Rolling Thunder BBL Season 7

[Abomination]

@Gandalf, I hadn't updated it yet because I had to step out I applaud your attention to detail and dedication however, my fellow Time Wizard!

MATCH REPORT VS LAW(UNDERWORLD)
13th DOOMWHEEL VS THE MIGHTY UNDERCHEESERS




Excerpts from the Book of the Plays, wherein much blood was demanded

"The Abominomicon has failed us!" - Starscream the II, losing confidence before the game has even started

tldr: Double 1-filled first few turns from Abom, with Time Issues from Law. Undercheesers push into Doomwheel's half turn 3ish. Doomwheel uses fireball wizard on cage. Ball rolls into another Undercheeser's hands. Law fails to score said Cheeser due to time issues and/or a potential mistake or misclick. Slugfest ensues. 0-0 at halftime. 2nd half is full of many injuries for Undercheesers, despite them being the ones with Mighty Blow. Doomwheel cage rolls upfield past the injured Underworld and scores easily. 1-0 to the Skaven.

Long version, now with Bolded Fouls!
To my dismay, after a rather lucky win against Gandalf, I was up again against a high TV team coached by Law. Since my small brain can't comprehend so many skills at the same time, I noted his team composition in my playbook. The main takeaway is that he's mighty-blow heavy. 540 in inducements I would have. I plotted my stars. I got the number of the perfect wizard. I brushed my teeth. Yes, I had the perfect plan, calculated to the 13th decimal point!

Result: 490 in inducements! ?!?! Starscream the II scratched heavily at his infected warpneedle marks as he realized his Coach had failed him and had failed basic arithmetic. Or was it only a test?

Skaven choose to kick. Law gets the ball near mid-field. I send some gutter runners after him but no blitz ends up happening because double 1s arrive early.

I believe law has some time issues around turn 2 as well as in a later turn as well. Gandalf and I had our time-wimey Chronomancy in effect, leading law to ignore its subtle ticks and tocks.

Some more double 1s happen for me, so we enter turn 3 with men barely marked, players barely injured and cages barely formed. Some ogre spectators fall asleep on the stands, falling off and crushing a few halflings in the process.

Finally, law pushes through my weak left side and sets up a solid 5-man cage and even a goblin receiver deep in my half. I throw a rock at my wizard, forcing him to wake up and fireball the cage, which hits 2 players. I rush the ball and it, very unfortunately, falls into Law's nearby +1 agi Skaven Thrower. The turn ends with him barely marked, but finally my players are in some sort of position.

Surprisingly, Law uses his ball-carrying thrower to blitz instead of just dodging out of the way with a reroll and going to score with 1 GFI. I think reroll included, he prob had like a 90% chance to score or somesuch. I woulda taken the free score (we're on turn 4abouts hereish), but perhaps he was thinking to prolong the half so as to abuse his Mighty Blow or maybe the clock just wasn't on his side. This is where things start to go wrong for the Underworld.

The 13th Doomwheel marks all his men and dodge-lines are secured. The ballcarrier flies down and the ball flies, miraculously, into a mercenary rat ogre's comfy hands. A foul (demanded by my playbook's unholy pages) on the right, completely irrelevant side of the field by the Skaven results in a badly hurt for Law's lineman Backup Killer lineman of doom.

Rest of the half goes like this: Law can't really get his players in position to knock loose the ball because it's a slugfest with everyrat covering everyrat else. Next few turns result in Undercheeser goblin badly hurt, another one knocked out, and a blitzer badly hurt. The rat ogre mercenary frenzies his way to freedom whenever it looks like he's got people covering him. He might've been able to score via frenzy since law put some players in front of him rather than to his side/behind, but I forget to do blitz. Law successfully takes out any gutter runners that the ball could have been handed off to in time and so the half ends.

0-0 at halftime.

-----------------

The Undercheesers showcase a special center-oriented defensive positioning to start the half. They get a free blitz turn and the ball unfortunately is going to land close to the line of scrimmage, but thankfully the 13th Doomwheel had a nice defensive positioning that meant a simple blitz wouldn't allow a cage to be formed without many dodge rolls. A goblin catcher gets into position and calls his buddy over! Unfortunately the excessive dodge rolls prove to be too much even for Stunty and the buddy gets badly hurt.

Another goblin's knocked out straight away on the actual turn 9. And then another one's badly hurt. Law knocks out 3 of my players in a one turn equalizer right away.

So, entering turn 10, 6 players have been taken out and law has used 2 rerolls. I form a solid cage on the right side. Some scuffling for the ball occurs, but the nature of a cage's positioning, and maybe a little bit of luck, results in better blocks for me. 1-2 more of the Undercheesers crumble to the floor and the cage moves upwards, with the Undercheesers on the floor. The score is pretty much assured by turn 12, barring some miracle dice or a big mistake from me.

1-0 to the Skaven

In the final turn, law decides not to go for the Throw-Teammate 1 turner. I think he should have gone for it, even tho it probably would have had like a 10% chance of working, since I covered all the lines and even put a few players on his Warpstone Troll (AFAIK, much like a regular pass roll, a Modified 1, not an unmodified 1, can be a failure), and since the ball did not land in an ideal position. Law says it was actually impossible tho because he didn't have enough movement to even attempt it.

Good game, law!

[notjarvis]

Never got around to writing a Report for what was Frankly a nuts game, where a second 1-1- Draw felt almost like a victory for the DElves after the preceding 16 turns.

Dark Elves get inducements, so take Morg N Thorg, a Basic Assassin, and Some Bloodweiser babes.

Amazons Elect to kick off.
Delves receive pick up the ball and do little other than stun the odd player.
On Defence, the Amazons first three blocks go Injure a Blitzer, Stun a Lineman, Injure a Blitzer, and a turn or two later the Merc Assassin is killed.
Dark Elves Drive up the pitch, KO ing a couple of players in response, and eventually manage to score around turn 4-5 with 7 players on the pitch (another was KOd)
1-0 To DElfs, but their Ko'd players don't return and so they are down to 9 midway through the first half.
The Amazons drive, and another Delf is Ko'd but the attempt to score is spoiled when a player with catch fails to receive a handoff (double 1), and worse the ball scatters off-field. and comes back in where the Delfs can make it safe enough for the rest of the half

Half Time! 1-0 to the Dark Elves. but again they fail their KO rolls so they start defending the second half with 8 on the field

This time on Offence the Amazon's make no mistake, and helped by a thrown rock which knocks down a Dark Elf player, push through to score in short order, injuring another Delf on the way, whilst another got Kod dodging out of a tackle zone.

1-1 to the Amazons, and the Delfs are receiving, but since none of the THREE! KO'd players (helped by Babes lest we forget) recover, so the Delfs start their offence with 6 on the field.
In hilarity rubbing salt into the wound sort of way - The Dark Elves are immediately reduced to 5 as another Thrown rock from the crowd injures one of the few remaining players. The Dark Elves have 5.
They send Morg and a Blitzer up the sideline in an attempt to try a risky throw and score.
Obviously the Blitzer I had pegged as receiver was KO'd by one of the Amazons.
The Delfs try a Pass to Morg, which fails, but it scatters in his tackle zone who is quickly surrounded by amazons, but he does a sterling job of not falling over and disrupting the Amazons' attempts to collect and throw the ball down-field, until the last turn when they try a pass to score and the catch is (yet again) failed.
The 4 Remaining Delfs leave the pitch to a heros welcome.

Overview.
A fun game, coloured by absurd dice throughout.
Amazons would have won comfortably if they didn't have shocking catching luck. Morg proved the thorn really which managed to scrape a draw, as the Zons struggled to put down the Big Guy, whilst having sterling success removing everyone else...

Dice
A fascinating game on a number of levels from the dice.

Surprisingly the Elves broke armour more regularly than the Amazons (+17 2D6 versus +3 probability. but with low numbers of successful blocks, they didn't manage more than a KO from the 7 times they broke through (although 4 Kos in 7 rolls is fairly lucky).
From 9 times the Amazons broke armour - there were 4 Injuries and 3 KOs, only one of those rolls being Mighty Blow assisted! which is pretty lucky (to get 8+ on 2D6 should happen ~ 42% of the time - this was 78% of the time (lol)).
This was exacerbated by the Delfs failing 6 consecutive KO recoveries (even though they had bloodweiser babes), leaving them significantly short handed as the game wore on.

On the Block Dice, the Amazons had a bit of an advantage too with the most frequent Dice being Defender Stumbles/Defender Down, and least frequent being Skull (only 1 in 10 dice being a skull or so)

D6 was poor for both sides, with -2.22 for the Zons versus -9.13 for the Delfs. the delfs D6 dominated by their KO recovery, whilst the Zons were dominated by their shocking catching which denied them at least 2 TDs (1/8 success, but 3 of them were failed interceptions to be fair)

Aftermath
On the plus side no Dark Elves have been permanently damaged yet so I don't have to sack any. A line-man misses the next game I think, but that's it.

Comedy Moment of the game
The Delfs haul 6 bodies onto the field for a last try, and immediately see another player taken out by a thrown rock> The crowd having a finely tuned sense of adding insult to injury.......

[Red Lion Three]

Nice review. To get two rocks in one game was just ridiculous. At least there wasn't a pitch invasion to finish everyone else off...

[Gandalf]

Ha... reminds me of when I played moose I think it was, almost every kick-off roll involved the crowd damaging his team somehow.

Nice match reports! I especially love Abom's madcap style and bonus images. I will try and do one for my match yesterday, though it was a bit of a blur.

[id3nt1ty]

For reference, Gandalf's definition of blur doesn't include the first 90 seconds of his (and probably some of my) turns.

[lawastooshort]

Nice write up Abom, thanks.

I played very poorly, whereas you played well: I can’t remember any particular mistakes from you apart from fouling with a storm vermin at one point rather than a linerat.

Not scoring in turn 4 was just a result of me not thinking it through properly, a silly mistake.

Because of the blitz and not really thinking very well I’d managed to use all 3 rerolls by the second turn of the second half!

Technically I could have attempted the throw team mate but I think it would have taken a 3+ dodge with dodge, 3+ pick up, 2 x 2+ GFIs, 3+ hand off, 2+ Really Stupid, 6+ (??? There were 3 tackle zones on Bowie) Throw, probably 5+ landing which hopefully wouldn’t hit a skaven, 3 x 3+ dodge with dodge, dodge and 2 x 2+ GFI, although if the landing didn’t scatter near enough the endzone (let’s call it 50% chance but I think it’s less) the poor gobbo wouldn’t have been able to make it anyway, without a team reroll. I am having some motivation issues with the team this season so I didn’t attempt it.

[Raveen]

Hey, it was only 3 and I did kill a wardancer!

[Gandalf]

Rav, I don't even know what you're referring to now, what does "it was only 3" mean? If you're going to go on about gloriously failing to kill a wardancer then at least start your post with something relevant!

id feel free to fill in any missing things, a lot went on so I'm going off the back of the log file & memory (which is a bit impaired at the moment).

Right then, Monday Night Football on the training pitch....

The Fables, armed with a couple of mercenaries, a wizard and assorted other stuff, turned up to play the Everglade Wanderers, who clearly weren't taking their opponents seriously as they hosted them on the training pitch. Perhaps they should've played at a proper venue and an evening kick-off as their efforts were hampered by Very Sunny weather.

The elves set up to score quickly - a plan that quickly falters as the ball is intercepted! Safe Throw never seems to work out for me... to celebrate getting the ball, the necromantics Badly Hurt Alan. Such is the way of this world. Unfortunately the ball was in the hands of someone entirely unsuited to the role; the elves got the ball loose and threw it backwards so that their main thrower could try again. The pass didn't quite make it leaving Bufkin with a chance to pick up the loose ball, which he failed to do. At the third time of asking the elves managed an error-free play, successfully picking it up and throwing it downfield to Ecthelion the Wardancer for a score. 1-0 on turn 4.

Drive 2, the elves kick off and get a Blitz! They do KO someone and get some players near where the ball is due to land, however as that is the touchline they stayed back and hoped for a lucky bounce, but it bounced out of play instead. Soon after Ecthelion attempts a leap, fails, and Badly Hurts himself instead. Post-match he revealed this was to protect himself as he had just levelled up but it's more likely he's an overconfident show-off. The necromantics try to hit some elves but it's hard work, they are slippery folk. The ball carrier gets isolated and wrestled to the ground, however the pass out from danger failed due to the sun. Never mind, the necros can't get the ball safe so the elves try it again on the next turn and clear a path for some passing/handoff action (and a successful GFI!) and it's 2-0 on turn 6.

With only 2 turns left id is unable to get one back or injure anyone but does manage a pass as his ghouls are both heading for level 4.

The second half starts with yet another Elf kick-off. Both teams get an extra re-roll which Fables use on their very first roll of the half. They fail to pick the ball up but it's too far away for the elves to disrupt. Eventually they pick it up but don't get great blocking luck and Altonmar inflicts the first of two Badly Hurts that he manages in total. But what's this? Bigby Wolf shows off his all-round silky skills by first stunning an elf who happened to be in the way, then catching a pass before leaping over the heads of the confused elves ("I didn't know other teams could leap" one was heard muttering) to get one back. 2-1 with I think 6 turns left.

The elves receive and the Necromantics get a blitz this time! The ball due to land just inside the elf half next to one of the LoS elves. A bunch of players swarm there but the catch is failed and a touchback results. They set up for a quick TD and the Necros mark up. The elves get really cocky and try and score a ludicrous AG5-based TD (the plan was catching in 2 TZ's and walking straight through the gap with no regard the markers) however the pass goes awry and goes straight into the hands of Fairy Godmother! The necros promptly works some space on their left flank, hand off to Bukin and with a couple of GFI's equalise on turn 12! 2-2

So it's all set up for a grand finale. The ref increases the stakes by winding the clock on a turn, 3 turns to score. The elves receive, destroy the LoS opposition and send a player down the middle, and two down the flanks. Everyone is in place to either receive the ball, pass the ball, protect the ball carrier or just hit someone on the front line. The entire necromantic team get back to mark the three possible receivers. Wallprancer decides now is his moment to shine, and he clears one of the markers away with a frenzied blitz (I forgot that player even had frenzy....). Despite the sun, the pass worked, the TD was scored, and along with a one-tastic last turn each it finished 3-2 to the Woodies.

-------------------------------------------------------

Funny moment of the game (for me at least)

I can't remember where but there was one point where Bigby Wolf had the ball and ended his turn standing right next to one of my players. Cue much wailing/cursing. I think overall I lost less to poor time management than my opponent, which is quite a rare event. On a day with 3 Time Lords playing, the match with only 1 actually took longer. id is welcome to apply to join Abom, la & myself as RT's Time Lords.


DICE

D6, I had 2.58 and Fables had -4.4. I was expecting me to have a higher score than that, as I didn't have a double 1 all game, until the very last turn. Also my D6 score was influenced by failing 4 out of 12 Take Root rolls, which didn't have much of an effect on the game, if any. In fact my worst luck probably came from the 1 in 18 intercept chance and the pass at 2-1 being inaccurate and landing right in the arms of an opposition player. However most things I tried worked out, even if only at the second attempt.

2D6 - we both would've expected about 9 armour breaks, but I got 10 and id3 got 8. Injury roll luck was *broadly* similar with both players suffering 2 injuries. One of my injuries was a failed leap so no SPP for id there.

Block dice - over half my rolls were both down or defender down. Most of my team had block or wrestle so that worked out pretty well. I had 62% success to id3's 42% success, that gap seems too big to be solely accounted for by more skills & more block dice being rolled on average.

One of id's mercs gest MVP....

SUMMARY

That turned into a really exciting game. My love for silly moves led to the equalizer but the necros still had to make it stick. The end was really tense and could easily have gone wrong. If the dice had been a bit more even it could easily have been a draw. GG WP

Oh and Alan's record this season is KO, Badly Hurt, Badly Hurt. Would you believe he is now only joint most-injured player on my team? Sort it out people.

[id3nt1ty]

Good write up.

THE EMPEROR, my newly signed Flesh Golem managed the intercept. 4,4,2,9 with no Block does not make an ideal ball carrier, and whilst I did try and get him in a cage, my Guard players were unable to get to him so it was (literally) a skip through the park for those bloody elves to mark off the incomplete cage and get a 2 dice block on him.

And as for Bigby wolf running the ball next to one of your players... I had words with him and his excuse was he hasn't gotten used to leap yet...

It was a good game, and close too. Could have gone either way at the end.

[Red Lion Three]

Rav - one of my relatives, who was somewhat ill last week, has taken a turn for the worse this week. It is uncertain how well they will recover and our house is currently full of family. I think that I will have to ask to reschedule this Sunday's game. I don't yet know how available I will be next week; it really depends on how things go with the treatment. Sorry about this. I hope that you are enjoying spending time with your newsome twosome!

[Raveen]

No worries RL. Id, is there any chance of a reschedule so I don't get further behind?

[Moose]

Just spoken to ee and the idiots apparently fucked up reinstalling my line , basicly no internet for me untill Tuesday at the earliest. So yea another missed match for me.

[Abomination]

Roger, Moose! Thanks for letting me know ahead of time.

Guess I'll get to the back of the line for the eventual reschedule.

[id3nt1ty]

Why don't Rav and Abom play? That's week seven's Hambridge Archers vs The 13th Doomwheel out of the way?

[Raveen]

Sounds good to me. I predict the rats to win