BB Match report - 8th Feb, 5 games

[Gandalf]

Wyld (chaos), Idan (amazonians), Adept (halflings) and myself (Skaven) logged on and played 5 games between us. Feel free to add on details...

Game 1 - Wyld vs Idan
Not sure what happened here but Idan disconnected at some point before the game ended and Wyld was awarded a 2-0 victory. I think someone got killed?

Game 2 Wyld vs Idan rematch
Wyld does what Wyld does and hit lots of players. It was a brutal game with little great ball play. At one point, Idan was down to just 4 players standing! However Idan snatched a 1-0 victory with the last move of the match and finsihed the game with little to no injuries.

Game 3 Gandalf vs Adept
This was Adept's first game in the league. It happened the same time as game 2 and there was much chatter on mumble. Adept spent a lot of the game hitting my players - specifically his 2 treemen (strength 6) beating up Pinky, my Rat Ogre (strength 5). He went down once or twice but sustained no injury. The halflings fought well against the larger ratmen for most of the game. However thanks to Gandalf's awesome gutter runners seizing on opportunities, I won 3-0. I honestly can't remember who the touchdowns came about but it probably involved some ninja dodging and generally staying well away from the treemen. Adept employed the amusing tactic of treemen throwing halfings with the ball over my lines, which almost led to a touchdown on one occasion.

Game 4 Wyld vs Adept
After games 2-3 finished, we swapped around and played new people. Again from what I heard, this game had a lot of kicking each other going on. I think there were one or two half-chances, and a Go For It roll or two failing, but the game finished 0-0.

Game 5 Gandalf vs Idan
I just finished this game so I can remember most of it Idan kicked off and the ball went really long (1 square from my scoring zome). However his defensive formation wasn't great. I pushed one player out of the way, then my thrower ran to get the ball and threw it to a gutter runner, who ran straight through the gap created by the push and ended the round 2 squares from Idan's scoring zone. Next turn he went over, despite Idan's best efforts.
Next up was a thoroughly bruising session as Idan's warriors showed their strength and knocked over many Skaven players. Eventually there wern't enough Skaven left and Idan went over for the touchdown as half-time approached. He did lose 1 to injury at some point around here though.
He tried the same thing in the second half but the rolls wern't quite so good, or maybe my formation was better, I dunno. Anyway he ended up with 3 players surrounded by 7 or so. He lost the ball, failed to pick it up, and a gutter runner picked it up and ran straight through for a touchdown after Pinky the Rat Ogre opened a gap.
Now he was down to 9 players for some reason. He organized himself down the left side of the field with a wall of players on the line of scrimmage and his thrower with the ball behind them, along with 1 guy from support. After bashing a bit I ordered my gutter runner to blitz from the other side of the field, and somehow he pulled it off, AND got the ball! In response Idan picked up the player who I had knocked over and knocked him back. Unfortunately Idan didn't realise that getting up plus a block = your one blitz move, so there was nothing he could do to stop the gutter runner running in for a late touchdown. It finished 3-1 to Gandalf.

I've taken a lead at the top of the league now, my record is 3 wins 1 draw. All 11 touchdowns have been scored by my 2 gutter runners, who keep picking up new skills all the time. As if a movement speed of 9 wasn't enough for these guys...!

[Raveen]

My advice for playing the vermin is to ignore the rat ogre and inflict as many hits as possible on the line rats and gutter runners. Their low armour means that skaven should be starting with less than 11 on the pitch by the second half.

Also don't be afraid to hold the ball and inflict pain on the faster, more agile teams.

WWW.bbtactics.com is an excellent resource and we'll worth reading.

[Wyld Karde]

Just filling in a few details on my matches.

My first match against Idan counted as a forfeit on his part because his PC was playing up and he lost connection.  Unfortunately for me, this happened after I flubbed an attempt to push an amazon into the stands and got one of my beastmen killed.  I'd already used up my apothecary when saving my Minotaur from a -AV injury.  It instead became a -AG injury.  This was going to set the trend for the evening of me being thoroughly screwed over by the dice.

The rematch went well for the most part.  Playing a bashy team against amazons is frustrating because so many of 'em come with block, dodge or both which makes it tricky to get them on their backs in the first place.  By the end of the match both teams lines were looking pretty porous and Idan managed to get the ball caged up on the side in my half of the pitch, letting him run in a last minute touchdown.  Oh well, at least I'd made him work for it.

The match against Adept's halflings was very entertaining.  The match kicked off with the halfling chef managing to steal all three of my team rerolls, meaning I was playing the first half with no second chances.  The slippery li'l bastards spent a lot of time dodging around and away from my players, and his treemen and my minotaur managed to keep one another tied up in the middle for much of the match.  Beastman Wayne Looney screwed up his GFI rolls on no less than three occasions while trying to set himself up to receive some desperation pass attempts.  Of course, when I was able to get my hands on the halflings the casualty rates were high, with several pushed off the pitch and others injured in various amusing ways.  Naturally, Adept brought a lot of spares along and in the end some clever positioning and desperation blocks by Adept kept me from managing to turn my numbers advantage into actual scores.  Despite spending the final two or three turns of the match in a very threatening position at the end of the pitch I just couldn't quite seal the deal.

A fun evening's gaming.  I'll look forward to some more bloodbowl with my fellow RTs again soon.

[Adept]

Being an abject newb, I almost feel like the victor after scoring that nil-nil draw vs. Chaos.

Both games were utterly hilarious. I look forward to facing Idan's Amazons in the near future. What a fun & silly game this is 

Incidentally, is Raveen going to be joining in? Gandalf is badly in need of a defeat 

Also Gandy, next time I'll just put your gutter runners into the hospital as the first thing. Fear the halfling!
(I should really read the fluff you guys wrote on your teams)

[Wyld Karde]

And so Adept has already worked out one of the golden rules of Blood Bowl leagues.  If your opponent has all their SPPs in just one or two players, do your damndest to kill them!

Also, even as a newb, getting a draw vs Chaos isn't a huge deal.  If you look at my league history you'll see most of my results are draws.  Why?  Because although Chaos players come with impressive stats, they start with no skills and are terrible ball handlers.  Think back on last night's matches and you'll realise that the majority of the turnovers I suffered were due to failures in handling the ball.  A flubbed pickup here, a failed pass there and it all adds up to trouble making progress.  My team's bashy as all get-out, but turning that into a win is a real problem.
It's also down to poor coaching on my part though.  When a player does level up I need to be getting those ball handling skills, but instead the lure of those cool mutations just keeps calling to me.  Why get something that lets a player pick up a ball more reliably when I could give him tentacles, or claws, or a second head?  It's hard to resist.

[Raveen]

I'll try to take part if the wife's laptop can cope :-)

I'm really tempted by an ogre team, which I shall be calling the Snottish Slaymores after one of the teams in the euro American football league. But I do also have a necro team in the league who might be created to give the rats a well earned kicking.

Unless Gandy's some sort of bb savant of course, or nuffle rejects my pre-match sacrifice.

[notjarvis]

It might cope Rav. My craptop manages it (it gets a little warm while it does but it does manage it)

I'll setup a team and join the league.

grotjarvis will ride again :-)

[Gandalf]

[quote="Raveen"]
My advice for playing the vermin is to ignore the rat ogre and inflict as many hits as possible on the line rats and gutter runners. Their low armour means that skaven should be starting with less than 11 on the pitch by the second half.
[/quote]
Hey quiet, my rat ogre has done a cracking job of soaking up aggro! I do have 2 or 3 subs available too as everyone I play seems to enjoy kicking my rats...

Good luck catching my gutter runners by the way. Movement of 9 and 3 GFI.

Also I would say, people should have 1 or 2 players further back. Often yesterday I managed to get past the main group of players and then would score the turn after, as no-one could catch them. If opposing managers had 1 or 2 players further back, then there would be at least a chance of closing him down.

grotjarvis will ride again :-)

You already have a team in the league, you don't need a new one.

Here's my team stats www.gandalfgames.net/images/team lineup 09Feb2013.jpg
- as you can see it's mainly about my 2 gutter runners scoring touchdowns (Dangermouse & Mighty Mouse), and Pinky the Rat Ogre beating people up. Really annoyed yesterday when I accidental gave him the ball though. The fool just stood around with it and ignored me.

[notjarvis]

So had Rav. :-

I've setup a new amazon one and applied to join, as a different kind of team to play

Never really warmed to the Dark Elves too much, and I'd only played one game with them that went really badly (player dead, and hardly any SPP gained) so it was hardly worth continuing with them.