...or How to Defuse the Bomb

tl;dr not using your blitz every turn can be GUD

It was a dark and stormy night (not really but atmosphere is important for long-winded stories!) and I had been paired up against Malmir in the box. I was in the middle of a disappointing Achilles spear run in Hades on one hand and a middling box trophy run with my buff dark elves on the other. On turn 2 of my drive during our match I decided to blitz with my witch even though that blitz was an obvious trap. The trap sprang, I rolled push/both down, then skull, and suddenly my ball carrier was being sacked. Now why did I blitz even though I recognized the trap? The reason is simple: I didn't want to waste my blitz.

Always making sure to use my blitz action each turn was one of the first things I learned that took me from being a middling coach to a slightly-better-than-middling coach. There are a lot of things to remember every turn when getting started in Blood Bowl, and a good tip is to always focus on who you will blitz before acting, then build your turn around that. Over time this very sensible tip mutated into an imperative: never waste your blitz. And imperatives tend to become dogma. After being rightfully called out as having made a bad mistake during that match, I started looking more closely at how NOT blitzing could strengthen my position more than blitzing could.

To be fair, using your blitz each turn is still preferable to not! How else are you supposed to -2die kill your opponent's ogre? But there are times when abstaining can be more advantageous, including:

1. When your opponent's players are set back far enough that you need to GFI to blitz them, especially on T1. Not only does this mean you might have to burn a RR or fall down, but even if that player succeeds they will be all alone and susceptible to retaliatory fouling.

2. When there's a trap! Especially a frenzy trap!

3. When setting up the blitz means you have to sacrifice the safety of your ball carrier. If your ball carrier will be exposed when you inevitably roll quad skulls maybe you need to abstain from blitzing and get your house in order first.

4. When facing a Bazdakkastine elf offense. Those elves look very tasty so close to their own endzone, I know, but they just want you to run into the backfield so they can lap you.

5. When playing stunties it's important to be aware of over-committing to an area in order to get the 2d blitz. Don't let your opponent break your defense just because you wanted to blitz! Remember that your team is probably very, very slow.