Best Linemen

[Charging Pun]

Let's face it. Blood Bowl, like football, is a game about the linemen. Sure the stars on the pitch are the guys handling the ball, or blitzing the ball carrier. But, where would those guys be without the linemen on thier team?

When you need to blitz the other guy's best ball carrier and you need an assist, who do you call?
When you need to get a pass off in the last turn of the game and you need protection, who do you call?
When that star player goes down with injury and is forced to miss a game, who steps in to fill his shoes?

The LINEMAN, that's who!

Share your linemen related stories, and let's sing for the unsung heroes of the pitch!


What player (race and position) makes the best linemen?
What skill combos do you like on your linemen?
Do you have a favourite lineman story?

[Coach]

This is a question where you really need to define the Lineman's role, as they all do different things depending on their team.

Their uses and effectiveness also vary depending how well developed they are.

[Charging Pun]

Actually it was meant to be a generic question. One that could spark debate as each coach sounds off to defend their favourite team.

I just wanted to hear about other coaches experiences with linemen.

[Coach]

That is exactly what my point was!

From a pure flexibility stand point perhaps the Dark and High Elf Linemen are the best. They aren't at a disadvantage at speed, strength or armour and have high agility to move around and handle the ball if needed.

Dwarf Linemen are also very good, Block, Tackle, high armour and access to strength skills. Can tie up anyone and even take on most other players 1 on 1 with no extra skills needed.

The cheap players are great cause they are cheap and disposable, can tie up more expensive players for a while, some of them are fairly mobile and can handle the ball (maybe needing the help with rerolls). There are quite a lot of linemen in the 40/50k range each with their own advantages and disadvantages compared to the others.

Perhaps those Linemen that cost more than that aren't really considered as such, their higher cost marks them out as perhaps a more numerous positional player and so some may have a case to eliminate them as fair discussion on this topic.

With so many of the 50k or less options, I'll leave them all out in the open for any coach to make a case for specific ones to go ahead and jump on in the discussion!

[drester]

i think that hobgoblins are work horses of the chaos dwarf teams. although the los duty is given to the dwarfs they still need to get stuck in for giving assists etc. while giving the dwarfs a 'leg-up' beating the snot out of the opposition they also have to do all ball handling with a massive banner over their heads saying 'soft target'.

as for builds just get sure hands and then anything that will help keep them on their feet!

no great stories with hobgobs really although one game i had a hobgob gaurding the wing and for about 3 turns in a row my opponent was rolling skulls trying to take him out! they're tougher than you think

nice thread cp, cheers

[Ancre]

My hobgoblins are the ones who never gets any fame for themselves.

My chaos dwarfs block and do the fighting, one of my bull centaur carry the ball and the other blitz, and the hobgoblins are walking tackle zones, giving assist or cancelling opponent's assists, forming a screen or a cage, and generally running around to where they're needed (in a team that walks at a dwarf pace, hobgoblins' MA of 6 makes them very mobile players).

As a result they never do anything extraordinary since they rarely make me roll dice, and the skill they have are skills useful for the team (like kick or dp) since they skill easily but they're the ones needing them the less.

They're very useful, but it's the bullcentaurs who gets all the glory ! Poor hobgobs, life's hard when you're a chaos dwarf's slave forced to play blood bowl But with lrb6 being implemented on Fumbbl soon, maybe one of them will have his moment of glory, becoming a back-up blitzer with wrestle, tackle and diving tackle on a double ! They can still hope ...

[Ian]

I'll just quote what I've posted elsewhere about Odin, King of Zombies.

One is a zombie called Odin, who was the first zombie I ever raised from the corpse of a fallen opponent. And he's brilliant. He's spent a looong time on two points short of his second skill but he's proven nearly invincible thus far. I've lost count of the number of injuries he's regenerated out of and on a number of occasions he's found himself being bullied by Big Guys (one big fight was with a rat ogre, but my favourite was with a kroxigor) and managed to tie them up for a few turns on his own. If and when he finally gets his second skill, I'd love to be able to give him Dauntless. It'll have a practical use, but it's mostly for flavour.

And he's still awaiting that second skill too. Though since I raised him for my own he's regenerated from death twice.

[Metalsvinet]

Speaking of hobgoblins, they can be dangerous too. In a game in my league: orcs vs chaos dwarves, the orc coach decided to one dice blitz a lone hobbo with his star blitzer (early league) with mighty blow and guard rolling skull, reroll skull, cas, death, apo, death.

[sunnyside]

When I think of actual linemen I think of G access only types. Elves and Dwarves really have what would be a positional on any other team as their "linemen" to balance not having access to S4 or S5 players.


As a Norse player, I love my linemen early on. They really are an exceptional value as rookies. A team of 14-15 linemen and five-six re-rolls wouldn't be bad at all for a one shot 100TR game if they played very aggressively and dropped more boots than a parachute battalion.

Sadly in the long run they lose their sparkle as everyone else picks up block on the linemen they field and phases the others out for more positionals.

I find they skill up readily enough as they are quite capable of blitzing a ball carrier, recovering the ball, and running it downfield. But unless they roll doubles adding skills to them always feels like TR bloat beyond maybe kick and a DP or two.

[Coach]

Zombies are a good shout, cheap, AV8 and Regeneration means they tend to be around for a while. You can also get free ones too making them even cheaper.