Overview
A Guide to getting the most out of one of the coolest, but overlooked players in BloodBowl.
Intro
A guide on Assassins
For a long time when playing dark elves I did not like the assassins. They seemed far too week and easily hurt. I tried using them to hunt week players and high value targets but more often then not they would get killed before they could gain any skills.
However lately I have come back to my dark elf teams with BB2 and I have found a new love for them. Obviously this, like any guide for BB will not be to everyone’s liking, as I believe building a team around your own play style usually yields better results then just trying to make a team with the most commonly used and OP skills. Having said that I hope this guide may give a couple ideas as to how to utilize this very specialist player without getting them killed too much 🙂
The Basics
First a little about the skills, Assassins start with MV6 Str3 Agi4 AV7. This makes them fragile and relatively slow for an elf. The up side is they start with Shadowing and Stab. Both these skills have their own merits and draw backs.
Firstly shadowing is a very nice and under used skill that allows the player to follow opposing players who leave there tackle zones, Each space the assassin follows makes the opponent roll another dodge roll and as you can only re-roll one of these, this becomes a very nice way to create turnovers. However! the down side is the assassins MV and how the skill is worked out; each time the assassin attempts to shadow, the opponent rolls 2D6 and then adds there MV, then takes away the shadowing players MV from the number, if the resulting number is 8 or higher the player gets away. Considering that an assassins MV is only 6 this roll is not always in your favour.
Secondly Stab, stab is a very useful skill as it acts like a block without the block dice. Instead the stabbing player rolls to break the opponents armour stright away (the usual injury rules apply EXCEPT mighty blow which does not influence stab). The good thing about this skill is that the roll is unmodified, meaning tackle zones and strength differences are irrelevant. even better is that a failed stab will not cause a turnover! The down side is the odds of breaking armour, on a AV 7 target the odds of breaking armour is roughly 40% which is pretty good, but on 9AV its closer to 10%. The biggest downside however is that injuries from stabbing do not give SPP’s making advancing assassins very hard to do.
The Sneaky Approach
The usual build and tactic for a assassin is to kill Low AV high value players, usually taking block, multiple block (as strength does not make a difference to stab this synergises VERY well) dodge and side step. However I find that this still gets them killed to much, they are far to close to the action.
I find the following tactic to yield far better results from the player without being so much of a waist of TV(team value)
When i am defending, i usually park my assassin next to the oppositions receiver rather then sending him out to look for kills, this is particularly annoying for the opposing team as the opponent’s runners are usually low AV and the opponent will want to try and dodge out of your tackle zone each turn for fear of stab. Furthermore, Although MV6 is not amazing movement in respect to shadowing, it does work a fair bit of the time, or at least the threat of it working usually makes the opponents move there receiver further away then necessary, sometimes hindering possible pass lines they were planning.
On the Offence, i run the Assassin in to the opponents half to be my receiver, this will usually go one of two ways. The opponent will either mark you with much more players than needed to try and kill you, which in turn which draws valuable players away from the rest of your team. Or they wont mark him at all because of the fear of stab. this leaves him open to score which may give easy opportunities for assassins to score, gives them much needed SPP.
I give my assassins, block, dodge and side step and occasionally catch. This set up is not only useful for a reciver/Interceptor but if the opposition try to blitz him to free up the their receiver, it gives a lot of defence. If he lives long enough, i then either choose jump up which synergizes very well with stab (giving the ability to stand up and stab in one turn without blitzing), or diving tackle to make it almost imposible for a reciver to get away. I dont take multiple block as its rare that i find my self in a position with more than one opponent in my assassins tackle zone.
For stat upgrades MV is brilliant as shadowing then becomes a very real problem, all others are an unwanted boost to TV.
The Kamakaze Tactic
The only other good use of assassins I have seen is using leap and stab to free the ball. Leap makes little work of getting in to a cage with just one agility roll rather than contending with tackle zones. The tactic is to leap in to the cage and free the ball with stab as it isn’t under the influence of any tackle zones and then dodge out of the cage). more often than not you can get off a pretty good odds stab and thus freeing the ball (and even if stab fails there is no turnover so the assassin can still escape the cage).
This build is a little too kamikaze for me asi if your dodge or leap roll fails, youre assassin is going to pay dearly, however I do see a lot of people use this set up and it does work. There are numerous versions of this set up including nerves of steel for better ball play, extra Agility for better dodgs and leaps or extra str, block and dodge for protection. But I think if you use this build you better make the first pick count as he won’t be around very long.
Top Tip’s and Wrestle
One Top tip for using Assassins is parking them next to prone opposing players. If you need to mark some of the opposing team that are already prone, the assassin can do this in leaps and bounds. Shadowing will make the opponent think twice about actually moving the player away from you and you are relatively risk free as the prone player would have to blitz you to throw a block at you. In this way you can completely tie up even the strongest of you opponents players (works VERY well with big guys as there low agility will makie them thing twice about moving away.) without fear of getting killed.
There is another line of thought with assassins which is using them to tie up opposing big guys. This is based on the fact that big guys will struggle to get access to the block or tackle skill, so if your assasin has both dodge and block (or Westle), they will have a lot of trouble actualy getting you down. a fair few big guys have AV8 which isnt to bad stab odds. and with low agility, they arnt going to try and moveaway, even with break tackle as shadowing counters it very well. I feel like this is a very risky game though and if you have a assassin with both block and dodge you can use them in better ways.
One last thing on assassins is the skill wrestle. You wont see it much on assassins and its up to personal preference. This skill takes both players down on a both down block dice and overides both players block skill. Furthermore, no AV roll is needed for either players. I personaly like this skill more than block. Although block will help against low TV teams, against high TV teams expect to find block as standard on a lot of players. You will also only be using the block and wrestle skills when defending, Wrestle naturaly stands out here as the next turn you will stand up and the opponent will not. This skill is particularly good if you take jump up early or you are using the assasin to mark big guys as discribed above, as geting a big guy down is problematic for the oppostion for so many reasons.
Conclusion
In conclusion i think assassins are a great addition any dark elf team and can perform a myriad of diverse and important tasks, rather than just murdering high value players and scaring noobs.
Having said that all dark elf players should remember that Assassins get better the lower AV the opponents have and even though shadowing becomes very annoying against heavy teams, it is risky putting them out there with hard hitters.
But dont take my word for it, try using assassins in new ways and see what you think. These players are so fun to play and should not be over looked.
Thats about all I have to say on dark elf assasins, I hope this guide helps some people and if you liked the guide, please leave a comment and i shall make more guides on some of the more overlooked gems of the BB universe.
Thanks for reading and have fun 🙂