RNG in Cyanide Blood Bowl

Minnels

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Just played my last game (I hope!) in Crunch Cup XI and I had some great luck in my first 3 games of the cup. I had a new amazon team and after game 2 I had all my blitzers leveled up. 4 guard after 2 games... wow. My third game was a massacre on some poor khemri coach. He never showed up for any more games in our division. After that everything went bonkers... *sigh*

Day 6 was the worst. I rolled 27 d6. From that came 9 ones. That is one third of all my dice thrown. And then I haven't even mentioned the double skulls/double both down in the same game. Rerolls seem to roll the same 75% of the time as I had rolled before rerolling. Especially skulls ^^. Atleast that is how it feels like.

I usually feel pretty safe since my whole team starts with dodge. A couple of girls always go down or I can dodge away and keep a distance with most of the girls untill I feel it is time to "get stucked in". Usually works great in tabletop, not so much in cyanide as my girls are defender down magnets. I guess this is mostly in my head however but as my turns start most of them are lying around everywhere. Armor rolls seems totally fine however.

I have been playing blood bowl, (tabletop) for over 3 years now and I know that you can have some bad days but this is just over the top. I am usually a very calm person but cyanide makes me flip tables and scream. Only this game makes this to me... it feels so unfair at times and you have no control over it :( When playing tabletop I atleast know I am the one throwing the dice and I can see them roll around before hitting the double skulls.

Other weird things is when you get pit invasion. 50% chance of 75% of all players on the field going down. Hilarious... oh wait... I was supposed to defend... with 3 players left standing. Ffffffffuuuu...

I really wish the RNG would be better in this game. I'm going back to playing only tabletop... or with BOTOCS if I have to play online. I can't take it any more. Maybe blood bowl 2 will be better. I can only hope.

While I am writing... something totally different. What happends if you blitz a player that have dump-off and your player have pass block. That is... you blitz -> he/she choose to dump off -> can you pass block with the player blitzing? What happends with the block? Do you have to end up in the dump-off player's tacklezone?
 

Nikolai II

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From the Q&A page in the rulebook:

CRP said:
Q: If you blitz or block an opponent with Dump-Off with a player that has Pass
Block can you use Pass Block to move after he declares his use of Dump-Off?
Can I use Stab instead of throwing a block after failing a Dauntless roll? Can you
use Stab with Multiple Block? When do I declare the 2nd opponent for a
Multiple Block?
A: No, once a block is declared as part of a Block or Blitz Action, you must
attempt to complete it before moving again. Similarly, once you roll the dice to
use Dauntless, you have actually already declared you are throwing a block and
cannot switch to using Stab instead. Yes, you may use Stab to replace either one
or both of the blocks with the Multiple Block skill. You may declare the 2nd
opponent after the 1st block.

Also - play more games and the random numbers will even out. And don't play Amazons if you like to dodge a lot. They ain't made for that. Just block people back, and use dodge to keep standing when opponent doesn't have tackle.
 

Limdood

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the random number generator of Cyanide's BB is actually pretty good in multiplayer.

Yes, the double skulls will happen....quad skulls will also happen :)skull::skull: reroll :skull::skull:)....if you don't have block, you're even more likely to turnover a block...its down to a 1 in 9 chance to turnover, which means somewhere around block #5, you're around 50% to have had that turnover roll and needed a reroll

one way to tell if you're becoming a better coach is when you can recognize those bad rolls....the double skulls, the failed pickups, and the ejected fouls, and still do well...maybe not winning, but possibly keeping enough pressure on your opponent to prevent scores and/or snatch draws.

I just had a game against Dreamy (Nikolai II above) where the entire first half was characterized by him dodging all over without the dodge skill, and making 4+ and 5+ pickup rolls without rerolls, and then tossing long passes across the field that didn't fumble. I kept his guys marked up as best i could, and the block and armor breaking dice eventually rolled around to favor me and allow me a chance to snatch the ball and score.
 

nufflehatesme

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The RNG is one of the good things about cyanide. it works fine.
The thing to remember is, yes, you may have been the best player in your TT circle of 5-10 players, and you won 80% of the time. The people that play online are also more than likely the best players in their TT circle too, as these are the people that have the passion to play this crazy game.
Big fish, little pond. get online and you are coming up against people with thousands of games of experience, who will punish the slightest mistake you make, and generally pound your team into the mud if your tactics aren't up to scratch.
 

Darkson

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This:
the random number generator of Cyanide's BB is actually pretty good in multiplayer.
And:
The RNG is one of the good things about cyanide. it works fine.

RNG has been checked, and it's more than capable for this purpose - it's actually more random than your average real D6 or Block dice.
It's also perceptual bias - you remember the bad rolls (the 5/6 chances that failed) more than you do the good rolls (when you rolled that 6 for the interception for example).
 
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SorroW

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I just want to add.

I have had those games, where every die is a 1 or a skull. And every oppenents block causes a KO or worse. Where every CAS is a death.

But I think I have had more of them on TT then online.


/SorroW, who thing the RNG in this game is fine!
 

Nikolai II

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I've more often had the feeling that TT opponents use cheating dice (especially Cas dice) than I have had about online opponents. And I've seen plenty of death and weirdness online :p
 

Street

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I have noticed that more often than not, Death gets apoth'ed right back into death.

In my last game, of 5 rerolls i did the 2 related to block dice were fine and saved me from turnovers, however the 3 which used 1D6 all rolled the same result as before the reroll. so 1 > 1, 2 > 2 and 2 > 2 is how my rerolls for 1D6 went in my last game.
 

Minnels

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Yes, the double skulls will happen....quad skulls will also happen :)skull::skull: reroll :skull::skull:)....if you don't have block, you're even more likely to turnover a block...its down to a 1 in 9 chance to turnover, which means somewhere around block #5, you're around 50% to have had that turnover roll and needed a reroll

one way to tell if you're becoming a better coach is when you can recognize those bad rolls....the double skulls, the failed pickups, and the ejected fouls, and still do well...maybe not winning, but possibly keeping enough pressure on your opponent to prevent scores and/or snatch draws.

The thing is that I feel that I can recognize the bad rolls and still save a situation. Before doing something risky I usually try to place a couple of players around so that even if things go horribly wrong, it won't be that easy for the other player to get the ball and turn it around in a heartbeat. Many times I have heard the phrase "always think of your next roll as a failure" and this helps. But you can only do so much without rolling a dice :)

I mostly play my amazons both online and tabletop and they kind of live on dodging at times. There is always a 1 in 9 chance of going down while dodging. I always concider risk versus reward, making the best odds rolls before anything more risky unless that one risky die would open up for some other play it could be worth the risk.

The RNG is one of the good things about cyanide. it works fine.
The thing to remember is, yes, you may have been the best player in your TT circle of 5-10 players, and you won 80% of the time. The people that play online are also more than likely the best players in their TT circle too, as these are the people that have the passion to play this crazy game.
Big fish, little pond. get online and you are coming up against people with thousands of games of experience, who will punish the slightest mistake you make, and generally pound your team into the mud if your tactics aren't up to scratch.

Love your username. Haha :>
I am not the best player in our TT group by far. The players I played against have been of varied quality. After the first two turns you can usually tell if the other coach have experience or is new to the game. It's about 50/50 I would say and I have learned a couple of new moves I never had thought of before. My problem is not playing against more experienced coaches however, that I take as a lesson to learn from and to be a better coach in the future. The problem is when "nuffle hates me" and it feels much worse in cyanide than in TT since you have so little control over your dice. There is... I don't know... a lack of visual feedback from the game? And when failing 3 dicerolls in a row or something like that causing a turnover while your opponent keep hitting defender down on every single dice block my temper just plumets.

Just need to make this dodge and everything will be awesome for the rest of the turn... *faceplants*. Free blocks on every single player to the opponent :p

And to answer the rest...
I know that it is perceptual. You don't notice good rolls because that have no bad consequence for you as a player. Atleast not on normal rolls... when you make those occastional 5+ rolls and succeed I would say it is something else followed up with a small victory dance or a fist pump.

I also have those games where every single injury seem to be a death. I have a ogre team in TT and those poor snotlings... out of 20 snotings I have fired from the team only 3 of them were actually fired. The other 17 died. They never get serious injuries. Either it is badly hurt or death. Being a snotling on that team is certain death. Being a ogre however means that you have 50% chance of getting +AG for some reason ~~

I can take the occational bad game without much concern. I know that the next match is probably going to be better. It's just the lack of feedback from the game when it comes to the dice I guess. If it has been proven that the RNG is good or even better than a real dice (maybe this is the problem... :p) then I guess I can't really complain? It just sucks that sometimes one of the players seem to be able to do everything he/she wants whilet he other player have this terrible bad luck. I feel really bad about the Khemri player that got totally massacred my by team in crunch cup. I guess he had a even worse game than I had on day 6... :/

Thanks for the answers and maybe I'll play some more games on cyanide but right now I have this sour feeling about it.
 

danton

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Yeah, just to echo what others have said, the rng has been checked and found to be solid. Also, proper randomness is not generally balanced or consistent. ;) It is normal for bad rolls to come in patches, or for one opponent to have better dice than the other sometimes.

Things tend to even out over hundreds of games, rather than hundreds of rolls! As has already been mentioned, perceptual bias plays a big role too. Your mind tends to remember the important failed rolls rather than the majority of the successful ones.

I do sympathise all the same, because I know how frustrating this game can be when nothing works for you, while your opponent takes risks and can seemingly do no wrong! Just try and focus on the next game and don't linger too long over the previous ones and you will be fine! :)
 

Slyspy

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I stopped playing Cyanide BB ages ago for these very reasons.

Not because of the RNG, which is fine, but because of the frustration. I wasn't enjoying the game and got more wound up about it than I ever did playing TT. I suspect it has something to do with the gaming environment. Because it lacks the social element (apart from the text chat) you rarely laugh with an opponent when things go wrong whereas in TT that is the usual response. Further, the anonymity of the internet allows one to rage in a manner which would be socially unacceptable face to face.

Not healthy IMO. Personally I'm a little obsessive about games and focused on BB too much. I played in too many leagues and the issues I highlighted above got to me. Recently I'm rekindling my interest, but if I rejoin a leahue (if any of them will take me back) I'll likely join one scheduled and one persistent league and leave it at that.
 

Minnels

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I stopped playing Cyanide BB ages ago for these very reasons.

Not because of the RNG, which is fine, but because of the frustration. I wasn't enjoying the game and got more wound up about it than I ever did playing TT. I suspect it has something to do with the gaming environment. Because it lacks the social element (apart from the text chat) you rarely laugh with an opponent when things go wrong whereas in TT that is the usual response. Further, the anonymity of the internet allows one to rage in a manner which would be socially unacceptable face to face.

Not healthy IMO. Personally I'm a little obsessive about games and focused on BB too much. I played in too many leagues and the issues I highlighted above got to me. Recently I'm rekindling my interest, but if I rejoin a leahue (if any of them will take me back) I'll likely join one scheduled and one persistent league and leave it at that.

This is exactly how I feel too! Spot on.

I have been playing a couple of games on cyanide with my TT friend who moved a couple of months ago but we always use skype while playing. It's a whole other story compared to doing online matches with randoms. Oh well ^^
 

Slyspy

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This is exactly how I feel too! Spot on.

I have been playing a couple of games on cyanide with my TT friend who moved a couple of months ago but we always use skype while playing. It's a whole other story compared to doing online matches with randoms. Oh well ^^

Yes, if I do get back to it I may well see whether regular opponents will use voice comms.
 

glebegue

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I stopped playing Cyanide BB ages ago for these very reasons.

Not because of the RNG, which is fine, but because of the frustration. I wasn't enjoying the game and got more wound up about it than I ever did playing TT. I suspect it has something to do with the gaming environment. Because it lacks the social element (apart from the text chat) you rarely laugh with an opponent when things go wrong whereas in TT that is the usual response. Further, the anonymity of the internet allows one to rage in a manner which would be socially unacceptable face to face.

Not healthy IMO. Personally I'm a little obsessive about games and focused on BB too much. I played in too many leagues and the issues I highlighted above got to me. Recently I'm rekindling my interest, but if I rejoin a leahue (if any of them will take me back) I'll likely join one scheduled and one persistent league and leave it at that.

Spot on. I bought BB when it was released but quickly ran away from anything online. After hundreds of hours offline between then and legendary edition, I finally decided to join a properly organized league, with, overall, mature people and planned schedules, etc.
Never looked back but it "seems" that most of the coaches still active today are more mature even in random games, the others left along the way.

As for RNG...heh, that's Blood Bowl. Sometimes Nuffle just kicks you in the nuts, laugh as you eat the dirt, then teabag you repeatedly. When this happens, either I have beers and a good movie waiting for me or...well..I just put my bed vertically on a wall and punch it :)
 
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Everblue

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One of the differences between tt and cyanide is that because the dice rolls are all simulated it's easy to overlook just how many dice rolls are actually needed for supposedly "safe" moves. If you actually had to roll the bones yourself then your perception of risk could be different.

I cross my fingers every time I do a 2+ dodge with my high elves, even when there's a reroll available!
 

Nikolai II

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Another difference is the pacing, lack of which means you get from "this should work" to "crap he's dead" in less time than it would take to pick up the dice to do the dodge skill reroll in tabletop.

While TT has you rolling the initial dodge, then skill reroll, then armour, then injury, then casualty, and all the time you see how it's getting worse and can prepare yourself for it..
 

The Charlatan

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Hi there everybody!

I wanted to just share something i learnt by playing D&D: when you can't stand your dice anymore, stop playing the cool dude and use the weakest thing you can find (and that you might like).
Frustration is made of broken high expectations.

If the cool rogue only rolls 1s, he's an idiot. But when a kobold rolls only 1s, he's just being a kobold. When a rogue kills something, he's doing his work. When the kobold kills something, he's a hero.

I got really frustrated at my DE team because of all the 1s it threw (and they weren't that many: it's just that we feel that an elf should be capable of dodging, and it never works)

So i picked up an Ogre team and just accepted them to be incapable of doing anything.
Of course, you play them the best you can, you try to win, but you know odds are against you.

And when a flying Snotling gets a TD or tanks an opponent for 2 turns, or an Ogre picks up the ball and scores, or simply a thrown snotling hits an opposing player, you feel like a GOD. Because they are doing above what you were expecting. And it's fun to watch the chaos you can cause with just a few good dice. And with bad dice, chaos is anyway going to be there.

Then you can go back to your "serious" team and at least go in with a smile across your face and if things go south, you can always tell yourself: "oh well, at least today i threw a snotling to the face of a wardancer"
 

Viajero

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As said by others already, the RNG of the game is perfectly fine, and I hope Minnels now really understands and trust that...

So you had 3 games everything went your way (level up in all blitzers by game 2, Khemri team decimated etc) and we never saw you posting here after 3 weeks about how biased in your favor the RNG is? ;)

That my friend certainly is perception bias. Having 3 games going your way and 4 not going your way is hardly a broken RNG for sure.

With Cyanide s BB as with anything online I guess, is usually better to take in moderation. I personally recommend be in 2 leagues. 2 is probably not too much to get burnt and 1 probably is too little if things don't go your way in it. Good to have a 2 nd back up league so to have a chance for Nuffel to "compensate" :)
 
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Minnels

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Another difference is the pacing, lack of which means you get from "this should work" to "crap he's dead" in less time than it would take to pick up the dice to do the dodge skill reroll in tabletop.

While TT has you rolling the initial dodge, then skill reroll, then armour, then injury, then casualty, and all the time you see how it's getting worse and can prepare yourself for it..

Yeah. While you are rolling those dice you can take it a little bit at a time.
"Okay... armor is gone let's hope for a stun or maybe a KO... yeah... that's what sould happen."
"Oh... casulty... damn... don't roll high now *hope hope*"
"Dead... damnit. Was this guy important? Maybe I should use my apotechary."

In cyanide it's just smash -> Dead. Instant. :/ Or well... you get this info box asking if you want to use your apotechary.

Walking around in TT is usally faster than cyanide and even then I count all the squares I move into but dying is a whole other story.


On the ogre story that is what I did with my ogres. I played around and never thought of it as a serious team, just something to have a bit of fun with, throwing snotlings and trying to do a 1 TTD almost every game followed up with a small victory dance every time it worked. Nothing like having your opponent make a goal after a long hard drive and then even it out in one round with some luck ^^. I think I had 17 games without a win (maybe 3 draw. Those are wins for ogres! :D) but now my ogres have got their skills and my ag4 block, dodge, juggernaut ogre with his 2 AG3 block ogre friends are really tearing though other teams like nothing else. As mentioned before, my snotlings just die so I have almost stopped throwing them around but they really enable you to threat your opponent in making goals like no other team (well... maybe halflings?). While having my first 15 games with them I had to go back to my amazons and get a more even game before going at it again especially since I had a very hard time in the start rolling 1-2 on every winning roll while losing loads of snotlings since they have a 90% chance of dying when they get injured for some reason ~~

Viajero: Yeah, I am convinced and I may look back some day but for now I will take a break from Cyanide. I am hosting a summer tournament in our gaming club so I will still get my fix ;)
Never seen anyone complain about having too much luck. But the fact that I remember the poor khemri guy and feeling a bit bad for it should be enough? I also bragged about my leveld up blitzers to my friends at the club and how good everything went. Nothing here on the forum because I don't feel that at home here... yet ;) But then those first games was pretty much one sided dice also. For me. They just switched around. *shrug*

I have only been playing in Crunch Cup right now online. That's been one game a week and it have been enough since it is hard to schedule matches between coaches with timezones and work etc. Also been playing TT while CC have been going of course. All games are not perfect but losing while talking and having a good time rolling the dice is different from staring at a screen and having everything just go wrong in an instant. I will return. I will not play amazons. I think... ogres. Never expect something from them and try to talk a bit more with the other coach. Hopefully they won't think I am being a nuisance :) How long is it to the next Crunch Cup? :p
 
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