Pop quiz, hot-shot. Your Block marauder rolls 2x 6s for his skillup. But he has an mng. What do you do?

First game against Necro on Fumbbl, first win of the season. Way to go team. To my opponent's credit, he had some truly shitty dice in the opening stages, with skulls coming out all over the place. Necro. Skulls. Heh.

Stats-wise, it looks as thought we were about even on blocks, so my plan of trying to throw more block dice seems to be working. For once, the Guard advantage was entirely on my side, and the big guys did a decent job of making it hard for my opponent. It's funny just how much of an impact that skill can have. While I've not entirely jumped on board the train of thought that's pulling out of ClawPOMB Central and out into Guardsville hedgerows, I am starting to be inclined to think that maybe I should put even more emphasis on the positional game.

Obviously, rolling mad cas rolls can be huge, but it seems as though if one does not blow up the opponent in a rapid fashion, when it comes to relatively equivalue punchy-biffy teams, Guard spam indicates performance more consistent. This is probably not news to most people, but its my party and I'll cry if I want to.

As such, I will only be able to substantiate this after more time has passed, there is one corollary and one consequence of this. The corollary is that I will have to be doing more aggressive TV management as this team skills up. Multiple killing skills tend to inflate TV at what seems to be a rate greater than controlling skills, but being able to work out the ratio of effectiveness between;

Guard + Block + extra bench players as meatshields

against

Claw + Block + Mighty Blow + Piling on + (Tackle + xyz)

is a level of analytical detail I'm too lazy to work through (and for which I have no knowledge) beyond a gut feeling that the former will be more effective in the long run. I have been pretty good with TV these past few seasons, but the latest game was the first at which I gave away inducements, so I've probably run out of free wizards.

Having said that, consequently, what is also of interest to me is the over-reliance on passing the ball. Typically this is the domain of "abloo abloo, shitty scrub" commentary, but whether its due to my own lack of skill, or due to the fact that my opponents are not incompetent, my "dive cage into half, score td" performance has been flaccid.

Gaining ground effectively is a skill that is not easy, at least for me, and something I need to work on. This will I think develop more and more as the team picks up more skills, but for the time being, the 3+ pass has become a routine occurance. This has both an upside and a downside. The downside is obviously dropped balls and loss of posession. The upside however, is that it makes reading an offense much harder. Having a two-headed gobbo as well as a rat creates some really solid opportunities. The goblin proved as much last game, utilising his 2+ anywhere to get the ball through for a point. Another advantage is that I've invested literally zero skills in passing, with the elf doing all the ball-handling. So its not like I'm wasting TV.

Despite, working on improving the running game I think will be my priority for the next few games. 200+ rats are up next game, so I think for once I might be able to actually cage a run, though this will depend on how roided-up his gutter runners are.



Anyhoo, things wot are to be done:

1. replace the move-busted ogre. I will lose his Guard, but I'd like to not have two trolls. I plan on taking Break Tackle on him at some point, so not having a lame one would be nice.

2. start aggressively pursuing second skills on marauders. Block is nice, but Guard, Kick and Tackle would be even better.

3. GET SOME SKILLS ON THE ELF YOU IDIOT. Though, even vanilla DE linos are amaze.

4. Figure out what the plan for the minotaur is. Juggernaut first pick so far has been really good, but what I'd really like is some Tentacles. Nuffle, plz.