No one noticed so I'll just copy/paste my question:

1. How does a Championship league work, as I understand you play as much as your time allows? So will you fall behind if you play only a small amount of matches and are there other competitions like this or some other free form online play?

2. How is the AI? As you might gather, time is a bit of a problem so playing on your own would be great for me even if the game's core focus is multiplayer. So is going solo worth it, story mode or some AI league?

1: No idea.
I've only played the campaign.

2: Easy takes crazy risks, resulting in lots of turnovers.
Hard AI plays very conservatively, so doesn't get the chance to score very often.
Medium AI is the most challenging.
Quite how challenging this is depends on your play, I suppose.

ive played the story only a little bit, but i suppose it could be said that its a bit of a puzzle mode. "Do x in y turns, with z team vs å".

atleast in legendary it was like that.

Just played Dodogeo's Red Spiky team.

A bit messy with 2 bashy teams punching it out in the middle of the field.
I had the edge with my skinks able to get away with the ball.
Once the score hit 2-0, I think Dodo gave up trying to score & decided to hurt my team as much as possible.
Luckily, He only managed a few KO's.
In fact, the worst injury any of my players have received so far is Badly hurt.
The game ended 3-0 & I broke his minotaur's leg :D

Replay:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/81270194/Weekly_R6_Rodzaju-Dodogeo.db

Halfling team 'Malicious Ankle Nibblers' have joined the open league...

And two more teams for the Open League:

Dark Elves "Elves in Black"
and
Orks "Boll Playaz"

I just need to try out new stuff. :-)

Must be typo there with the orc team name..they dont -really- play the ball do they? :p

Actually i think the orc thrower is one of the better ag3 throwers..only if they had proper catcher to help him out.

The score indeed wasn't my main concern, I tried the fouling system since iippo mentioned it a couple posts ago, puls I wanted to try out Claws that I got on one beastman.
The idea was to injure a couple of your guys so my guys could move more freely, but no matter what just couldn't make an injury or knock out.

When playing against lizards, you dont really want to aim at the tough av9 lizards or kroxy - the stunty av7 break far more easier, whether by blocking or fouling and bring the whole teams ballhandling to staggering ag1.

..ive already mentioned that to Rod - the team has atm "tiny" bit too much str and block to my liking :)

As a thumb of rule in BB, ko'ing or cas'ing the stunty av7 first and leaving the big strong dudes last is usually the best. Anyway, why would you want to block the "hard" targets first - spp is same for av7+stunty and av9+block -also they dont give one bit more assists. -> thus, you -usually- should thin any given team beginning from the "weak" players.

...certainly it makes difference who has or doesnt have block, tackle, wrestle and so on.

----

oh - claws are very good, but usually you pick block first to knock people down in the first place. And then most choose mighty blow instead of claws as MB works against av7 as well + gives +1 to injury rolls if you break the armor straight away. Claw is then traditionally the third of fourth skill on a "killer". Certainly this is different on teams that get mutations only on double.

Yeah, but the whole match I just couldn't hit even one of those little dudes. They would just dodge or sidestep any form of contact, so after that I tried to hit some of the bigger guys.

true enough - not having block and/or tackle makes the dealing with dodgers bit tricky. ...then again the saurii are str4/av9 + starting to get block ...wouldnt call it really any easier :)

(statistically if youre rolling 2d blocks, knocking down a player that has either dodge or block has the same odds - assuming you can or dare to choose both downs ...certainly blocking an opponent who has block, with a player who doesnt, is far more prone to cause you turnover).

sidestep doesnt affect blocking or dodging, its just lets the opponent player to select the square where he is pushed/blocked. Essentially sticking to you if they so choose and also you cannot push of the pitch unless you have grab-skill (not certain of juggernaut).

Too much block?
This from the guy whose whole team has block?

I have a str 5 kroxy with block, 2 st 4 saurus with block.
I have 1 st 5 saurus & 3 st 4 saurus without block….

;-}

Mostly I'm still experimenting, for example, yesterday vs Rod I choose to start as the kicker thinking that the Kicker moves first.

Live and learn.

yeah - too much when you consider 5x str4 and 2x str5..and that one of the blocks is on the kroxy - sure its kinda scary from the perspective of my fragile av7 team :)

...as ive NOT gone the foul-norse build i may have mentioned earlier, but instead put all my gp on the expensive positionals - universal block (not counting yehetee, as ive luckily leveld ulffies for block) is the only "advantage" my team has (generally speaking). Sure having average 6337 stats is nice...but id rather call it "not having disadvantage" rather than "having advantage" :D

Also again generally speaking, norse have pretty narrow access to strength skills, namely guard and mighty blow - which kinda sucks. Str teams get to chooce the dice against you and later on will have good combo skills from the strength/mutation set. On the other hand your average lvl1 is at the peak of his destructive power unless you roll double and choose mighty blow, which is probably bad idea as dodge/guard is likely to be more important on team scale.

Norse get easy access to block+tackle combo, but tackle doesnt help that much against bashers. Pro on linemen would let norse player to reroll failed block dice...but thats hardly as useful as having MB or plain higher str for more dice in the first place.

...it might seem like i am complaining - but i am not really. Its just that i -think- ive pretty much grasped where there norse are on basher team hierarchy. And against the real basher teams that may very well mean sacrificing the winning of "bashing" for the sake of winning the whole match.

->> ill probably have to end up doing lots of manmarking to immobilise the saurus, which is not optimal. And ofcourse catching those skinks. I would love to win you by passing and while that is possibility - its not something to count upon my team.. Just as with dodging - ive got it easier than your saurus, but my odds arent something you can really count to pull of time and time again.

As far as i can see, those are pretty much the only weaknesses a developed lizard team has.

Well - have to see whats the situation when we finally get to play on round 10 - maybe youll get block to rest of your saurus by then ;)

(break tackle!)
ha - youre not the only one to do that :)