a major trading port for The Old World, Norsca and the New World and through these trade routes they learnt of the game Bloodbowl.

Bloodbowl has only recently found a home in Araby and by the Sultans decree great stadiums were erected in all the major cities; Lashiek, Copher, Martek and El Haikk. Each team is led by its Sheik (Leader), and comprises of The Silent Guard from Eunuch Mountain (Palace Guards), Dervishes, Bedouin Throwers and Bedouin. The teams have only ever had a chance to pit their wits against each other and the Khemri teams until now. Overtime their teams have evolved in to a well oiled machine, mixing strength, speed and agility to overcome their most bitter rivals.

Tired of watching the same regional teams competing the sultan ordered a great ship to be built housing a Bloodbowl stadium on its deck. This vast ship would set sail with teams from all of Araby's great cities to find new teams and races to play.

Rationale
The Araby team design was fairly straight forward as there is a wealth of fluff for this race, from warhammer army books, warhammer online and warmaster where they have a full army range.

The linemen are your basic human linemen though less well equipped hence the Av drop and price drop to match. Similarly the throwers are also your basic human throwers but again less well equipped so they start as Av7 players.

Because the low average armour the team needed some muscle and Eunuchs are the perfect fit, some other rosters use 'Palace Guards' to fill this role, but calling them Eunuch added more individuality to the roster. Also the Palace Guards are seemingly Eunuchs anyway, after reading through the fluff for Warmaster most of the Palace Guards in the Araby list seem to originate from Eunuch mountain.

When designing their stats it was clear this player was the teams Blocker so they start with a similar stat line to the Black Orc Blocker, dropping a point of Av and gaining a point of Ma, this was also very straight forward as they aren't covered in the huge weighty armour of Black Orcs which allows them to move around a little more freely.

Dervishes are the staple of the Araby team, featured in every list you will find for them, they are the elite warriors of the Araby army. The only difficulty came in deciding what Ma and Av to give them in the end I settled on Ma7 and Av8. MA8, Av7 was a consideration but it didn't seem right giving a human Blitzer Ma8. Also more Av7 seemed to leave the team too vulnerable. The skills of Frenzy and Side Step were added to represent the Dervishes frenzied nature and side step to represent their whirling almost balletic movement.

Finally the Sheik was added. Sheik literally means Leader so that skill choice fitted the player nicely and makes him and the roster unique; and as the most important and specialised player on the team it seemed right to give them Ag4 as they will be the whole focus of the team. Although putting an Ag4 player on a team with 2 St4 players could be perceived as too much, the team does lack any important starter skills such as block or dodge and Chaos Pact have more St and an Ag4 player without making them broken, also the average Av on the team is not good so they need a get out of jail card when things are not going their way to help balance the roster in a similar way that Gutter Runners do for Skaven, though not quite to that extent. On some internet Araby rosters the Shiek starts with Ag3 and Dodge which actually makes him more reliable than Ag4 does with no Dodge and I didn't want any of the standard meta choice skills in the team to help keep it unique and play in a new way to other teams.

Season 2 Changes
After 1 year and 180 games Araby were sitting exactly on 40% win percentage. This has them placed in Tier2 of Blood Bowl teams firmly. Even though their win percentage is being dragged down by 2 teams with particularly poor records I have decided to reduce their RR cost to 60k. The only reason they started with 70k RRs was because they break the rules of team building with the Shiek. As we have now proved this team is definitely not too good I have moved the RR cost up to what I originally wanted it to be.

Season 3
219 games played with a win percentage of 52.74% in this 3rd season and on. This puts the team in the tier 1 bracket. Though I suspect this is actually a tier 1.5 team as intended. Their win percentage shouldn't have jumped from 40% to 52% just based on a 10k deduction on their RR cost. The number of games played are just not enough to draw any concrete conclusions. The team has been locked in now, I am comfortable with the roster and how it is performing.

Roster design by Garion, Harvestmouse and Zakatan
Background and rationale by Garion Player Pics are drawn by Knut_Rockie and coloured by Garion
Player icons by Cowhead