Barik Farblast is back with his trusty bazuka, a rocket launcher like weapon whose name in Dwarvish means “not recommended for active service” due to their tendency to explode.
Thankfully for Barik, exploding bazukas killing their own crew was only ever a thing in Warhammer Fantasy Battle – their BloodBowl equivalents are completely safe. But is it any good?
The problem with Barik in previous editions was that he was a thrower who could only play for Dwarf teams so generally there wouldn’t be any players who were any good at catching his passes. And having a Secret Weapon meant you were only going to have him around for one drive. He wasn’t totally useless – he was cheap, and with Sure Hands and MA6 was a viable option for a dwarf team who were going into a match without any Runners. Or, seeing as the options for cheap inducements were a lot more limited in previous editions, he could even be of some use just as an extra pair of boots to do some fouling.
Stats And Skills
HIs stat line in the new edition is MA6 ST3 AG4+ PA3+ AV9+ so he still is basically a dwarf runner but sacrificing a point of agility for a point of passing ability. That’s definitely a negative compared with his stats in previous editions as you’ll probably want him to pick up the ball at some point but I guess that if you’re carrying a rocket launcher around then that might have a negative impact upon your agility.
Skill-wise we have the Sure Hands and Thick Skull as we’d expect for a star player based upon a dwarf runner, plus a selection of Passing Skills – Hail Mary Pass, Pass and Strong Arm. He’s also got the Secret Weapon trait and the obligatory Loner trait.
Strong Arm makes no sense seeing as it can only be used in conjunction with Throw Team Mate. In all probability, this skill should actually be Cannoneer to give him bonuses on Long or Long Bomb passes which would be similar to the behaviour of the Strong Arm skill in previous editions.
Generally Barik still suffers from his mediocre passing ability – at PA3+, you’re better off with a standard human thrower than with Barik. Also AG4+ even with Sure Hands isn’t exactly great for getting the ball into his hands in the first place either.
One thing he does bring to the table is Hail Mary Pass. Hail Mary Pass was a niche skill in previous editions, and it has been nerfed considerably in the current edition with a -3 penalty on the roll as Hail Mary Passes now count as Long Bombs for the purposes of modifiers on passing rolls. If we assume that Barik’s Strong Arm skill should be Cannoneer, then he’s got a +1 modifier for Long Bombs which applies to Hail Mary Passes so a 4+ is required to avoid a Wildly Inaccurate Pass or Fumble. With his built in Pass skill, that gives you a 75% chance of a successful Hail Mary Pass.
A successful Hail Mary Pass however always scatters from its target square. Sometimes that isn’t an issue if you just want to lob the ball down field to get it away from your opponent but if you want someone to catch it then it’s not so great. The table below shows the number of different ways out of 512 in which a 3D8 scatter can result in the ball landing in each square:
Odds of actually hitting your target square are 24/512. Counter intuitively, if you aim at a square adjacent to the square where you want the ball to land, the odds improve slightly to 27/512. Those are still pretty lousy odds.
Barik has a special ability where once per game he can reroll the scatter dice for a Hail Mary Pass. With the reroll, odds of the ball landing in the square that you want improve from around 5% to around 10%. Even with the reroll, Barik isn’t going to be making Hail Mary Passes that get to the intended receiver very often.
Diving Catch
Where Barik does shine, or at least isn’t entirely useless, is when you have a receiver with Diving Catch. For Diving Catch to work, we need only to get the ball to land on the receiver, or on an adjacent square. Aiming for the receiver means we’ve got 8 adjacent squares each with odds of 27/512, plus the target square itself with odds of 24/512. If a Hail Mary Pass is aimed at the square containing a Diving Catch receiver, odds of them being able to attempt to catch the ball are therefore ((8*27)+ 24)/512 = 240/512 or about 47%. Pretty terrible considering you’d have to have made the Pass roll, and would still have to catch the ball.
Barik’s special ability can of course be used to reroll it which increases the odds to 72% of the ball scattering to within a square of the catcher. Using his special ability also gives a +1 to the catch roll which counters the -1 penalty for trying to catch a scattered ball.
If you take a situation where Barik attempts a Hail Mary Pass targeting an AG2+ catcher with Diving Catch, the overall odds of success, i.e. successful pass, the ball scatters to within a square of the catcher, and the catcher makes the catch, are down to about 53%. Those odds are bad enough that you really don’t want to be relying upon his Hail Mary Pass skill to get the ball into the hands of a catcher.
Conclusion
Barik was always a bit useless and sadly this hadn’t changed much. He still has some value for teams that are in desperate need of a cheap runner with Sure Hands, and, whilst Hail Mary Passes are unreliable, if you can get some receivers deep in the opponent’s half then that does give you a Plan B for when Barik is in danger of losing possession of the ball. If you’re lucky just the threat of the Hail Mary Pass might force your opponent to keep some players deep in his own half away from the action which might give you some advantage.
Or just use him as a cheap player to foul with. Buying a player just to foul with every turn until he gets sent off isn’t a bad way to spend 80K.