One of the big changes, at least if you are a Chaos coach, in the new version of BloodBowl is the nerf to Claw.
The big change here is that in the old rules, Claw allows a player to break armour on a roll of 8+ after modification whereas in Season 2, you need an 8+ before modification. The upshot of this is that when you combine Claw and Mighty Blow, a roll of 7+ would break any armour but now the Mighty Blow armour modifier won’t help you. Of course Claw and Mighty Blow is still a good combination as, whilst Mighty Blow won’t help you break armour, you can still get a bonus to the injury roll. The question however is how good is it? The generally accepted optimum development path for the killer Chaos player in previous editions was Block followed by Mighty Blow and then Claw but does this still hold up in Season 2?
Whilst Claw has been nerfed, there is another little used skill that has now become an effective offensive skill – that skill is Pro.
In previous rules, Pro was always a liability when used with blocks. You could use Pro to attempt to reroll blocks, and if you made the 4+ Pro roll then you’d get to reroll both block dice (assuming a two dice block). This helps generate some more casualties but it is a double edged sword – rerolling ineffective blocks will always have a chance to cause a turnover.
The new Pro skill works on a 3+ which is obviously a boost, but more importantly it allows you to reroll one die from the pool of block dice.
The upshot of this is that if a player with the Block skill throws a 2 dice block then you can use Pro to attempt to reroll one of those dice with zero risk of the Pro skill causing a turnover. If you rolled double skulls on the initial roll then Pro is a risky way to save yourself from a turnover so a team reroll is the sensible option, but for any other result where you’ve failed to knock down your opponent, or if you’ve rolled double skulls and have no team rerolls to save your skin, then you can use Pro to attempt to reroll one of the block dice. Obviously if you’ve rolled say a Push and a Skull, you want to reroll the Skull so even if you reroll to another Skull, you can pick the Push and avoid a turnover.
Assuming a 2 dice block thrown by a player with the Block skill then depending upon the skills your opponent has, the Pro skill will increase the chances of a knockdown as shown in the following table:
| Opponent’s skills | Chance of knockdown with Block | Chance of knockdown with Block and Pro | Relative increase |
| None | 69% | 79.2% | 15% |
| Block or Dodge | 55.6% | 65.6% | 17% |
| Block and Dodge | 30.5% | 38.2% | 25% |
If you have a 25% increase in the number of knockdowns, then that will lead to a corresponding 25% increase in the number of casualties. Depending upon the skills involved, Pro will give you an increase in casualties of anywhere between 15% and 25%.
Pro is even more effective on single dice blocks and less effective on three dice blocks (the more block dice you roll in the first place the less likely you are to need to reroll any to get a knockdown) but we’ll ignore those scenarios as we’ll assume you’d be using a team reroll on a single dice block anyway, and three dice blocks are relatively rare.
So what does Claw do for you in the Season 2 rules? Once you’ve got a knockdown it’ll increase your chances of breaking armour by varying amounts depending upon the armour value of the target:
| Opponent’s AV | Increase in armour breaks |
| 8+ | 0% |
| 9+ | 10.5% |
| 10+ | 69.4% |
| 11+ | 191.7% |
So what does this tell us? Claw is useless against AV 8+ or worse. It is marginally useful against AV9+ and then really becomes effective against AV 10+ or better.
Unless you are playing in a league with lots of orcs and dwarfs, Pro is actually a far more effective skill for a killer player than Claw. Pro will give an increase in casualties of between 15% and 25% depending upon the skills of the opposing players whereas Claw only exceeds this against AV 10+ or better. The vast majority of players you are punching are going to be AV 8+ or 9+.
Pro also has a major advantage over Claw in that Pro achieves its increase in casualties by increasing the number of knockdowns. With Claw you must knockdown an opponent before Claw can have any effect. There will be times when you throw a block against a big guy where you’d rather have the increased chances of a knockdown via the Pro skill than using Claw which is more likely to result in a casualty but also more likely to leave the big guy standing.
The choice of skills for a killer player with access to mutation skills used to be Block/Mighty Blow/Claw. There’s now a strong case to argue that a better option is now Block/Mighty Blow/Pro. And that leaves Chaos Chosen/Nurgle and other teams who’s main selling points were primary access to Mutation skills with a big problem. Claw is going to become a skill chosen much later on, and whilst a Chaos Warrior can go for the Block/Mighty Blow/Pro skill set, so can anybody else with primary access to General and Strength skills.
Between the nerf to Claw that was exclusive to the mutation teams, and the boost to Pro that is available to practically everyone, the forces of Chaos are in real trouble in Season 2.
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