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).