“1) Before talking about the match, here's some team stuff.

1.1) How to save this team:
a) fire the -ST guy.
b) hire two linemen so you don't have to field the Goblin on defense.
c) hire another reroll as soon as you can afford 140k, and only then get an Apothecary.
d) if the Minotaur dies, replace him with a Rat Ogre, but don't fire him just to do that.

1.2) How to build an effective Chaos Renegades squad:
a) Take the Elf and the Orc to start. 120k, 2 players.
b) Take one big, be it Ogre or Troll. 235-260k, 3 players.
c) Fill out your roster with Linemen. 635-660k, 11 players.
d) Take three RR counters. 845-870k.
e) Take Fans, upgrade Linemen to bigs, or hire reserves, which could be the Skaven and/or Goblin.

1.3) How to build an effective Chaotic team that is not necessarily Chaos Renegades:
a) Chaos Chosen, mate. Renegades are awesome fun but they're hard mode. Learn to run before you learn to fly.
b) Don't get obsessed with filling in the roster positions to start. I actually like all-Beastmen or mostly Beastmen, but if you gotta have those big gnarly blockers, just start with 3, and use the savings to load up on fans. You won't be sorry.

1.4) What to do instead as a brand-new coach:
a) Orcs are similar in terms of overall philosophy, but much more reliable.
b) Humans are similar in terms of abilities and profile, but much more reliable.
c) Skaven are similar in thematic terms and have some similar players, but are much more reliable.

2) Okay, that said, let's go to the match itself.

2.1) Initial setup:

2.1a) Okay, so 2d blocks with big guys against ST3 players on the line of scrimmage are kind of an admission of failure. If you're up against an all-ST3 line of scrimmage, you should engineer it so that you can make your blocks with players who don't have a high chance of failing are the first ones to act. (Well, this is just generally good.) This can be normal players without Loner but with an assist, or it can be big guys with two assists so they get 3 dice. Big guys with 2 dice are fine at the end of the turn, when it doesn't really matter.

2.1b) Also, you probably want to be engineering diagonal blocks, starting from the middle out, so you can push laterally and get even more blocks. To do this, I recommend always having at least 5 players on the line of scrimmage against a bunched-up line, and the one opposite the defensive center throws the first block, against whichever edge you want to push away from. That way, you can create like a conveyor-belt effect.

2.2) Turn 1.

2.2a) Picking up the ball, dodging, rushing, passing, and handing off are all dangerous. Any time you have to roll one die, and if it fails you re-roll on one die, you know you have a reasonably unsafe action. As such, even if it's important, do everything around it first, and then take the action, unless your un-acted players would be better off not having acted at all should the action fail and you turn over.

2.2b) At the end of your first turn, you misplayed your Goblin catastrophically. You needed to present a screen I couldn't engage, but you didn't, so I was able to collapse on the ball. One of the reasons I use that offset line is so that I can know you are going to be forced to separate the ball-game and the bash game, and all I have to do is concentrate on the former. One good way to thwart that is to use the Troll and Minotaur on the line of scrimmage, then put the Ogre in the middle, away from the action, so he can blitz a player if you want or he can provide a bulwark keeping me from getting midfield control.

2.3) The First Drive:

2.3a) You can move before handing off. When your Dark Elf handed off to the Skaven, you should have first determined if you needed to do the handoff at all (I don't think it was smart), but second you needed to look at all the squares next to the Skaven the Dark Elf could have reached without rolling dice and picked the best one, rather than the one he was in, that got in the way of other players. You could have positioned him diagonally outside of my Defensive guy, which would have marked (and assisted against) my guy while also letting you hand off with the exact same math. But better would have been to reposition without handing off.

2.3b) You should definitely mark all players by shift-clicking on the player and noting their skills, and be extra aware of Guard players, because their assists can't be pulled off. Some of us have a complicated code that we don't share with others lol (! is for Mighty Blow and Claw in my book, while Blodge is #, Wrodge is %, and Dirty Player and Sneaky Git is &).

2.3c) On turn 2, after that silly Animosity handoff, you set up a cage way deep in your backfield (that seldom works, by the way) and then tried a Rush/Rush 2d/2d blitz with the Minotaur. WTAF? Like, your Ogre could have helped set up the cage with a 3d blitz that would have been both stronger and safer.

2.3d) On turn 3, you appeared to get desperate, and set up the back half of the sideline cage, then moved into it, then tried to set up the front half in a manner I'm not sure I understood. What did you think would happen? That seemed very strange to me. Even if you're desperate, a sideline cage in your own backfield is a terrible thing, and the back half alone is ... worse.

Your play improved after that, lol. Desperation does that.

2.4) Overall offense notes:

2.41) You seem to understand the core currencies of the game, but are working through putting it into application. I don't think X-cages are super powerful unless your opponent is very fast and mobile, and my team might have been kinda mobile but fast we are not.

2.42) Big guys are actually a pretty terrible way to deal damage unless you can consistently engineer 3-dice blocks with them. They look like they should hit hard, and sure, if they knock you down they can use Mighty Blow and that's basically double damage (the truth is more complex, but not far off). But that negatrait, even a 2+, and Loner and no primary access to Block or Tackle, it's a killer, and if you rely on bigs to do damage, you'll find that while they hit a little harder than linemen do, they don't really punch their weight unless you can get that third die, and even then, it's ... better, I guess.

2.43) I was able consistently to isolate your Troll. Try to keep him babysat as much as possible.

2.44) Don't worry overmuch about the Goblin's fragility. I mean, it's a problem and you have to account for it, but if your opponent doesn't have any Block/Tackle, you shouldn't see it as that big an issue, and if they have neither (as in my case), the little beggar is actually kinda rugged. Also, position matters more than players. If you can make me use my blitz hitting someone to open a hole instead of letting me through the open hole to blitz something valuable on the other side, who cares if the blitz in question is more likely to do damage?

Yeah, we'll start there. Ping me in the 145 Discord if you want an invite to JR's School of Block.

GL, HF!

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