Feb 8, 2016

FUMBBL

This is my first post for 2016 and it's been a while since I posted anything. The reason for that is that I'm currently traveling with my family. This means I haven't been painting much lately, but I think I'll finish the dark elves 2.0 tournament list for Preußenbowl 2016 in time. Here's a wip on the last two members, the witch elves (and the rest of the team in background).

wip witch elves
So, what will this post be about?
Well, when the rest of the family went to bed, I played some FUMBBL and I tried two teams that I've been curious about. The Slann and Vampires and this post will be some thoughts on both teams as well as some lessons learned. I'm glad that I did this experiment on FUMBBL since I didn't have to do it on tabletop. 

Vampires

I got the GW team off eBay a while back, but I haven't played a game with them on tabletop yet, so I thought that I'd try them on FUMBBL, just to see what they were all about. I started with 3 vamps, 8 thralls and 4 rerolls. The first lesson, thralls aren't that tough. In my second game, I had just 11 players and wished that I would have started with 4 vamps instead of three.

The team is very fragile and you have to get used to playing men down, even if you start with a bench. It's a fun team and if you don't roll ones, they can be very effective. I however rolled ones for my bloodlusts and thens for the bites, which got me outnumbered fast.

I had some fun games, but also some very frustrating games.
This is not an easy team to play.

After ten games, my record was 2-3-5

Slann

I had to try this team out since I'm getting them in a future kickstarter this spring.
I started the team with the croaxigor, 3 catchers, 4 rerolls and 7 linefrogs. I like the start of the team and I will use the same starting roster on tabletop. The reason for starting with the craoxigor is that I really like that miniature, so he was a must.



I enjoyed playing slann more than the vamps and after 14 games my record was 5-0-9, but I should have stopped after 10 games. By then, my record was 5-0-5.

After four games I had enough money for a blitzer, so I thought I'd give one a try and that's when it went wrong. After another couple of games, I bought a second blitzer. They're very expensive players and I don't feel that they are worth their keep. I'd rather have a linefrog with wrestle and strip ball for 10k less than a blitzer and that's the key for both slann and vamps, team value.

Lessons learned

Both vampires and slann need to watch their team value closely. Naturally, getting your vamps and slann catchers to blodge seems like the best thing to do, but I'm not so sure to be honest. By the time you've reached that TV your opponents will have a tackler or two. Lacking basic skills means that you're behind almost every other team in the skill rase.

Vampires
I got the advice to skill all my vampires with dodge first, but I believe, that the first vampire that skills should get block first. You need a blitzer and I'd give that vampire mighty blow and tackle before dodge. After that I'd follow up with two vamps with dodge and give the fourth one block. I'd also try and skill some thralls with wrestle.

Slann
Getting dodge on the catcher is fine and a logical choice, but after that I'd probably not give all four block. Sure hands seems like a good skill for leaping in and stealing striped balls. Side step also seems like a good choice. If I didn't have a linefrog with wrestle and strip ball, I'd give those skills to a catcher. 

Getting a linefrog with wrestle and strip ball is first priority though. If you can, hand of to a linefrog and score. Getting points on the catchers is easy, but will just drive your TV.

I'll stay away from the blitzers in future. At least until I've got a couple of good line frogs on my team.

I'll give both teams another go and try something else than blodge. 
Wish me luck!