Stand Firm

I still see lots of people taking the same first picks for their slow, fumbly high strength players. I see lots of block, guard, mighty blow, but not many players take stand firm as a first pick. I feel like its so powerful to have a couple of them I've been skipping block on a few just to load up on it early.

What do other coaches think about stand firm first for bobs, blockers, werewolves, ect.?

Guard remains the best Strength skill in the dungeons, IMO, but Stand Firm is definitely my second choice of Str. skill. It's simply essential to control space and avoid getting dumped into things. The only possible exception would be blitzer types like Slayers and Ulfwerener who benefit greatly from Juggernaut.

I don’t rate Stand Firm as a great option for 1st skill on most players with strength access. Usually block (if they don’t start with it), Mighty Blow (to skill up faster) and Guard (to help the rest of your team) are better.

But I could certainly see it being a great 2nd choice or being good on a dwarf heavy team that already had a fair amount of guard and MB.

That's generic BB advice. After a while in the dungeons, you'll get different ideas.

Mighty Blow is not so hot when your KOs can return, you can end up having up to 16 players running around the place, and pits are everywhere. Also, have you ever gone, "man, those Flesh Golems surely are a pain in the *§$%" when playing standard BB? Imagine that feeling in a place full of passageways and junctions.

Smoked is a very experienced coach, he knows what he's talking about.

SF helps to block passages. With the ref back in game, a sleeping bo can really be a pita and two can block a passage on their own. Of course you can foul a av9 bob with 2 assists...

That's generic BB advice. After a while in the dungeons, you'll get different ideas.

Stand firm is indeed a better skill in Dungeonbowl than normal BB, but block is still better overall.

It’s the difference between long and short term effectiveness. If the player doesn’t have block they are much less reliable. It can take a long time to get 6 spp’s and if you don’t pick block or MB as skill 1 then getting up to 16 will be a hard work unless you get very lucky. Hence why I pointed out MB was more for spp generation.

That’s why I said it would be better on teams like dwarfs who already have block, though Orc Blitzers could make good use of it too.

Plus a -2D block has a 25% chance of taking down a blockless player and juggernaut still negates the skill.

Then we're talking at cross purposes a bit, probably. While the OP referred to the possibility of taking SF as the very first skill, I was mostly concerned with a comparison of Strength skills.

So, to clarify:

DB renders skills like SF, Grab or Juggernaut far more valuable than in standard BB, and greatly diminishes the impact of MB and PO. That's a good thing.

Taking "block" as first skill is never a bad idea, of course. However, it's not quite so necessary as in standard BB, because you'll end up throwing (or contemplating the possibility of throwing) lots of blocks in "precarious positions", and the base chance of failing one such "pre-pos" test and *losing the player* is 1/6 vs. 1/9 of suffering a turnover on a 2d-block without "block". Which basically means that the lack of block is the lesser concern.

A well-developed Black Orc only needs Block, Guard and SF. One may debate on the order in which each skill should be taken. Anything beyond that is IMO just gravy, including Mighty Blow. Depending on the amount of Grab in a Jade team, I might even forego MB altogether on a BoB and take Grab instead.

In bash-vs-bash games, when I see my opponent has gone overboard with MB I know it should be fairly easy to gain the upper hand.

To clarify, I am not talking about it for every single player. Much with guard on a chaos team, it seems more important to have 2-3 SF guys before everyone has block even. Especially with the fouling rules back in, it makes even more sense for av9 players with sf to simply block narrow hallways. its hard to remove them with just one assist, and if they are str4-5 its even more difficult.

Honestly I find myself in many less scrums compared to bbowl on a field. The size of the board makes clumping up much less possible, and if you are slow its death unless ball possession is already yours. Come to think of it, most of the games I lose seem to be when the opponent was allowed to get the ball, then clump up. Maybe a little more guard would help with this condition, and guard is definitely powerful here. Still imagine 3 SF bob or dwarf in a line. Only juggernaut can break through this barrier, or leap can go right over them.

I have played a few thousand bb games under my belt, but had almost no experience with db. I would say I have less than 40 games of db, ever. That's exactly why I'm asking, as I really don't have the experience.

If you have a troll, or ogre, whats his first normal skill? Guard, Stand Firm, maybe Jugg? I have gone with SF every time so far. Its so nice to own those sidelines, till a roller comes along :O.

I agree, bobs need just SF, block, guard. In that case, would you trade a bit of reliability for a piece which is so powerful early in the team development? I have played almost all games from 1k to 1300, with a few up higher. In this range the SF really shines, esp as usually only the roller has jugg at this point.

I think I'll keep taking equal parts guard, and SF for the first skill of players like this, but with SF first and see how it goes.

On a Troll I go Guard first, if nothing else because they are chaperoned constantly by the other Greenskins and their assist can come in handy. On an Ogre the choice between Guard and SF would depend on the overall looks of the team. On a Yhetee (or Minotaur) I suppose MB(Claw), then SF is the way to go. Juggs or Guard as third skill, depending on how one likes to use the brute.

Stand Firm has it's place in the game, but I'd only take it for a couple of players at most, as I'm not a great fan of using up skill slots on defensive skills for players who're going to level up fairly slowly.

For big guys other than the trolls I'm very much inclined to go with juggernaut as the first skill - when the only sure fire way to get rid of a player is to push them into a pit then juggernaut becomes very useful (even more so than block for blitzes). Possibly I'd be inclined to go for frenzy as a double skill on an ogre too, if it already had juggernaut.