Season 4 - League Champions - The Mighty Undercheesers

[Raveen]

The only downside would be the possibility of losing the MVP. But at this stage in development that's less vital to you.

If it had occurred to me earlier I'd have mentioned it but it only crossed my mind when I was writing the match report.

[Idanmel]

I fell asleep around 22:30 GMT.

Thursday?

[Idanmel]

Do you guys want to know who won the Tomb Army vs Cangurus match? No peeking at the table!

First half was played a couple of weeks ago, so we fast forwarded to the 2nd half, starting 1-0 to the Tomb Army:
Gandalf, this was a half you had to see to believe...

Turn 9:
Elves receive the ball and after running 6 players into the Tomb Army's half, Rony Tobbins fails to pick up the ball, but rerolls with sure hands to safety. The Tomb Army mark the elves and bash whoever they can.

Turn 10:
The elves get one player free to catch the ball. Rony Tobbins approaches Joe Vitalynx for a handoff, but Joe fails to take the ball and the Elves suffer a turn over and fail to do a 2-turn touchdown. The Tomb Army continues to mark and bash.

Turn 11:
Joe Vitalynx picks the ball up, runs up the field to find the open catcher, who catches the ball and runs to score the touchdown. 1-1. The elves kick the ball one square behind the line of scrimmage, close to their 2 blitzers. Rigor Jointless, the agility 2 Zombie picks up the ball on his first try and tries to cage up.

Turn 12:
Kyron Batie, the strength 4 blitzer finds an opening in the cage and makes a 2 dice block on the ball carrier, which succeeds. Barut the fourth an agility 1 mummy fails to catch the bouncing ball, but Tom Diagnoses an agility 2 skeleton manages to hold on to it. The Tomb Army cages up some more.

Turn 13:
Kyron Batie finds another hole in the cage and runs a 2 dice block with poor results. He rerolls and gets a defender stumbles, only to see Barut the fourth catching the bouncing ball with all of his agility 1! The tomb army continues to bash (injuring the lineman pale carnegie, who is retiring) and cage near the scrimmage line.

Turn 14:
The elves are running out of time, so they decide to run a 2 dice against block on Barut... Nothing comes out of it, as Barut chooses defender stumbles on Eckhart Trolle who has dodge. Bashing and caging on behalf of the Tomb Army continues.

Turn 15:
Eckhart Trolle manages to do a 1 dice block on Barut and gets a lucky defender down, and oddly enough the ball is not caught by the Tomb Army but lands on an empty square. Day Vid L N picks the ball up and runs cowardly towards his own touchdown area. Tomb Army tries to make sure there are no Elves standing to catch the ball, but Ramtut III the star players rolls double skulls and fails his loner reroll.

Turn 16 (DO YOU FEEL THE TENSION?):
A catcher who is lying down next to two wights stands up and runs to the touchdown line. Day Vid L N gives3 the ball to Rony Tobbins who runs forward, manages two GFI's and throws the 3+ accurate pass to the catcher waiting behind the touchdown line. BUT WAIT! Ivan the Terrible (may he meet his maker) a wight who suffers a broken neck which reduced his agility to 2, intercepts the ball and splatters the Evles dream of finishing first in the league. Game ended at 1-1 with the Tomb Army managing to throw and catch a ball just to test their luck.

Tomb Army caught 4 balls out of 5. They did it with agility 3, agility 2 (twice) and agility 1.
They picked the ball 1 time out of 1 with agility 2.

Thanks for the game Andy!

[Gandalf]

Thanks for that Idan, I was very good and didn't skip to the bottom or look at the table first.

It is indeed very frustrating when your elves can't do what they should be doing with the ball, and the opponent does. If you can't pick the ball up and throw it around, what's the point of playing as elves?! You need to produce a graph like mine to show to your team, to inspire them to improve their skills in the area. It worked for me :p

So, the only game left of this season is undercheesers vs. dwarves. Has anyone seen spinx? The top 3 will be one of these three depending on the undercheesres result.
Win -> Undercheesers, Wood Elves, Elves
Draw -> Wood Elves, Undercheesers, Elves
Lose -> Wood Elves, Elves, Undercheesers

Then it's the cup... when is that going to be (Jan some point I assume) and who is in it? There are qualification criteria but I seem to recall someone suggested they may want to sit out.

[Raveen]

The Carrions need to get in on the Hot Dwarf Action too. I've arranged two dates midweek to play Spinx and he didn't make either of them so I'm kinda waiting for him to propose something now.

Naturally the Undercheesers game takes priority as they're contesting the title when I'm just shooting for third (unless I'm remembering wrong ).

In terms of the Cup I propose we reconvene on the 10th. If we can all play then the top 8 rushers will play in a knockout, seeded by rushing stats (I need to read up on how to set this up). The remaining two teams can play each other if they choose (I know La is busy in Jan so may opt out).

In following weeks as teams are eliminated I suggest a challenge system where eliminated teams may challenge another team so long as they didn't play the previous week (unless that's the only game available I guess).

[lawastooshort]

I messaged spinx on steam a couple of times but he hasn't replied yet. It's going to be hard to fit a game in with the inlaws round for a fortnight. If the Mighty Undercheesers become champions, it would only be right for them to attempt the double in the cup! If they don't then I'll have to see.

[LtSpinx]

Sorry Rav, I keep forgetting about the midweek games and la, the times you contacted me on Steam I was at work and when I was able to reply, you were offline. Unfortuantly, due to lots of overtime at the moment I have not really been able to log into the forums.

I can probably play a game this evening and tomorrow, Monday is also a possibility and maybe Tuesday too. Please let me know when you can play. Contacting me on Steam is probably a good idea but I might not always be able to get back to you straight away.

Sorry about being unreliable at the moment.

[Raveen]

No worries Spinx, can you pencil me in for Sunday night. My wife is in London for the day with the laptop so it depends on when she gets back for me to be able to play. Shouldn't be a problem but I'll let you know if there's a delay.

[lawastooshort]

No problem Spinx, I don't really want to have my hopes and team shattered anyway I might be able to do Monday or Tuesday evening, lateish, but not sure yet, sorry. I'll try to get on steam and see if you're about?

[Raveen]

An exciting end to the season!

The Brawlers chose to receive which gave their Death Roller a free hit at my team. The roller worried me, it's one of two players in the league able to outstrength my Tomb Guardians and getting hit by Mighty Blow is not what you want when you have Decay. I shoved three skeletons on the line and bade them farewell.

The ball went high and the dwarves collected it neatly, caging up in the middle of the pitch whilst running potential receivers down each flank. I elected to punish the dwarves on my right and started knocking heads together. The skellies in the middle did a sterling job of surviving the Roller and stodging up the mid pitch making it hard for the dwarfs to move. The Brawlers' star blitzer stranded himself on my sideline and I pushed him out easily. The crowd pulled his head off and the poor apothecary didn't have a potion that could cure it.

At this point I decided to engage the cage. The Roller wasn't acheiving much and it was time to make hay with the Guardians. I started pushing the cage about, a tight cage being easier to use for chain pushes to release the ball, and then pulled my whole team round to block down the Roller (who went over stunned).

The ball was forced free but I was totally engaged and couldn't get a Thro-Ra free easily. A turn of pushing got the Thro-Ra even more marked up and then another turn finally released him. He grabbed the ball and scampered off up the pitch Finally scoring on turn 8.

A second injury in the first half and the Death Roller removed by the ref put me against 8 players in the second half. The ball went off the pitch so I gave it to a Tomb guardian. We also had a pitch invasion as the Carrions fans went mental for the second game running leaving players on both sides snoozing. Against a depleted foe it was a relatively simple task to cage down the pitch and tie up the dwarves in the midfield. Poor June Gritfield was used to mark 6 dwarves whilst the rest of the team watched. She went off on a stretcher eventually. The ball was walked over the line with two turns to go.

Another kick off and another touchback. Spinx went for his patent passing play but failed teh catch. I was able to get in a get the ball but there wasn't time left to get to the other endzone and score.

A fun game but very one sided in the second half as Spinx chatted more than he paid attention as things were pretty irretrievable for most of the drive. Dice weren't as one sided as I'd have thought. I did better on the 2D6 rolls which helped but I think Spinx lacking in Troll Slayers helped me more than anything else.

[LtSpinx]

See you on Sunday la?

[lawastooshort]

Should be okay, yes - just have to negotiate a bit with the wife to make sure I get an uninterrupted 90 minutes

[lawastooshort]

edit: didn't want to triple post so replaced last post with the below:



Brewer's Brawlers 1 - 2 The Mighty Undercheesers.

The result I hoped for but didn't expect - what I expected was for more than 2 goblins (and 1 apothecaried Bob Dylan) to get hideously mangled. As it was we had 1 KO and 3 injuries each. I also had the better dice luck all round (the dwarves rolled 45 d6 to my khemri-like 19), with the dwarves attempting an elven amount of dodges and failing most of them. I didn't want to dodge because there was Tackle everywhere.

After receiving, the dwarven turn 3 (there was a riot for the first turn) touchdown was a glorious sight. The dwarven LOS knocked some goblins about, and a blitzer made a break down my left. I thought I had it covered with a marker and David Bowie, and smacked the ball carrrier, in half a cage in the centre, to the ground, freeing the ball - but I had no time to do anything with it. Spinx cleared the ball of my two markers, picked it up, ran through my flimsy line, and wanged it right down to the endzone, where the blitzer caught it! I think this was a full 12-13 square pass.

This gave the Underworld 5 turns to score back in their drive, so Jimi Hendrix picked up the ball with his new extra arm and scampered off, first right, then left, and then home for the equaliser.

I think for the second half the Underworld were 11-8 up on players, as the massive death roller, which I had apparently been overscared by, as it was fairly useless, had been sent off, and two dwarves had been injured off. If I recall one of them was the trollslayer, injured off by Lou Reed with my first block of the game.

The dwarves started getting near my ball carrier, so the Underworld marked them up and smacked them as well as we could before going down the left as fast as we could - then Spinx's Strip Ball blitzer (?) managed to dodge away from Bowie, go for it, and then... both down my Block Jimi Hendrix, having already used the reroll to get away from Bowie. Next turn I blitzed him down and ran away for two turns, and then that was it.

Thanks for the game LtSpinx - apart from your score it felt most things went my way. And apologies for smacking your last blitzer there.

[notjarvis]

Congratulations on Winning the League lawas

Very well done!


(and commiserations Spinx on a fairly awful season).

[Raveen]

Wow, Jim, what an amazing league phase of the RT Cup!

You're right, Bob, it's been a magnificent spectacle! Let's take a look at the teams.

The Brewers Brawlers finished in last place after a torrid season. Suffering from injuries, they just weren't able to get their passing magic to work for them. The Dwarves are considering their future and may decide to pack in the Blood Bowl to make time for more boozing.

Next were The Tomb Army who started this season as rookies so fresh that they still had a bit of flesh on them. A few games into the season and they started developing into a far more professional outfit and we expect great things from them in the future.

Rookie nurgle team, Eballa sneezed and vomited their way to eighth place in spite of injuries to their key players. An unremarkable season for the team but maybe a solid foundation for future success?

The cast of a touring musical turned Blood Bowl team, Fables! brought speed, claws and lycanthropy to the pitch. It was an uneven season for the rookie Necromantic team but they scored wins against established favourites and have all the tools to do better next year.

Fan favourites The Orkly Ducklingz finished in a respectable sixth place. The mushroom loving Orcs were once again great sometimes but a shambles at others. A spokestroll has complained that substandard mushroom supplies caused the team's Black Orcs to required long and persistent naps in the middle of games.

Into the top half of the table we have Stagocalypse who started the season well by taking an early lead but weren't able to keep things rolling in the face of injuries and upsets. Notable mostly for their terrible passing game the stag party is sadly now missing it's stag.

In fourth place we find The Pinewood Carrions. The Khemri have really gone all out this season to hurt as many people as possible but despite flattening more than 100 players this year, they have only managed to injure 17, 3 less than the Brawlers and the Undercheesers.

In third place are The Cangurus who have once again been giving life altering seminars between matches. Their passing game has been a marvel again this year, only second to the second placed team...

The Everglade Wanderers who have played some amazing and beautiful Blood Bowl this year. The Wanderers really were the dominant team of the early and mid season and threw, ran and scored far more than any other team.

Taking home the Bomber Dribblesnot League Trophy are the Goblins and Skaven of The Mighty Undercheesers. Depending on a running game to get the touchdowns scored, the Undercheesers were a surprisingly reliable team and managed to only lose 1 match all season. Star Troll, David Bowie, has promised not to let the league go to his head. Partly because the Orcidas Rushing Cup is about to start and partly because he's not sure where his head is anyway.