RT BBL S5 - Final Week - 10th May

[Raveen]

Off knocking rocks?

[notjarvis]

I'm away too the 29th.

Is it worth moving the one of the Rest weeks to that week?

[lawastooshort]

Off knocking rocks?

That sounds filthy.

[DaigaroOgami]

That's what sh...

ahem

Those two are scared of rocks. We're drinking beer for birthday celebrations.

[id3nt1ty]

Scared of rocks?!?

[Raveen]

PC is playing silly buggers so I might be a bit late.

[lawastooshort]

Okay good luck Rav

[Raveen]

Vampires Suck (Geddit?)

So, I'll admit to going into this one with a bit of trepidation. Vampires are a subpar race but La is a good coach and Khemri are nothing to shout about either.

I won the toss and elected to receive. The plan was to break as many Thralls as possible and score a late TD. La kicked off and I started hitting. I tried to injure a vampire with my Tackle/PO/MB Blitz Ra but no joy. I gathered the ball and decided to march straight up the pitch. The Vampires were hungry and not a turn went by without one or more Vamps failing Bloodlust and munching on a Thrall. After a few turns a TD seemed like a formality as I was so far up in players due to knocked out Thralls. Those Vamps though, they really are a bugger and normal caging tactics just don't work. A couple of times I was caught out by Hypnogaze opening up a hole in a normally solid formation. And that Ag 5 Vamp is a real bugger. Needs to redie a bit If you ask me.

Anyway, we ended up with La wizarding my ball carrier down forcing me to pick up on my turn 8 to score. Luckily I was able to push the Vamp players out of the way and got lucky enough to get the TD. La had one turn left so effectively got two goes at recovering his KO'd players. Enough of them returned that he was able to field a full team in the second half.

I kicked to the mid pitch and La collected the ball and pushed far down my left wing. My formation started to drift over but I was too slow to stop the play as Hypnogaze again got the better of me. Luckily for me La needed to score quickly to avoid getting bogged down (at least, if he hadn't scored quickly he was going to start running out of pitch as my Guardians lumbered into range).

This left me six turns to score a second and win the game. By this point the Vampires started to self destruct again and I was running out of Thralls to punch. By the end two Vampires had failed to bite a thrall and decided to can it for the week. The last vamp was still able to blitz my ball carrier on the last turn requiring yet another pick up to score. Again, Nuffle smiled on me and I got the second TD in my last turn.

The dice felt like they were horrible for La although BBM suggests they weren't too bad. I suspect that decent dodge rolls probably balanced out the horrible bloodlust rolls in the figures but on the pitch failing Bloodlust is worse as it can wreak havoc on your play. La was unfailingly good with his positioning and whilst the game should have felt easy by the end of each half, it never did. A win I feel like I earned and will cherish.

[id3nt1ty]

The Sons of the Silver Sword elected to receive, so the Fables set up with a spread of tackle zones across the field. After a deep kick the Sons gathered the ball, passed it forward and protected the ball carrier well with a good screen. Bigby and Baba Yaga went chasing off into the Sons back field to try and threaten the ball carrier, whilst the rest of the Fables shuffled about a bit to prevent the Sons from moving anywhere by sideways. The Sons moved the ball around a bit to try and make some space, and the Fables tried to hem them in and beat them up a bit. The Fables managed to knock the ball lose a few times, but couldn't take advantage of it and the Sons defended the lose ball well. In the end, a zombie managed to block the ball carrier, a Ghoul picked up the ball and scampered off to score in turn 7.

The Fables received the kick in the second half, and attempted to push the Sons Loaner Catcher off the field. I foolishly re-rolled double both down against a player without block to defend down and KOing the elf anyway. A zombie then rolled attacker down, leaving me out of position The Sons didn't take advantage of my mistake, but kept up a good defensive line instead. I then tried to Frenzy another catcher, but messed that up too - leaving the ball carrier defended by Beast. At this point Red Lion chose to use his Wizard, fireballing a group of players but only knocking Beast down. The ball carrier survived a blitz by some Lineelves, and then retreated to the other side of the pitch in a proper cage. Red Lion was unable to blitz the ball carrier, but absolutely swarmed my cage with players, preventing me from going anywhere. The Fables did some hitting and the ball carrier escaped. By this point, the Sons lack of skills was really starting to show - especially as I'd been targeting the only players with block and injured them off the pitch. Bigby was in position to receive a handoff and score, but the hand off failed and I'd used up all my re-rolls by this point. It looked like the Sons were going to score an equaliser, but they weren't able to pass the ball away and the ball scatter to a Fables player. After a little more bashing, the Fables scored in their turn 16 and that was that.

Well played Red Lion! The dice looked fairly even, and I certainly had to think about keeping my ball carrier safe. I think perhaps you should have take a more aggressive offensive, by running your catchers into my back field and forcing me to spread out. By keeping your players together like that you lose your biggest advantages - your agility and speed.

[Gandalf]

Pre-match - Gandalf picks up Morg'n'Thorg, Bomber Dribblesnot and a babe. Really glad to have Morg as I had an Ogre sitting out today so he was a super-able replacement.

First half

Chaos win the toss and elect to receive. They caged up on their right, the ogres tried to block their path whilst shenannigans happened on the right - including attempted fouls, bomber dribblesnot injuring his team-mates and an intercepted bomb. Impressively he managed to last all the way to turn 3 - three times better than his last appearance on the Ogre team! The ogres mostly stood around being boneheaded. Chaos then showed off their ball handling skills by running/passing it to the other side and running free towards the line - however a double GFI was required to be out of reach of the nearest ogre and the second one failed, leading to the ball being by the sidelines. The latest snotling recruit, Son of Gandalf, picked the ball up but next turn was hit off the pitch. The ball stumbled to the approximate middle of Gandalf's half of the pitch.

The teams swarmed to where the ball was, we had a nice checkerboard effect going on for a while there. The melee swung one way then the other, until morg stamped his authority on it by... picking the ball up?! Well at AG3 and no bonehead, he was the premier ball handler on my side. He showed off by picking it up even when in one tackle zone. With time running out in the half, he set off up the pitch, and seeing the snotling-with-catch injured, the only realistic option left was to run it in himself. The ogres helped clear the way, and it looked like he would make it, despite having a chaos player hanging off each leg, when a 3rd chaos player came in and knocked him over with a 1 dice block! End of an exciting first half.

Second half

The ogres receive - the ball went out of play so the ball was given straight to Shrek (The Original), ball handler extraordinaire. A quagmire was formed in the central of the pitch with big bulky ogres and a variety of chaos players, who mostly seemed hell-bent on knocking Morg over. I expect they are sick of the sight of him in their games. Shrek (The Original) mostly managed to keep himself standing, occasionally joining in with pushing chaos players away. Meanwhile 3 snotlings ran around, trying to get into position to catch the ball, or just to mark players out of the game. This went on for quite a while, burning up all my re-rolls, until a chance appeared. To call it a half-chance would be an insult to half-chances anyway, but time was running out so the Ogres went for it anyway. Shrek (The Original) dodged clear from 2 tackle zones, into another one, and then launched a pass to the sole remaining snotling (of the 3 referred to earlier) who was standing in the end zone. The pass was not fumbled, and it soared through the air... before landing just short! A chaos ball handler duly came in to pick up the ball... but failed! With a re-roll! This left Faq The Pouch needing a dodge and a pickup in a tackle zone to score, which he did with style, rolling 6 then 6. 1-0 to the Ogres!

The Chaos had a slight chance of equalizing, but this chance was gone when the first action - to pick up the ball, failed. The Ogres had their first (and probably only) win of the season, and the crowd had been entertained in the process. In honour of his exceptional ball-handling skills, Faq The Pouch was awarded MVP.

Post game

As per usual I rolled a 6 for my winnings enabling me to purchase my 4th re-roll, whilst having enough money spare for a new ogre, should the worst happen. No level-ups as the only person to get any MVP's on my side was Faq The Pouch (who is only one SPP away from becoming my second level 3 snotling. Baffling.) It was a poor day for the ogres on the block front (see dice section) but them chaos guys are well-armoured, and it was an exchange they were glad to make for that rare honour of winning a game. The Chaos had a couple of level-ups I think - despite the lack of TD's they had injured loads of snotlings and even done two passes (show-offs).

Dice

The first half both teams had fairly ridiculous highs and lows which made for an entertaining time of it all, eg failed GFI's at crucial moments, a 5+ pickup, a one-dice block to stop Morg from scoring. It felt fitting to me that these levelled out into a 0-0 half.

The second half my D6 luck improved (bonehead failure were *really* rare) but my block dice were terrible (40 out of 89 rolls were attacker down or both down) which burnt up all my re-rolls (still managed 3 turnovers from failed blocks!), I try to save one for a TD move. Fortunately I didn't need it as I had the "always roll a 6" dice to hand.

Overall my D6 luck was better than the chaos (5.11), and the 2D6 were pretty close (Chaos win by 2.3). The Chaos block dice were slightly above average, whereas mine were poor. Saying that, I did feel that the snotlings went down even faster than normal, whereas the ogres suffered 0 ko's/injuries and often stood standing... so I would prefer the luck to be that way round.

[LtSpinx]

Sorry Daigaro but I managed to fall asleep on the sofa after work. Are you available for a game on Tuesday?

[Raveen]

Looking at the 29th: Daigoro, La, Id3 and Nj cannot play.

Happily Daigoro and Id3 have already played that week's game and La is sitting out.

Nj is due to play Wyld and Wyld is already committed for this week's catchup. I therefore propose that we move the Nj vs Wyld game to the second catchup week.

The alternative is, Id3 and Spinx play midweek and on this Sunday it's Daigoro vs Spinx and Wyld vs Nj.

Discuss amongst yourselves and let me know.

[lawastooshort]

Assuming Raveen you are going to do more of a match report later…

This was a tough match for the vampires, ending both halves with only 4-5 players on the pitch I think, and starting the game by KOing 3 of my own players in my first 2 turns. The dice weren’t that terribly unfair really, but the blood lusts went wrong too often and at the wrong times: in the second half two of my vampires left the pitch after blood lusting and then tripping up on a 2+ dodge. It certainly did feel like just one of those matches at points.

That said, both Rav’s scores came down to needing to succeed a AG2 Sure Hands pick up in the last turn of the half, so it could have been a different if somewhat unjust result, and the lads fought hard and very persistently. It might have seemed somewhat perverse to have gone for a two turn TD on my drive, but Vampires are somewhat perverse and don’t quite play like your normal team.

The dice certainly weren’t bad enough to be able to blame them, so it was nicely educational.


MVP went on a loner, so I hired him.

Need another match or three before I can afford enough thralls to get the fourth vampire, and probably need another reroll to support his blood lusts. Need a bit more team and coach development this season but expect to stick with them for next. Like Underworld, they are a team with different options that is very fun to play with. Not sure they are going to get competitive though.


Well played Rav – the undead shuffle on…

[Raveen]

I've updated my post with a summary

[Wyld Karde]

Actually Rav, I already played my catchup match against the Percys midweek, so I'm free to play NJ in the catchup.