CLAW Blood Bowl

Pro didn’t really fit elsewhere, so I’ve decided to talk about it separately following last week’s comments on Big Guys and Loner.

Pro is a starting skill on Imperial Nobility Throwers and Blitzers, Orcs and Humans get one free Pro with Team Captain (discussed below), and it’s on the General Tree, and so is readily available to lots of teams. But is it worth it?

Pro is an interesting skill, it allows you to re-roll one die from a dice pool, but only if you first pass a Pro roll on a 3+. The rerolled die could be one of your block dice or any other rerollable action (Dodge, Pick up, Rush, Pass, Catch, Negatrait etc). You can do this once-per-turn per Pro player but only on their activation (no RR on interception/bouncing ball catches).

Getting to reroll dice without using up a precious team reroll sounds great, but the 3+ part creates a decision point whether to risk the Pro roll or take the safe but limited option.

[Video version at bottom of page – link to jump there]

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Let me take this quick aside to reaffirm… you should decide whether a roll is worth rerolling before you roll the dice.

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Pro or Team RR?

If you have no team RR or definitely wouldn’t want to use a RR for that action, Pro gives you a free second chance at one of the dice two-thirds of the time, which is a huge improvement over just accepting failure!

Example odds– 3+ Actions

Let’s use a common example to get the odds comparison; a 3+ dodge. On its own, that dodge has a 67% chance of success. If you have a team RR available, you can reduce the chance of failure to 11%, since you only fail if both the initial roll and the re-roll come up short, the classic 1 in 9.

Compare that to Pro rerolls. If the dodge fails, you roll Pro. That succeeds two-thirds of the time, and if it does, you get to re-roll the dodge. That second dodge roll also has a 67% chance of success, giving a total chance of failure of 18.5%. Overall, this is slightly worse than using a team RR but not huge.

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If you do have a team RR and the action truly matters that it succeeds then using the team reroll is almost always* objectively better. The hard decisions are in the grey areas where the risk-to-value proposition is less obvious, where it would be nice to pass, but saving your last RR might be more important.

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Pro is better than nothing, but if it really matters, use a team RR.

A point that is worth repeating at every opportunity is that you want every level-up you take to improve your team’s performance, and any this or that skill decision is about which improves it more. Adding any skill adds to your Team Value. Skills that aren’t doing much to you success potential will “bloat” your TV and start giving inducements away to your opponents. This leads to asking how to get value from the skill, which pieces can value the most, and where in their development should you take the skill.

As you can use Pro once every turn, you get more value from the skill on pieces who make frequent actions that aren’t turn-critical. So, what are those actions/pieces?

Use Case 1: Multi-die blocks that haven’t catastrophically failed

The classic and most common use for Pro is when you have rolled a 2D or better block and have rolled a push result alongside either another push, a both-down or a skull.

This happens in 1 of 3 blocks, i.e. pretty common. If the Pro piece also has block, you could obviously do the same for both down + Push on one dice, and a non-pow on the other dice (42% of blocks).

Pro is often safer than a RR

If you reroll both dice you could get a dub skulls and make things worse. Using Pro is therefore often a safe way to upgrade the skull/both-down/push into a pow, while always keeping the other safe push result available to fall back on.

Pro improves your chance of Knockdown

To make a value assessment, we need to know how Pro changes the odds. Let’s use a simple example: for a 2D block you normally have 55% chance of knockdown with no block vs no block.

For 33% (1/3) of the blocks you can reroll a dice with Pro, 2/3 you get to reroll, and 2/3 you improve that dice into a Pow/Stumbles = 7% improvement = 62% chance of knockdown.

The table below looks at a few common situations for 2D blocks.

Attacker	Defender	Normal Odds	With Pro	With RR
No Block	No Block	55%	62%	81%
Block	No Block	75%	82%	94%
Block	Blodge	31%	37%	51%

If the piece with Pro is your primary Blitzer, taking ~10-12 blocks/blitzes per game. It’s reasonable to think of Pro as adding ~1 extra knockdown per game + they also will get occasional use out of it for other actions, which are harder to quantify.

Block+ Pro can gain value in lots of ways

The previous table looked at specific examples, but the thing about Pro is when it is on a Block (or Wrestle) piece it can give value in lots of outcomes depending on who you are hitting and what you want. The table below illustrates this for the following symbol/use case combos.

*You can fish for Pow or Defender Stumbles (Pow/P), this is the most common use case.

**You can fish for Bothdown e.g. where the position of knocked down player matters, this is rarely going to be critical in terms of game state but can be a route to a little bit of advantage.

***You can fish for a Push e.g. to allow Surf or chain push or OTTD.

X You can fish for full Pow to improve a defender stumbles result e.g. vs blodge

	Skull	BD	Push	Push	Pow/P	Pow
Skull	TeamR	* ***	* **	* **	** *** X	** ***
BD	* ***	* ***	*	*	*** X	***
Push	* **	*	* **	* **	** X	**
Push	* **	*	* **	* **	** X	**
Pow/P	** *** ****	*** ****	** X	** X	** *** X	** ***
Pow	** ***	***	**	**	** ***	** ***

^^no point in memorising this, it’s just to illustrate that Pro can change the odds of every block outcome depending on what you need at the time… but only if you don’t get what you want and you pass the 3+!

Pro is great for uphill blocks

Above we said that almost always the team RR is better. The edge case when Pro might be better than a team RR is when rolling a -2D uphill block and you have one skull and one good result showing. In this case, you could RR both dice (44% to get pushes or better), or you could Pro the skull (2/3 to get to RR, 2/3 to improve the skull to a Push+… 44%). Same overall odds so no point using your precious Team RR.

Is it worth the TV

So, it is useful, but is it worth 20k TV? That depends on what else they could take.

The thing is that not all blocks are equal and some skills (Tackle being a prime example) help by a larger amount in specific blocks, but those blocks are likely to be more important hits on key opponent positionals or ball carriers. The chance of winning the game goes up more for these specific hits (higher Expected Value in Game Theory terms).

In my opinion Pro is a nice-to-have skill, it is great for the pieces that get it for free, but I’d only consider it later on in player development; once they already have takedown and damage skills or if they have limited skills access.

In terms of cost-to-value, as you are unlikely to be able to generate consistently 10+ blocks/game with more than one piece, so usually it would be best on your primary blitzing piece. Those pieces generate lots of SPP but might be better served saving for stat increases or secondary skills.

Use Case 2: Big Guys / Loners

Negatrait rolls like Bonehead and Really Stupid are annoying when they fail but aren’t turnovers. Therefore Pro can be used safely on those rolls. You are likely making these negatrait rolls 12+ times a game, so having Pro will give you 1-2 fewer failures. Not huge, but you also can use it for the other rolls a Big Guy will make.

The other clear value add for Pro on Big Guys is most Big Guys also have Loner. Rolling a 3+ for Pro to reroll one dice is often going to be better odds than trying a Loner 4+ for the chance to RR both dice.Once you combine the Loner point with the negatrait aspect, Pro on a Big Guy becomes quite a viable option.

However, Pro is a General skill, so it would be a secondary skill and so the decision becomes about which skills to save for.

In a league the 40k Pro usually should come after Block (in longer leagues) or a Strength skill – Guard / Juggernaut / Stand Firm / Grab depending on which Big Guy + Team + role. As a second or third skill it is worth considering.

In tournament situations, Block is clearly better on a secondary but some rulespacks limit the number of Elite skills you can take or the number of skill repeats you can have on your roster. In those situations, a Pro might be an attractive choice but, again, pretty rare that you will get enough value to justify.

Use Case 3: Vampires

Pro actually shines for Vampires who must make a 2+ or 3+ Blood lust roll to act. With Pro those 17% odds drop to about 7% per activation. However, if the Pro roll fails you could still choose to bite and not end the turn, so it isn’t catastrophic (except for the Thrall perhaps).

If you don’t fail the BL roll, you will have the Pro available for any Hypnotic Gaze actions, where, again, failure isn’t a turnover and so trying to Pro RR them is a good safe option. (Pro+BL = 2/3 + (1/3×2/3×2/3) = 81.5%. Not shabby.

In a league situation, Pro probably sits somewhere in your Vampire’s development plan. Some players like to take it first, others after Block and Dodge.

Team Captain is a new addition to the game as a special Team Rule for Orcs and Humans. It allows you to select one player to gain the Pro Skill for free and also gives you a 1 in 6 chance of getting to keep a team RR when used. The only caveat is that the player must be on the pitch to use this “Argue the Reroll”.

So, who to pick?

Following the rest of our discussion, the best choice is almost certainly a piece that you want to roll dice with frequently.

On Humans that makes it one of the Blitzers. They will be doing most of the blocking and blitzing, and occasional desperation dodges without dodge. In a league situation, you want to level them up quickly so they will need to catch or pick up the ball and also dodge/rush when required so you will get an occasional additional use out of Pro. In a tournament build, the captain Blitzer should be the one that gets Mighty Blow to complement their Block and Tackle, and if you can stack on them to give them Break Tackle or Frenzy then they are really effective pieces.

On Orcs, my preference is a Big ‘Un, although you can make a case for the Blitzer. Giving it to the Big ‘Un leans more into one of the Orc win conditions of smashing an opponent by giving a Mighty Blow piece the chance to RR one of their block dice per hit and thereby occasionally improve a Push to a Pow. In a tournament pack, that Big ‘Un will have Block and become your damage-output blitzer. Whereas, the Blitzers more commonly will be taking Tackle or Guard, and will be blitzing targets that they need to get down and therefore will use full team RRs.

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