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15th Febuary 2013

Strong Stout (Dwarves) vs Warpstone Wanderers (Underworld)

Once again, Fluxx's bashers challenged my second string mutants and the result was very different.  Fluxx won the toss and elected to receive and he started strong.  Underworld casualties were coming thick and fast, the KO and Injury boxes filling quickly as the dwarves did what dwarves do and ground their way in a heavy cage down the Wanderers' right flank.  Unfortunately, greed for a quick score left the dwarf Runner exposed to a quick blitz which knocked the ball loose.  The Wanderers couldn't retain possession, but a foolish error by Fluxx (accidentally trying to pick up the ball with a trollslayer) meant the Wanderer's thrower got his hand to the ball and managed to make a pass up the pitch for a linerat to easily run in the touchdown on the last turn of the first half.

All the KO'd Wanderers recovered for the second half, which meant they were only two things down when receiving the ball.  Some insane luck meant that all four Wanderers goblins managed to dodge through the Dwarven line of scrimmage, while the blitzers fell back to form a loose screen for the thrower.  A quick dash forward, and a long pass was caught by a marked goblin who managed to dodge clear of the dwarf blocker marking him and run in a touchdown for 2-0 to the Wanderers.

Come the next kick and once again the dwarven slow grind worked it's magic.  Having learned from his mistake in the first half, Fluxx played a conservative but incredibly violent bash down the Wanderers right, even going so far as to have the troll slayer holding the ball stop one space short of scoring rather than risk a GFI.  This approach paid off and the Stouts brought in a face saving touchdown.

At this point we each only had one turn to play.  Not long enough for either team to score so we agreed to hold the action at this point.  Fluxx felt he'd drawn enough blood.  All in all an excellent game.  The Dwarves played well for the most part, but the Wanderers managed to capitalise on the few mistakes made to bring home the bacon with a final score of 2-1 to the Warpstone Wanderers.

Also, Underworld cheerleaders are... well... words fail me.  Have a link instead. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=127411943

My new Vampire team vs Morde's Orcs

Some stupid - and I mean REALLY stupid rolls afflicted me this game (eg needing 2+ twice and failing despite using a team roll followed directly by another failed 2+ roll was one of the worst moments). Somehow the dice contrived to deny me a touchdown at all. 5 re-rolls just weren't enough. Morde scored a good touchdown in the first half, and I was scuppered at every good opportunity but still very nearly scored with a bad opportunity on the penultimate turn (2 or 3 dodges, a pass and a hand-off worked, but I failed the first of 2 GFI's needed for the TD). 1-0 loss for me but fun was had and I started to learn a bit about my new, challenging team. I think a matchup vs the halflings for this team could have the potential to be a very silly game. Consider that a challenge Adept!

Morde's Orcs vs my Skaven
Morde took 4 extra re-rolls for his inducement, giving him a ridiculous total of 7 (he also got an extra one in a kick-off event!). He had all his guys on or very near to the line of scrimmage at kick off. I recieved, made a hole and my gutter runner ran almost to the end zone. All Morde could do was blitz with a goblin, who only managed a push, so it was 1-0 to me and a lesson learned for Morde.
Around turn 5 he was running down the flank, but he dropped it/fumbled it or something. I sneaked in, passed it from one gutter runner to the other and ran in to score. AG4/Dodge/Pro all combined to make it happen.

Second half kicked off with me having 11 versus his 9. I quickly lost rats though. Pretty soon he had it caged up good and I decided to let him score. He took a long time doing this though - one turn not moving forwards at all, but he eventually scored in turn 14 with my entire team all formed in a diagonal line in the opposite end of the pitch. "Is that the blood bowl equivalent of probe art?" asked Morde. It probably was.

Unfortunately Morde had taken too long to score and didn't have the time to score again. I kept the ball and passed/ran around a bit with my whole team no more than 4 squares from my own touchdown line. All Morde could do was blitz a goblin, who promptly got flattened (and possibly out of the next game!). 2-1 to the Skaven at full time.

I think fun was had by both. Morde learnt some stuff along the way, including how to use Block.

Had loads of fun tonight.

OK nobody mention to Gandy the possibility of a one turn TD with Skaven...

I can't score one turn from kick-off. I think that needs a movement 10 guy with sprint. I know it's possible to score in 2 turns - I did that at the start of the match, but at the end, as I was 2-1 up, I decided that escaping with no further injuries was more important than trying to score a third.

I've always read "one turn TD" meaning being able to score from anywhere on the pitch in 1 turn if your players are in the correct positions, which I have done in the past.

I don't know the detail but essentially you set up a series of pushes that push your fast player over the los allowing you to run through and gfi over the line. Takes a lot of planning and luck I suspect.

My vampires vs Adept's Halflings

After their poor game earlier, my vampires got another run-out versus Adept's little dudes.

The game started with a lot of punching and a lot of players in the middle of the pitch. Eventually Adept went for it and threw a halfling. However he didn't land properly. I snaffled the ball. I can't remember what else happened but I scored :p I got close to scoring a second as well but with 5 guys he just about managed to get enough tackle zones in on my 2 players :p

Second half and more of a melee in the middle. However this time I manage to break through after knocking a ton of halfings over (I think there were 2 treemen and 2 halfings standing at the end of the turn where I ran for the line. He couldn't get any halflings close enough, and 2 turns later I scored - I delayed so I could get a vampire down there to make the touchdown and earn the SPP's.

With 3 turns left, and 11 against 8, Adept decided to kick a lot with a degree of success. There were a lot of players in the middle so I decided to launch the fireball I bought as an inducement. 5 people got hit - my one guy got KO'ed, but for Adept.... well, one of his halfings lost a point of movement and I managed to kill a treeman! The audience were shocked and stunned as the mighty fellow burnt to a crisp, and the apothacery was already used. (Injury roll needed 10+).

More thumpings ensued, halfings mostly bounced around a bit, and I passed the ball around a bit too (a huge 5+ roll succeeded but a 3+ that I needed to level up failed). The match ended with about 12 players left on the pitch. That fireball sure took its toll. Final score 2-0 to the Vampires.

Post match - Adept got 70k and I got 30k money (?!?!). I had one player out for the next game, so I bought another Thrall so I at least have one sub. None of my guys made it to level 2. Adept levelled a few guys up. Hilariously his AG4 halfing rolled a double 6! So he now has an AG4 ST3 halfling. That's just wrong. It does add 130k or so to his team's value! He has 70k towards a new treeman (cost 110 or 120). Whoever plays him next should have a fun time as he only has 1 halfling.

Much better rolls for me this game. I failed 2 or 3 blood lust rolls but team re-rolls saved the day every time.

A very fun game vs. Gandy, and a total shocker in losing that treeman. It was the poor saplings first BB ever as well, since I had just spent all my money firing the one with the useless Piling On ability and substituting this one.

Another veteran halfling is getting the sack because of the permanent injury.

The little bugger with super-halfling strength and ability is utterly hilarious. Next for the block skill on level four! 

A battle of the second-teams today as Gandalf's Vampires played Idanmel's Wood Elves. After the impressive intervention of the Wizard in the last game, I took a wizard and a Bloodweiser Babe for my inducements.

No long match report for a change - it finished 3-1 to me. Idan had a few stinky catch/pick-up rolls which screwed him up somewhat. 0 re-rolls can really make things hard. I had 10 altogether - 3 used for failed Blood Lust rolls, and 2 for double-skull rolls. I generally gave the ball to a Vampire, and since they have strength 4, Idan had a near-impossible task to get it off him, and his army of Thralls. He tried though but this generally led to me having lots of 2 dice blocks available, and I would wait until I had beaten up a sufficient number of elves before rolling on to the line.

Idan's score was quite impressive to see. He ran up to the halfway line and threw the ball a full 13 squares, over a group of players, to a guy in the endzone (who I think had to GFI to get there?!). We were both in a state of disbelief.

The end game was almost completely silly. It was Idan's last turn and my vampire was 2 squares from the end zone. There weren't many elves left thanks to 4-5 turns of blocks plus a fireball. Idan attempted a 2-dice-against block, threw "attacker down" and "defender stumbles" and I picked "defender stumbles", just out of instinct that "red dice = bad".... doh. As a result he tried an end-to-end touchdown but the pass failed, meaning I was able to make a pickup & handoff (3+ and 2+ I think?) to get the 3rd on my last turn. It could've been 2-2 thanks to not thinking properly!

For me I think this was a tale of 5 re-rolls a half versus 0. Although the elves get to re-roll a whole load of things, it's super-handy to have team ones available for those important occasions. The vampires do need re-rolls it's true, though I think I was slightly fortunate to only fail 3 blood lust rolls. Idan also got the benefit of most of the kick-offs, but he also got 2 pretty bad ones - once his thrower nearest the ball got hit by a stone from the fans, and secondly he came off worse from a pitch invasion (3 men down to my 1).  Two kick-off rolls I've never seen before...

After the match, no-one had an injury with any lasting impact (not even a "miss next game"). I finally got some players levelled up after my third game. I rolled a double on a Vampire so I took pass (Vampires have regular access to all the promotions except passing ones so I seized on the opportunity), Dodge on my 2nd vampire and good old-fashioned Block on my Thrale. I also got 80,000 in money (woo!) so I only need another 30,000 to get my 4th vampire.

Warpstone Wanderers (Underworld) vs Dodge n Splodge (High Elf)

LtSpinx's elves came out of the gate like a shot from a cannon.  Some classic early elfballing combined with some poor luck (and play) on my part got him off to a fantastic start, two touchdowns up by one quarter time.  I was beginning to wonder if I shouldn't have gone with a bashy team for my second string as I'm more comfortable with that style of play.
Somehow managed to turn things around though.  One or two poor rolls from Spinx and some textbook dodging of goblins through the line of scrimmage and I managed to equalise before half time, bringing us to 2-2.

The Wanderers managed to keep the momentum going in the second half.  Slippery li'l goblin bastards kept getting through, while the skaven marked, blocked and blitzed to keep the elves mostly contained.  Spinx was left resorting to desperation plays to try and stay in the match, and while most of these didn't pay off, he did manage a score at one point.

Final score, 5-3 and end to end stuff.  Cracking match.

Ultimately, what did for Spinx was a lack of rerolls.  He only has one team reroll and has to keep buying players to replace casualties.  If things don't pick up soon, he should probably think about retiring the team and starting a fresh one.

[quote="Bob"]
Well Jim, you know what I always say. If a match has more than 4 touchdowns the teams weren't hitting each other hard enough.
[/quote]

My Skaven just drew 4-4 with Spinx's winless elves. Bonkers game. My thrower with safe hands seemed to have butter hands and failed to pick the ball up THREE times. I came back from 4-2 down with 4 turns left and scored on the last turn.

Also I hit a magnificent number of elves down. At one point there were the sum total of zero elves standing. I took a screenshot.

Don't play orcs, you'll run out of drive space too quickly!