Last night my new Blood Bowl league got started. It was a bit rocky because several people ditched at the last minute so it seems that we have one dummy team that will just concede to everyone who plays against it. That is something of an advantage for the teams in that half of the league as they will get some extra cash and rest, but long run it isn't a big deal, and I am glad to have someone running the league who will just step up and make it work rather than engaging in a pointless pursuit of perfection.
I got a started off with what I think is a good matchup for my dwarves - Dark Elves. We are early on in development so most teams only have a half dozen skillups and I have Block on my entire team as well as 3 copies of Guard and 2 of Mighty Blow. That makes it basically impossible for the elves to fight my dwarves because if they stand toe to toe I will destroy them, and if they try to dodge everywhere I have just enough Tackle to counter their Dodge. Dark Elves don't have enough speed to be able to dance circles around me, and their dodging isn't reliable, so they are really stuck.
My opponent also only had 10 dudes on his team so he had a journeyman join him. On my first turn I killed the journeyman, so his 30 seconds of fame really was about 30 seconds. "Hey Mom, guess what? I am going to play for a real football team! Watch me go!"
Crunch, splat, dead. One can only imagine the Dark Elf parents weeping over their child's mutilated body. Of course the 70,000 gold he got paid to play for 30 seconds will probably console them because if I recall the Warhammer universe correctly that would be enough for them to live in opulence for their entire lives.
I logged a pair of other career ending injuries on actual team members and won the game handily, 2-1. What basically happened is that my opponent tried to block me but burned through rerolls when he rolled 2s. When my opponent tried to dodge away he burned rerolls when he rolled 1s. This was fine for a couple turns, then he ran out of rerolls and his elves spent a lot of time on the ground with angry dwarves standing over them, taunting them to get back up. This is the standard dwarf plan against elves, I think, and it worked well.
My opponent managed to buy a new player at the end of the game but still has two other players missing their next game to heal up so he will only be fielding nine players next game. That is a rough spot to be in. His next opponent is pleased that I left him so beat up, but I had an option to make it even worse and I declined it and I am not sure what the right choice is.
In the closing rounds of the game I was passing the ball from one dwarf to the other trying to earn experience and bashing whatever elves I could catch to get experience from hurting them. Obviously I should try to get as much experience as possible, no one doubts that. However, once I was assured of the victory I could have fouled an elf or two on the ground to try to inflict some extra pain on my opponent. It wouldn't change my victory and it wouldn't get me more experience but it might make opponent's team worse if I could inflict extra injuries.
So do I want to kick an opponent when they are down?
If I end up playing off against this opponent in the semifinals the answer is yes, I should hurt them. However, a team that isn't even fielding a full roster and has one of their best players with serious injuries on them isn't looking like a big threat. If I bash them even more I am probably just making it easier for the next few teams to beat them up, and I want all the games that I am not involved in to be tight slugfests where lots of injuries are handed out. I certainly can't play them again for a long time, so any injuries I inflict now are unlikely to be helpful by the time we face each other again.
However, all of that assumes a lot. Maybe my opponent will go on a tear through the league and I should do all the damage I can whenever I can. I know that if I could hand out random injuries to teams throughout the league I would do that... heck, I would even do that if my team was included because I have tons of money and healthy dwarves so I can buy new ones if I need to. Other people can't because they are squishy and broke.
The last thing to consider is the social factor. Maybe me not stomping on my opponent's elves at the end of the game will convince him to do the same later. It won't buy me any other form of mercy, certainly, but maybe avoiding a mutual destruction pact surrounding last turn fouls is a worthwhile thing. If the league is full of murderous bastards then I may have wasted my chance, but if people mostly play nice then I don't want to be the one person everybody guns for. I am actually pretty happy to be in a foul heavy league though because of my current situation of having money and healthy dudes... and of course dwarves are tough and generally don't break even when you step on them.
In any case I wasn't sure if I should foul on the last turn so I just didn't and pressed End Turn. The game was great for me as I suffered no losses, got 17 experience, and won the game. No need to push it, was my thinking in the moment.
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