Advanced Tactics: Scatter Launches And You

The last passing post ended with a bit about how scatter launches can be made to work in your favor. Let's talk a little bit more about that.

How Scatter Works
Scatter occurs in a number of situations. A scatter launch is an obvious one, but the ball also scatters once whenever a player fails a pickup, fails to catch a pass or kickoff, or fumbles on a throw attempt. When a ball scatters, it moves one space in a random direction (all directions are equally likely).
On a scatter launch, the ball scatters away from the intended square three times. This does not mean that it will land three squares away, however. By way of example, here are some possible scatter patterns:

As you can see, every space within three of the intended target (including the intended target itself!) is a possible landing square for a scatter launch. And I'm sure you've already noticed that not all of these squares are equally likely landing squares; for example, only one scatter sequence leads to this square:

While this square has three sequences, making the ball three times as likely to land here:

And here's how the squares all work out percentage-wise (as always, with some rounding):

First observation: 4.69% of the time, a scatter launch will land where you intended. The receiver will have a chance to catch it, but he won't get the +1 bonus for catching an accurate pass.

Second observation: The way scatter works means that you can make relatively "safe" throws even if your AG is low enough that you're unlikely to get an accurate pass. For example:

While this pass is obviously pretty unlikely to work, the potential scatter has a pretty good chance (~72.42%) to either land on or adjacent to one of our players. A pass like this is dangerous, of course, but sometimes it's preferable to the alternatives. For example, if your thrower is in that position and being harassed by enemy blitzers, a long bomb into the other half of the field can prevent an easy opposing touchdown. It's also a way for slower teams to move the ball more quickly, particularly if they feel like their men downfield are tough enough to withstand the opposing player's attempts to knock them clear of the ball.

Third observation: There's a ~46.85% chance for the ball to land either on the receiver or within one square of him. Why is this important?

Throwing The Game

The Diving Catch skill allows a player to attempt to catch a ball that lands in one of his empty tackle zones, and it can be an important part of a low AG passing game. A player with Diving Catch has a chance to catch both accurate passes and nearly half of scatter launches. If you can remember the math from the previous passing post and combine it with this fascinating new information, then you might be almost as much of a nerd as I am. In any case, Diving Catch raises the catch chance of an AG 3 catcher by like 8% in the simplest case, and more for higher AG players. But there's a much more entertaining use for it!
The Hail Mary Pass skill allows your passer to throw the ball to any space on the field, even beyond normal long bomb range. A Hail Mary can't be intercepted and has a greatly simplified pass roll: on a 1 the pass fumbles, and on a 2-6 it scatter launches. Because these passes aren't affected by AG, it's a passing plan even a Khemri can get behind (although even with Diving Catch, he might have a hard time catching the ball). Of course, hurling the ball off wildly into the distance is still risky, but used sparingly a Hail Mary strategy can give even slow, low-AG teams a shot of offensive mobility.

Final Notes
One other thing I mentioned briefly last time is the number of skills that exist to improve your passing game. Most of them are incremental increases and the improvements are easy enough to calculate in your head, but I think it will be valuable to show the math on an example of the reroll skills:

AG 3 Thrower, AG 3 Catcher

Range	Fumble Throw %	Scatter Launch %	Fumble Catch %	Accurate Catch %
Quick Pass (+1)	17	17	22	44
Short Pass (+0)	17	33	17	33
Long Pass (-1)	33	33	11	23
Long Bomb (-2)	50	33	6	11

AG 3 Thrower with Pass, AG 3 Catcher with Catch

Range	Fumble Throw %	Scatter Launch %	Fumble Catch %	Accurate Catch %
Quick Pass (+1)	6	6	10	78
Short Pass (+0)	8	17	8	67
Long Pass (-1)	22	22	6	50
Long Bomb (-2)	42	28	3	27

Pass and Catch improve your passing game immensely. The effect is nearly as dramatic on higher AG players (they improve slightly less with rerolls, but given their much higher initial values they obviously end up with very high improved values). It's obvious that players with passing skills should be better at passing than players without, but the point I wanted to underline here is that the difference is really large. You can achieve this same level of improvement with just one of these skills and a willingness to use a team reroll as well.

Blood Bowl Basics: Passing

Passing is one of the most powerful and locally underutilized strategies for scoring points. A competent passing game is difficult to defend against, and a surprise pass from a normally non-passing team can slip past almost any opponent. Passing is not without risk, however; an interception sucks more than almost anything else in the game and your team has to make roughly a million AG rolls to complete a pass. So when is it safe to throw the ball?

Putting Up Numbers: The Short Version (No, Seriously)
First, the simple rules regarding passing: Passing is done as part of a move action. You only get to make one pass check each turn, so make it count. If your pass fails in such a way that the ball hits the ground or ends up in an opponent's hands, your turn ends.
A million might have been a slight exaggeration, but passing does still require a lot of AG checks. First is the passing roll, which is a normal AG roll with a few unique modifiers. For one thing, each enemy tackle zone on the passer inflicts a -1 penalty on the roll. For another:

The range of the pass modifies the passing roll. The value shown in the ring that your receiver is in gets added to the pass roll, so very short passes get a +1 modifier while long bomb passes get a -1 or -2. Once you've eyeballed the range and you're comfortable going for the pass, just right-click again to make the pass roll... sometimes!
Why sometimes? Because interceptions are by far the least intuitive part of Blood Bowl. If there is an enemy player who is awake enough to have tackle zones in the intended path of the pass, he makes an interception roll after you decide to pass but before you make the pass roll. The interception roll is an AG roll with a -2 modifier and an additional -1 modifier for each of your player's tackle zones on him. If he succeeds at this roll, you don't even roll the pass and he grabs the ball (and 2 SPP!) out of the air. If there are multiple potential interceptors, the opposing coach chooses just one to make the interception attempt.
Assuming no interception occurs, you make your pass roll. You've successfully gotten the ball out of the passer's hands, and the rest is up to Nuffle. If you succeed on the passing roll, you've made an accurate pass and the ball will land on the intended receiver. If you failed the passing roll, the ball will scatter randomly to a square up to three spaces away from the receiver. If you failed the passing roll and the result of the roll is 1 or less before and/or after modifiers, the passer will just fumble the ball into an adjacent space instead of throwing it. Remember that passing range is a modifier, which means that you're more likely to fumble a very long pass than a very short one. That's Blood Bowl!
So now you've fought to get your passer clear of opposing tackle zones, weathered an enemy interception roll, and succeeded on your passing roll. Surely the ordeal is over... except this is Blood Bowl, the only game that actively hates you while you play. Even if you manage to get the pass into the receiver's square, he still has to catch the damn thing. The catch roll is another AG check, suffering a -1 penalty for each enemy tackle zone on the catcher as well as getting a +1 bonus because of your passer's accurate pass. If you make the catch roll then Nuffle has smiled upon you and everything is sunshine and rainbows... for now. Fail the catch roll and ball will bounce out to a random square adjacent to the catcher.
That's the brief overview. Now let's get into some detail.

Putting Up Numbers: The Rest Of The Information
First, let's talk odds. You've seen all the AG rolls now, so you know that high AG players like elves or Gutter Runners are better at this stuff than the average mook or troll. But exactly how much better? That requires a bit of math. A bit of math that I've already done for you, in fact. Aren't you lucky to have me?

AG 3 Thrower, AG 3 Catcher, No Tackle Zones Or Interceptions

Range	Fumble Throw %	Scatter Launch %	Fumble Catch %	Accurate Catch %
Quick Pass (+1)	17	17	22	44
Short Pass (+0)	17	33	17	33
Long Pass (-1)	33	33	11	23
Long Bomb (-2)	50	33	6	11

AG 4 Thrower, AG 4 Catcher, No Tackle Zones Or Interceptions

Range	Fumble Throw %	Scatter Launch %	Fumble Catch %	Accurate Catch %
Quick Pass (+1)	17	0	14	69
Short Pass (+0)	17	17	11	55
Long Pass (-1)	33	17	8	42
Long Bomb (-2)	50	17	6	27

Obviously these are simplest-case examples, but they show very clearly the difference between the average team's AG 3 passing game and an elfy AG 4 passing game. One more valuable note here is that an AG 3 team with no rerolls is more likely to drop even the shortest possible pass than they are to complete it. Of course, I would never recommend that you pass without rerolls, and fortunately there are several skills available to augment your passes without wasting precious team rerolls.

• Accurate adds +1 to all of the player's passing rolls.
• Pass allows your thrower to reroll the passing roll once.
• Catch allows your catcher to reroll the catching roll once.
• Strong Arm gives a +1 bonus to passes outside of Quick Pass range. (This is a Strength skill, so it's pretty unusual for a dedicated passer to have it. It stacks with Accurate.)
• Nerves of Steel cancels out all tackle zone modifiers for passing, catching, and intercepting.
• Extra Arms adds +1 to all catch and intercept rolls. (This is a Mutation skill, so very few teams will have access to it.)
• Safe Throw reduces the chance of your passes being intercepted.
• Diving Catch increases your odds of catching scatter launches.

That's right, you can catch scatter launches! That's totally not even figured into our math! And, in fact, scatter launching can be an important part of a low AG passing strategy, and once you're strategizing around scatter launches then the Hail Mary Pass skill becomes interesting.... What I'm saying is that it gets a lot more complicated. I'll be covering that stuff in an advanced passing strategy article in the near future.

Blood Bowl Basics: Blocking

The most common event in any Blood Bowl game is one bloodthirsty psychopath hurling himself bodily at another in an attempt to rend him asunder. You could just issue attack commands willy-nilly, but then you'd be the kind of asshole that makes me say things like "willy-nilly". Come on, you're better than that.

The Gentleman's Guide To Violence By The Numbers
The block die is pretty simple.

A block thrown by a completely unskilled player against a completely unskilled player has a 1/2 (50%) chance to knock down the defender and a 1/3 (~33%) chance to knock down the attacker. The Block skill decreases your chance of being knocked down by 1/6 on both attack and defense, while the Dodge skill reduces your chance of being knocked down by 1/6 on defense and allows you to reroll one dodge roll each turn. The number of dice rolled also has a large effect on knock down chances.

% Chance Of Knocking Down Skilled Defenders

# Of Dice	No Block, No Dodge	Block Or Dodge	Block And Dodge
1	50	33	17
1 + Reroll	75	56	31
2	75	56	31
2 + Reroll	94	80	52
3	87	70	42
3 + Reroll	98	91	67

Avoiding An "Own Goal"

% Chance of Knocking Yourself Down Like An Idiot

# Of Dice	No Block	Block
1	33	17
1 + Reroll	11	3
2	11	3
2 + Reroll	1	<1
3	4	<1
3 + Reroll	<1	<1

The lesson here is that Block is good and single-die blocks are dangerous (less so with Block).

DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU!

Do You Even Lift?

Number of dice is obviously a tremendous predictor of success, and the number of dice you roll in a block is based on your ST.

• If the attacker and defender have equal ST, 1 die is rolled.
• If the attacker and defender do not have equal ST, 2 dice are rolled instead and the higher strength player selects the result.
• If the attacker and defender do not have equal ST and the stronger player has more than twice the weaker player's ST, 3 dice are rolled instead and the higher strength player selects the result.

It's not terribly likely that you have players on your team with twice your opponent's ST, so how can you get those sweet, sweet 3-die blocks?

With A Little Help From Your Friends

Assists are the most common way of performing multi-die blocks. When you throw a block, you get a +1 ST bonus for each allied player projecting a tackle zone on the enemy you're blocking as long as they're not in any other enemy player's tackle zones. Confused? It's okay! I made pictures for all the dumb people:

All players in this example have ST 3. However, the teal lineman will still get a 2-die block against the red lineman because the assist from his teammate gives him +1 ST for this block.

If the teal lineman throws a block against the red lineman here, he'll only get 1 die because his teamate's assist is now being denied by the red blocker.

Pretty simple, right? I hope you just said "yes", because it gets more complicated. The enemy you're throwing the block against can also get assists from his teammates in the same way you can!

If the teal lineman throws the block in this situation, he'll get a "negative" 2-die block; two dice will be rolled and his opponent will choose the result, as the red blocker is providing an assist to the red lineman.

Defensive assists get denied in the same way as offensive assists. Everybody here is only making 1-die blocks, because all assists are being denied.

Of course, real game situations will be more complicated than that. The most difficult part of a turn is often figuring out the series of actions that gives you the best sequence of multi-die blocks. For example:

This situation occurred in a game I played yesterday as Halflings vs. Goblins. Without going back in time and picking a competent team, what is the correct sequence of plays here?

Blood Bowl Basics: Fouling

Everybody loves a good foul. Having a half dozen goblins hold a guy down while another jumps up and down on his head is both hilarious and an objectively great idea.

Great question, Aaröngandr! It turns out that the answer to that question is the same as the answer to all questions: LET'S LOOK AT THE MATH!

How A Foul Actually Works
Once per turn, you can foul an opposing player, making an armor roll against him. Like all armor rolls, you roll 2d6 and if the result is higher than the player's armor then he has to make an injury roll. There's one way that the foul roll is different than other injury rolls, though: your teammates can provide assists! Foul assists work just like blocking assists, which is to say that each of your teammates projecting a tackle zone onto the fouled enemy and not in any other enemy's tackle zones will provide a +1 bonus to the foul roll.
Since the lowest you can roll on 2d6 is a 2, a guaranteed armor break on a foul requires (enemy AV - 1) assists.
Now that's neat, but it takes a lot of dudes to guarantee an armor break on even the relatively crummy AV of 7. You can't always spare that many players, since a player assisting a foul is a player who's not really contributing to the rest of the game. So how many assists does it take to make an armor break likely?

It turns out: not very many! (Some rounding ahead.)

Enemy AV - # of assists	Armor Break %
1	100
2	97
3	92
4	83
5	72
6	58
7	42
8	28
9	17
10	8

An armor break is more likely than not at 6, which is just one or two assists respectively on the common AVs 7 and 8. So you can probably get an armor break... but then what's the chance of killing the guy you're fouling?

How An Injury Roll Actually Works
If you break a player's armor, that player has to make an injury roll on 2d6. Here's the short version of the injury table:

2d6 Roll	% of Occurance	Result
2-7	58	Stunned
8-9	25	KO
10-12	17	Casualty

There are a few common skills which alter the injury roll: Thick Skull moves the 8 result into the Stunned category (making Stunned 72% likely and reducing KO to 11%), while Stunty adds 1 to the injury roll to produce this table:

2d6 Roll	% of Occurance	Result
2-6	42	Stunned
7-8	30	KO
9-12	28	Casualty

What About The Ref?
The ref will get up the courage to eject your player from the game if you roll doubles on the armor break roll and/or the injury roll. If you don't break armor, you have a 1/6 (~17%) chance to be ejected. If you do break armor and as such cause an injury roll, you have a 11/36 (~30%) chance to be ejected.

Tying It All Together
Rolling the (non-stunty) injury results and ejection chances into our armor break table from before gives us this (including some smallish propagating rounding errors):

Enemy AV - # of assists	KO %	Cas %	Ejection %
1	25	17	30
2	24	16	30
3	23	15	29
4	21	14	28
5	18	12	26
6	15	10	25
7	11	7	22
8	7	5	21
9	4	3	19
10	2	1	18

TL;DR
You're more likely to remove the opposing player from the field than to get ejected if (enemy AV - # of assists) < 6. That's not really the whole of the consideration, though. You also have to be concerned about the fact that getting ejected causes a turnover (so do important moves before fouling!), the value difference between the fouling player and the fouled player (because it's generally worthwhile to trade a halfling for a wardancer or a gutter runner, for example), and any bribes you may have (each of which has an ~83% to cancel an ejection). Smart fouling will increase your game win percentage as well as your opponent rage percentage, so figure out the math and stomp some faces!

Blood Bowl Basics: Caging

You can't win a game of Blood Bowl without scoring points, and you can't score points without carrying the ball. So once you have the ball, how do you keep it?

One common tactic for holding on to the ball through an opponent's turn is called caging. As in the picture above, the ball carrier is surrounded by four teammates at his corners. In order to get to a space adjacent to the ball carrier, an enemy would have to dodge into three tackle zones. The roll needed to dodge into three tackle zones is (7-AG) + 2, meaning an AG 3 player needs a 6 (AG 4s only need a 5). Then, if they manage that, a block thrown against the ball carrier will be suffering two defensive assists from the adjacent cornermen:

A cage has a lot of strengths if it's constructed properly. But what are its weaknesses?

For one thing, a cage is easy to break if any of the cornermen are adjacent to an enemy.

The enemy adjacent to the cornerman knocks down (or at least pushes) the corner of the cage, opening up a route for a blitz on the ball carrier. Don't build your cage adjacent to enemies so this doesn't happen to you! If the enemy wants to knock a corner off your cage, make them spend their blitz doing it so they can't blitz your ball carrier afterward.

Cages aren't unstoppable, though. Here are a few strategies for dealing with an opposing cage:

Blitzing the Corner

The easiest and weakest strategy. You can blitz a corner off the cage and then run in one or two more defenders to stand adjacent to the ball carrier. This is far from a sure defense as your defenders end up adjacent to opposing players who may just crush them with blocks to free up the ball carrier. It's also easy for the ball carrier to escape with a single dodge after the offense rearranges a little:

While a corner blitz will rarely stop the offense from advancing the ball by itself, it can be effective if combined with a solid defensive formation that prevents the cage players from opening up space for the ball carrier to run. It can also be effective if part of the cage is made of weaker players, as you can position your encroaching defenders next to them to reduce the likelihood that the offense will be able to knock you off of the ball carrier.

Stalling

A classic column defense won't break the cage, but it will make advancement difficult. The offense can only blitz one of the defenders, meaning that there's no way to open a tackle-zone-free hole. They'll have to spend an entire turn getting men adjacent to the column defenders in order to beat them down on the next turn. Stalling defenses are most effective against slow teams; agile teams may be able to throw a pass over the stalling defense or just run around it. This defense also sometimes fails against stunty teams, who may be able to just roll right through the remaining tackle zones after blitzing one defender down.

Punish the Others

A cage eats up almost half of the offense's players, and ideal cornermen are tough players who are difficult to knock down. This means that the offense is short-handed elsewhere on the field, and the people being left out alone are likely to be playmakers like catchers. If you can spare a couple of players to set up a loose defense in front of the cage in order to slow the ball carrier down, you can often gang up on these other important offensive players and attempt to take them out of the game. Beat them down and maybe throw some fouls if you have a cheap player you're not afraid to lose (or a bribe). This will sometimes allow the offense to score, but it's often okay to let an early point slip through if it lets you secure a man advantage. This defense is most effective against teams with important offensive players who have low AV, such as elf catchers.

Special Support

Finally, some teams have special tools that are particularly well suited to breaking cages:

• Players with Leap such as Wood Elf Wardancers can safely leap into the space adjacent to the ball carrier, allowing them (with supporting players denying defensive assists) to get easy blocks on ball carriers.
• Very high AG or stunty players can sometimes just dodge straight into the cage for a similar shot. 
• Goblin Bombardiers or hired wizards can drop an explosion right on the ball carrier, potentially wiping out the whole cage (and even if the explosion doesn't get the ball carrier, it may wipe out enough corners to allow for an easy blitz).
• Throw Teammate (available to Goblin, Underworld, and Halfling teams) can sometimes be effective. A thrown player can land safely in a space adjacent to the ball carrier or he can even be used as a missile to knock down the carrier or one of the corners to allow for a blitz.
• The Vampire team's Hypnotic Gaze ability can shut off the tackle zones of one or more cornermen, which also allows for an easy blitz (and most ball carriers aren't going to stand up to a Vampire blitz very well).