Pick-me-up

Pick-me-up

At the end of the opposition’s team turn, roll a D6 for each Prone, non-Stunned team-mate within three squares of a Standing player with this Trait. On a 5+, the Prone player may immediately stand up.

Pick-me-up Overview

Pick-me-up is a new skill introduced in 2022 along with a new player for Norse teams. You’ll find it on the Beer Boar positional player. It plays along with the theme of Jump Up on the Berserkers but gives some utility to the rest of the team. It’s a unique trait from a perspective of that type of game play.

Game play wise you’ll likely want to keep the player behind your team mates, especially ones that are likely to be hit and thus knocked over during the oppositions turn. Generally a more central position will let you cover more of the pitch, thus being by the sideline will limit your area of affect. The trouble with that is that it’s going to be harder to protect your player with Pick-me-up.

A typical situation when your team mates are going to be hit is when they are on the line of scrimmage when it’s your turn to kick off. The threat of your player potentially being able to get back up for free may stop the opponent from following up in order to avoid being hit back. If they do follow up then you might get the chance to hit them back. If they don’t, then you will probably be free to move away without needing to dodge. If you aren’t then you might be able to hit another opposing player who is already marking that square, or your player may be in the position to lend an assist.

It can also be useful near or in your cage. You’ll likely have a lot of team mates nearby that you can affect and by being near the ball there is a good chance the opposing team is going to be blitzing a nearby team mate of yours.

Pick-me-up is going to be less effective when playing opposing teams that are more likely to break your armour. Teams that can target your Pick-me-up player are also ones that could render this trait useless. Note that your player with this skill needs to be standing at the end of the opponents turn in order for you to be able to use it.

5 thoughts on “Pick-me-up”

  1. While I do like the idea behind this trait.
    I don’t see it being that meta, because of two reasons:
    Norse have low armor value with AV 8+ and secondly, it only works on a 5+ and you need to give up a decent player (norse Linemen) to have the Beer Boar with ST1 and AV 6+. So basically a snotling.

    I do see the Beer Boar as a valuable option to lower your team at the start of a league or in a tournament. Yet having more than one on the pitch is quite crippling, IMHO.

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  2. I see pick-me-up more like a bonus on a player designed to foul anyway. Boars are cheap and will foul. Pick me up means that they can focus on fouling but still remain a bit useful to assist other players.
    I don’t think it’s really worth building a strategy around the boars though, especially if it means focusing on protecting them or keeping them behind. Their main value isn’t this skill, it’s that they are cheap.

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  3. I like the idea of the skill 🙂

    It loosely reminds me of skills like foul appearance or jump up:
    99% of the time, you should plan around the assumption of the skill not working – except in the most desperate situations where it is your only hope (which of course you should avoid in the first place).

    But it forces your opponent to build HIS strategy around the assumption of the skill working, so you force him to take precautions – and all precautions are costly.
    In terms of strategical positioning as well as in terms of brain capacity.

    Plus there’s always a chance of your opponent not taking into account all implications of the skill… maybe the additional movement of the free standup allows for an assist in a constellation your opponent thought save.

    Never rely on it, but enjoy the occasional game changer 😀

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  4. I agree with all of the other comments here, but I think what it adds up to is… an extremely weak skill.

    Did Pick Me Up really need to be a 1/3 chance of working instead of 1/2 or even 2/3? It can potentially save a blitz or allow an extra hit, but outside of those cases it’s just saving 2 movement for downed-but-not-stunned-or-injured units in a modest range.

    I suppose that’s fine for a cheap fouler and a nice perk during the initial line-up, but it’s not a skill worth paying much attention to.

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  5. My first encounter with Beer Boars was in a TT tourney (with Nurgle). I won the toss and received, knocked down 3 Norse Linos on the LoS (no armour breaks). All 3 then proceeded to stand up and block my players!!! Horrendous – I was on the back foot immediately.

    Perhaps overlooked in the comments is the very low cost of Beer Boars (20,000). As well as providing very cost-effective fouling options, they add cheap reserves. For example, at TV100, you can take a couple of Beer Boars to take team numbers to 13. Very handy indeed on an AV7 team when starting a league team or in tourneys.

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