Pro

Pro (General)

Once per turn, a Pro is allowed to re-roll any one dice roll he has made other than Armour, Injury or Casualty, even if he is Prone or Stunned. However, before the re-roll may be made, his coach must roll a D6. On a roll of 4, 5 or 6 the re-roll may be made. On a roll of 1, 2 or 3 the original result stands and may not be re-rolled with a skill or team re-roll; however you can re-roll the Pro roll with a Team re-roll.

Overview:

Pro is a skill useful for players who make many rolls throughout the game.  It can be used to maximize the use of other skills without having to resort to a team-reroll.  Unfortunately, pro only works 50% of the time, so you should only use it when you’re out of team re-rolls or on events that won’t lead to turnovers.

For example, a favorite use of pro is to put it on a blitzing player.  This player is already equipped with Block, Mighty Blow, Tackle, (maybe Piling On and Claw).  To squeeze the most effectiveness out of such a player you must knockdown your opponents!  This is where Pro helps out tremendously.

Let’s look at the Blocking Tables.  A Block player blitzing a non-Block / non-Dodge player with a 2D roll will knock him down 75% of the time.  A Block player blitzing a Block / non-Dodge player with a 2D roll will knock him down 55.6% of the time.  With Pro, these values go up to 84.4% and 67.9% respectively.

Let’s say you use your blitzer over the entire course of the game… so 16 blocks.  16 * (67.9 %- 55.6%) = 1.968 extra players knocked down!  Is your Mighty Blow, Piling On, Tackle, Claw player licking his lips now?  Over the span of a season, this adds up, leading to even more casualties and hopefully, more victories.  On top of that, if in dire straits, you can use the Pro reroll for Dodging or Go For Its (things must be pretty bleak for this, though).

Benefits:

  • Increases odds of Big Guy success from 83% to 90%.  In other words, instead of failing 1/6 times, he’ll only fail 1/10 times.
  • Can be used for a blitzer to reroll pushes into defender downs without sacrificing team rerolls.
  • When successful, Pro can be used just like a team-reroll for that player.

Disadvantages:

  • Only a 5o% chance of succeeding
  • If using Pro to reroll a push, you can actually reroll into a double-skull!  (1/36 chance)

Useful to:

Big Guys, Vampires, and Blitzer / Blocker units.  As we discussed before, Pro is a good skill for players who are re-roll intensive.  This includes Big Guys, killer-type players, and of course, vampires!  Pro can be used to reroll bloodlust, hypnotic gaze, and blocks.  This is important because you want to save your team rerolls for especially important moments (such as when you’re getting ready to hit a ball carrier).  Just remember, however, that Pro should be a late addition to your roster as you’ll need other key skills (Block, Dodge) first.

Big Guys

Big Guys are a different story.  Since all big guys have the loner skill a team reroll only works for them 50% of the time.  This is where Pro is very beneficial to Big Guys.  It gives you the opportunity to reroll “for free” without having to worry about wasting a team re-roll.  Unfortunately for Big Guys, they can only access the Pro skill if they roll doubles.  This causes a dilemma because there is another General skill available that every Big Guy wants…. Block!  This is where it’s up to you as a coach to figure out what you want to do.  Block can be considered a safer skill selection, especially since -a 2d block against the Big Guy becomes less effective.  However, if your Big Guy isn’t being utilized because he failed 3 Bonehead rolls in a row, that Block doesn’t mean much.  Regardless, Pro for a Big Guy could be helpful because it decreases failure from 1/6 to 1/10.  In a course of a game that’s one less failure.  The Pro roll can also be used for blocks which can aid in knockdown and SPP accumulation (if you already have block / juggernaut).  The biggest thing that comes with Pro, however, is peace of mind.  As a coach you’ll know you don’t have to waste a team re-roll on the Big Guy anymore!

Summary:

Although not dependable, pro does a good job of saving team re-rolls from Big Guy failure or from rerolling actions that don’t necessarily mean failure (hypnotic gaze, push result, bloodlust, etc.).  It’s valuable because it maximizes the effectiveness of your key players and it can also come in handy in situations where all of your team re-rolls are used.

Pro is just one of those skills that has to be experienced.  When you start seeing pushes converted to defender downs that then become Badly Hurts (all while not using a team reroll), you quickly become a fan.  When you’re down to 0 team rerolls and your pro player successfully catches the game winning TD because of a pro-RR, you quickly become a fan.  There will be many times Pro will fail you (50%), but learning realistic expectations from Pro comes with practice.

10 thoughts on “Pro”

  1. I have read the article, wanted to respond immediatly, and reread it again. Good article.
    Pro is indeed a late addition, as in other skills have/need priority.
    Another useful suggetion is the frenzy/pro combo. Indeed pro is marginally usefull, but more so on players that throw a lot of dice, but may not be always keyrolls. If they are key, use a teamreroll!. I love bigguys and use them extensivly. I would not mind a BG with pro, but they are more likely to get Block instead, or dodge or leader ect.
    All in all, very good comprehensive article.

    Reply
    • Thanks.

      I wasn’t a believer in pro until I won the Pro skill for my main blitzer as a glittering prize (OFL – http://www.oldworldfootball.com).

      This same Mighty Blow, Tackle, Dauntless High Elf Blitzer is now tied at 10th place for most CAS in the season. And this is for a league of 56 teams. An Elf!!!! Pro is AWESOME! 🙂

      Reply
  2. Pro can be a great addition to specific players, I used to take it a lot on my Chaos Dwarf Blockers (after Guard and Mighty Blow, back when Stand Firm needed a doubles roll).

    Personally I don’t like it as an early skill on Vampires (or most of the time even a late skill. Be sure to read my article on Vampires for a more in depth reasoning why http://bbtactics.com/vampires/ though I know some Vampire coaches swear by it!

    Reply
  3. There are certainly moments when you rely on team rerolls over Pro. I do however think there are a few uses that are forgotten in the text above. These cases also shows why it may be clever to use a player with Pro late in your turns.

    1) You are running low on (not out of) team rerolls. Sometimes it’s just better to trust Nuffle. A team reroll can be used later by anyone, Pro can only be used by the player with the skill.

    2) You know all those times when you simply decide on not using a reroll? For example, the ball is far enough back that the other team won’t reach it. This is when your ogre impress the snotlings with Pro on the pick-up.

    3) When you trust your armor. It would more often than not be nice if your longbeard can base a halfling instead of a rooted treeman. It’s 50% to dodge away and if you fail, well the grass doesn’t have Mighty Blow. With Pro, you make it 62,5% of the time. That is not far from the 66,67% that a human lineman get. This obviously works on GFI as well, making your players slightly faster when need be. With Pro a GFI will work 65 times out of 72.

    4) Leap! This can only be rerolled by team rerolls (including Leader) and Pro. This is a great skill for slann linemen who might well finish the turn trying to get away from a clutter of orcs. If it isn’t needed for the leap, then it can also be used on a dodge to get away from the last greenskin. Such a manouver is 4/9 to work without rerolls, but with Pro you get 16/27.

    5) Say we are on the 16th turn and you spot an option to blitz the ball loose followed by some ballhandling. You would obviously like to Blitz with a Wrestle/Tackle/Strip Ball player, but Pro is also very good. There is even the option to use a team reroll on the Pro roll, making it 75% to work. Just be forewarned that you will hate those 25% when you spend the reroll and don’t even get to reroll the main dices. The point of this is obviously to try to keep the team reroll for the passes and catches later in the turn.

    Another version of this is when you move your player to the TD-line, prepared to reroll any GFI with Pro. If the GFI and the following throw goes well, then you shift to a regular reroll for the catch. This is obviously moot if the thrower has the Pass skill and you don’t need to dodge or something. In that case you start with the team reroll and use Pro later if needed.

    Reply
  4. Exactly! I think most people overlook the math behind Pro. Take this, for example:

    “It’s 50% to dodge away and if you fail, well the grass doesn’t have Mighty Blow. With Pro, you make it 62,5% of the time. That is not far from the 66,67% that a human lineman get.”

    What this means is that an AG2+Pro player dodges out in the open like an AG2.75 player (or an AG2 player with 1.75 heads)! The benefit goes down as you move away from 50% chance rolls, but it’s still pretty good. Same case with AG3 and dodges:

    – AG3: 66.7%
    – AG3 + Pro: 77.7%
    – AG4: 83.3%

    So an AG3+Pro player dodges out in the open like a AG3.66 player. That’s why Wrestle and Pro slann linemen rock so much 😉

    Reply
  5. Thanks Skip Tasteless for restoring the two lost comments (you skipped your own). I find it funny that I and Macabeo both got your helmeted picture on our comments.

    Reply
    • Yeah, it’s not limited to only one use of the skill for the entire team per turn. It’s limited to every individual player that has Pro. Like if you used an Amazon team that all have the Dodge skill, while you can only use Dodge to reroll one dodge per turn, every player on the team can do it in that one turn if needed.

      Reply
  6. I just want to point out that Pro got buffed in the 2020 rules. It’s now 3+, (but can no longer be rerolled). A Pro longbeard now dodges just as well as a human lineman do.

    So whilst Pro is still less certain than rerolls from Dodge, Catch, Pass, Sure Hands or Sure Feet, it’s a smaller gap. It can still be used for any of those situations, won’t be cancelled by Tackle and can be used to reroll Blocks, Leap, Jump Up, Dauntless, Hypnotic Gaze and nega-traits such as Bonehead.

    What are you waiting for? Become a Pro today!!!

    Reply
    • Are you sure about not being able to reroll the Pro roll? The wording on the Pro skill says you may not reroll this one dice, but it’s referring to the one dice you are trying to target with the Pro skill and not the Pro skill roll itself.

      Reply

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