And finally, we have the game that took forever to play - Idan's Elves vs. my Ogres!
It kicked off with a horrific run of rolls from me - injured snotlings, my mercenary bombardier blew himself up and general incompetence abounded. I knew Ogres would be tough/frustrating but this seemed too much. The Elves scored in turn 2 I think.
Next drive however, things improved a bit. The elves ran around a bit and positioned people for a future pass, but this meant there was a thinner line of elves for the ogres to push through, protecting a snotling with the ball, which they duely did. Also, 3 snotlings ganged up to get a 1 dice block on an elf, and injured her!!! Epic stuff from the ST1 guys. I think it was during this drive that I rolled an epic number of 5's (on 2D6) for armour rolls on my snotlings (they fail on 6+). Idan started to really hate those irrepressible 20,000 cost guys. Anyway I fell over the line on turn 6 to make it 1-1.
Idan had 2 turns to score before the half ended. He had 3 people downfield to recieve. My ogre did a 2xGFI to blitz the ball carrier. However on turn 8 Idan still managed to pick it up and get it to a guy who could run it in. Before running it in though he decided to beat up another snotling - and rolled a double both down!
So at the end of the first half it remained 1-1.
Second half started with the elves in possession. I can't remember some of the details but I think a pass failed in the region of my far right corner. A snotling picked it up, tried to pass it but fumbled it - but it was picked up (on a re-roll) by my ogre! However it was just the two of them back there, the elves quickly closed in. I had one turn to try and remedy the situation somewhat - but my first move was a blitzing ogre, who failed with his block (or a GFI - can't remember). This meant it was 6 elves vs 1 orge & a snotling... the elves duely got the ball and scored. 2-1 to the Elves.
Idan kicked off but it went out of bounds. I gave the ball to my ogre on the front line. With about 5 turns to score I hoped I could roll over the line. However, Idan engaged lame defensive tactics (boo hiss!!!
) and I was only able to trundle forward 2 turns a square. He made no effort to get the ball - simply to stall me and bash the odd rogue snotling. It came to my penultimate turn and I realised I needed to advance 3 squares to have a chance of a last turn score. This meant I needed to pull off a 5+ dodge, which I managed
On the last turn I had 4 ogres standing and 2 snotlings lying down. I needed a successful block followed by 2 dodges and 2 GFI's to score (odds on those 4 rolls are 7.7%). The block succeeded but the first dodge failed. Oh well!
I was quite pleased to only lose 2-1, and to get within reach of a draw too. I suffered 3 injured snotlings - two will be back the next game, the other misses the next one with a smashed collar bone. Normally this is cause for retirement, but not this time as strength 1 is the minimum strength value so the smashed collar bone has no effect.
Thankfully also MVP went to one of my ogres, and obviously you want to skill up your ogres rather than snotlings as they are a lot less prone to dying...
