Rolling Thunder BBL Season 7

[id3nt1ty]

Good day Coaches! I had written some fun fluff here yesterday related to how this was the seventh day of the seventh season of RT BBL. However, a divine act of Nuffle meant that all my fluff writing was lost. But it turns out this was a Good Thing. Whilst researching a bit more for the second writing of this weeks fluff, I discovered that I would have been spreading false prophesies about the First Coming of Nuffle. Of course, the sacred number of Nuffle is eleven, not seven, and it just goes to show that Coaches should always strive to better their understanding of our sacred game. So prepare yourselves! Dust off your play books, practise your probability or if you're Percy, try and dig out this week's fluff from your belly button.

Without further ado:
The Mighty Undercheeser vs Hambridge Archers
Will the Undercheesers make a sticky mess of the Archers, or will David Bowie come to a sticky end at the hands of Zara the Slayer? Will the winner be determined in touchdowns or players fouled?

Everglade Wanderers vs A Fistful of Boomstick
One of RTBBL's most experience teams against one of their least experienced teams. It is going to a be a tough match for the Undead as they lack any serious elf catching skills. However, there is a chance to make it into the history books as Alan has recovered from his latest injury and will be available for more attempts on his life.

The Orkly Ducklingz vs The Brave Harts
The Brave Harts are currently leading the qualifiers for the Parma-Violence Cup with 19 injuries, but they are closely followed by the Ducklingz who have inflicted 18. You'd be making a safe bet if you put money on PirlOrc and the crew ignoring the ball this game in favour of causing as much damage as they can. The Amazons on the other hand can't really afford not to play the ball, as they'll struggle to cause injuries against this more armoured team.

Bad For Thy Elf vs Fables!
In contrast, the Dark Elves and Necromantic are joint bottom of the Cup Qualifiers with just five injuries each. Despite their name, the Dark Elves can probably be forgiven because they are elves, but also because they were fresh team for this season. With the Werewolves' Claw, the Fables probably expected to do better than they have and two rookie Werewolves starting mid season probably aren't going help matters. The jury is still out on which way this match will go, but it's certainly likely to be intense.

[Gandalf]

Speaking of the cup, you should put up a cup qualification table picture, Comish! Or maybe there already is one and I'm just missing it...

I'll do this in BBDB properly at some point. As for this season, since the qualification criteria is casualties inflicted, you can just go to the RT BBL Season 7 page and sort by the last column Taking into account games played, I'd say it looks like Wood Elves, Dark Elves or Fables! to miss out; at least I have the alternative qualification route of winning the league.

[Gandalf]

Speaking of the cup, you should put up a cup qualification table picture, Comish! Or maybe there already is one and I'm just missing it...

I'll do this in BBDB properly at some point. As for this season, since the qualification criteria is casualties inflicted, you can just go to the RT BBL Season 7 page and sort by the last column Taking into account games played, I'd say it looks like Wood Elves, Dark Elves or Fables! to miss out; at least I have the alternative qualification route of winning the league.

Update - click the competition page link and you can see the cup qualification in graphical format You wouldn't believe how long that took to do....

[id3nt1ty]

How did you predict the casualties?

[Gandalf]

Simple calculation... it assumes your casualties/game rate carries on through your remaining games.

[Abomination]

Heyo moose, I'm here chilling before the games if you wanna try to finish our 2nd half

[DaigaroOgami]

Orcs prove armour is lovely and much more use than a turquoise bikini.



So, the 'Zon's invite the Ducklingz over for a lesson in etiquette, who start the lesson early by insisting the Orcs start with the ball, even going so far as putting the ball straight into Gerty's hands.

The ladz however, still fueled on the injustice of PirlOrc's injury, treat the ladies with as much respect as an elf, their own fault for having all that dodge about. Gerty manages to create some space for herself out on the wing, letting her teamates cage up around her and stalling long enough for PirlOrc to limp up and join in. Mandela, Percy and Leroy start a chorus of alternating screams and 'BOING' noises on the LoS as Amazons alternately leave the field KO'ed or (annoyingly) stand firm.

Red Lion get's unlucky on an attempted cage break and leaves enough space for Gerty to get rid of the ball to someone else so she can focus back on hurting people instead. Orcs score on turn 8 with 5 ladies left on on the pitch, all but one lying down muttering something about 'chivalry is dead'. There's just enough time left in the half for the gobbo's to get their obligatory bashing, and even Percy elects to go in early for his half time oranges.

1-0 to the Ducklingz at half time.

Half time oranges must've been good 'uns as all 6 KO'ed players from both sides return for the Amazon drive. The ladies try a cautious cage & plod down the Ducklingz left, but are repelled by Gerty's rage, and the amazon's note she's in prime position to sack the ball carrier. Amazons switch to the right but (Percy thinks) they make a slight positional error and give the orcs time to block them in with a strong LoS and two columns stacked with tackle and (ST5 blodger) Leroy. The 'zons spend a few turns teasing the Orcs into stepping up the columns, but Leroy bats back the timid attack, with PirlOrc making a few cheeky blitzes and then running away to hide, sorry, tactifully take position, behind Leroy.

Then we get the play of the game - the Ducklingz make a slight positioning error, and the 'Zon ball carrier goes all Gung Ho and 2D-against blitzes, (gets double defender downs), punching a hole in the Duckling defence and makes a break for the endzone. Beautiful stuff. Even PirlOrc nodded in approval as he stood motionless watching the ladywith a ball sprint by.

Sadly for the Zon's Gerty had already fallen back to play sweeper... she lost her marker and flew like a patriot missile to free the ball, which thankfully bounced right next to Leroy. the ex-ballcarrier was stunned so didn't have enough time to recover and try to score again.

1-0 to the Orcs. D6 were even, 2d6 were skewed heavily to the orcs, but only 3 injuries from 24 armour breaks (not including the foul)(with a lot of Mighty Blow) makes me think all the Nuffle -love went on armour breaks and ran out on the injuries.

Block dice were pretty even; both of us throwing defender down the least. I got extremely fed up of hearing the stand firm 'BOING' from the lads with no tackle.

Reginald the solitary Line orc got MVP for out-casualtying Gerty. Makes sense.

Good game Red lion

[Red Lion Three]

The Orcs are the first team in 6 matches to force the Zons into "not a draw"! The run comes to an end at PirlOrc's hands. GG Daigaro.

[Gandalf]

What looked on paper to be a horrific matchup for moose turned out to be exactly that. No tackle, and the block he did have was largely negated by wrestle/block.



It was exciting stuff at the start as moose hassled me a lot, I didn't score until turn 6. Then things just started to run away a bit. I had the better players for running, passing and bashing, I'd be very impressed if any coach managed not to lose this matchup.

Dice were fairly equal, but I didn't loose a single kickoff, and nuffle awarded the undead mvp to a star player. Alan got injured for the 4th appearance in a row and got a sympathy vote as MVP!!! So he will be getting a second skill!! Woot

Dat 4th TD was the elfiest nonsense I've ever pulled off. It was just ridiculous, and yes probably bordering on cheating. Also, AG5+dodge is just stupid.

[notjarvis]

Dark Elves outbash Necro's in close encounter!

Dark Elves get some inducements so take an extra blitzer as one is off injured. They are already taking (two merc linemen)

Weather is fine.
First half
- Necro team elects to kick off. Elfs push up their right and cage up. with receivers ran into the Necro half for insurance.
- Necro's make inroads into the cage a bit, And injure the Witch elf on their first turn - (she's badly hurt)
- Delfs respond by injuring a Wight (who annoyingly regenerates), but eventually are ground to a halt and are forced to elfball it to one of the blitzers who runs in to score on turn 3.
1-0 to the Delfs early in the first half.
- Delfs kick off to the middle of the necro half, but immediately get a blitz! Allowing them to run players (including the ST4 blitzer into the Necro half)
- this has upset the apple cart, and though a werewolf picks up the ball, he's taken out by the ST4 Blitzer (bones mccoy)
- the ball is loose in the Necro half, the Dark Elves get it and try to run free, but are tackled near the line.
- Bigby wolf gets injured in the mellee, but again he regenerates.
- the clock has run down too much for the NEcros to score though, so the half ends.
second half
- Dark elves have 10 as another player is Ko'd
- Dark elfs manage to tackle the ball a couple of times, but it falls fairly kindly for the necros, at one point a zombie catches it and drives down to within 3 or 4 squares of the Dark Elf line,
- The Necro's try to handoff to an unmarked werewolf to score, but even with a reroll they fail the 3+, and the Dark Elves manage to defend.

1-0 at the end

Overview
A fun and open game which swung a number of times. Could have easily been a range of scores with a bit of different luck here or there.

Dice
Dark Elves had extraordinarily good blocking dice, with 18 out of 61 rolls being defender down. This led to a frankly extraordinary for Delfs 67% block success rate, versus the Fables! 39%
Dark Elves didn't fare so well on the D6 with -1 probability to the Fables 12 (the dark elves dice being dented by rolling 3 1s in 5 pick up attempts). But that didn't matter so much as their superior blocking luck allowed them to defend.
2D6 was fairly even, but again the Dark Elves were pretty lucky to cause 4 injuries from breaking armour 9 times (2 of the bastards regenerated though)

[Raveen]

Did you at least get to the end of the game, Gandalf/Moose?

[id3nt1ty]

Good write up, notjarvis. The Fables truly were feeble last night...

[notjarvis]

Good write up, notjarvis. The Fables truly were feeble last night...

To be honest was a bit of a statistical freak. No way should the Dark Elve's blocking game be so dominant. The fables did nothing particularly wrong tactically as far as I could see, was just difficult to get through when your ball carrier gets single dice tackled twice :-)

[DaigaroOgami]

Feeeebles!!

I told you, it's Nuffle's curse for being so mean to PirlOrc.

Abom & Moose got their match finished and Gandalf/Moose completed their's too.

[lawastooshort]

Wow good work Moose