Squish the elves, again

I finished the second week of my new Blood Bowl league and it was shockingly similar to the first.  I played against a Dark Elf team for the second week in a row, won 2-1 for the second week in a row, and injured three elves for the second week in a row.  The injuries this week were less punitive because none of the elves died or took permanent penalties but all three are skipping next week's game to recover, same as last week.

I have had an easy ride of it so far.  Dark Elves are a good match for me, especially in the early going.  They rely on their Dodge ability heavily, and since Dwarves get to cancel Dodge at low cost the elves have a rough time of it.  This opponent in particular had a ton of Dodge on his team and it was not particularly helpful.  My next few matches are going to be rougher, I am sure of that.

One thing I have that nobody else in the league has (that I know of) is an upgraded stadium and an enhancement.  There are lots of enhancements available, though each team can only get one of them.  They are symmetrical in theory, but that doesn't quite work out in practice.  For example you can get soft turf that makes people less likely to get hurt if they fall down by running too far, or both sides can get a wizard.

The two enhancements that were most interesting to me were the ones that grant both sides a Bribe during the match and the one that reduces the cost of Star Players by 50,000.  Note that you have to be playing in your home stadium for the enhancement to matter so you only get the benefit half the time; this will be important.

Dwarves have a really powerful unit called a Deathroller.  It is the strongest unit in the game and is a total wrecking ball when it is on the field, but it gets sent off by the ref after the drive when it is on the field.  You can use a Bribe to try to get the ref to ignore the Deathroller once, but the Bribe only works 83% of the time.  A lot of people seemed to think that the Bribe enhancement combined with a Deathroller on the team would be really good but I don't think it works out that way.  The problem is that the combination of only playing in your stadium half the time and the 17% failure rate means that the Deathroller gets sent off 58% of the time anyway.

Also in many cases you field the Deathroller and use the Bribe, but the opponent has one turn left before halftime and the Deathroller ends up on the field and gets kicked out again immediately.  You can fix this by having lots of dwarves on the bench so you make sure the Deathroller doesn't *have* to be put on the field, but then you have a ton of Team Value devoted to dwarves on the bench, which sucks.  I think the consensus is that the Deathroller costs too much and you would be better off with more skills on your other dwarves than an unreliable trick like the Deathroller.

Dwarves are also in a uniquely good position to use the Star Player cost reduction.  Most Star Players cost 300,000 or more gold to hire, and they are generally badly statted and overcosted.  Reducing their cost by 50,000 is irrelevant; nobody wants them anyway.  However, dwarves have a Star Player called Berik Farblast who only costs 60,000.  He is good at picking up and throwing the ball, but this isn't especially useful as I don't want him to get the touchdowns because he will leave the team at the end of the game and the experience will be wasted.  Berik's abilities really are generally bad and I would never pay 60,000 for him, especially because he has a secret weapon and gets sent off at the end of a drive just like the Deathroller.

But I would pay 10,000 for him!  At 10,000 Berik is a steal.  Not because you use him to play the ball, but because he can foul.  The problem with fouling normally is that you often lose the player you are fouling with to the ref.  Berik is getting sent off anyway and cost almost nothing to hire so I lose very little when he exits the game.  I can run him around and foul like crazy and I don't care if he gets sent off.  He is also useful as a speed bump.  Dwarves are tough but I still don't want them to die.  If there is someone really scary then Berik can just stand next to them and get punched.  If he dies, I don't care.  If he lives to get punched again, then my 10,000 value loser is tying up 100,000+ worth of enemy.

Really, the point of Berik is not his unique abilities but just that he is a dude.  A dude that can stand places and step on necks.  It turns out that a dude like that is really useful if they are cheap enough.

And to give Berik credit, he does have some cool stuff.  If I desperately need a long pass gambit he is actually really good at that.  If I need to throw the ball to the other end of the pitch to keep my opponents from scoring, Berik has the Hail Mary Pass ability, which I would never actually select, but which could come up.

I will only buy Berik when I am playing at home and have the 50,000 cost reduction so half of the time I will just be a normal dwarf team.  The other half of the time I will have a cute little benefit that makes my team just a little better.  The best part about this plan is that I can play completely normally if I want to - I don't really commit anything, and it will never help my opponent.