Before the game, I get lucky with a doubles roll on a Sure Hands gutter and give him Big Hand. Yes! The perfect ball-retreiver! Well, not quite, he'd need to be more dodgy, but good enough for me. I come up with a cunning plan to not level up 2 of my players, fire 1/5 of my team, and hire a wizard to exploit this veritable blessing from the Horned Rat...
...then it turns out you have to level up all your players before starting a match! So there goes that. I rush out to my linemen and with a little bit of my ghoulish charm and some rat-proper bootlicking, manage to hire them back at double the price. Unfortunately one had already left to go play under a Vermin Lord.
"Welcome back, rat-rat! Listen, I er... didn't mean-mean all the things I said-said back there..." - Starscream the II, forced to hire back 2 linemen after being forced to fire them by his coach
first half
Skaven choose to kick.
Early on, skaven use Grab to surf a player. Sometime near the middle of the half the rats lose one of their own, but overall it's a friendly half full of pushing.
In fact, pushing pretty much describes that half. Lion's tackle costs me a reroll or two. I try to keep him contained; the zons are only able to advance a square or 2 at a time.
The 'zons might have been able to advance more than this each turn by moving from side-to-side or via narrow gaps I left intentionally open, but chose to try to outbash my 2-man columns and brute force it, playing it a bit more bashy than risky.
I think the 'zons STR4 catcher was a bit underutilized, but on the other hand, Stand Firm did do wonders for them, tying up my only player with Guard, someone who would have been vital towards cage-breaking IMO.
Zons go for a desperate pass on turn 7ish. The pass fails. Rats grab the ball and attempt to do a quick score upfield but it fails, only having had 1 or 2 turns to set it up with rather poor positioning.
Accurate representation of the game thus far in the eyes of the spectators
2nd half
0-0 entering 2nd half
Skaven receive. Starscream the II, glorious leader and warp-clone of the 13th Doomwheel, gets the ball and runs back some, deciding not to cage up.
Some bashing goes on and the first few turns just seem to be filled with trying to see what lines will break at the line of scrimmage. 'zons can honestly break through whenever they want with their Dodge, and there were even paths direct towards pressuring the ball-handling thrower, but 'zons decide not to pressure, mostly focusing on keeping most of the rats marked instead.
At first Lion gets luckier with his block dice, a rat is knocked out I believe. But then I get luckier with my block dice. I get 2 gutters past the zons to do the patented run, throw, run, hand-off, score but I forget about the middle guy of the equation. I should have only put 1 gutter deep in his half.
Some gutters(!!) surf the str4 catcher off of the pitch on a 2-dice defender chooses. Here's my chance to do the run, throw, run, hand-off, score again! Except this time I forget about the final guy instead of the middle guy of the equation. I think this is where I lost my chance at the win, having failed to push my advantage 2 turns in a row.
Subconsciously frustrated with my mistakes, I cage up the thrower and move him down the right side for the last third or so of the 2nd half. This goes disastrously because Lion manages to mark all my rats and I didn't keep any gutters free (a big, big mistake) so they were tied up by tackle and often, multiple tackle zones.
Ball is handed off to a lineman. Next turn said lineman tries my desperate final play: dodge and throw it to a marked agi 4 lineman, in the hopes of having him run to the left side of the field (safely out of range of all the zons cept the one who would chase him), and then score in the final turn. This master plan fails right its first step with a failed dodge. Ball falls off pitch and is thrown in close to an amazon on my side of the half.
The last 2 turns seem as if the 'zons could score, but they used all their rerolls putting all my rats on the floor. There's a zon with the ball with just 2 GFIs on his turn to score and win! I form a new desperate plan: dodge using a lineman (common theme here...) and push him out of range. This time, desperation works and the game ends exactly as it's gone throughout its entirety: with a pitiful, whimpering push.
Final result: 0-0
Match rating: 6/20
% of dissatisfied fans: 100
Number of times Red Lion sighed per turn: 4.2 (1 per gutter runner)
Good game, Lion! I love the amazons.
