[Dwarf] Playing against Amazon

[Rav3n73]

Coach,

Thanks for the advice, after turn two my opponent had used all his re-rolls.

I managed to draw this match, although I suspect I don't go on the offensive as much as I should.

As he usually put a line two deep in front of my cage, I decided to have two cages running down the pitch and my runner swapped between the two. At this point he couldn't block both cages with only 8 players so I managed to score on my eigth turn. I didn't help that I wasted one turn trying to pick up the ball deep in my own half so, it wasn't until my third turn that I actually managed to cage up on the half way line.

Couple of questions.

1. How many dwarfs need to have guard? I have two longbeards at the moment with guard.

2. During the match after I had done all my important moves in a turn, I found that occasionally I had a couple of one die blocks available. Should I have taken those, as I had block and elf didn't?

3. I have brought an apothacary and I'm now saving up for another long beard. Once I have done brought my twelth player, what do I do with my winnings. Should I start saving for a fourth re-roll or start buying cheerleaders and additional coaches? It's very rare that I need another re-roll at the end of the game.

[Coach]

1) I'd get as much Guard as possible, Dwarfs really need it with no one ST4 or higher.

2) If you have a reroll spare still then I would certainly do it, you only fail with a skull result and it can hurt the opposition, both giving you numerical advantage and also gains SPP. If you don't have a reroll you need to weigh up how bad rolling a skull would be. Also even if you have a reroll do that anyway, sometimes you may decide to take the skull to save your rerolls. Check out the One Die Blocks article for more.

3) I'm not really a big expert on Dwarfs, getting a coach and cheerleader can be great for denying the opponents a reroll even if you don't need it. I'd get a max three, but players and rerolls are more important imo. You may have a player die between now and then anyway.

[Rav3n73]

Hi All,

As my dwarf team rumbles on, tonight we are playing a wood elf team.

The wood elf roster is :-

Thrower (Strong Arm)
Wardancer x 2
Lineelf (Guard)
Line Elf x7 (Four of which are journeymen)

My Dwarfs are as follows :-

Troll Slayer x2
Blitzer x2
Longbeard x5 (Two with guard)
Runner x2

A part from the usual tactics as per your comments for the Vanilla Elf game, anything else I should think about?

I'm going to try and eliminate the Wardancers and Thrower early on.

When I kick off, should I go for a 3, 4, 4 set up to make it harder for them to dodge through.

First half you should probably have been fouling every turn with a Blocker who had at least one assist just to get rid of Amazon players. I usually do this every turn of the first half until the fouler gets sent off. Sometime you are unlucky at it is the first hit, often it will not be until turn six or later. A couple of KO's or a single casualty on a skilled player makes it very worthwhile.

I'll try this tactic too, every chance I get.

[Coach]

Standard tactics should work well in this case, he doesn't have Stripball on his Wardancer yet which would be your biggest problem usually.

[Rav3n73]

arghhhhh I really really really hate the dwarfs some times!!

Well lady luck, well and truly turned her back on me last night.

The Wood Elves scored their obligitory quick TD. Next they kicked to me and my Dwarf runner failed to pick up the ball until the third turn! thats a 1,2,2,1,2 (With Sure hands) what were the odds! Before we knew it, we had wardancers swamping us and they took a 2-0 lead into the second half.

As we roll on the kick off table for the second half, there is a riot and the half moves on a turn, so I now have only 7 turns from kick off to get a TD. Eventually we manage to drive all the way to the endzone and a sprint on behalf of my runner manages to get us a TD for 2-1 lose.

Through out the match the wood elves kept passing their dodge and armour rolls whenever I put them on the floor. Not one casualty during the match and I only KO'd 4 throughout the match, who all passed their rolls to come back on again.

I guess rule number one in blood bowl is "No matter how much you plan, those dice can really flush the game plan down the toilet".

Never mind, I've got the Dark Elves to look forward to in a weeks time.

[Hasdrubal]

I've had the same experience against Wood Elves, those games can be very frustrating.

You somehow need to plan for that when setting up to receive the ball, keeping a couple of players mi-field to move towards the ball and protect it against un-sure hands.

[Coach]

3 turns in a row is just very bad luck, I've had it happen to me before

The best thing to do is to assume you are going to fail and move the rest of your team to cover for the failure. Of course if you need to score quickly then you have to take more risks and may have to forgo doing that.

Good luck in the next one.