God damn this is awesome.
I had a ton of luck with my elves, (though you need lots of reserve players because their armor is terrible). They rarely fail to pick up the ball or hand off, the wardancers with their average strength + block + dodge are great (support them with someone else and they get 2+ dice and can only go down 1/36th of the time), plus the catchers are surprisingly awesome. (9 move + dodge + catch...stuff them behind enemy lines to slow them down on critical plays. Sure you'll get blocked for 2 dice, but you can't block and move on the same turn unless it's a blitz, and if they dodge instead, strength doesn't matter)
I also had a ton of luck with chaos. They're great for sheer brutality. Kind of weird though, mostly their players are pretty average, but I'm guessing they'll become a lot cooler with strength and mutation upgrades. ('Tentacles' looks cool + is useful against stunties.)
Chaos against Lizardmen...man, that was sheer brutality. Playing on normal difficulty in a Blitz campaign, I usually created five casualties by the end of the game. At the end of one match there were only three enemy players left on the pitch, and my ball carrier was helping seven other guys to crowd around one of them and kick him to pieces. I think that match ended with four long-term injuries and two deaths... "Pile On" with a minotaur is hilarious.
It was pretty worthwhile, though. I played against the same team two more times in that cup, and they were short some players and the ones they did have had stat penalties. Here's a tip, though: If you're going to use fouling as part of your long-term strategy, aim for their Big Guys. It's awfully nice if you can take away their big anchors like that...and the Big Guys often have minimal armor! Plus, hey, they're the expensive ones and I think they only get replaced by linesmen if the team is assigned mercenaries.
I would disagree on some of the strategic ordering. Passes, even with elves and stuff, are some of the highest risk things you can do. I NEVER use Go For It unless I'm making a field goal on that exact turn (or unless it means the difference between being blitzed on an FG run and being completely out of range). GFI is a flat 1/6 chance of falling over per extra square, regardless of agility, and 1/6 is very much not a free roll...plus, if you were using GFI, you probably really needed to get wherever you were going, and it's just no good to be flat on your face with no tackle zones. I always do 2+ die blocks before passing, and remember that dodging with agility 4 is less risky than blocking with 1 die, giving a 5/6 chance of success (if dodging into a square with no tackle zones). If you have an agility of 4, get 'dodge' as soon as possible to boost that chance to 35/36; otherwise, 'block' is an absolutely great first skill. It's a good idea to keep your skills simple, I've found. Don't go for fancy maneuvers; just give yourself a solid backbone. (Although giving someone Kick ASAP is incredibly useful...the sooner you can stop kicking off the pitch, the better!)
And yeah, totally make sure you read through the rules, or you'll miss little things. Heck, dodging is easier than I had expected...it gets a bonus +1 chance (like some other actions), which can vastly, vastly increase your odds.
Anyone fancy a game tonight?