Getting Started in BB2

Overview

A fairly simple rundown on the basics of Blood Bowl in Blood Bowl 2, keeping it to the plain details.

Foreword

Blood Bowl can be insanely rough to get into. The game is not tremendously complex, but it has great nuance; it’s very easy to lose a lot of games and not have any grasp of why you lost. I was fortunate enough to have friends to teach me and play with me as I stumbled through my early games, but not everyone is blessed with the time or opportunity to do that.

Let me preface this by saying that I’m not an expert – this isn’t a guide that is going to elevate your games to the top level or help you break into the ladder finals. But if you’re just starting out, this is a great place to do it.

The Most Basic of Basics/Glossary

You should start by playing the campaign.

Yes, yes, I know – the AI is garbage. The reason I suggest playing the campaign isn’t for practice against the AI, but rather to familiarise yourself with the game’s user interface and controls. The campaign also drip-feeds you basic game concepts, so if you know nothing about the game itself, you’ll learn about things like blocking, injuries, dodging, and so on.

Before we start, I’m going to go over some terms that will come up frequently, some during this guide and some during actual gameplay. Note that to avoid confusion, Blood Bowl terminology separates in-game players (“players”) from you, the game-player (“Coaches”).

0-16 – used to describe any player which may be played with 0-16 units in a team. This is usually the most basic lineman, with no special features, but for some teams (like Lizardmen) the 0-16 players are tremendously important.
#db – a block involving # number of dice, i.e. 1db, 2db, and so on. rdb is sometimes used to denote a block where the opponent chooses the die (because the dice are displayed in red).
apo – the Apothecary. Also used for Igors, the equivalent for undead teams. “Apo” is used as a verb to expend your 1/game Apothecary roll on attempting to fix an injured player.
ball-hawk – a player built specifically to sack opponents.
bash – hitting the other team. Teams that are “bashy” or “bash teams” are focused on this aspect of the game; it’s hard for the opposition to score or defend when they’re all dead.
beast out – see “stupid”.
Big Guy – a typically 0-1 player with low movement, non-existent agility, and very high strength and armor. Big Guys generally have a drawback skill and Loner (which means any attempt to use a reroll on them has a 50% chance of wasting the reroll for no benefit). Note that high-str players without these skills (for example, the Khemri Tomb Guardian) are generally not considered Big Guys.
cage – offensive formation used to defend one’s ball-carrier. This one will get its own section since cages are ultra-important, and are relevant even to passing teams.
chain push – to push a player such that they push another player. Often used to try and force players off the pitch during scrums. May also be referred to as crowd-surfing.
CPOMB – the combination of the Claw, Piling On, and Mighty Blow skills; placing them on a single player makes them obnoxiously good at killing opponents. A player with all of these skills is a “CPOMBer”.
crowd-surf – strictly, to push a player off the pitch, but it can also refer to chain pushing in a scrum (the usage has become somewhat murky with team, and depends on where exactly you play your Blood Bowl).
dub skulls – to roll Attacker Down on both die of a 2db (or on one dice in a 1db and then on the reroll). Technically only a 1-in-36 chance. Becomes more common once you’re out of team rerolls.
feral – see “stupid”.
gfi – Go(ing) For It, the opportunity to move an additional two squares at the cost of having to roll 2 or better on 1d6 for each square. Since failing means falling over, which means the potential for an armor break and injury, it is entirely possible for a player to die from a failed gfi.
kicker – a player (usually a lineman) with the Kick skill, generally only set up on defensive drives. A priority target.
killer – a player designed to maim opponents, rather than to carry or take the ball. Overlaps with CPOMBer, but you can have killer players without that combination of skills.
mark – placing a tackle zone (TZ) on an opposing player, forcing them to either make a dodge check or remove your piece in order to move that player. Also given as “mark up”, “double mark” (for two players), and so on.
priority target – an opposing player you really want dead. This might be because they have very powerful skills, or simply because the opposing team can’t function without them (i.e. Ghouls on Undead, Pestigors on Nurgle, Throw-Ras on Khemri).
sack – to cause an opposing player to drop the ball, by hook or by crook.
Slann – a team that no longer exists thanks to internal reconfiguring of the Warhammer setting. Kislev Circus use the Slann team’s rules with new flavor, and may be referred to as Slann without qualification.
spin/ning – to attempt to be paired with a suitable opponent by match-making, usually in an eternal league format. Comes from the spinning coin icon in Blood Bowl 1. May be followed by information regarding your search (i.e. “spinning TV1000”).
stunty – a skill that makes players dodge better, but more fragile and terrible at passing. Also used to describe teams whose players all have Stunty (Halflings, Goblins).
stupid – a Big Guy who has lost their turn to their drawback skill has “gone stupid”. Usually means they lose their Tackle Zones. “Beast out” or “gone feral” is sometimes used for Big Guys with Wild Animal instead.
TV – team value, a number given based on the team’s players, their skills and stats, rerolls available, if a team has an apo, etc. Games are usually played between teams of roughly-equal TV; the lower-TV side has access to free money used to purchase inducements, small gimmicks to help them match the opposing team. Fresh teams are made at TV1000.
TZ – tackle zone(s), the 8 tiles immediately around any player who is on their feet and not otherwise hampered. Attempting to move out of a tackle zone prompts a Dodge roll, and attempting to pick up, pass, or catch a ball while in a TZ comes with penalties.
vanity pass – to pass for no strategic benefit in order to try and claim the 1 SPP from making a successful pass. Often seen in the last turns of a half when a team has possession but cannot score a touchdown.

This is just basic stuff – you’ll learn other terms, like nicknames for various players, as you play more of the game (blorcs for Black Orc Blockers, gunners for Gutter Runners, and so on). Of course, before you play, you have to make a team. Let’s start by discussing the various roles found in a Blood Bowl team.

Team Roles & Construction

While the player’s class will usually give you some insight into their role on the team, there are general roles used by coaches to describe what a player does in a meta context. We’ll go over these quickly, then discuss building an actual team.

Fodder – usually your 0-16 player, your lineman. These guys are primarily there to get hit instead of your positional players, who have specialist skills. That doesn’t mean they’re not important; linemen are incredibly useful for limiting where an opponent moves or simply marking up an opponent to make them roll dice (more on that later). As the cheapest members of your team, fodder are the ones best suited to be placed in dangerous positions. If you need someone to mark that Big Guy, do you want to put an expensive positional player there, or a lineman who you can replace cheaply?
Blocker – these guys are the glue in the team. They don’t necessarily have Block (though it helps), but they will almost always have Guard sooner rather than later. Blockers generally serve a defensive role in a scrum, being difficult to put down and constantly adding pressure and supporting teammates.
Blitzer – your offensive players. Blitzers almost always start with Block (because blitzing out of position means you’re often getting 1dbs, which are very dangerous without Block and still risky with it), and typically have higher armor than other players. Since they’re usually up there anyway and have Block to make them hard to put down, they’re a common choice for attempting touchdowns.
Thrower – a player whose purpose is to move the ball on to another player. Dedicated throwers (usually characters with normal access to Passing) are actually relatively rare for the simple reason that many things can go wrong when trying to pass. While they do show up on high-agility teams, a lot of teams make do with just a Catcher.
Catcher – a player whose purpose is to receive the ball. Often fragile, so they need to be caged off and protected while they run the ball to the end zone. It’s not uncommon to see Catchers and no throwers; having both Catch and Sure Hands (which are common starters for Catchers) makes them an obvious choice to attempt to pick up the ball, and having done that, they may as well hold onto it. This can be problematic, as it means your Catcher(s) may get all the SPP, raising your team value without particularly improving other aspects of the team; it’s important to share the glory around.
Big Guy – the most exotic roll, most teams have the option of using 1 Big Guy, who comes with a drawback skill (see below) and Loner, making rerolls unreliable. The inclusion or otherwise of a Big Guy tends to be the most contentious part of a TV1000 team lineup: they are very expensive and may have a hard time growing (as their only SPP income is typically by injury, unless they get MVP), and can be unreliable, but they provide high strength and may be the only reasonable defence a team has against another Big Guy. It’s worth noting that many Big Guys have skills that are otherwise hard to come by (Prehensile Tail, Tentacles, Disturbing Presence).

Next, let’s look very quickly at player stats.

ST – Strength. The typical Strength is 3. Strength is primarily used when blocking; it determines the number of dice rolled. If the player’s Strength matches the target’s, you roll 1 die; if the player’s Strength exceeds the target’s, you roll 2. To get 3 dice, the player’s Strength must be more than double the target player’s (this usually only occurs with heavy assisting or Big Guy on stunty action). If your player’s Strength is lower than the target’s, you roll 2 dice, but the opponent chooses the die used – so obviously don’t do this if possible! Strength is a powerful attribute for Blockers, Blitzers, and even Linemen, although taking it on a Lineman may inflate the team value more than you really want.
AG – Agility. Typically 3, and used in basically everything related to handling the ball, as well as rolling Dodge. A player with 3 Agility needs to roll 4 or better to dodge, pick up a ball under ideal circumstances, and so on – which means a 50/50 chance, so you need to be careful. Elf teams tend to have a monopoly on Agility, and it’s most useful to Catchers and Throwers.
AV – Armor Value. Your opponent needs to exceed this value when they knock you over to cause an armor break. 8 is the average value; 7 is low, 9 is high. The reason for this is the probability bellcurve of 2d6: an AV7 player is significantly more likely to have armor break than an AV8 player (41.67% vs 27.78%). Typically, ball-handling players will have lower AV, while Blitzers and Big Guys have higher. Watch out for low-AV players that also have Stunty, since that adds a modifier to injury rolls – they’re more likely to go down, and more likely to stay down.
MA – Movement Allowance. How far a character can move. This is normally 1:1, but doing things like getting up costs 3 movement, and movement can be expended for certain skills. You typically see high MA on Blitzers and Catchers, and low MA on Blockers and Big Guys.

That’s it. Four stats to rule them all. Later on I’ll give a quick overview of teams, but for now, let’s focus on building your first team – Orcs. There are lots of good reasons to start with Orcs: their players aren’t finicky or technically difficult, they have high AV meaning you don’t need to replace them very often between games, and unless you’re doing the very gimmicky one-turn touchdown play, you don’t need their Big Guy, saving you a lot of starting money. You have a lot of options for a starting Orc team at TV1000, but here’s my recommendation:

2 Linemen
1 Thrower
4 Black Orc Blockers
4 Blitzers
3 Rerolls

This totals to 990k of your starting 1 million, leaving you with 10k you can save towards getting an apo if you get a good take after your first game (Orcs being heavily armored you’re reasonably unlikely to lose a valuable player in your first game). There are a lot of advantages to this lineup: the 1 Thrower gives you an option to actually pick up the ball thanks to them Sure Hands (helping save your rerolls). Starting with all four Blitzers and all four blorcs lets you start getting SPP on them from the very beginning, and the Black Orcs are all Strength 4, making them very hard to outbash in a scrum.

Now, there is a downside to this setup: your team is very one-dimensional. Every game you’re going to be looking to get the ball onto someone better (a black orc or a blocker), caging up, and grinding your way down the pitch. Some people find this really fun, and some people don’t, but I recommend sticking it out for a while anyway, for the very simple reason that it will teach you how to properly cage up and you’ll also see what your opponents do to try and break into your cage – giving you the opportunity to learn how to cage-break.

Go play a few games in the eternal league just like this to get used to the concept, and then come back. This team is disposable; if anything bad happens, it’s not a big deal.

Cage Basics & Clock Management

Despite being about defending a valuable target, a cage is an offensive formation: you use it when you’re attempting to score. Cages use overlapping tackle zones around the target player (i.e. the ball-carrier) to make them difficult to attack, either because the attacker runs into so many defensive assists or because they simply can’t get into the cage.

The most basic cage looks like a 5 on a six-sided die: the ball-carrier in the center, and the defenders on the four corners. This cage has a lot of advantages, beyond just being simple to put together; it creates a double-layered tackle zone fence on each side of the ball-carrier, making it hard to dodge into; a player that attempts to break in will find themselves (after an initial block or push) being in the position of struggling with two assists to push them away from the ball carrier; the cage can easily be reconfigured if players get bogged down in a fight and can’t get away.
The key part about this cage is that none of the cage players can end their turn in an opponent’s tackle zone. If that happens, they’ll just get blocked on opp’s turn, letting opp push into the cage; this can cause the whole cage to fall apart. If you end away from a TZ, opp has to blitz if they want to try and break the cage that turn – and if they move up to surround your cage, you have a good chance of being able to push them away and make a route for your ball carrier while leaving their entire team locked up in a scrum.

Obviously, this is a very basic overview; cages are one of the most complex tactical aspects of Blood Bowl, both setting them up and using them efficiently. This is why I recommended starting with Orcs, who don’t really have other options: being forced to learn how to use a cage will also teach you how to break them.

For further reading, I highly recommend you check out the following articles on BB Tactics:
[link]
[link]

Caging up and managing the clock go hand in hand. If you have the ball, and it’s well-secure, you don’t necessarily need to score immediately. While that’s obviously the case if you’re at a point deficit, if you’re winning – and especially if a lot of the opposing team are KOed – consider caging up on the opponent’s end zone and using the rest of your team to hit them instead. This denies your opponent opportunities to score themselves, and (if you have the last turn before half time), also takes away an opportunity to try and revive their KOed players, which can give you a big advantage in the second half.
On the other hand, if you’re under a lot of pressure, or your team is the one with a lot of KOed players, scoring immediately gives you an instant chance to stand them up, and pressures your opponent to score to even things up – giving you another chance to revive your players.

It sounds dumb, but mismanaging the clock can easily lose you games you should have won, and you can turn near-victories into decisive wins with proper time management.

Managing SPP & Levelling Up

SPP, or Star Player Points, is the equivalent of experience points for your players: they gain it by doing various things, and at certain thresholds of SPP, you roll dice and gain the chance to improve your players. Let’s look at how you get SPP:

Successfully passing to a teammate: 1 SPP
Injuring an opponent with a normal block: 2 SPP
Intercepting an opponent’s pass: 2 SPP
Scoring a touchdown: 3 SPP
MVP: 5 SPP

Allow me to clarify the second point: “injuring an opponent with a normal block” means that their armor must break and they receive an injury roll higher than simply being KOed (anything from Lightly Injured to Dead). Further, the block must be a regular block: hurling your opponent off the pitch, Chainsaw, Stab, and so on don’t qualify (however, Claw does, since it isn’t a special attack). That being said, if your opponent attempts to block one of your players and ends up rolling skulls and going down, and is injured, your player will get 2 SPP!

Remember that SPP is tracked individually. For fresh players, their first level up will come at 6 SPP. This is part of why it’s important to pass the ball around and not just let your Catcher score all the touchdowns; one touchdown is half a level, and MVP in conjunction with anything else that gives SPP is an instant level.

When a player levels, you roll 2d6, and your options vary depending on the result. On a standard roll (“single”), you can take a skill that is normally available for the player. If you roll doubles, you have the opportunity to take a skill not normally available (which these are is dependant on the player). For some players this is tremendously important (Big Guy with Block?), while for others you might even choose to forego a doubles roll and take a regular skill, especially early in development.
On very high rolls, you gain the option to improve one of the player’s four statistics (depending on what you rolled). What you do with this, and if you want to do it, is heavily player-dependant; while ST will almost always be useful, AG, MA, and AV are much more situational, especially if the player started with low AG to begin with.

[link] has a breakdown of players for teams and suggestions of builds to use when levelling them up, so you can refer to it if you get stuck.

Easy Teams – Play Right Away!

Amazons

Amazons obliterate at low TV, able to take four Blitzers (who have blodge), 4 rerolls, and an Apo in their starting budget, but they tend to do worse at higher-TV and Tackle completely destroys them. Also, they’re secretly a bashy running team, not a passing team like they pretend.

Dwarf

Dwarf teams have a very simple gameplan – group up and hit it til it dies. They have no ball-handling at all, and low movement, but cheap rerolls and their players are basically unkillable, plus half the team has Block and Tackle.

Elf

Plain Elves are the quintessential passing offensive team, with amazing Catchers that have Nerves of Steel able to take catches reliably even if they’re marked up. The downside is their expensive positionals and low armor, plus their Catchers tend to really hog the SPP and you need to make sure to spread it around.

Necromantic

The Necro team could do with some more skills to start with, but they have their advantages in the form of clearly-defined player roles, and their Werewolves are very powerful and make great ball-handlers. They’re really bad at caging, though, so you need to be prepared for that. Compared to other super-defined teams, Necro don’t have the same issues as, say, Dark Elves, since they focus more on the basics.

Norse

Like Zons but male, and they all have Block instead of Dodge. Like Zons, they can be fragile when they go down, but they have access to some more unusual skills like Frenzy and Dauntless, and they have a Big Guy with Claw, which can quickly give them a numbers advantage on the pitch.

Orc

I’ve been over why Orc teams are great for beginners, so I won’t repeat it here, but suffice to say the combination of a simple gameplan and solid players makes them great to start learning the basics with.

Undead

Undead rule; you have Wights for Blitzing, Mummies that are pseudo-Big Guys without Big Guy drawbacks, cheap Zombies for getting bashed, and Ghouls for ball-handling. The catch is that only Ghouls can handle the ball on the team, which makes spreading out SPP hard, and makes them priority targets, plus their rerolls are very expensive.

Moderate Teams – Learning Curve

Chaos Dwarf

Chaos Dwarf teams have access to cheap players in the form of Hobgoblins and strong, high-MA players in their Bull Centaurs, but you have to be mindful to not always use your Bull Centaurs as ball-carriers since then they’ll hog all the SP. The team also has no ball-handling, which is a bit of a problem. Think of them as more exotic Dwarfs. Note that they do have access to the Minotaur, which is an amazing Big Guy.

Chaos

Chaos have a bad rep in eternal league where at high TV they can all be CPOMBers and just kill the entire opposition team, but early on they have no skills at all, which is an issue. However, their Minotaur Big Guy is insanely awesome, and the entire team can get Mutation skills on singles, letting you quickly diversify your Beastman linesmen. They do have very expensive players and rerolls, however.

High Elf

High Elves tend to be a bit more complicated than regular Elves as while they possess higher AV and a spectacular Thrower, their Catchers aren’t anywhere near as good (so your positioning has to be much better), and they don’t have the tricky skills of Wood Elves or Dark Elves. Their players are kind of expensive, though.

Human

Human teams have a player for every role and even access to a Big Guy. This actually makes them a little more complicated to play, since they have to be very adaptive, changing the gameplan to counter the opposing team. However, having that option is a big deal, and the Ogre Big Guy is very solid – you can very easily bash through weaker teams or pass around slower teams. The biggest issues come with against other average teams.

Lizardmen

Lizard teams have players that are very strong (Saurus, who are ST4 and you can have 6 of them!) and players that are very fast (Skinks, their 0-16 player). However, the ones that are fast can’t take a hit and the ones that are strong can’t pick up a ball. This means you have two wildly disparate players on the field, and can make getting and hanging onto the ball a bit difficult. They also start basically skill-less, so you need to get some games under your belt before they pick up steam.

Nurgle

Nurgle teams are slow as molasses, but they have access to an incredibly good Big Guy who has both Tentacles and Disturbing Presence, and half the team has Disturbing Presence or Hideously Ugly, disrupting the opponent’s ball-handling and blocking. They can even replace their linesmen by killing opposing players with Nurgle Rot! However, they do have very vulnerable players in the form of the ball-carrying Pestigor, who is liable to hog all the SPP.

Skaven

Skaven are similar to the human team, but are notable for having the Gutter Runner, a serious contender for “best player in the game”. Once again, they tend to be SPP-hoggers, however. The team as a whole is quite fragile (except for the Blitzers), and even the Rat Ogre has low AV for a Big Guy (which is not a great combo with Frenzy). Fortunately, their players are fairly cheap, and the ability to tie up an opposing team with disposable linerats and use the Thrower to get the ball to a Gunner is a huge option.

Wood Elf

Wood Elves are very fast and Wardancers are incredibly powerful players with Leap, but they have low armor and their Big Guy is the infamously-unreliable Treeman. They’re also expensive, which isn’t a great combination with fragile, especially when you have such high-priority targets as Wardancers. If you leap into the enemy line with a Wardancer and fall down, you can probably kiss that player goodbye for the rest of the game.

Difficult Teams – Experience Required

Bretonnian

A relative newcomer, Bretons are somewhat like a Human team but they are far more specialized. Their linemen are absolute garbage, but they do have Fend, which is incredibly useful (as if they get pushed out they can reposition to hose your opponent’s formation). The Blitzers are your star players and will tend to hog all the SPP, while the Blockers do a fantastic job of opening holes for them. The catch is that their good players are very expensive and their cheap players really suck, and their good players have fairly schizophrenic skills, which can make building for them somewhat difficult.

Dark Elf

Unlike the other Elf teams, while the Dark Elves have AG 4 in general, they’re more suited to a running game than a passing game – check out their Runner, who has Dump Off instead of a throwing skill. They also have expensive and unusual positionals in the form of the Assassin (who has Stab, letting them block things much stronger than themselves) and the Witch Elf (who has Frenzy, but not Block and is high priority, so watch out). All this means they have a very odd play-style, so you need to put in some time and get your basics down before you go all in on Dark Elves.

Khemri

Khemri field four ST5 Mummies without Big Guy drawback skills, which is insane, but the entire team is somewhat hampered by nonexistent mobility and agility. Only the Thro-Ra can reliably pick up a ball, which makes them obvious priority targets, and only the Blitz-Ra can move a reasonable distance, and god forbid it rains. On the other hand, every player has Regenerate, making them very hard to get rid of permanently, and their Skeleton linesmen are cheap, but oh boy do you need to cage off properly to play Khemri.

Slann/Kislev Circus

Represented in BB2 by Kislev Circus since the Slann were retconned, this team is basically built around a single gimmick – the combination of Leap and Very Long Legs. This can make them very obnoxious to pin down and stop from scoring, but actually using them is also very difficult and requires a lot of practice, especially since Leap is such an unusual skill. They also have great interception ability against other passing teams, but they have garbage core skills (although they at least have cheap rerolls). If you’re really good at positioning, Slann are awesome; if you’re not, you’ll probably lose repeatedly.

Underworld

Underworld have an odd combination of Skaven and Goblin players: 0-12 Goblins, 0-2 Skaven linerats, 0-2 Skaven Throwers, 0-2 Skaven Blitzers, and access to a Warpstone Troll (who has Throw Teammate). This means they play in a very unusual way, with the Skaven Blitzers and Throwers serving as standard positionals and the linerats being secondary specialists, while the Goblins serve as disposable fodder. On the other hand, the entire team can take Mutations on singles rolls, which is crazy. On the other other hand (they are a Mutation team!), they have Animosity, so Goblins and Skavens may refuse to hand the ball off to each other, which really reinforces the idea that the Goblins are fodder for harassment while the Skaven put in actual work. Levelling up your Linerats into catchers might be your best bet, as the Mutation access lets them get access to things to replace catching skills.

Vampire

Vampires look amazing on paper: while their Thralls are cheap for being relatively decent fodder linesmen, and while the Vampires are expensive, they have ST4, AG4, Regenerate, and Hypnotic Gaze, letting them smash through standard players and even break into cages or disable Big Guys easily. The problem comes with Bloodlust: every Vampire has a 1-in-6 chance to stop what they’re doing to feed off a nearby Thrall (which can leave the Thrall down in the dirt), and that’s on every action, and if there’s no Thrall near enough, the Vampire will run off into the crowd instead, causing you lose the player until the next drive – and the more Vampires you have, the more unmanageable it becomes, plus the Thralls have no particular skills, so you need those Vamps. They have super expensive rerolls too, which is a problem when one bad roll can lose you a game.

Joke Teams

Not all teams are created equal – in Blood Bowl, that tends to mean some teams are strictly worse than others, rather than strictly better. These are those teams.

Goblin

Goblin teams are defined by their plethora of Secret Weapons (every player except the basic Linesman, the Trolls, and the ‘Ooligan – who isn’t in the Cyanide game – has one) and their cheaper Bribes, letting them keep their guys on the field when they shouldn’t. However, with every player having Stunty, they go down hard when they fall over, and most of the team is ST 2, plus many of their Secret Weapons can backfire on you. With access to two Trolls, they at least have muscle on hand, and they can do surprise Throw Teammate plays to score touchdowns or even deny the opponent, but their gameplan is more about causing as much havoc as possible and hoping they’ll have the ball and a clear shot when the dust settles.

Halfling

Halfling teams are quite similar to Goblins in the sense that they have the same basic Linesmen and two Big Guys (the Treeman), but rather than relying on many useful Secret Weapons, the Halfling team has just one: the Halfling Master Chef inducement for cheap, stealing rerolls from the opponent for their own use. With the Treemen, they can do Throw Teammate plays, but since Halflings pretty much suck, it’s kind of hard to capitalize on it, and Treemen are notoriously unreliable thanks to their Take Root drawback skill. You really have to try and force your opponent to make a mistake they can’t recover from with their lack of rerolls, and then somehow capitalize on it, which isn’t easy with such bad players.

Ogre

Ogre teams are hilarious. You get to field 6 Ogres, and they don’t have Loner. The downside is that they still have Really Stupid, which is a disgustingly bad Big Guy drawback skill, and the other players on the team (the Snotlings) are almost completely useless, with no ball-handling skills – they’re largely there to give you a +2 on the Really Stupid roll.
On the other hand, with 6 Ogres, you can turn the entire opposing team into a fine paste if the rolls are in your favor, and it’s hard for them to defend even a clumsy, fumbling touchdown with no players on the pitch!

General Tips & Further Reading

Blood Bowl is about Not Rolling Dice

Yes, I’m aware this is very counter-intuitive. Some people call this “risk management”, which is probably more accurate, but saying it like this tends to get people thinking about it more intuitively. Every time you roll dice in Blood Bowl, you have a 1-in-6 chance of failing outright, and you can only use a team reroll once per turn (and each player can only use a skill reroll once per turn). If you’re familiar with the problems with critical fumbles in D&D (that is, a level 20 fighter will fumble their weapon more frequently than a level 1 peasant), you can already see where this is going, but the main premise to this mode of thought is like this: make your opponent roll more dice than you.

You can limit your own number of dice rolls by simply not making unnecessary blocks (for example, try playing without ever throwing a 1db – you’ll quickly learn that sometimes they are absolutely necessary if you plan on winning, but you’ll also learn that with good positioning you can often eliminate them entirely). That’s the most simple way to bring down your chances of failure. Passing is a dangerous game because there are a lot of ways it can go wrong that can cause a turnover. If you wall off your opponent’s players, you can avoid having to make rolls to get yourself out of trouble while forcing them to make rolls to try and put pressure on you – and vice versa. Simply moving a player up and forcing the opponent to try and block them away can yield better dividends than trying a Blitz.

A lot of this is stuff you have to learn by playing, but once you get a feel for the flow of the game, it comes much more easily.

Big Guy Skills

Here’s a quick list of the Big Guy drawback skills, what they do, and who has them:

Bone-Head: Roll 1d6 after declaring but before taking an action; on a 1, the player loses their Tackle Zones and the action is lost (including Blitzes!). The player may not do anything until a 2+ is rolled on a future action, or the drive ends. Found on: Ogres, Kroxigors (including the Kislev Circus’ trained bear Big Guy, who is a Slann Krox in disguise)
Really Stupid: “This player is without doubt one of the dimmest creatures to ever take to the Blood Bowl pitch (and considering the IQ of most other players, that’s really saying something!).” Works the same as Bone-Head, except the roll is 4+, not 2+. However, if you have a friendly player on their feet next to the Really Stupid player, you get +2 on the roll, meaning you still only fail on a 1 – basically the same as Bone-Head but if the player becomes isolated you will have a hard time getting them to do anything. Found on: Trolls, Beast of Nurgle, Warpstone Troll (note that the Norse Snow Troll has Wild Animal instead!)
Wild Animal: Easily the best of the Big Guy skills. You need to make a 4+ roll or lose the action, but you get +2 on the roll if the Big Guy has been ordered to hit something (including blitzing), and, crucially, they don’t lose their Tackle Zones, which means if you have him tangled up in a scrum there is essentially no drawback to this skill (provided you don’t lose your Blitz!). Found on: Minotaurs, Snow Troll, Rat Ogre
Take Root: Found exclusively on Treemen, Take Root is extremely nasty if it actually goes off (you need a 2+ roll on any action to avoid it): it lasts for the entire drive (or until the Treeman is knocked over), the player’s MA becomes 0; they may not Go For It or be pushed for any reason, and can’t use any skill that would cause them to move or be placed prone. They do, however, retain their Tackle Zone and can block players in range without following up, but it’s hard to score blocks when you can’t move into position.

This is one of the reasons why Tentacles is so up there for Minotaurs (and to a lesser extent, Rat Ogres): it keeps things in hitting range where they can do their thing, and since they don’t lose their TZs if they go stupid, the Tentacles stick regardless.

Fouling

Fouling is basically a block thrown against a player already lying on the ground, and you can do it after moving, but only one foul per turn ever. The usual things related to blocking apply for assists, but the target’s ST doesn’t matter. However, this is technically illegal, and while five times out of six the ref isn’t going to send you off, it can happen: if you roll doubles, the player is caught fouling and ejected from the game – you can replace them, but they won’t be coming back. There are skills specifically to enhance fouling (Sneaky Git and Dirty Player), and it can be useful to have a dedicated fouler on the field.

While it’s generally considered poor form to foul a character on the last turn or two (since that gives you no particular benefit), it’s more acceptable in shorter leagues that have a round robin or playoff format (since you may play them again in the future); T16 fouling is particularly frowned upon in eternal league since you may never play that person again, so you’re essentially hosing them for no advantage to yourself – basically, griefing.
Of course, this is Blood Bowl, so it’s not like it’s against the rules…

Diagonal Crowd Push

Normally you can’t push a player diagonally off the pitch, but if there is a player in the only valid on-pitch space they would be pushed to normally, you can diagonally eject them. While this is generally of limited use (since it involves putting a player directly on the sideline intentionally, which is asking for them to get ejected in kind), if a scrum spills out of control, this can be useful to remember.

Kick

Kick secretly rules since it lets you dictate where the ball goes to in a much more narrow area, which is great if you can get them down some players and start kicking to empty areas. The downsides are that it means having a player off the line of scrimmage (and Kick is normally found on linesmen), and Kick makes them a priority target – so try to only set them up on defensive drives, if you can possibly manage it.

Assistant Coaches & Cheerleaders

While these give you permanent bonuses on certain kick-off table results, you should think carefully about converting money into Coaches/Cheerleaders: you may be better-served by spending them on out-of-pocket inducements, or simply dealing with the inflated TV caused by having money above 150k (or whatever the threshold is for your league), and saving the money for emergency replacements or even deepening your bench.

Don’t Forfeit

You can forfeit without penalty if, at the start of a drive (during the set up), you can field 2 or less players. If you forfeit for any other reason, the opposition will get two MVP bonuses and you won’t get any – so unless you’re getting absolutely slaughtered, it’s worth sticking it out for the MVP. You also take Fan Factor hits and if your players have 51 or more SPP they have a 50% chance of permanently leaving the team in disgust, and you won’t get any money (the winning team takes it).

Blood Bowl 2 Guide