The following is lifted from Hogshine's blog, which can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=36240196865&ref=nf&.php%3Fref%3Dhome

For those of you without facebook, here it is in it's entirety. I must say that i agree with him completely.

In my earlier blog I wrote an introduction to the world of Bloodbowl and Fumbbl. I would now like to talk about the new division: Blackbox, and my thoughts on it.

In order to do this, I need to introduce the notions of TR/TS. TR is a LRB4 (Living RuleBook 4, the ruleset in use on fumbbl) device used to measure how “powerful” a team is. Generally, a higher TR team would beat a lower TR team. The TR is worked out using a simple formula, which basically adds up how much the team is worth in terms of how much money has been spent, and then adds an extra amount depending on how skilled the team is. A beginning team will start off with TR=100, as they have no extra skills, so just have the worth of how much money was spent. One of the drawbacks of TR include that it does not take into account injuries.

TS is similar, but with slight modifications. It is another measure of how “powerful” a team is, and is generally more accurate because it takes into account injuries and the specific skills the team has. However, it is not included in LRB4, and is purely a fumbbl invention. For those of you understand more about Bloodbowl, but are not familiar with fumbbl, you can find more information about TS here.

Now, back to Blackbox. The idea is that instead of people offering match ups, and then relying on the other player accepting said match up (this system is still in place in the [R]anked division, for example), the players all activate the teams they want to play with and then an algorithm sorts them into match ups such that they are fair for both players. The main motivation for this is that in [R]anked, many matches are unfair. It is very easy for teams or coaches to pick on coaches who are not very experienced, and don’t realise that they are almost certain to lose. It is also easy for teams to play other teams who are less likely to hurt them, in order to keep their team healthy. The first situation is clearly bad, the second one is not so bad, but leads to more boring games. Blackbox would take care of both of these by matching teams up into suitable games.

A lot of coaches involved with Fumbbl agree on this in theory, but there has been some debate about how the algorithm should work. There is agreement that TS should be the most important factor, but there are still issues with whether good coaches should be matched against poorer coaches at the same TS or whether the poorer coach should be given a TS advantage. There are other issues as well, more information can be found on the fumbbl site itself, by searching the forums.

That should be enough information for you to understand my thoughts on the matter!

Basically, I think the match ups should be almost completely determined by TS. There is no reason to penalise coaches for being good at the game by forcing them to play at a TS disadvantage to poorer coaches. Similarly, if I were to play one of the very good coaches on Fumbbl, I would like it to be a fair match on paper, and not to be given any sort of advantage against them. Yes, perhaps I would be more likely to win. However that victory (if/when it came) would seem worth far less than if I’d managed to play with even teams, but play well and force a victory.

Another issue is whether to place bashy teams up against non-bashy teams. I do not see why this is an issue at all. So your precious little elf team might get a little bit hurt? Bloodbowl is a violent game. If you can’t take the risk of your team getting killed or beaten, then don’t put your team into the box.

This mentality can pretty much explain my views on most of the other issues, such as concessions (especially without any of the game actually being played) and so on.