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How Are Your Vamp Teams Doing?


Isha

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Interesting caveat on Animal Savagery that I learned mid-game. If you have an adjacent friendly, you must knock them down. The rules don't say anything about opting to lose your tacklezones instead. So if you're willing to let a Vamp fail the roll and lose TZs, they have to be by themselves. If you have an adjacent friendly, you must be ready for it to be bitten. Means you really don't want to activate a vamp when its only adjacent friendly is carrying the ball.

 

I think this will mean you can aim to max out on vamps on field, and position 2-3 behind the play without adjacent friendlies. They get first crack at move/gaze actions, if it works, great. If they don't, the rest of the vamps get the job done. Only give your vamps bite targets when actions are critical. I'd kinda ruled out MB, but giving it to a vamp is potentially viable if you can keep it isolated at the start of each of its actions. Still probably not a positive return on investment, but worth thinking about.

 

2+ Gaze without using TRR or bite, relying on:

  • 1 vamp, no pro: 42% succeed
  • 1 vamp with pro: 42% + 14% = 56%
  • 2 vamps, no pro: 42% + 24% = 66% 
  • 2 vamps with pro: 56% + 25% = 80%
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On 1/4/2022 at 1:57 PM, Suido said:

What Danton said, and:

  • Gaze is 2+
  • Pro is 3+

Game ended a 1-1 draw, my winning TD was stopped by double 1 on the AS roll when blitzing after I'd run out of friendlies to bite.

Crazy game dominated by snake eyes for both teams. Normal amounts crazy for vamps? I dunno.

It was raining and I had 30k inducements, so I got a weather mage for the first time ever. Deployed the mage so I could pick up the ball in turn 1, roll double 1. Best 30k I've ever spent.

 

Then opponent finished his next few turns early on snake-eyed dodges, so I was able to recover. He also marked up way harder than he should have, giving me heaps of blocks and 6 removals, and that was enough to get the first half score. 

 

Second half they scored in 3 turns, leaping the wardancer clear of trouble to score. Leap is still pretty baller, 3+ when in 1 or 2 TZs.

 

Their kick off landed in a widezone on the LoS and they got a solid defence (D3+3 open players can be reset up). Ball stayed live, so I got to Gaze the catch blodger who was marking it. Gaze and the blitzing vamp stunned and KOd their thralls, which wasn't great, and was repeated for the rest of the half. Gaze worked, 3D blitz only got a push. Blitzer picked up the ball. Elves tried uphill blocks against a couple vamps which didn't go too badly except for leaving their thrower and WD in surfable positions. So I surfed them, and then it was a race to endzone, between me running out of players to bite and their block catcher throwing uphill blitzes. After failing AS with my last reroll, the catcher rolled a double pow, and followed up with a foul stun. 

 

Really fun match (we got free fouls at some point, first foul I tried I rolled double 1 for arguing the call then bribe! Yay), but I had an easy ride playing against a wood elf team that just gave me too many free hits. AS kicked my butt in the second half, and having to roll 4+ AS more often against teams that only allow 1 blitz per turn will be very annoying to manage. Standing back and letting the vamps cannibalize the team will be a very viable strategy. Pro will be essential to having more Vamps on the pitch.

 

Through the power of DF and 80k winnings, I now have an apo and 50k in the bank, ready to buy another vamp after the next match. Or maybe a deeper bench first. Hmm.

 

Definitely not a fan of a 4+ to do anything...thats going to make them verrry hard to play and they're already quite tough in this edition...sounds like the RNG broke too, thats far too many snakes haha!  Thanks for the write up.  I'd be very curious to keep hearing how they do!! 

 

LJ

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Of all the changes in Season 2, the way Vamps have changed seems to be actually pretty balanced. Obviously I don't know how much thought went into it, but whether by luck or design, the resulting pros and cons make it hard to definitely say they're better or worse.

 

Played second match against humans, 2-1 win.

 

Gazing a corner of the cage and blitzing the ball carrier still works fine.

 

Tried the idea of not giving friendlies to bite for non-critical actions, it worked great cos I only failed 1 4+ AS roll all game. YMMV. Between that and their abject injury dice, I had a 9+ on the pitch all match which was lovely. 

 

Vamps being prone is really bad. A prone vamp that's adjacent to one other vamp that you don't want to bite is worse than being prone alone. Blodgestep will mitigate that. Being able to sidestep to ensure being adjacent to a thrall when prone will be incredibly useful.

 

Two Vamps leveled, gave one Block and the other Pro.

 

Also had a JM thrall cause 2 casualties and stun the ogre with a 1D block. So I hired that dude instead of a 4th vamp. Controversial? Yes, but it felt right. Next game, get 3rd vamp to 6 SPPs and then hire 4th Vamp.

 

PS Dedicated Fans are essential for quickly filling a roster. 50k investment has returned 165k winnings after 2 matches. 

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MD8 went pretty painfully as expected.  First injury being a dead lvl 4 Blodge/Pro vamp on turn2 . I had taken an extra Apoth so burned that and got BH. Next injury being a dead lvl 1 agi 2 thrall.   Next was an AV bust on the leader/wrestle/tackle thrall which ate it.  Niggle on my new DP and then he killed the same lvl 4 vamp AGAIN....burned the 2nd apoth which again saved the day.  For some reason he opted to try and score win the game with a goblin and didnt even properly cage it so we managed to thwart that and move the ball to safety and a 1-1 draw.

 

Finally got dodge on my block/sidestep/+ma vamp with her TD, so 1 lvl 2 vamp (+MA) 2x lvl 4s and a lvl 5.

 

I was pretty happy with my drive for a change, managed 3 crowd surfs and stalled a couple of turns.  Must get better at that...its' definitely one of my many weaknesses.

 

Brets for my final game and they've not played yet so may add to their MB/tackle quota but looks like that should be manageable.

 

 

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On 1/4/2022 at 5:39 PM, Suido said:

Gaze is a straight agility roll. Vamps are Ag 2+. The maths checks out.

I heard that people misunderstood hypno drastically at tournaments and it's sense been clarified, but I don't follow vamps and don't know the exact clarification, but I believe that hypno is not actually 2+.

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3 hours ago, Kinroth said:

I heard that people misunderstood hypno drastically at tournaments and it's sense been clarified, but I don't follow vamps and don't know the exact clarification, but I believe that hypno is not actually 2+.

Having RTFM and errata multiple times in the last week for the purpose of playing vamps, and knowing my way around words and numbers, I can assure you your belief is wrong. I'm on holiday so I don't have the manual to photo and post, but I can do it after next weekend if no one does it sooner.

 

Gaze is an AG roll. Vamps are AG 2+. The only modifiers to Gaze rolls are TZs of opponents other than the target, just like in previous versions. 

 

The shitty part is having to roll a 4+ AS first. Maybe that's what you're thinking of?

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6 hours ago, Suido said:

Having RTFM and errata multiple times in the last week for the purpose of playing vamps, and knowing my way around words and numbers, I can assure you your belief is wrong. I'm on holiday so I don't have the manual to photo and post, but I can do it after next weekend if no one does it sooner.

 

Gaze is an AG roll. Vamps are AG 2+. The only modifiers to Gaze rolls are TZs of opponents other than the target, just like in previous versions. 

 

The shitty part is having to roll a 4+ AS first. Maybe that's what you're thinking of?

Yes, that's it. Isn't hypno worse overall because of the 4+ roll now?

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Depends how you mitigate the AS. 

 

If the Gaze is necessary, then have a thrall ready to be bitten and the 4+ doesn't affect the outcome. You have an 83% chance of success compared to 66% in prior ruleset.

 

If you can't/don't want to bite anything, then the 4+ makes the overall Gaze action worse.

 

On the other hand, failing AS without a bite target just means losing TZs for a turn, not leaving the pitch like with BL.

 

That's why I posted the likelihoods of Gazing above - those are the odds when you'd prefer to not bite, so by having 2 Pro vamps available, you have an 80% chance of successfully Gazing the target without biting any teammates, which is comparable to the 83% chance of a single Vamp successfully Gazing when you don't care about the AS roll, aka have a bite victim ready.

 

Depending on the game situation, you might be ok with letting 1-2 vamps fail AS and lose their TZs, or you might be ok with biting a thrall. It's only when neither of those is a good option that AS hurts.

 

It's the same as every dice roll in BB - are you prepared for failure?

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P.S. not sure if it's been mentioned yet, but AS requires you to Knock Down a friendly, so no more repeated bites of already stunned thralls. If the KD doesn't break armour, the bite victim is still able to act, starting their action from prone. So a single thrall can be bitten twice in a turn, provided its armour isn't broken by the first bite and it stands up prior to the second bite.

 

Also, you can bite vamps. Not ideal, but the option is there.

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MD8 was fucking stupid.  5 of 6 turns ended on snakes.  one was triple with the lust.

 

  I rolled a lot of pow and my opponent rolled a lot of skulls, stupid numbers of both, more than the pushes, but when he did hit a player they went in the box.  You can't win with three players, but we did manage to tie.  I have to go with a "3" next season.  I'm old; I can find something else to bitch about.

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On 1/12/2022 at 12:15 AM, Kjelstad said:

MD8 was fucking stupid.  5 of 6 turns ended on snakes.  one was triple with the lust.

 

  I rolled a lot of pow and my opponent rolled a lot of skulls, stupid numbers of both, more than the pushes, but when he did hit a player they went in the box.  You can't win with three players, but we did manage to tie.  I have to go with a "3" next season.  I'm old; I can find something else to bitch about.

I saw myself die your last game.. shrudder.

Nice Regen though.. and nice game!

I could not follow it all but, nice win.

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Three pre-season friendlies completed out of a possible four. Results 1-2-0, all starting vamps have their first skill and the 4th has been hired.

 

Really looking forward to having more on the pitch, I've felt very restricted with just 3 vamps, which has been 2 vamps quite a lot of the time due to various removal from pitch reasons throughout the 3 matches - surf, KO, Cas, sweltering heat, fielding too many players because I forgot I had a 12th player in between counting them out of the box and setting up on field. The usual stuff.

 

Amazingly, I've only had a single MNG thrall so far, and nothing worse. Credit to my opponents' useless injury dice, long may it last.

 

Screenshot_20220115-2059452.png

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LJ is taking a break from OCC.  The vamps will probably come back but 1-1-7 in a division I really should have had a half-decent shot at has drained the BB life from me.  Brets are often hard work for me but we just couldnt get going today yet again.  Multiple snakes (6 in the end I think, if you count the BL fail/pro pass/ BL fail combo which happened at least twice).   Multiple turns with 1s for dodges/handoffs/anything stopped us scoring at all.  My opponent also had a few turns of shoddy dice but at those points there was next to nothing I could do anyways.

 

No perm injuries and a half decent amount of cash and the vamps are in pretty great shape.  It's just time to stop for a lil while and recharge.  Best of luck with all the vamp teams!! 

 

LJ

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On 1/15/2022 at 11:18 AM, Suido said:

Three pre-season friendlies completed out of a possible four. Results 1-2-0, all starting vamps have their first skill and the 4th has been hired.

 

Really looking forward to having more on the pitch, I've felt very restricted with just 3 vamps, which has been 2 vamps quite a lot of the time due to various removal from pitch reasons throughout the 3 matches - surf, KO, Cas, sweltering heat, fielding too many players because I forgot I had a 12th player in between counting them out of the box and setting up on field. The usual stuff.

 

Amazingly, I've only had a single MNG thrall so far, and nothing worse. Credit to my opponents' useless injury dice, long may it last.

 

Screenshot_20220115-2059452.png

AV 9 and 8, whow

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Yeah, AG and AV are now shown as the roll required. The AG changes incorporate the +1 dodge/pick up modifiers. So now catching a bouncing ball is -1, instead of no modifier. For Gaze, it's still an unmodified roll, which is therefore an improvement because the AG improved and the modifier didn't change.

 

AG3 = AG3+

AG4 = AG2+

 

AV7 = AV8+

AV9 = AV10+

 

Etc.

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