Blood Bowl Basics: Inducements

Some games seem destined for a loss. League compositions can be unpredictable and sometimes your crew of fresh-faced rookies goes up against a brigade of psychopaths wearing shoulderpads and jockstraps made out of all the opponents they've killed. How can you beat that without cheating? Thanks to inducements, you won't have to!

Who Needs Skill?

In each game of Blood Bowl, the team with the lowest Team Value is awarded money equal to one thousand times the difference between the teams' TVs with which to buy inducements, which are basically league-sanctioned cheats intended to give the little guy a chance. These things are the reason that you need to watch your TV and make sure it doesn't spiral out of control. If you're not careful, here's what you might have to face:

$50,000 (50 TV difference)

Bloodweiser Babes: You can purchase up to two of these young ladies, each of whom will use a combination of magic beer and cleavage to give your team a +1 bonus on KO rolls. Normally, each of your KOed players makes a d6 roll at the beginning of each drive and wakes up on 4+, so one of these takes this to a 3+ and two take it to a 2+. A Bloodweiser Babe is (almost) the only thing that costs less than $100,000, so they're relatively common. It's rarely correct to take two Babes. though, as you'll usually get more use out of the team reroll or apothecary that you could get instead.

$100,000 (100 TV difference)

Team Reroll: You can get an extra team reroll per half for just $100K, which is a pretty fantastic deal. You should have some idea of exactly how good an extra reroll is for your team, and you'll probably find that this works quite well for you.

Wandering Apothecary: This functions exactly the same way as a normal apothecary, allowing you to reroll one casualty roll during the game (or turn one KO into a stun instead). This allows you to have two apothecaries for a game, but each casualty roll can only be rerolled once. If you're up against a team that you're afraid is going to punch your face in, this is probably a better way of keeping your team up and running than buying two Bloodweiser Babes.

Igor: Teams that can't buy apothecaries also can't buy wandering apothecaries, but they can recruit one of these surgeons of undead flesh instead. An Igor allows a reroll of one Regeneration roll during the game.

Bribe: A bribe allows you to attempt to change the ref's mind when he tries to eject one of your players for throwing a foul or wielding a secret weapon. You roll a d6 and on a 2+ your player doesn't get ejected. This can be a good buy if the opponent has a particularly useful player or two that will cramp your game plan, as it allows you to be a bit more liberal with your fouls on that guy. Bribes are super great for the Goblin team due to their extensive secret weapon use, and fortunately for them all Blood Bowl refs are both goblin and racist. Goblin teams pay only half price ($50K) for bribes.

$150,000 (150 TV difference)

Wizard: A hired wizard will sit on your sidelines booing loudly and incessantly pulling rabbits out of his hat to terrify the opposition. Additionally, the wizard will cast one spell for you during the game. At either the very beginning of your turn (before you have declared any actions) or at the very end (even if your turn ended with a turnover) the wizard can cast either a fireball or a lightning bolt, targeted at any square of your choice. The lightning bolt hits the player in the targeted square, knocking him down on a d6 roll of 2+. The fireball hits the targeted square and all adjacent squares, but only knocks down on a 4+. Lightning bolts can be powerful for giving a slow team a way of stopping an offensive breakaway of the kind that elves and gutter runners often make, while fireballs are a (somewhat unreliable) way of breaking down difficult cages.

$300,000 (300 TV difference)

Halfling Master Chef: Yes, that says $300,000. It might actually be worthwhile, though. A Halfling Master Chef steals rerolls from the opposing team and gives them to you, but the number is variable. At the beginning of each half you roll 3d6 for your Master Chef and on each 4+ you steal one reroll from the opposing team. The odds breakdown is pretty simple: 12.5% 0 steals, 37.5% 1 steal, 37.5% 2 steals, and 12.5% 3 steals. The Master Chef compares pretty positively with the same value worth of team rerolls; even if you only roll 1 steal, it's arguable that your opponent losing a reroll is actually better for you than getting two rerolls of your own would have been. Of course, there's always the chance that your Master Chef screws up, but if you don't like gambling you should probably take up a different game. Because Master Chefs are even more racist than referees, Halfling teams can hire a Chef at one-third of normal cost, making them as cheap as team rerolls.

Variable

Mercenaries ($50,000-$240,000): A mercenary can be hired to fill any position on your team that isn't already filled (for example, if you're allowed 2 blitzers but you only have 1, you could hire a mercenary blitzer). A mercenary costs $30,000 more than it would cost to hire a normal player for the position, and mercenaries carry the Loner skill because they're not used to playing with your team. That's obviously a pretty bad deal, but sometimes you can't afford to leave an important position vacant after an unfortunate injury or death. You can choose for the mercenary to come equipped with any one skill that his position could take on a normal improvement roll, but it adds $50,000 to his cost. (If your team is injured badly enough that you can't field 11 players at the beginning of a game, the empty slots will be filled with mercenaries of your team's 0-16 position and your TV will be adjusted up as though those players were normal members of your team.)

Star Players ($60,000-$430,000): Star Players are extraordinarily skilled free agents that command hefty appearance fees. Most of them are very selective about which races they'll play with, though, so most teams will only have access to a few Stars even if they have all the necessary cash. Learn which Star Players your team has access to and figure out the situations for which they'd be ideal. (I could also write an article about Star Players if people would like.)

Mo TV, Less Cheating (But Still Some Cheating)

The higher TV team can get access to inducements too, but it's going to cost them. A team can transfer any amount of money from their treasury to their inducement fund, but their TV increases by one thousandth of the money they transfer. This means that the higher team could buy (for example) a Bloodweiser Babe, but doing so would cost them $50,000 from their treasury AND increase their TV by 50 for the game, so the lower team would also get an extra $50,000.

The lower team can transfer money from their treasury the same way, but the fact that it increases their TV makes it self-defeating in most cases. If you don't have enough inducement money to afford an inducement that you desperately need, you can contribute enough money from your treasury to purchase it, but be aware of the TV change you're causing. For example, if a 1000 TV Human team decides that they need a wizard to fight their 1100 TV Elf opponents, they can get it by contributing $150,000 from their treasury. This temporarily increases their TV to 1150, meaning that the Elf team will actually receive $50,000 in free inducement money for the match. This is a high price to pay for an inducement, but it could be worthwhile for a gamesaver.