Blood Bowl Basics: Formations

A lot happens in a Blood Bowl drive. Spines are shattered, curses are shouted, riots are incited, and occasionally
somebody even picks up the ball. It's easy to get caught up in all the action and not notice the shaping effects that
cause the scrum to occur in these squares and not those squares (or even those other squares over there). Some of
that shaping comes from the coaches working hard, action by action, to drive the ball into the place best for them, but
a surprisingly large part of it comes from the formations in which the players set up at the beginning of the drive.

Setting Up For Victory

There are a lot of things to consider when setting up. I'm going to show you some example formations, but always
think about the relative speed and strength of the teams in your game before using any of these. Some formations
work best against strong, slow lineups, while others are best for containing elf plays. The best lineup will change from
play to play as well, depending on the number of turns left in the half, the number and composition of each team's
injuries, and what you predict your opponent's strategy might be. Keep your eyes open and your brain working!

One common defense is known as the column defense or the 3-4-4, so called because it places three defenders on
the front line, 4 defenders on a second line, and 4 defenders on a third line. A "collapsed" 3-4-4 might look like this
(shown using Norse in blue):

Obvious strengths of the 3-4-4 are that it creates a strong band of tackle zones across the field and that it's resistant
to enemy blitzes. There's no spot where a single blitz can open up a TZ-free path for a ball carrier. It's not
impregnable, of course; any knockdown attained on the line of scrimmage can be accompanied with a push in the
opposite direction to start forming a hole, like this:
It only takes one knockdown at the LoS for this to happen. Any more than that makes a more open and defensible
path for the offense. Obviously, this is less of a concern if you can prevent the enemy players from having strong
blocks at the line, either through skills (lots of Guard, perhaps) or a significant ST advantage. You can defend against
this to some degree by running a staggered 3-4-4 that looks like this:

This reduces the opponent's ability to run up the middle by adding some tackle zones to the middle three squares at
the cost of opening up the sidelines to blitzes a little. This defense is a little worse against a frenzy blitz (as assists
from the end linemen in the back 4 can be denied easily, making the second frenzy block safer) but stronger against
stunties and high AG dodgers who will potentially have to make an extra dodge to get through the formation. As you
can see, there are a lot of ways to adjust any formation to make little tradeoffs like this. As always, keep your head in
the game and figure out the variation that works best for your situation.
A defensive option that might be slightly more effective against dodgy teams (especially stunty dodgers) is the 5-5-1
(also known more verbosely as 3-2-3-2-1), shown here in both flattened and spread variants:
This formation has an obvious weakness to a block on a corner lineman followed by a blitz on the player behind him,
so I really only recommend this if you're playing against a team where you have a significant ST advantage, which
fortunately will usually be the case against many stunty teams. If the enemy team is ST-disadvantaged, they'll have to
spend enough players performing the initial hit and blitz that they probably won't also be able to form a defense for
their ball carrier. This formation includes a significant backfield presence, which can be useful against fast teams
trying to sneak through.

Offensive setups are often a little more complex, because the offense has a lot more information to work with. When
you set up your offense, you need to take note of both the general shape of the enemy formation and the position of
important defensive players (unusually high-ST players, guys with Strip Ball, etc.). Unfortunately, the information
you don't have is where the ball will land, so you need to keep a couple of guys in the backfield no matter your
formation (and against fast defenses, you need to make sure to protect them!). You can easily line up symmetrical
formations and position assists to enjoy your first turn advantage without any help from me, so let's talk about some
more interesting strategies.

A strong side offense like this allows you to concentrate your offensive power on fighting a smaller portion of the
enemy team for a couple of turns while the weak side players try to catch up to the action. This is a particularly useful
strategy if your opponent has a few well-developed players grouped up on one side, as you can avoid them for a few
turns (or more, if you can get them marked before they get to the fight). It's also great for capitalizing on injuries that
leave the opposing defense uneven. Your battle plan might look something like this:
If you score any knockdowns at all with your blocks, this puts you in a pretty strong position for next turn with a
number of enemy players hard-pressed to contribute at all (and probably your guys on your weak side will contribute
by marking them or something). This is pretty optimistic, though. If the ball falls on the weak side, you might be in
some trouble if you can't reliably make a lateral pass. For this reason, I'd be pretty leery of using this kind of offense
against a team with Kick. A strong side offense also loses some utility against fast players who can contribute to
defense anywhere on the field quickly and can really punish a weak side kick.

Who's On The Line?

One other important thing to consider is who goes on the line of scrimmage. Three players are required to stand right
in the opponent's face, and it's important to know what that means. Against some teams the line will be a killing zone
festooned with ST 4 claw-wielding psychopaths, while other teams might just put up three lackluster dead guys. (The
kicking team may have to do some guessing here, unfortunately.) Think carefully about what you want your line to do.
If you can't fight the enemy line (or if fighting it would take up too much of your bashing ability) it might be wise to
place disposable linemen (or zombies or beastmen or whatever) there just to tie up the enemy fighters as long as
possible while placing your own fighters where they can contribute to moving or stealing the ball. Each team has a
limited amount of murdering power, so mete it out carefully; only use as much as is actually helpful on the line and get
the rest of it out there intimidating the enemy playmakers.