On Blood Bowl Star Players vol. 2

Here are some more amateur thoughts…

Cindy Piewhistle / Bomber Dribblesnot

Useful for: Cindy: Flings / Dwarfs / Norse / Humans; Bomber: Greenskins / Skaven

Useful at: causing chaos

Star Player bombers are a pain in the arse to play against, and their low cost to hire has significantly altered the game’s meta for the teams to whom they are available (try facing an Ogre team with Cindy AND Bomber); everybody recognises this.

Slower and far more fragile than Bomber Dribblesnot (7+ down from 8+ is only 1 difference, but statistically comes up far more often on armour rolls), if Cindy is worth 50,000 gold pieces then her goblin alternative ought to be more like twice the price, but actually they both come in at a the same ridiculously low price.

Cindy’s special move – chucking two pies/bombs at once – is also arguably less effective than Bomber’s – being able to explode one that someone catches automatically – especially as it gets her sent off immediately rather than at the end of a drive. That said, if your opponent is about to score and the opposition are bunched up, chucking two bombs before she’s likely to be sent off anyway is a good way to go.

The main boon to Cindy is her availability to teams who otherwise couldn’t access bombers: humans, dwarfs, halflings, Norse, etc etc, especially those who often don’t have low enough team value to gain inducement money but who might have a bit spare in the coffers to spend as the overdog without inflating the opposition’s budget too much. All of a sudden the chaos of bombs on the pitch is available to lots more teams.

 

Glart Smashrip

Useful for: Skaven / Greenskins / Chaos

Useful at: blocking / blitzing

Giant rats don’t exist, obviously, especially corpulent ones with nasty claws. Glart adds muscle to a skaven team, and for my money is a more interesting and useful purchase for them than the most famous rat – after all the other rat is just VERY fast and agile, and doesn’t really offer much more to a skaven team than a bunch of gutter runners already bring. But a ST4 piece with Claws and Grab, who can frenzy blitz you once a game, and who you can’t push away from you? He’s a nasty, crowd-surfing roadblock, a rat-faced dwarf-killer. I saw someone describe coaching skaven as being like “coaching a panic-attack” once, which made a lot of sense; Glart adds a bit of pitch-control to that otherwise unpredictable experience.

 

Hakflem Skuttlespike

Useful for: Chaos / Greenskins / Skaven

Useful at: scoring (lots)

Hakflem is a freak, obviously, the best scoring-machine in the game. BUT, skaven coaches, think twice about spending your gold on him: is there anything he can do that a couple (or four) skilled-up Gutter Runners can’t do? And do you really want him hogging your SPP? Rats really benefit from numbers advantage, so wouldn’t Glart Smashrip be a better purchase?

No, Hakflem comes into his own when playing for teams who wouldn’t ordinarily have access to someone this fast and slippery: namely chaos teams and greenskins. Dodging practically everywhere on a 2+ with a built-in reroll, snatching the ball off his own teammates and then sprinting for the endzone: he can absolutely change the game in those circumstances. Imagine facing down a wall of chaos blockers and beastmen, only to have this insane heart-attack of a player burst through your defensive lines with the ball and score.

Deeproot Strongbranch

Useful for: Flings

Useful at: blocking / (Fling) throwing

First choice on many a fling coach’s roster, Deeproot is the strongest player in the game, has Block and +2 Mighty Blow for removing people from the pitch easily, never takes root like other treemen, and can chuck a fling better than anybody else. Alongside two other trees he makes an absolutely formidable frontline.

But he’s really expensive, and really slow. For the same price you can get Griff – a hyper-mobile blodging touchdown threat – or, for 10,000gp more, Rumbelow AND Puggy, giving you two Block players, one with Tackle and St4 on a blitz, and the other a blodger with a built-in personal reroll. I’m playing flings this season and have only taken him a couple of times; he’s formidable at what he does, but I think I value mobility more.

The Swift Twins

Useful for: Elves
Useful at: blitzing / throwing

The Swift Twins are great fun, and can really bolster a beginner elf team or a tournament build – what elf coach doesn’t want a Mighty Blow/Tackle blitzer and the best thrower in the game? – but, and this is a BIG but, they cost 340,000gp. No elf EVER has that amount available in inducements, and if you’re the overdog and have that in your treasury to fritter away then you’re basically also hiring Morg for your opponent.

So the question isn’t what The Swift Twins are useful for (their roles are very clearcut), but, rather, when the hell do you get to use them? And the answer is pretty much never, sadly. If they were split up and cost 150,000 (blitzer) and 190,000 (thrower) each I could see them appearing much more often. As it is they suffer from the usual elf Star Player problem: if you spend all your treasury on replacing dead players and your team value bloats quickly, you never get to use any.