Wood Elf Wardancer Overview:
Wood Elf Wardancers are often cited to be the best player to have on the ground getting their head kicked in in the game. They are fast, agile and have a fantastic combination of starting skills. This does of course make them expensive but they are worth every penny of their cost if not more. They can pretty much get anywhere they want and do anything they please, making them the best weapon in the Wood Elf coach’s arsenal. They will get targeted a lot by the other teams in order to injure them, so expect them to get fouled should they end up prone for whatever reason. They do have low armour so can get hurt easily, but with the starting combination of Block and Dodge, they can be fairly hard to knock over, especially for new teams.
Wardancers tend to do all the blitzing on the Wood Elf team, they start with Block like other teams blitzers and with the Dodge and Leap skills they can usually get to the ball carrier. This ability is what makes playing against Wood Elves such a nightmare and it gets worse after they get Strip Ball. If you can knock the ball loose, your fast and agile team mates can often recover it and then be off to safety before the other team gets a chance to blink. This causes the other team to be extra protective over the ball and can cause them running out of space to manoeuvre. The Leap skill also means that they can’t hide on the safety of the sideline using half a cage, you can jump right in and push the ball carrier into the crowd.
You do need to be careful about using the Leap skill too much though, there is no skill reroll for it so it can end up using up your rerolls quickly. Leaping is also harder than dodging most of the time so you will end up prone if you fail, more often than if you dodged. This can lead to you injuring your own player off a failed leap without the other team having to do anything, they will love you for this and rightly so. You should also be aware of failing a leap into a cage, if your armour does hold up then you are surrounded by opposing players and a ripe target for a juicy foul. Even if you do succeed you should think about a route out or the other team is likely to start getting a lot of hits on your Wardancer the next turn. Thankfully dodging out of a cage is a lot easier than trying to dodge into one.
If you do look to leap into a cage to hit the ball carrier you also need to consider the assists that they will get. You have to pay particular attention to cage corners who have Guard as you can’t cancel their assist out with Linemen like you usually would. If the ball carrier does have Sure Hands and Block, you might want to reconsider jumping in there. If they don’t then it can be worth trying to hit them even at a strength disadvantage. Despite the dangers involved if there is a good opportunity for getting the ball loose and causing lots of problems for the other team, then it can be well worth it to put your Wardancer at risk. You won’t win games by playing scared trying to protect them all the time, that said don’t be overly reckless, a Dwarf cage can be a really bad place to end the turn in.
Wardancers aren’t just used for jumping into cages though, if the opposing defence is really well set up, then your only way through may to be use the leaping ability of the Wardancer. Hand the ball off to one and watch them get past the opposing defence as though it wasn’t there. Pay attention to getting crowd pushes as well, their manoeuvrability around the pitch can worry players near the sideline, especially if you equip one with the Frenzy skill. Getting opponents off the pitch will only let you dominate the game even more with your speed and agility.
Strip Ball Wardancer:
- Normal: Strip Ball / Tackle, Side Step, Diving Tackle / Dauntless / Jump Up / Shadowing / Fend
- Doubles: Guard / Mighty Blow
- Stat Increase: +ST +AG +MV
The quintessential Wardancer build, with the best core skills already they don’t need to take them! Strip Ball on one Wardancer and the rest of the team brand new is going to be a tough opponent for any other starting team. Don’t worry about Sure Hands cancelling it out, if you can tie up their Sure Hands player they will have to off load the ball to someone without it. Tackle is handy next as Dodge is an often taken skill for ball carriers so you want to negate that. Side Step will minimise the blocks you take and also let you stay next to the ball carrier should they remain standing with the ball. After that you have a lot of useful skills to choose from. Diving Tackle keeps the ball carrier in place a lot of the time, Dauntless will help you out against stronger teams, Jump Up keeps you mobile and can give you free blocks from prone. Opponents won’t want to leave you prone by their cage as you can open up an easy route to the ball carrier, or even hit them yourself as well as maybe getting a blitz on with someone else too. Shadowing can also cause problems for ball carriers and can keep you next to them. Fend could be worth considering as well.
For doubles, Guard can let you leap in an assist pretty much anywhere you please. Mighty Blow will help keep the players you knock down on the ground, or even better off the pitch! Getting a nice stat increase on a Wardancer will make then even more useful and an even bigger target for opposing hits. +ST makes hitting the opposing players a lot easier and also harder for them to hit you. +AG makes leaps as easy as dodges and you can dodge and pick up the loose ball in traffic with greater ease. +MA comes in handy for increasing your range and lets you do hit and run blitzes back to safety easier. You could consider +AV though they will be taking lots of hits and it doesn’t make much difference if you are getting gang fouled.
I don’t play the likes of elves very I often, so I very much consider dodgy teams “The Enemy”, and within there Wardancers are right at the top of the list.
I therefore couldn’t help but cackle with glee when reading a report from a game in one of the leagues over at Rock Paper Shotgun where a guy was playing as orcs and when he had the ball at one point the opposing woodies sent a wardancer downfield, past the orcs. The orc player promptly marched the majority of his team back down the field so he could blitz and gang-foul the wardancer into the injury list. 😀
You can reroll a failed leap with Pro can’t you?
You can yes, good point. You may find room to squeeze it in, generally though if I’m going to be doing a leap I will prefer to have a reroll handy for it. Not a big fan of Pro for what I consider a fairly crucial roll.
What do you give to your wardancer when you roll double 5 on your first skill roll?
I’d personally take Guard, though that is a good question to ask on the forum as there are a lot of options that could be worth discussion.
@ Konstantin I would take +Ma always, however on a normal double. I would take either MB or Guard, MB is possibly better as they will be doing most of your blitzes but you also desperately need guard on Elf teams to compete at a higher TV
I just wanted to say this: Wouldn’t you consider sure feet as a good skill for the ball hunter? Mine as Stripball and I went straight for Sure feet after ward. There is often a turn where the opponent doesn’t have a cage formed. I can use my ball hunter to jump over the defence and run after the ball carrier that way almost ALL of the time. This shift a lot of there energy to defend and take back the ball early in the drive. I don’t know, I find that Sure Feet with a potential +2 to movement for only 20TV is much better then a stat increase (well I don’t know how much is +MV). But if your playing MM (online) then it’s better for trimming TV, increase you threat range more (well not more but in a safer way at least). And allow you to threaten REALLY far.
It can be handy to have, though you have other fast players on your team. Sure Hands and Sure Feet on a Catcher may be better suited to collect the ball after knocking it free. While the situation you described it would be handy, I’d rather have Tackle and Side Step first as they are more use in many more situations and not just this one. Catchers also already have Sprint so also get more use out of Sure Feet, but generally most of the time in my opinion there are skills that are a higher priority and have less situational use. Wood Elves are the second fastest team, positioning isn’t something that is usually going to be an issue to need Sure Feet. Couple that with the fact you can use a team reroll as well, where other skills can’t be replicated in use and that is why I don’t recommend Sure Feet, at least not as an early skill choice.
Regarding building for MM, that is an unnatural environment that the Blood Bowl rules weren’t designed for. As such I don’t want to give specific advice based mainly on that environment. If you want to discuss skill choices on a team specifically for that environment in mind then start a thread with your team roster on it on the forum.
No one mentioned Jump Up for a non-Strip Ball build, but I find it awesome.
I’m currently playing a wood elves team with some experience on their backs (something like 8 games), and without realizing it (I just started playing BB) I skilled up one of my wardancers far more than the rest of the team, and my team is now a two-pieces always-winning team with some useless players round them, the two pieces are:
THROWER: accurate, strong arm
WARDANCER: +1 AG, +1 MA, Jump Up
Fairly often I can just send my WD trough the enemy lines, recover the ball (geeeez those Orcs just can’t hold it) and score a TD in two turns; of course the enemy will blitz me in order to prevent the TD, but because of block and dodge the chances of having me face down are kinda low, and Jump Up allows me to use my full 9 units of MA to recover my ball (once again) and fly for the TD ^^
Same thing goes for attack schemes (I have the ball in my hands from the start, I throw some passes for the lulz – and advancements, then send my WD as mentioned earlier).
Whoops, the skill is actually mentioned…well I’d put more attention on it! xD
Haven’t had too much experience with playing Woodies myself (though quite some experience playing against them), yet, I’d like to share one thought:
I feel like on rolling doubles Grab is a very good skill for a blitzing/ball-loosening Wardancer. It enables you to control where the ball gets loose if you attack an incomplete cage, which is useful because you probably neither want to pick it up with your blitzer (for two reasons: first, avoiding to move into a half-formed cage, which might result in getting beaten up badly and second, because you probably want to move the ball out of the cage and cannot perform another action, that is a hand-off or pass, with the guy that blitzed) nor want it to rest within the cage or be caught by another player of the other team. Yet, thats what your in for, quite often, as your movement and the leaping skill tempt you often enough to attack from the unprotected side of a forming cage, thus pushing the ball-carrier towards his teammates. With grab you can instead choose to pull the ball-carrier out of its cage, meaning he will (hopefully) loose the ball out in the open space where it’s easy to fetch for your catchers. Plus, Grab is obviously useful for easier blocking chain arrangements, to move some new fodder to your treeman when he’s taken root, to push opponents towards the sideline, and from time to time it’s even nice (though that’s rather rare with an extra mobile Player of mediocre strength and inferior protection like those Dancers) to be able to keep an opponent’s catcher or runner (think Skaven, Elves or passing-game Humans) at bay.
I’m currently trying this (skipped +MA in favor of the double) at the PC game, but as it’s in single-player there’s no challenge anyway and any inferences on how it would work out normally are pretty much hypothetical and presumptous, which is, why I ask:
Any opinions on this, coach?
Grab when used in a Blitz action only cancels Side Step. It doesn’t let you choose any of the free squares to push the opposing player back into. Also there are more useful skills to take on a double, Mighty Blow, Guard etc. If you could chain push one of your players who does have Grab (typically your Treeman) then he may be able to Grab the ball carrier out, but cages are often formed where this isn’t ever going to be possible.
Another point is that Frenzy is fairly popular on Wardancers, you can’t have both Grab and Frenzy on the same player.
Darn. Would have been nice, though.
Thanks for the quick reply and the rules reminder. Clearly there is no great use in having it on a WD, then.
You forgot to list Juggernaut as a key double for the Strip Ball Wardancer. This combines very well with Strip Ball as you can treat a Both Down result as Pushed (i.e. ball popped loose!), even if the opponent has Block or Wrestle. That is very useful – basically you always have a 5/6 chance of popping the ball on each dice, unless your opponent has Sure Hands.