New Black Orc team

[almic85]

So has anyone else tried out the new Black Orc team and what do you think of them?

I had a 1000TV muck around game with them last week against a human team and the human player conceded before half time as I ran in my second TD with him down 4 players.

they certainly pack a bit of offensive punch with Brawler and Grab on their 6 Black Orcs and can play a decent control game against weaker teams, but I don’t know how well they will do against other high strength teams or against teams with lots of block.

 

[TopsyKretts]

I am going to. Had to do a tally up of the current inventory of greenskins. Turns out I had the incomplete team of 12 original 2016 team fully painted. Another FW variant (equally incomplete 12 player set) unpainted. And 1 FW booster (horrendously incomplete). And the hilariously fugly cheerleaders And 1 left over brute from the only complete greenskins team I got, a full team of savage orcs (alternative version of orcs in BB2016, no longer available in BB2020 ). With a few converted blitzes, all I needed was 4 black orcs. And if I added 2 more, they would double nicely in a Black Orc team! Noticed that the old blorcs changed name to "Big Uns", however the (incomplete) water transfer still label them as Black Orcs. Everything from GW & FW is so half-assed. Like, I would need a total of 4 FW boosters to complete the 2 orc teams. And they would still not be compatible with the FW alternatives.

Anyway, I got a second box of brutes disarmed to represent blorcs. Getting ready for testing out Black Orcs. They look like a variant of lizards, slower but with a couple of interesting skills. 6 grab! And brawler (an experimental special rule in BB2016, now as an official skill in BB2020) as a discount Block skill.

 

[almic85]

I’m running a bloodbowl tournament this weekend and am taking Black Orcs so will be able to post up how they went.

It’s 1,150,000GP with 48 star player points to spend. 6 SPP for a primary skill and 12 SPP for a secondary skill.

This means can I take a full roster with 2 rerolls and some bribes.

Skills are 2 Black Orcs with block, 2BO with guard, 1BO with mighty blow, 1 BO with tackle, 1 troll with guard, and 1 goblin with sneaky git.

The tackle guy is because I will need something to counter dodge players and the block guys are to help take down teams with lots of block.

 

[TopsyKretts]

What you need the bribes for? Fouling? I mainly spend bribes for secret weapons, and black orcs don't got any (unless you get a chainsaw star player or something).

I'm not sure Block is worth it, as it removes some of the utility of Brawler. They can of course work together, but in my mind also overlap somewhat. I got an impatient dwarf who spent the hard earned SPP on a random skill, and got brawler, so I'll see what it brings.

Of course 1 Tackle is good to have against those elves, but on MA4? Could be difficult to have that tackler player in the right position to use it when it counts.

Anyway, I haven't played them of course so it may be you got it quite right here. Time will tell.

 

[almic85]

The bribes are for fouling. I’ve found from a couple of trial games with black orcs that the best way to control the board is to foul every turn and even though I have a sneaky gut goblin I don’t want him sent off or may have to foul with someone else in a pinch.

I agree that block and brawler overlap a lot and brawler mitigates a lot of the issues that come from not having block offensively. However brawler doesn’t really offer anything in a defensive capacity in the same way that block does and if I need to put something a bit hardier on the front line then it really needs to have block or it’s likely to be going down.

Similarly I have found that brawler is great for rerolling a both down result when the other dice is a push, but you are often better of using a team reroll if the other dice is a skull. Your dwarf with block and brawler will likely find that you end up using the brawler reroll to fish for pows when it’s safe to do so.

As for tackle I agree it would be better on a faster moving player, but black orcs just don’t have them unless I wanted a tackle goblin which I did honestly think about.

An alternative build was to make a block goblin and have one black Orc without any skills, probably a block one.

Another alternative was to lean into the pile driver skill for a free foul every block, but it would likely mean dropping the troll to afford a biased referee and some more bribes as you would have 6 black orcs blocking and fouling every turn plus a goblin fouling every turn.

 

[Malevolent Pink Cat]

SNIP

I'm nearly finished painting the standard Gouged Eye team, and I've been trying to figure out how to get two more of each of the Black Orcs and the Blitzers (to round out the team properly) without: (i) buying a second Gouged Eye team and ending up with SO MANY DUPLICATE SCULPTS; or (ii) buying 2 * FW add ons for a ridiculous £50+, and I just can't see any way to do it. Even if you buy a second Gouged Eye team and are prepared to hack them around, the Black Orc sculpt in particular just doesn't lend itself to easy arm swaps / repositioning to give some variety. End result, I think, is that I'll just use a Troll, and accept a sub-optimal team set-up.

Also - why does the FW booster even contain a second thrower?! Conventional wisdom seems to be that you only take one thrower anyway, and the base team comes with two (which is the maximum), so why would you want ANOTHER ONE?!

/ rant.

More on topic, I'd be interested to see how the Empire Nobles (or whatever it's called) team performs, if you've got a player coming to your tournament Almic.

 

[almic85]

FWIW I would just buy the new black Orc team and use their black orcs as the Orc Big ‘in’s and convert the black orcs from the original box set into blitzers.

The issue I have with the normal Orc sculpts is that they all actually look the same because they all have the same gorilla run dynamic poses.

The other benefit of buying the black Orc team is obviously that you also get half a goblin team with them so all you need are the 2 trolls plus the secret weapons and you have a functioning goblin team as well.

Throw in a skaven team and all of a sudden you have also have an underworlds and skaven team. So you can almost get 5 teams for the price of three.

For my human team I just bought two of the BB16 humans and have a bunch of spare lineman that can now become a chaos pact team once I buy a Minotaur (as the troll and ogre come in the BB20 box set).

 

[TopsyKretts]

What I did was get 1x FW Booster. This gives you a complete set of 4 Blorcs (complete for orcs). Then converted 1 blitzer from the body of a leftover line + arms/head/shoulder part of the original blitzer. But no way to expand these Black Orcs to 6 for the Black Orc team. Instead, best way forward is as almic85 says to use 4 of the 6 the new Black Orcs for standard orcs also. It could even be tempting to use the original Black Orcs as blitzers? I discarded this idea, but it is not impossible.

Gimping yourself to the trash original team of max 2 blitzers & 2 blorcs is to let GW win, don't do it!

My problem was I started painting several of these teams in differente colours If I had known what the status is today, I would consider painting almost everything the same, because it is a line going from Humans --> Imperial Nobility --> Halflings --> Wood Elf --> Old World Alliance --> Ogre --> Snotlings --> Goblins --> Orcs --> Black Orcs --> Underworld --> Skaven --> Renegade --> Chaos --> Chaos Dwarf

Wow, almost all teams are linked with at least 1 player.

Your dwarf with block and brawler will likely find that you end up using the brawler reroll to fish for pows when it’s safe to do so.

Speculating into getting the Wrestle skill also, to have the supreme trifecta of Block skills

 

[Jayward]

@Malevolent Pink Cat I bought the Orruk Brutes from AoS and weapon-clipped them to use as Big 'Uns, and I'm in the process of converting the two existing Black Orcs into Blitzers (mostly by adding top knots!). Still not the cheapest option, though, as that costs more than a second box of Gouged Eye

@almic85 I've got a fair few games in with them, although admittedly only against my housemates who are not stellar BB players. I agree that two Block is needed; helps keep them up and gives you reliable Blitzers. The skill pack I was using gave 6 skills and a double, so I went for 2 Block, 4 Guard, Block Troll. I tried Tackle and it was terrible; basically everything with Dodge has no trouble avoiding a SPD4 AG2 guy. Didn't try Tackle on a Goblin, but both Wrestle and Strip Ball worked well.