Author

Taureau Amiral

Editor and blogger at Blood Bowl Strategies. Educated French-Canadian minotaur. West Point graduate. Former professional blood bowl coach and player. Winner of four Stars and Stripes Cups and three Selfish Bastard Trophies. Don't take him too seriously. He only wants to open a few doors in your mind, using strength if need be.

Full biography

Strategies

The Grind, or winning 2 -1

Taureau Amiral
This strategy, often named The Grind, aims to win the game by a score of 2 to 1. Yes, you are reading correctly; we are not talking about a shutout. Even more convolutedly, we are not even seeking to score the game's first touchdown! In fact, we do not care if our opponent scores first, as long as…
Tips

How To Improve Your Coaching

Taureau Amiral
Let’s valiantly tackle an abstract topic: how to improve your coaching. Most of us try to be the best blood bowl coach possible. I am that way too. I give all my best. But I observe that some of you are not really improving even though they are spending a hell of a lot of time coaching their team.…
Tips

How To Break Bad Coaching Habits

Taureau Amiral
When I first learned to play Blood Bowl, I thought I simply had to pay attention to avoid picking up some bad coaching habits. It sounded simple enough. Yet, I would sit on the pitch’s sidelines, sweating through my t-shirt in the middle of the Canadian winter. I even ended up taking a nap before…
Talks

Why You Should Practice Gratitude

Taureau Amiral
The devil is in the detail. I can roll nine consecutive pows followed by a lonely skull. What do I remember? The skull. Well, it seems I am not alone. Research shows that, unfortunately, we are all wired to focus on the negative. Obviously, being all stressed up and rancorous will not help us…
Tips

Surfing the Winds of Luck

Taureau Amiral
I have spent more than a decade of blood bowl observing what makes coaches luckier than others … And from what I saw, there never was a coach who could win four touchdowns to zero, game after game, just by being lucky. As far as pure luck is concerned, a coach has as many chances to dry clean his…
Tips

Mildly Shocking Legendary Secrets

Taureau Amiral
We all know the drill. I will not mention the game's probabilities, skill choices, positioning, common sense, and all these run-of-the-mill but very important Blood Bowl aspects. Here are some theoretical and philosophical leads to explore in your quest for legendary coaching. 1. The « Rotten to…
Statistics

Blood Bowl Fouling Odds

Taureau Amiral
At Blood Bowl, fouling is the only action where a coach will attempt an armor roll for the sole and assumed purpose of stunning or depitching a player. Rolling an armor after a successful block is certainly fine, but this dice roll results from an action undertaken with another goal in mind and is…
Statistics

Blood Bowl Armors & Injuries Odds

Taureau Amiral
If there are a lot of game situations where it is worth looking for a fight, very few are really worth it from a Blood Bowl team’s development point of view. As proof, the armor rolls statistics below detail frightening odds for anyone thinking of going to war. At Blood Bowl, it is often understood…
Talks

Goal and Simplicity

Taureau Amiral
For most Blood Bowl legendary coaches, games are made of sequences, repetitions, similarities, and probabilities. They allow us to roughly predict whether achieving our goal is likely even before activating a single player. However, when probabilities and humans insert glitches in these constants,…
Talks

Security and Surprise

Taureau Amiral
At Blood Bowl, a coach must always combine security and surprise. Security is imperviousness to surprises, but if a coach only plays securely, he will have difficulties achieving a surprise to unbalance his opponent. Blood Bowl can only be played securely and a coach can become very good this way.…