It's often debatable if they are reliant on star players, I've found. This is especially so in league play, where - as I've said before - star players taken as inducements don't score SPP, and thus don't help your team advance and improve. Sure, the same can be said about journeymen, but journeymen work best as scrimmage fodder anyway, leaving your more important players free to gain SPP. A star player on the other hand can and will steal the show. In the new edition, there's also the fact that you cannot take Journeymen and/or Star Players alike if you already have 16 players available for the game. You're either banking on someone missing the game due to a casualty or deliberately playing with less than a full roster just to benefit.
I may go through and give a whole breakdown, but star players by their very nature are situational. I will have to read the article, but from what I see they don't differentiate for any variables, and just kind of looking in a vacuum. I will say that I think Willow is this season's weakest star. Last season was Gretchen, but if your gnomes are facing tomb Kings and you only have 160k to play with, I would say that 2+ dauntless to fight mummies would come in handy, giving you 2 trees and Willow to tie up mummies. Whereas playing against an AG team, I would probably take Rowana over Willow. Jordell and Jeremiah are both in S tier, but I would say Jordell goes down to A tier in a league, while Jeremiah stays S. As @ChapterAquila92 said in a league you don't want to give all your SPP to star players, so having a successful passing completion loses 1 SPP to Jeremiah, while your elf goes on to get the 3 SPP for the touchdown. And I wouldn't put Roxana in the same tier as them. It seems like AG 1+ was the criteria for elves in S tier. Breaking down to cost, who they can play for, and what role/hole do they fill on the teams they can play for, and whether it's a league, a tournament, or an exhibition, would change up a lot of these rankings in my mind.
Let me present a counter-argument. Take it with a grain of salt, as I'm a blood bowl noob just trying to understand and parrot back what I've heard. I'll use Snotlings as an example (because I like them), but the same theory would hold for Ogres or any other similar team. The idea is that you don't really want to level up your snotlings too much anyways because they are strength 1 and die easily. So what I've heard is you only level up the trolls and pump wagons, and keep your TV as low as possible. That way, when the opposition levels up, their TV really takes off and you can afford top tier star players and better inducements in general. At least that's what I got from the videos I've watched. Not sure if works well in practice.
I'm watching a YouTube series on the same topic by Bar0n's Den, and he is using different criteria to rank them, including which teams they can play for. When he is finished with his tier list, I'll post it on here. We can then compare and contrast.
As @Bowser said, yes they can. Usually they are classed as secret weapons and sent off the field by the referee after a single drive (as is the case with the Dwarf death roller), but in this edition, the Snotlings can field their pump wagons just like any other player, for the entire game. Blood bowl is a wild game. Bombs, chainsaws, stabbing. BLOOD BOWL! Changing your mind in regards to the game (even if just a tiny bit)?
That was certainly the meta in second season (2020) and is very likely going to be the meta in third season, especially for Stunty teams. But for a league, most non stunty teams usually want to get your rostered players better for a consistent experience. If I can take out your star or stars, you may have trouble keeping up, and a 40,000 lineman can foul your 250,000 star for a very profitable trade off. So while I also love me some Hero Hammer style Blood Bowl, for some teams they can take more than they give.
That's good to know. Definitely a steep trade off, especially if your stars are taken off the table. That would really leave a low TV team stranded for the remainder of the game. That raises another question, which stars are the most robust and difficult to remove from the field?
There is quite a few with armour 10+ and either thick skull, or Regeneration. Armour 11+ on I think 3, Morg, Maple, and Deeproot. No stars have Iron hard skin though, so all of them can have armour reduced by a gang foul, claws, or a chainsaw. Of course good positioning can help mitigate these things, and if the other guy has a chainsaw, don't stand a tree next to him!
Oh wow, I can imagine that removing Deeproot would be very hard. AV 11+, Thick Skull, Block and strength 7. You'd need a lot of support from teammates and nuffle to bring that guy down. We might get you into the game yet!
This is still very dependent on being able to get SPP on your trolls and pumpwagons, though. I personally wouldn't bank on the inducement allowance to provide a boost, especially in a league. The reason why I say that is because it's not only highly variable from game to game, but you also don't get access to inducements during play-off games at the end of each season, which means no star players to call upon (at least, that's how my league plays it). As for deliberately keeping a low TV, Ogres have it the easiest with the Low-Cost Linemen team special rule: they don't count their Gnoblars' base cost for the purpose of determining TV, even if they have multiple advances. By the new rules though, you still need to keep some roster slots open if you intend on taking star players and journeymen consistently, otherwise you're waiting for some of your own players to be missing the game due to lasting injury. One other thing to bear in mind is that, when it comes to a stunty team like Snotlings, they can very easily draft all 16 players on their team roster brand new and still have money left over for a good number of team re-rolls, an apothecary, and maybe the odd cheerleader or assistant coach. Snotlings in particular can also call in a number of extra players each game as per Riotous Rookies, above and beyond the 16 player limit, and are allowed to have a little more than the normal 11 players on the pitch compared to most other teams. Consider them ammunition for your trolls to throw.
Is this based off a rule in the rulebook itself or a house rule? Wouldn't this unfairly affect stunty teams and greatly improve naturally high TV teams? Snotlings have that rule too, but are slightly hampered by the Insignificant rule. I did not know that the Low Cost Linemen rule applied to advancements as well! That does change the calculus.
This is very much a local league ruling, just as much as it is for us to retain the previous edition's rulings on how many of each position you can take in your team (mostly for the benefit of teams that had been around since when Blood Bowl was reintroduced), and how we nominate our MVPs. For the most part, we also enforce a "painted and based models only" policy for play-offs as a painting incentive on the side. Having said that, while our ruling certainly does skew towards the high TV teams, it's been my league's opinion that the league games leading up to that point are the warm-up period in which you should at least be trying to improve your players rather than holding them back. The only exception to this is when you don't want to inflate your players' values in anticipation of redrafting them for the next season, and this will typically be toward the end of a season nearing play-offs. Well, no, you still have to factor in the advancements for that season, but Low Cost Linemen basically means the team does not count the hiring fees of said Linemen (which incidentally includes the advancements they gained in all previous seasons) when calculating Current TV.
Some Blood Bowl Resources: Bloodbowlbase.ru up to date rules and references Deathpitch.com website and app for roster creation, still has some bugs for new season https://barrysheppard.github.io/bloodbowl-card-creator/index.html - card maker of you want to make some for your teams, or you want to make personalized stars https://bbtc.pl/pdf/team_create?id=1764953128234 another roster Creator, can make a Eurobowl legal team on there as well Bbroster.com another roster builder, was in my opinion the best one, still being updated for new season https://www.dadidimerda.it - reference for stars and skills http://www.elyoukey.com/bbpusher/#2!17!12!!_ if you want to demonstrate plays https://fumbbl.com/help:OTT this is the one turn touchdown info, but fumbbl has a playable live blood bowl game, and lots of helpful information