Advanced Tactics: Injuries

Everybody comes to a game of Blood Bowl looking for some heads to roll. The fans want to see blood spill and, although they may be loathe to admit it, both coaches are aiming to put enemy players in the ground. Conversely, nobody likes to lose players, but if you're looking to run with the same 11 men on the field forever you might want to go play Madden or something. I might write another post in the near future about how best to preserve your squad, but today we're talking all about the opposite.

How To Lose Friends And Injure People

I've talked about the math on injuries a bit in previous posts, but here's a refresher. Whenever a player gets fouled or falls down because of a block result (unless Wrestle was used), a failed dodge, or a botched GFI, a 2d6 armor roll is made for that player. If the result of the roll is higher than the player's armor, then a 2d6 injury roll is made for the player, using this result table:

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

Obviously, you want to get that casualty result as often as possible. It helps with your short-term goal of winning the game by removing an opposing player from the field and it helps with your long-tem goal of team improvement by awarding your player SPP. There are two ways to significantly improve your casualty rate: making better blocks and developing players to cause injuries. (Smart fouling will also help to cause casualties, but there's already a post about that.)
Making better blocks is a little bit complicated. The simplest part is covered here (tl;dr: rolling more dice is good and also Block and Tackle are valuable in the relevant situations), but the more difficult bit--positioning your players and sequencing your actions such that you produce the maximum number of multi-die blocks each turn of the drive--is a bit beyond the scope of this post. Just remember to always have a drive-long strategy in mind when moving and blocking; if you're not thinking about the next turn and the turn after that, you're often going to find yourself losing to an opponent who does. Skill pickups that can help make your blocks better include Guard, Tackle, and Dauntless.
Developing players to cause injuries, on the other hand, is very much within the scope of this post. The most common skill for increasing a player's killing power is Mighty Blow, the influence of which can be seen in this handy visualization:

Players with the Claw skill treat all enemies as though they are AV 7, which is obviously valuable. It also has a favorable interaction with Mighty Blow, producing the following graph:

The other skill that interacts quite well with Mighty Blow is Piling On, which allows a player to throw himself on top of an enemy that he has just downed in order to reroll either the armor or injury roll for that player. This skill is a little bit less of a no-brainer because it leaves the attacking unit prone, which can range from mildly inconvenient to incredibly dangerous (particularly if the Piling On player is someone valuable that the opponent might like to foul). In order to get the most out of Piling On, you have to know the math (surprise!). In the following chart, the red line represents your percentage chance of causing an injury if you use Piling On any time you fail to injure a downed opponent, while the blue line represents your chance of causing an injury if you use Piling On only to reroll the injury roll after breaking armor:

As you can see, Piling On provides a tremendous improvement over the base casualty rate. What's important to note, though, is that the improvement in the injury rate between the red and blue lines is actually quite small. At AV 6 and 7, using Piling On to reroll failed armor breaks only improves the casualty rate by ~4%, and the effect is reduced significantly as AV climbs (or falls).
Because Piling On leaves your player prone after he has taken his action for the turn, using it significantly reduces that player's usefulness over the next turn. He won't provide any tackle zones during the opponent's upcoming turn and he'll be vulnerable to fouls, and then on your next turn he won't be able to throw another block without using up your blitz (unless he also has Jump Up, which would be unusual but might be something worth thinking about for a player like this). This means you really need to get some value out of knocking him prone, so think carefully about the numbers here before telling him to drop the elbow.
Incidentally, Piling On also interacts pretty favorably with Mighty Blow:


Making A Monster
At this point, the data has made it clear that the most effective killers will have Mighty Blow, Claw, and Piling On, allowing them to cause a casualty on ~20% of their knockdowns. There aren't any positions that start with even two of these skills, however, so you're going to be stuck building your own brutalizer. So in what order do you take the skills to ramp up your killing power as quickly as possible?
The math indicates that Mighty Blow is actually the most important skill. It provides the largest increase in casualty rate on targets with AV 8 or lower and is only slightly less effective than Claw on targets with AV 9. (Claw remains the head-and-shoulders standout against AV 10, but you're not going to run into much of that.) Mighty Blow is so effective, in fact, that it increases casualty rates on blocks even more than improving the block's chances of success; getting an extra successful face--using Block against a player without Block or using Tackle to cancel someone's Dodge--and getting an extra die on the block are both significantly less effective for injuring people than just adding Mighty Blow to your player. Piling On is the runner-up, again increasing casualty rates significantly more than actually improving the quality of your blocks although, like Mighty Blow, it's less effective than Claw against AV 9 and 10 players. (Of course, improving the quality of your blocks knocks opposing players down a lot more, and there's obviously a lot to be said about the value of that even when it doesn't result in a casualty.)
A final note about creating your own killer: Mighty Blow and Piling On are both from the Strength category, and Claw is from the Mutation category. You'll want Strength access on normals on a player that you intend to turn into a casualty machine, and many of these players just won't ever have access to Claw. If you're looking for players that can easily assemble the unholy trinity of smashing skills, the list is fairly short: Chaos Pact Marauders, Khorne Bloodthirsters, Norse Yhetees, Nurgle Warriors and Pestigors, Underworld Blitzers and Trolls, and every player on the Chaos team. Most players on the Underworld and Chaos Pact teams can get there with one double and Skaven Blitzers and Rat Ogres can do the same, while Necromantic Werewolves need two doubles. Be careful about using Piling On on a big guy, though, as their negative traits can make it relatively difficult to get them back up easily and your opponent may be more than happy to gang-foul them while they're down!

The only question left is "Just how much better is one of these teched-out slayers than the average fresh-off-the-assembly-lineman?"

Blood Bowl Basics: Apothecaries

When a player's blood splatters on the pitch, everyone in the stadium cheers. Fans, players, and coaches alike eagerly anticipate the echoing crunch of a good armor break, looking forward to an easier game for their team (or an excuse for bloodthirsty vengeance). The apothecaries at the sidelines get excited as well, but their joy is more about the gold falling into their pockets than the game.

Single-Player Healthcare
Apothecaries can fix the most grievous wounds or even bring the dead back to life, but other times they'll nearly kill a man when tending to his sprained ankle. Basically, these guys have no idea what they're doing; bring an injured player over to them and they'll go at him arbitrarily with saws and bandages until something happens. Despite their unreliability, apothecaries are tremendously useful. At a one-time cost of 50,000 gold, they pay for themselves (and then some) the first time they save a player's career, and it's likely they'll do that half a dozen times in a season.
An apothecary can only be used once each game, and performs one of the following functions.

Rerolling a Casualty
An apothecary can let you reroll a casualty roll and then select either result. This can let you turn a serious injury or even a death into something less permanent, which is obviously extremely valuable. Nobody likes losing a level 4 player with two stat gains, and the apothecary keeps that from happening (sometimes). It gets even better, though: selecting a Badly Hurt result when using an apothecary will result in your player not being injured at all. He still gets pulled off the field, but he'll be available again at the start of the next drive. You can even use your apothecary to reroll a Badly Hurt just so you can select it to keep your player in the game.

Preventing a KO
When one of your players gets KOed, the apothecary can change the result to a stun instead. This may seem weak, indeed almost wasteful, compared to the apothecary's other function, but we've all had players get KOed and then stubbornly refuse to get up. Preventing that guy from going to the KO box in the first place gives you an extra player all game, which works out the same as saving him from an injury (or better, if the drive lasts longer than his stun).

Primum Non Nocere
Apothecaries are very powerful and an extraordinary value, so every team should have one. However, you don't necessarily need one right away. Buying an extra discounted reroll instead of an apothecary during team creation will probably serve you better in both the short and long term. Also, when your team is just starting out and you haven't been able to afford all your positionals yet, you may get more value out of devoting your gold to picking up players. As soon as your blitzers and scorers start developing, though, an apothecary is the only thing that will keep your heart from stopping for a second every time an opponent rolls a pow.

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.

Blood Bowl Basics: Formations

A lot happens in a Blood Bowl drive. Spines are shattered, curses are shouted, riots are incited, and occasionally somebody even picks up the ball. It's easy to get caught up in all the action and not notice the shaping effects that cause the scrum to occur in these squares and not those squares (or even those other squares over there). Some of that shaping comes from the coaches working hard, action by action, to drive the ball into the place best for them, but a surprisingly large part of it comes from the formations in which the players set up at the beginning of the drive.

Setting Up For Victory
There are a lot of things to consider when setting up. I'm going to show you some example formations, but always think about the relative speed and strength of the teams in your game before using any of these. Some formations work best against strong, slow lineups, while others are best for containing elf plays. The best lineup will change from play to play as well, depending on the number of turns left in the half, the number and composition of each team's injuries, and what you predict your opponent's strategy might be. Keep your eyes open and your brain working!

One common defense is known as the column defense or the 3-4-4, so called because it places three defenders on the front line, 4 defenders on a second line, and 4 defenders on a third line. A "collapsed" 3-4-4 might look like this (shown using Norse in blue):

Obvious strengths of the 3-4-4 are that it creates a strong band of tackle zones across the field and that it's resistant to enemy blitzes. There's no spot where a single blitz can open up a TZ-free path for a ball carrier. It's not impregnable, of course; any knockdown attained on the line of scrimmage can be accompanied with a push in the opposite direction to start forming a hole, like this:

It only takes one knockdown at the LoS for this to happen. Any more than that makes a more open and defensible path for the offense. Obviously, this is less of a concern if you can prevent the enemy players from having strong blocks at the line, either through skills (lots of Guard, perhaps) or a significant ST advantage. You can defend against this to some degree by running a staggered 3-4-4 that looks like this:

This reduces the opponent's ability to run up the middle by adding some tackle zones to the middle three squares at the cost of opening up the sidelines to blitzes a little. This defense is a little worse against a frenzy blitz (as assists from the end linemen in the back 4 can be denied easily, making the second frenzy block safer) but stronger against stunties and high AG dodgers who will potentially have to make an extra dodge to get through the formation. As you can see, there are a lot of ways to adjust any formation to make little tradeoffs like this. As always, keep your head in the game and figure out the variation that works best for your situation.

A defensive option that might be slightly more effective against dodgy teams (especially stunty dodgers) is the 5-5-1 (also known more verbosely as 3-2-3-2-1), shown here in both flattened and spread variants:

This formation has an obvious weakness to a block on a corner lineman followed by a blitz on the player behind him, so I really only recommend this if you're playing against a team where you have a significant ST advantage, which fortunately will usually be the case against many stunty teams. If the enemy team is ST-disadvantaged, they'll have to spend enough players performing the initial hit and blitz that they probably won't also be able to form a defense for their ball carrier. This formation includes a significant backfield presence, which can be useful against fast teams trying to sneak through.

Offensive setups are often a little more complex, because the offense has a lot more information to work with. When you set up your offense, you need to take note of both the general shape of the enemy formation and the position of important defensive players (unusually high-ST players, guys with Strip Ball, etc.). Unfortunately, the information you don't have is where the ball will land, so you need to keep a couple of guys in the backfield no matter your formation (and against fast defenses, you need to make sure to protect them!). You can easily line up symmetrical formations and position assists to enjoy your first turn advantage without any help from me, so let's talk about some more interesting strategies.

A strong side offense like this allows you to concentrate your offensive power on fighting a smaller portion of the enemy team for a couple of turns while the weak side players try to catch up to the action. This is a particularly useful strategy if your opponent has a few well-developed players grouped up on one side, as you can avoid them for a few turns (or more, if you can get them marked before they get to the fight). It's also great for capitalizing on injuries that leave the opposing defense uneven. Your battle plan might look something like this:

If you score any knockdowns at all with your blocks, this puts you in a pretty strong position for next turn with a number of enemy players hard-pressed to contribute at all (and probably your guys on your weak side will contribute by marking them or something). This is pretty optimistic, though. If the ball falls on the weak side, you might be in some trouble if you can't reliably make a lateral pass. For this reason, I'd be pretty leery of using this kind of offense against a team with Kick. A strong side offense also loses some utility against fast players who can contribute to defense anywhere on the field quickly and can really punish a weak side kick.

Who's On The Line?

One other important thing to consider is who goes on the line of scrimmage. Three players are required to stand right in the opponent's face, and it's important to know what that means. Against some teams the line will be a killing zone festooned with ST 4 claw-wielding psychopaths, while other teams might just put up three lackluster dead guys. (The kicking team may have to do some guessing here, unfortunately.) Think carefully about what you want your line to do. If you can't fight the enemy line (or if fighting it would take up too much of your bashing ability) it might be wise to place disposable linemen (or zombies or beastmen or whatever) there just to tie up the enemy fighters as long as possible while placing your own fighters where they can contribute to moving or stealing the ball. Each team has a limited amount of murdering power, so mete it out carefully; only use as much as is actually helpful on the line and get the rest of it out there intimidating the enemy playmakers.

Blood Bowl Basics: Team Management

At the end of the player development post, I mentioned that player improvements bloat your Team Value, which can lead to your opponents entering the game with more cheaty wizards and chefs and star players. "That sounds dangerous!" I hear you cry. Well, good eye. That stuff will kill you. But it's okay, I'm here to teach you how to develop a devastating team without getting devastated in return.

Too Big To Succeed?
First, let's tackle the elephant in the room: Is it always good to improve a player? It's true that improving a player improves your game overall, which is to say that yes, it is always good to improve a player. But that's not really the question; the question is whether a given improvement helps your team more than it helps the opposing team.
Everything that helps your team, from rerolls to Fan Factor to the players themselves, has a Value. The Value of a team element is based on its initial cost and then, in the case of players, augmented by any improvements they may have. The Value of all of your team elements combined is your Team Value. At the beginning of each game, your Team Value will be compared to your opponent's Team Value, and the team with the lower Value will receive money equal to 1,000 times the difference with which to buy inducements (things like extra rerolls or the wizard I keep mentioning). The point here is that every time you increase your Team Value, you increase the the inducement money your opponents will receive (or decrease the money you will receive, if you're the lower team). This means that you want every improvement to your team to be better for you than the Value it adds is for your opponent. Let's talk about the non-player elements that inflate Team Value.

• Team Rerolls increase your Team Value by a thousandth of their initial cost. This Value varies by team between 40 and 70 inclusive. The cost of Team Rerolls doubles after team creation, but their Value doesn't double. Team Rerolls are extremely powerful and are nearly always worth their Value increase. (For comparison, the inducement cost of an extra reroll is 100,000 gold, meaning a TV difference of 100.)
• Fan Factor increases your Team Value by 10 per point. You have a chance to gain Fan Factor every time you win a match and a chance to lose some every time you lose a match. You can also purchase Fan Factor for 10,000 gold per point, but Fan Factor improves your team by such a small amount that this is not a worthwhile purchase. Your Fan Factor is going to vary up and down almost in spite of you and it's really not even worth thinking about.
• An Apothecary increases your Team Value by 50. The Apothecary is invaluable and you obviously want one, but the cost and the TV increase may make it worth playing your first few games without one. You should get one as soon as you start developing valuable players, however.
• Cheerleaders increase your Team Value by 10 each. One kickoff event (with a ~14% chance of occurring) uses each team's number of cheerleaders along with a couple of random factors to determine which of the teams will receive an extra team reroll. This is not worth the TV increase in my opinion, but I suppose if you bought enough of them you could secure the reroll every time that kickoff event comes up.
• Assistant coaches are exactly the same as cheerleaders, except for a different kickoff event which also has a ~14% occurrence rate and functions exactly the same as the cheerleader event.

From looking at these values, you can see that the vast majority (generally greater than 80%) of your Team Value comes from your players. Team Value from players is calculated by dividing their initial cost by 1,000 and then adding the following values for improvements:

• 20 Value for each skill the player has gained from one of his Normal categories.
• 30 Value for each skill the player has gained from one of his Double categories.
• 30 Value for each point of MA or AV the player has gained.
• 40 Value for each point of AG the player has gained.
• 50 Value for each point of ST the player has gained.

The first conclusion to draw here is that players who don't contribute enough to the team are actually making your team worse by inflating your TV. You don't want to have many players sitting on the bench, and anybody carrying an injury that significantly impairs their ability to do their job is too injured to be on the payroll (note that injuries do not reduce the Value of a player, although a player that's injured enough to miss a game won't contribute his Value to your Team Value during that game). The second conclusion is that each time a player improves, his new improvement needs to be useful enough to offset the Team Value bloat that it causes. Very small marginal improvements can actually be slightly damaging to your team!

Managing the Bloat
Your TV is going to go up as your team improves. There's not a lot that can be done about it, and frankly most improvements are more than worth their TV cost. You want your team to get better, and that means a slow TV climb. There are things you can do, however, to maximize your increase in game-winning ability per point of TV.
First of all, pay attention to your injuries and fire players who are injured in a way that interferes with their job. -AG is a career-ending injury on a thrower or catcher, for example, while it means nothing to a minotaur or troll. Firing critically injured players serves your team development in another way as well: it prevents them from claiming the MVP from the bench and robbing your useful players of SPP. The value of keeping your roster trim is significant.
In the same vein (and as mentioned above), don't employ a half-dozen extra players who don't spend time on the field. If they're not out on the pitch shedding blood for you, they're only helping the opponent. It may be worthwhile to keep an extra man or two in reserve if you have an important strategic use for them, however. Examples include a backup player on a low-AV team as a replacement for KOs/injured players, replacement players for your Secret Weapon guys so that you're not playing short-handed after the first drive, and a second-stringer to replace called-out players if you like to rely on fouls (but make sure you know the math before you try this).
Finally, think hard about the climbing costs of your non-vital players. If a player like a skink or a zombie lineman gets a third or fourth skill without getting any extraordinary rolls, they may just not be worth the TV they're adding anymore. This obviously is a complex issue that there's no hard and fast rule for, but carefully consider whether a developed player on your team is worth the 60-100 TV they're costing you. Is that goblin worth an extra team reroll every game? Would you rather have a Bloodweiser babe than that lineman?

Travelling the Old World On 1000 TV A Day
Remember that the important thing is the difference between your TV and that of your opponent. A TV of 1400 has a very different meaning in a league that averages 1800 than it does in a league that averages 1100. Keep your eyes on the TVs around you and be prepared for the inducements that you'll have to face (or that you'll get to wield).

Blood Bowl Basics: Player Development

There's more to winning a league or tournament than just winning a game. While in the early games play skill (and Nuffle's blessing) may be enough to pick up wins, later on when opponents are making passing plays with AG 5 catchers and everybody has Block and Dodge you'll get stomped if your players aren't similarly impressive. So how does one get from this

to this?

Players improve by gaining levels, and players gain levels by gaining Star Player Points. There are five ways that a player can pick up SPPs:

• 1 SPP for throwing a completed accurate pass
• 2 SPP for an intercepting a pass
• 2 SPP for inflicting a casualty in a block
• 3 SPP for scoring a touchdown
• 5 SPP for winning the MVP award (more on this in a moment)

After each game, players who have reached certain SPP thresholds can gain a level, which generally means gaining a skill. The player makes an improvement roll on 2d6, and then selects a new skill from a category based on his position and the result of the roll.

Underworld throwers can take a skill from the Passing, Mutation, or General categories on any roll, or from the Strength or Agility categories if they roll double on the improvement roll.

Treemen, meanwhile, can only take Strength skills on a normal roll, but have access to most others on doubles. However, they can never get a skill from the Mutation category.

In addition, if the roll is 10 or higher, the player can forgo taking a skill entirely to gain a stat point instead. On a 10 the player can take a point of AV or MA, on an 11 he can take a point of AG, and on a 12 he can take a point of ST. Obviously, it's almost always correct to take a stat over a skill if you have the option because of how powerful the stats are, but there are exceptions when the stat isn't useful (such as +AG on a 1 AG big guy, for example).

Building the Perfect Murderer
Playing for the win is important in any game, but it's also important to think long-term. Part of this is funneling SPP to players that desperately need improvements and protecting valuable improved players. The latter is self-explanatory, but let's talk about the former a bit.
One of the most common sources of SPP is inflicting casualties. A player receives these points when involved in a block that injures an opponent, regardless of whether he was the attacker or defender. Unfortunately you don't have a huge amount of control over this due to the randomness of the armor and injury rolls, but there are still ways to increase the likelihood of scoring a casualty (see the "Fighters" section below).
Another common (and far more controllable) method of getting SPP is scoring touchdowns. It's difficult to get a big guy like a troll or ogre to pick up the ball and run with it, but it's not unreasonable with most other players, meaning that touchdowns are a reliable way of directing SPP to the players that need them (contingent on your ability to score, obviously).
The other big source of SPP is the MVP award. Every game, a random player on your team will receive 5 SPP for being the MVP. This could be any player that was on your team during the game, even one who died or a temporary one like a mercenary or star player. The MVP award can be a big boost if it lands on a player who normally has trouble gaining SPP (like the aforementioned troll or ogre).
Finally, while passing is risky for most teams, high-AG teams like elves can use easy short passes as a constant drip of controllable SPP to level up their important players. Of course, the penalty for failing a pass is pretty severe, so it's important to be careful with this strategy.

Playing to Your ST
So what do you do with all the SPP once you have it? There's no simple answer. The best skill choice for a player depends on his position and role on the team, the rest of the team's makeup, and your plans for the team's future. That said, here are some common choices for improving your positionals:

Fighters
Many players on your team contribute primarily by knocking opponents over. As previously discussed, Block is a very powerful skill for this sort of player, boosting their knockdown odds and reducing their odds of getting knocked down in return. Big guys want this more than anyone since their obvious fighting role on the team is hampered by Loner often preventing block dice rerolls, but unfortunately they usually only have access to it on doubles. If you roll doubles on a big guy, Block is almost certainly the right pick.
Another big concern on bashy players is SPP generation. These players often make good cage corners and ball carrier defenders, meaning that they don't get to score a lot of touchdowns themselves. Fortunately, there are a few skills you can take to improve your chances of inflicting a casualty. Mighty Blow is one of the best of these, allowing you to add a +1 to either the armor break roll or the injury roll. Let's take a brief look at how that affects the injury math that we did in a previous post:

The Claw skill also significantly increases a player's lethality. Claw causes armor break results of 8 or higher to be treated as a success, meaning that even your toughest opponents effectively have AV 7 during your blocks. Obviously, it combines favorably with Mighty Blow: every time a player with Mighty Blow and Claw knocks an opponent down, he has at least a ~14.35% chance to inflict a casualty and, in doing so, gain 2 SPP.
If you find your fighters frequently going up against enemies with Dodge, Tackle can be invaluable. A player being blocked by an opponent with Tackle cannot use the Dodge skill to turn Defender Stumbles into Defender Pushed. As a nice side effect, a player with Tackle prevents adjacent enemies from using their Dodge skill to get a free reroll on dodge rolls. In short, Tackle is as effective as Block for increasing your knockdown chances against Dodgers, but it comes with an extra little bit to make their lives even harder.
The Jump Up skill can also be quite valuable. Jump Up allows the player to stand up without losing movement and, more importantly, stand up and throw a block with a single action by passing an AG roll with a +2 bonus. If the player has AG 3 or higher, he passes this check on a 2+. Jump Up is in the Agility category, though, so most bashy players will only be able to take it on doubles.


Cagebreakers
Some players specialize in knocking the ball loose from opposing cages. The most obvious example of this is the Wood Elf Wardancer, but many teams can reasonably construct one.
Leap is a classic cagebreaking skill as it allows the player to leap into a space adjacent to a ball carrier without having to make any difficult dodges. Of course, once you've leapt into the cage, you're generally looking at a single die block against the ball carrier. To make this block as effective as possible, cagebreakers usually get Strip Ball, which knocks the ball out of the carrier's hands if you hit him with a Push or a Stumble, and either Block or Wrestle to down him on Both Down. This makes for an ~83% chance of knocking the ball free on the single die.
Cagebreaking is a dangerous job, and Block/Wrestle and Dodge are very useful on a cagebreaker to help him survive the enemy turn.


Ball Handlers
Players who intend to handle the ball have a lot of great skill choices. Dodge and Block are great for keeping you standing if you intend to hold the ball in enemy territory and reroll skills (Sure Hands, Pass, Catch, etc.) contribute tremendously to your chance of success at their related tasks.
Accurate adds 1 to all pass rolls, which is the same as having an extra point of AG for throwing purposes. If you remember the math from our passing post, that's a pretty nice boost to completion %.
The Strong Arm skill allows a player to add 1 to any pass roll they make outside of Quick Pass range, making it almost as good as Accurate. The interesting thing about Strong Arm is that it's in the Strength category, which many passers can only access on doubles. This skill is a valuable pick if you want to run a passing game on a team with lots of Strength access.
The value of Diving Catch and Hail Mary Pass is discussed here.
Nerves of Steel is a great skill for players who often find themselves attempting to pass or catch while surrounded by enemies, as it negates all the tackle zone penalties for those actions.
Foul Appearance is an interesting skill. When a player wants to block an opponent with Foul Appearance, he must first roll 2+ on a d6; if he fails, his action is still used up but he doesn't throw the block. This skill has some obvious utility on ball carriers, although it's a Mutation skill so most teams won't have access to it.

Linemen and Weak Offense
A large portion of your team (at least at first) is going to be composed of a lineman-type position. These players will usually be involved in a lot of violence without being particularly well-equipped for it (average ST, no Block, etc.). There are a few skills that these players may find very useful.
Wrestle occupies an interesting space. Wrestle modifies the Both Down event so that it brings both attacker and defender down without causing any armor rolls and without ending the current turn (unless the ball carrier initiated the block). This works even if the one or both players have Block. While this result is obviously less fun than Both Downing a guy who doesn't have Block and watching him crack in half, it's also more reliable because an opponent with Block doesn't deny it. There's significant value in disabling tackle zones, especially at the line of scrimmage or in a cage. Wrestle also protects you against Block and makes opposing Blockers less eager to attack you (since you'll get up from a Both Down on the opponent's turn before they will).
Guard is also quite strong on linemen, for a lot of same reasons. In all the places where Wrestle is good because it lets you turn off opposing tackle zones, Guard is good because it lets you provide assists despite those tackle zones. Linemen spend a lot of time either struggling on the line of scrimmage or making paths for more specialized players, and Guard is extremely useful for both. It's a Strength skill, though, so many linemen can't get it on normals.

Too Much Of A Good Thing
There's more to team improvement than just getting as many levels as possible. Every time one of your players levels up, your Team Value bloats a little bit, and if you get enough of that going on you'll find your enemies coming into games with ringers and wizards and extra rerolls and all kinds of unfair things. Next time, we'll talk about managing your Team Value to provide the maximum awesome to you and the minimum to your opponent.

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).