Necromantic Flesh Golems

Blood Bowl Necromantic Flesh Golem
Necromantic Flesh Golems Overview:

Necromantic teams are considered to be a bashing team though they lack many players with strength higher than three and also don’t have many players with natural access to strength skills. Flesh Golems give the team some much needed extra strength and are also their only players with high armour. Thick Skull helps keep them on the pitch and Stand Firm can be a very useful skill for disrupting the oppositions plans. On the downside they are fairly slow and have low agility and they come at a high cost as well. This can make fitting them into a starting roster tricky, though Regeneration can keep them alive for longer.

Flesh Golems are best used as more of a supporting player which the rest of the team works around. Stand Firm makes them a great pivot to roll the play around as the opposition will have trouble moving them. It also means they are great for marking opposing players and can cancel out assists as well as providing them once developed.

It can be hard to develop Flesh Golems as they don’t start with Block. The expensive players and rerolls may often mean you forgo blocking with them as they can cause so much disruption just by standing in the right place. You may also find that you would prefer to keep your rerolls for more crucial moments rather than the 1/9 times a block fails. With so many of your starting players really needing to get their first skill as soon as possible, Flesh Golems rarely get fed touchdowns like other ST4 players. Once they get Block though they can start to become a bit more active.

They also make great road blocks as the other team needs to usually knock them over in order to get past them. Being able to hold up the opposing offence makes them great for getting in front of a cage. Their low movement and agility though may mean that they can get marked out of the game so you need to be vigilant to try and prevent that.

Following along the same lines they can also be great for plugging up the wide zones to stop teams running around the flanks. It might not be wise to set them up on the Line of Scrimmage when defending as Zombies can do that job perfectly fine. That frees the Golems up to set up a bit deeper, perhaps out in the wide zones supporting another team mate. Setting them up further back like this stops the play from just running right past them. If you do put them in the wide zones though, one of them invariably may end up away from the action for most of the drive.

Flesh Golem Road Blocks:

The first couple of skills on a Flesh Golem really pick themselves and as they skill up so slowly it isn’t uncommon for them to all to start life much the same way. The team is rather light on Block early on and it will cut down on turnovers. Getting your only ST4 players hitting things is the way to go so Block is the logical first skill. Guard comes next, though I don’t think it is a mistake to perhaps take it first. Block will help them get more SPP compared to Guard though. Necromantic teams need to get Guard when they can to compete against other hitting teams and to protect their players. It also combines really well with Stand Firm and if you get a Guard Flesh Golem in the right spot he can cause lots of problems.

After the first couple of skills you can diversify a bit depending on what you feel the team needs and what role you usually find you Flesh Golems performing. Break Tackle will let you reposition then to the best spot and also keep up with cages. Grab will let you tie up as many opponents as possible and still let you hit them and keep them close. Mighty Blow will help the team get a numerical advantage and help with his development towards more skills.

Late on Tackle can be handy to deal with any Dodge players they come into contact with. Pro is another choice to let you attempt to reroll double pushes on blocks and sometimes dodges if you don’t want to use a reroll.

For doubles I would take Dodge, though if facing lots of Tackle heavy teams I may skip it and just go for a normal skill instead. For stat increases +ST makes them that much better at what they already do, agility would be a waste and the extra movement will be more helpful than armour. Early on though I would prefer to take a normal skill compared to movement, unless perhaps playing in a very long or perpetual league. There certianly can be a case made for not taking extra movement at any point and a skill would be better value and more use more often.

Flesh Golem Summary:

While Flesh Golems are expensive and very slow to get going, they can make the difference to the team and once developed with a few skills are invaluable players for supporting the rest of the team. They develop perfectly fine just by taking normal skills, which is great as you don’t have to try and get doubles on them and also keeps their Team Value lower. As a supporting player don’t feel pressured that you should have to block with them just cause they are ST4 and standing next to an opponent. Weigh up the cost of failure compared to the problems he is causing the opposing players he is against by just remaining standing. Sometimes the best thing you can do with a player is to just to nothing!

13 thoughts on “Necromantic Flesh Golems”

  1. I tend to favor giving Guard to the first one that skills up. Necromancer really need it as they rely on the bashing game, but don’t have many strong players. With guard, your Wights can work off him to get 2-dice blocks. The only problem, as Coach said, is that it will take a painfully long time for them to get their next skill. That’s why I recommend giving the second Golum Block as his first skill, so he will be able to skill up and eventually get Guard.

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  2. I disagree on Guard for these guys early tbh.

    Their poor movement and agility means they will rarely be in a position to provide guard support according to *your* plan, not the opponents.

    Early team progression the fleshies are roadblocks, but they get tied down and thus aren’t able to support your team. Use them to tie up areas of the pitch you want to *avoid* dealing with, and send Wight+doggie strike teams around them.

    I would definitely go Block, Mighty Blow, Guard, Break Tackle, whatever-fits-your-league/playstyle next.

    To my mind fleshies need to first of all stay on their feet to continue being a ST4 Stand Firm nuisance = Block.
    Then smack down the opponent (that’s what high ST players are for…) = MB
    THEN provide support and flexibility = Guard, break tackle etc.

    *If* they had more movement I’d give them guard early, certainly, but with MA4 the *early team progression* support duty goes more or less exclusively to Wights, and stand still and bash goes to fleshies.

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    • I find that they need to start block first as they lose whatever benefit guard gives them then they are lying prone on the floor. However if your Wights take guard first then this allows you to build golems this way, many a time have I played and my guard Golem has been targeted first to get rid of his guard.

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  3. Making my Flesh Golem a true road block I picked side step for my double skill. That combined with the natural stand firm just makes their limited movement less of a liability. I haven’t had a Golem with 2 doubles yet but I would consider jump up for that same reason.

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    • Having both Side Step and Stand Firm is really nice to have, most coaches avoid getting both on the same player due to the overlap in abilities which causes some redundancy. I’d love to have both on the same player but I usually find the case for something like Dodge gives greater benefits. If you’ve already got lots of skills on the player then I may perhaps be tempted. I bet your opponents find them even more annoying than normal though.

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  4. i usaly try to keep my flesh golems on the front line but ever since chaos edtion has came out i have began to fear putting them there becuase of one good and big reason: THE FREAKEN BLOOD THRISTER! i first pick up guard, then block and stand firm, and dautless but that thing just mows my golems down like they were halflings, am i doi ng something wrong or is the bloodthrister just that strong?

    Reply
    • As the Bloodthirster isn’t actually in the Blood Bowl rules I’ve never played against them. From what you are saying though I’d just stick Zombies on the LOS, but I’d recommend doing this anyway as it leaves your Golems either unmarked and free to move somewhere more useful, or they mark them and they have an opponent to hit.

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    • Anything that mixes Claw with Mighty Blow is a danger to Flesh Golems. Since Mighty Blow is usually the first skill a Bloodthirster takes, that’s probably the source of your problems. If it doesn’t have Break Tackle too then tie it up with a zombie.

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  5. And if he has break tackle just tie him up with two zombies!

    Since the Blood thirster is the only natural hard counter for flesh golems in the game (if blitzing) it is right to assume that they are giving them a hard time. The good thing is that in return they tend to hog all the blitzes which protects your better skilled and more squishy parts (i.e. Ghouls).

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  6. Thirsters shouldn’t be giving Golems any more problems than any developed CPOMBer. Sure the Thirster is stronger and therefore a bigger pain to block away but the main difference in my eyes comes down to stages of development. Presuming all normal rolls a chaos goat with CPOMB Frenzy will be even worse for a golem given that they can blitz with St 4, get the necessary assist(s) in easy enough most of the time, and can RR bad block results without fear of loner.

    The main thing is that the goat in question will likely be Lvl 6+ (presuming they took block or wrestle, and a legend if they have another skill) while Thirsters start being a serious threat come Lvl 2 at which point they likely took MB to go with their natural claws and frenzy. So St and Armor advantage aside, since while helpful it’s not that necessary when blitzing a Thirster at 6spp blitzes with the killing potential of a beastman with an absolute minimum of 31spp (MB/Claw/Frenzy) and more commonly at least 51spp (Block\Wrestle).

    And then juggernaut causes problems, etc. but if I go on I’ll wind up writing an unasked for essay.

    TLDR: Thirster is not much worse, arguably not as bad, than any developed killer with mutations access. They just get there a lot sooner.

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  7. My flesh golem just rolled a +str. But it’s his verry first skill. So no block or anything.
    Is it wise to take the strenght and wait for the second skill to get him block?

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