Deathroller & Big Guys

[Jolly Roger]

Many of you have asked to change the rules about the Deathroller and Big Guys. We watched all your propositions, took the most feasibles and proposed it to Games Workshop.

They just accepted these one : The future teams can not have more than 2 players with 5+ strength (instead of the rule 2 players with loner competence).

This change should come with the next update at the end of the week!

Well, this is not optimal, because the Deathroller is problematic. OTOH, the thing with having only two players with 5+ strength is OK, but it raises a number of questions:

-Are Jade teams unable to field a ball-and-chain fanatic and two Trolls? That would suck because being able to use the three is standard for Goblins;

-Does the restriction apply to Star players? That is, if you have two big guys, will you be able to hire somebody like Morg'n'Thorg?

-What will happen with teams that have three big guys? I've seen a number of Grey teams with a Minotaur and two Ogres, for instance. In my opinion, such teams shouldn't be eligible for matchmaking after the update.

As for the Deathroller, it would appear that GW's conservatism towards its intellectual property far outweighs its interest in making such property playable. However, Cyanide can mitigate the problem by making sure that no dungeons are used that allow the Deathroller to dominate. You know how to proceed: maps like "Catacomb" and "Catacomb II" with only a single narrow access to the end zones have to be edited to make them more open, in much the same way that the old "Prison" map was changed.

Thanks for the info, anyway.

Well...it's something.

It does make the poor goblin fanatic difficult to include, though. He's already at such a disadvantage in this format, and now you have to forego one of your trolls to take him.

And as Bribri has noted, it does absolutely nothing to limit the effectiveness of the Deathroller. Do you really think we will see fewer of them now? If anything, they might be more effective with fewer big guys to stand up to them.

Sounds like a move in the right direction but you may need to re-look at some of the teams to avoid having useless options like the trolls with the Jade college.

It would probably be easier to classify some players as “big guys” and limit all teams to have a maximum of 2.

I’m hoping the restriction will apply to the player’s starting strength. Otherwise what happens if Grey college have a chaos warrior get +ST or Jade has a troll that gets injured and reduced to ST4?

Ummmmm, this doesn't help, at all. This just makes the death roller even MORE powerful. Now you have this STR 7 behemoth and I can't field more than 2 big guys to try and take it down.

Also, you probably need to drop the requirement for gobbos.

Also, also, any team that has "Ogres" "Trolls" "Big Guy" as their third race just got screwed as it is now completely meaningless. Since you can only have 2 BG, you can just get them from the first 2 races. Completely wasted and useless 3rd race for half the teams now.

What is going to happen to existing teams? I have a team with 3 treemen.

This is a bad decision.

As has been said above, it does nothing to deal with the issue of the pointless 3rd race for Jade college (and other colleges), and it'll have no effect on the death roller.

A far better change would be to remove all big guys from the general races, and have them only available in teams as the 3rd race.

worst idea yet. nobody had problems with the big guys, they had problems with the deathroller. in what world does cyanide live where this is a good fix.
also what happens if you have a chaos warrior, werewolf etc get +ST, does this apply to your limit so couldnt buy another big guy?
also assuming you want to create more colleges with the other teams (as you said you did) where does this leave khemri and undead?
silly idea, for once cyanide listen to what peoples problems are instead of what you think they are (sounds like my wife), the problem is the deathroller, not the big guys or the fanatic etc and has been pointed out this does nothing to fix the deathroller (who is limited to 1+ ogre or yeti anyway with the 2 loner rule).

easy fix - remove the deathroller, that way its not in and no rules need changing. lets be honest nobody would really miss it


to be honest shouldnt be surprised the picked the french moderators idea, which is the worst idea put forward for deathroller fixes

That very last point is arguable. In my experience, most of the coaches that have the Deathroller seem to absolutely love it, and would undoubtedly miss it. I think it's a favorite of the casual player, the type that Cyanide would like to attract more of.

Personally, of course, I would love to see it go. It really sucks the air out of any game, particularly those featuring Grey or Jade on the other side.

Oh man... not good news. (Thanks for trying Jolly!)

GW's paranoia about their IP has blinded them from realizing how unbalanced the Deathroller is in this game. I am not the best coach, and I struggle against the Deathroller. I really enjoy the game and will slowly improve, but it's just no fun playing against teams that use it.

It is so blatantly OBVIOUS that the DR is the most overpowered component in this game and GW just lets it go! Personally, I feel this was the most important change needed to be made in this game and they have let us down.

There were some great suggestions by players such as Brihaspati, but it was all for naught.

Remove the Deathroller from the game. But GW won't allow it because they need that one gamey trump card which helps them procure more customers.

Unbelievable!
<end rant>

Remove the Deathroller from the game.

Much better, REMOVE Games Workshop from Blood Bowl