No worries. The best answer to your question is “how badly do you want to play Blood Bowl against an AI?” and how much you want this game is somewhat less than that.
Also, the AI is predictable and really likes the box move. Important games against even opponents aren’t hard to win 1-0 or 2-1, even if you can’t break his box.
Man, you Dopers are weird.
You skipped the TMI threads, passed by the ones devoted to perversity and went straight by the bizarre and opaque sides of GQ to drop that in a thread about a computer adaptation of a well-established board game?
Yep. But more power to ya. What are the rules for Blood Bowl like? I assume it’s a football-esque type of game, but kinda of in the Cyberballmode?
Closer to Speedball, but more tactical and with dwarves, elves, orcs and the like (from the Warhammer universe).
It’s a board game, and the computer adaptation is a board game, too. Turn orders, dice, movement allowance and all.
You play a persistent team, usually in a league. This allows for player recruitment and improvement, but if your star blitzer gets killed by a rat ogre in week 3, you’re facing a difficult season.
The AI is nothing to write home about. I’d never played Blood Bowl at all before, and within 3 or 4 games I was routinely clobbering the AI. The interface could be a bit better, it seems needlessly clunky for a few things, but for a low-budget game it does a pretty good job setting the atmosphere, and would be grand if you had regular buddies to multiplay with.
Yup, the AI is quite subpar. The worst thing is that, in an apparent leave of their senses, all teams play from the same book. You’d think they’d have gone… well, not the extra mile, rather gone out of bed and coded a file for each race that would play to their strenghts, but no. Elves cage up, dwarves try to dodge and Gutter Runners try to blitz their way through.
Not to mention the horrendous AI team management. It’s bad enough that it selects player skills entirely at random, but it will never, ever fire a player. Doesn’t matter if he’s got 4 skill downs, 9 niggling injuries and no XP whatsoever, that guy’s gonna play.
So, yes, single player sucks. Multi is neat, though. It’s sooo cool to be able to play a match without losing markers and messing the paint on your players 
I don’t find the interface bad…I think it is quite good (I have the PC version). The rules reference living rule book #5 so I think that’s what they use.
The AI is nice for figuring out how to play…but like virtually all games out there the AI is not that good (though it will most likely toast you while you are figuring out the game).
The TRUE game is against other humans. There is nothing like playing against fellow humans and the rush of beating them. The AI is a very pale shadow by comparison. Last night I played 2 games and won them both! Getting better :).
Which brings me to another observation…young people these days! (get offa my lawn)
I’ve asked my opponents how old they are…and all of them have been 35+. I think this is because we grew up with board games and facing oponents across the table top so we are attracted to these competitive games which, by their nature, were turn based and require thinking/strategy. Young people seem…well…like slack jawed pussy wimps when it comes to direct competition like this. They seem to like non-zero sum games, preferable beating up on AI opponents and also seem to prefer more real-time twitch/reflex games.
When I think about it, games like Blood Bowl require you to ‘toughen up’ and take your lumps/losses and make you realize there are people out there better than you.
True that. Last night, I had three wins in a row, was getting cocky… The fourth player didn’t give me a chance. Every dumb mistake I made, I paid for. Luck didn’t help, either (fuckin’ two TDs ruined by a single GFI roll…). A really humbling experience. And to him, must have feeled like playing the AI 
That said, there’s also lots of… well, not cheaters per se, but people who push the system - like, by designing the perfect team by playing again and again against their friends (and making tons of XP because their friend lets them win), and only starting to play for real when they’ve got 6 Sauruses with block, mighty blow, piling on, jump up, or every single player of theirs has +1 ST… Of course, generally these knuckleheads are bad players on the pitch, so 
I really want to play a dodgy team. When I’ve tried…I can win sometimes but when I lose it is bad and even when I win it is almost always a pyrric (sp?) victory in that I have hurt and dead players. This means that even if I win, my team is worse off.
So, when I meet a dodgy team player that seems to know what they are doing I am excited because I want to learn how they play. I used to even ask advice etc.
One guy in particular played wood elves and he beat me 5-0. He was giving me loads of advice. I was dutifully (with a pen and notepad) taking many notes.
Toward the end I asked him “You will smoke me this game…but how do you handle injuries? You have 2 dead and 4 wounded - 2 of the wounded ‘permanent’ injury types.”
His response…
“I farm”
So, you essentially cheat - play against yourself in a second account.
Your notes and advice are essentially worthless dude! How can you build a Wood Elf team without ‘farming’??
That’s what I want to know.
Don’t know how relevant it is to the computer edition, but yes, Wood Elf teams in tabletop are hard to keep up. My strategy for this (1 loss in 2 1/2 seasons with them) was:
– Treeman on front line. Your other players are good enough that even if you totally discount the Treeman, you’re almost a match for most other teams 11 guys with your 10. Over the course of a game, on average this should avoid 1/4 to 1 injury depending on how many times you kick off and how much your opponent likes to foul.
– First two skill upgrades you get to two different rookie linesman should be Block and those should also go on the front line. Blodgers are so much better than just blockers or dodgers. (Now, a problem I would run into was when one of those would get a second skill before any of my other linesmen would get their first, then they would be too valuable to get placed on the front line but the rookies were too vulnerable.)
I agree that blodgers are needed…the question is how do you get there.
Here is my wild-ass idea…let me know what you think since I haven’t tried it and it would require much time and patience to build up.
Start with 1 tree and 10 lineman. Now wait…your thinking I’m completely nuts! If a tree is 130 or less then you can start with 2 rerolls. The thinking here is that you don’t try to win at first but just trying to get your people SPP’s (MVP and by passing every turn). Look like you are defending when they have the ball but don’t seriously contest them unless you see an opening. Concentrate on getting SPP’s (by MVP if necessary)
After the first game, you will have attrition. Don’t replace them but rely on the free mercenaries you get to complete the 11 player line up. Put those mercenaries on the line.
Over time you will build up some experience and money. First, buy an Apoth. then start getting other types of players besides linemen. By the time you are done, hopefully 2-3 linemen will have survived and be skilled hopefully even blodgers.
Stupid crazy or viable strategy??
The only flaw I see is lack of positionals. I’m also not a fan of passing every turn to gain SPP, but some swear by it (I only do so when I am already 1 SPP shy of a level due to an MVP or such.) But if this is a very open ended league like I am seeing from a reading of this thread, it seems like a good way to build up your team and just pretend that the first 10 or so games never existed. Then once you have the money you can build up your positionals.
(Also good call on the Journeymen taking the front line abuse, I’ve done much the same. And of course if you are still in development mode you’d put them on the front line even if you have blodgers, but I seldom did if I had one-skill blodgers available as I was always in Win at all Costs mode.)
Yup, I also usually start my elf teams (of any kind - Dark, Wood and High) with only Lineelves. Elf rerolls are so expensive, it’s really better to buy 3 or 4 of them at creation.
Plus, elven specialists usually come with everything they need either right off the bat or only one XP level away (the exception would be Dark Elf assassins, who really benefit from both Dodge and Tackle, and maybe Diving Tackle to boot).
The main problem I get with Elven teams is that it’s really easy to send your team value up in the higher stratosphere. Want to add one or two linemen as replacements for the inevitable atttrition ? That’s 140 TV, right there. More if they have exp. It’s such a fine line between having a reliable elven team, and giving your opponent scores of free stuff that defeat the entire purpose of having a reliable elven team 
Which is why I mostly play Chaos and Orcs
Kobal: IME having a team rating too high does not really hurt you until you are in the 2000K’s, and having more replacements is always better than not having them, especially with the Elves.
But it’s true what you say, that in online play it might be less reliable to have a very very high TR than a middling one, as if you do not choose who you play against you might be paired off against a rookie team who buys 3 400K cards against you and takes all your rerolls and your two best players. (Whereas face to face league play usually has teams of more equal TR facing each other, in which case you almost always prefer to have a higher TR.)
I tried it last night as I was a bachelor for the evening
Made a Dark Elves team…started with 10 lineman and 1 blitzer plus 4 rerolls.
I expected to lose the first 10 games or so. I was surprised that I won 3 and drew 3.
Also only lost 2 linemen! Replaced them with another blitzer and a war witch. Still don’t have a lvl 3 lineman but 2 are very close. I gave all of them block except for one who rolled an increased attribute so I took armor to 9.
I think this may be a viable way to go. I am second guessing my war witch. I think I should have taken another blitzer because blitzers and linemen have AV8 and a lvl 2 blitzer will be a blodger.
I got excited about the thread title until I realised you were talking about the Computer game. I play the Tabletop version a lot - I’m co-commissioner for a league with ~30 coaches in the current season. A lot of fun.
I haven’t actually gotten around to buying the PC game yet, for a couple of reasons, the single player is stupid by all accounts, and I already get my multiplayer fix from the tabletop league.
In regards to guys cheating, A friend of mine (who is also a BB fan) is a games designer (although not on this game), and by all accounts it is pretty simple to mess with the games files on your own computer, to change things which aren’t checked for, and so aren’t detected when hooking up a multiplayer game. A couple of examples he gave, was you can change the injury table. so instead of a 10-12, it only registers an injury on a 12, same on the casulty table so no matter what dice is rolled the worst that can happen is a Badly Hurt. Would help protect those fragile teams.
I don’t think I’ve seen that yet…those fragile teams still get hurt easily when I played against them.
There’s also cheating in ftf leagues (which doesn’t exclude cheating online). There were huge rumors in one of our first ftf leagues in Orlando about people coming to an agreement when they played each other that all casualties would be “badly hurt” rather than seriously injured or death.
Bumping the thread to let you guys know that the game has found a US distributor for at least the PC and XBox 360 version and should be in stores at the end of January. So if you didn’t want to download it there will be an option soon.