Fan Favourite (Extraordinary) #
The fans love seeing this player on the pitch so much that even the opposing fans cheer for your team. For each player with Fan Favourite on the pitch your team receives an additional +1 FAME modifier for any Kick-Off table results, but not for the Winnings roll.
Fan Favourite Overview: #
Some of you may have noticed that the Fan Favourite skill is listed in the skills section of the Competition Rules Pack document that you can download from the Games Workshop site. You may also have looked through it and realised that it isn’t mentioned anywhere else and no Star Players come with the skill, so why is it there.
The skills was altered to this rule in LRB5 when the changes to Fan Factor were made and FAME was introduced to the rules. To my recollection the Star Player, Thrud the Barbarian, had this skill before he was removed from the game. He was so easily confused that he used to often change sides through out a match causing much carnage. This obviously went down well with the fans and games involving him often got a greater turn out.
Fan Favourite was also listed as a prize during a league’s Spike Magazine Trophy if they ran one. The player who has the most SPP in the league after the Spike Final (the whole league not just the teams in the final) permanently gains the Fan Favourite skill. This increases the players value by 30,000 as though it was a double roll skill increase. The pages covering this have been removed from the Competition Rule Pack hence the anomaly.
It’s use is fairly obvious and comes in very helpful on Kick Off rolls, giving your team a nice edge in gaining rerolls whilst preventing the other team from getting them, as well as the more dangerous Pitch Invasion results and Throw a Rock. This extra edge on the Kick Off table may come in handy for games where there are lots of touchdowns. You might elect to score more yourself, or this may cause the opposing side to be a touch less aggressive if they usually like to try and have a high scoring game.
As assigning the skill after the Spike Magazine Final is completely optional and not all leagues even use the four major tournaments listed in the rules for their league, actually having or facing this skill is going to be quite a rare occurrence. In low scoring games the effect of it may also be fairly low. This in turn may lead a coach of the player to decide they aren’t worth their value to the team any more and opt to retire them. Sometimes players can get carried away with themselves and let the fame go to their heads at the detriment of the team.
It is a fun rule with more player and team background history built into it that one that will most of the time have a great tangible impact during a game. (Though some games it could clearly make the difference.) There is also a slight factor of encouraging some player turnover if they get retired for one of the highest valued players in the league, I don’t know if that is intentional but it is a nice touch of letting one of the league greats make into the Hall of Fame before they die a death on the pitch!
