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.