Sunday, November 6, 2011

They can take our victories, but they can never take our Haggis!

Big Thanks to 'SierraKiloBravo' and Endgame in Oakland for putting on and hosting a great Blood Bowl Tournament.

The rules were:

100 TV teams, then add 3 regular skills (no more than 2 repeats), 1 double skills and 1 mutation, no player getting more than 1 of these extra skills.  There was also a modified Kick off table, the double 1's being everyone on both teams were turned into rookie werewolves for the drive!  -Never happened in any of my games, but I did hear someone call out that it happened to them.

For my line up, I had 2 trolls, a chainsaw, bomber, fanatic, 8 goblins and the star fanatic Fungus the Loon (who I was calling Fergus the Loon). I took 2 bribes, 2 rerolls and a cheerleader.  For the extra skills, I gave my mutation as Claws for a troll, doubles skill was Hail Mary Pass for the bomber, and then Guard on the other troll, Mighty Blow for the fanatic, and dodge for the chainsaw.

I took the new Impact! Scotlings and ran them as Goblins- the 'North Kilt-town Sheep Shaggers' from the previous post. It occurred to me, that I've never actually played goblins before. I've used goblins in orc teams of course, I love them on orc teams! Great utility pieces- a real asset to an orc team.  And I've used them in my Underworld team last league: also great utility pieces, but when they're 3/4 of your team?  They lose some of that asset and begin to be a liability... as I quickly found out.

First game was against LoonieShaman's Chaos Pact team.  I have 2 trolls? He raised me 3 Big guys. Ouch.
I'll have to pause to say I'm not a morning person. I'm semi-nocturnal.  I tend to get to sleep about 4am and wake sometime before noon.  This tourney started at 10am and was 2 hours away from home.  I was a bit out of it ;)  But my opponent was a real sport and even helped me with some finer points to stunty teams, putting up with my foggy brain.  We played on table 1, a nice looking pitch. I was happy about that, as I was sure it'd be my only chance to play on it that day.
Game ended 2-0 in his favor.  Highlights: he injured a troll early on, but I returned the favor by injuring 2 Big Guys. Taking Dodge on my chainsaw saved him several times.

Game 2 saw me facing Dwarves.  Ouch.  Probably the worst match up for Goblins.. say goodbye to the dodge that saved me so often in the last game.  Great opponent- we had a very good game. Twice I tried to throw a ball carrying scotling, but both times the giant tried to eat him! Ah well.  Game ended 1-0 in his favor, if I recall correctly.
Look at all these Scotlings laying down on the job! Get up!
These dwarves were not your typical dwarves either! I've never seen so many go for its and dodging with a dwarf team!  Even dwarf blockers were dodging and often successfully!
The chainsaw was particularly ineffective this game.  Curse Quality Dwarven armor! 
-You can see a giant (troll) has a skill written on his base. I decided to make things easier for opponents and lightly painted the additional skills on the bases so it'd be easy to know which are the upgraded players.

Game 3 put me against my first fast & agile opponent. High Elves.  I like the high elf team. I have a team I converted last year (and have yet to find the time to paint) but I think the high elf team is very fun and is under rated. Maybe not be as fast or squirelly as the other elves, but they're fast & agile enough and very stable. 
He took block for 2 linemen, nerves of steel for a catcher and big hands thrower. 
I had to kick to him, and was worried about placing too many secret weapons on the pitch only to have him score fast and lose them, so I started with just the chainsaw and the bomber (who's so far in the back field he is out of the picture).  

Nuffle played many jokes on my little randy jokesters and this game saw one of the biggest.  First turn, my first action I Hail Mary Bombed the bomb (spicy haggis) directly behind the line of elves, it scattered of course, since was a HMPass, and landed directly on an Elf head, and being an elf, he caught it, and threw it right behind my troll... uh-oh... but wait! the troll snags it from the air! an Interception!  Whoo-hoo! He then makes to lob it back over, but I guess that Haggis just looked too tasty.. he fumbles! No elf was injured, but stuffing the haggis into his mouth, it exploded and killed the big fellow!  Wow what a start!  Well, that's goblins for you!

The game continued on, and the elves scored, as they enjoy doing- with the odd belief that it is the focus of the game, or something like that.  And with just a turn left in the first half, I managed to pull off the one turn throw team mate for the touch down play! 1-1 at the half.  Second half was much the same- he got the ball from me and scored, then I made a fling and tied it up.  Late 2nd half and he has possession of the ball, he runs an elf into the end zone, makes a move to throw a short pass for the winning score, only old pappy stands between them right in front of the receiving elf. it's turn 8 of the 2nd half, he throws, it's accurate, its.. intercepted! Pappy snags the ball in his hat! Saving the Sheep Shaggers from yet another defeat! This places him as the MVP of the tournament in my mind. 
Old Pappy intercepts the ball! -Picture as appeared in the North Kilt-town Cryer.
Luck comes around, Nuffle evened things out for my bomb-hungry troll!
Game ends as a tie 2-2. Great hard-fought game. 

Last game, facing the Dark Elves. She had an interesting team. Just 2 blitzers and no assassin, but 3 rerolls plus a leader reroll. I couldn't expect a lot of turn over luck.  This was a serious go-for-it team.  On one turn I counted 9 go for its, all successful. I have to learn how to not roll 1's! I always bite turf when I go for it ;) 

This game started with Nuffle laughing at me again.  First turn, first action I blitzed the dark elf leader with my chainsaw... rolled a 1. Uh-oh... reroll: 1. ouch!  Break armor and killed himself.  Within a few turns she'd scored and I set up to even the score.  No such chance.  I got the ball taken and she scored on me.  2-0.  

Second half I went for a fast score- knew I'd have to, so no weapons on the field. It worked, I got a 1 turn throw team mate score.  Next I did get the ball back, and threw a scotling with it, and was in such a good position now, having 2 fanatics on the field, I got greedy. I stalled 'just for a few turns' to clear the pitch more. I knew I had to score, but I had a blitzer cornered on the edge of the sidelines- I had a 2 die block chance to push her out into the crowds.. ok, 1 more action.. then i'd score. I was a bit nervous, since I had no rerolls left...but I threw the dice:  Skull & defender down.  Blitzer has block of course. ouch.  I then get the ball stolen and soon she makes the score 3-1. Game ends.  Well, that's what I get for being a greedy git :) 

In this shot a bomb was thrown at the mass of elves and landed just right, only managed to knock one down, no damage done. I suspect the troll had earlier eaten the only explosive Haggis left that had any kick to it. 
-Also, the kilt-lifting Scotling between the two giants is fouling the elf with 4 assists... the less said about this the better ;) 

Other bits:
Here you can see the tournament dice that were given to players to keep, a nice pair of green dice with an orc  skull on them.  My Haggis bribes must have pleased the refs, I never had a bribe fail!  I couldn't resist painting up a team tartan ball the night before. 

I finished up dead-last, right about where I expected to be... someone has to do it!  And I got a couple Greebo werewolves as a prize, so should be fun to paint. 

Something was going on across the street that day.. either that or the Predator was hoping to make some money being induced as a star player...

Thanks to all for a fun tourney!


8 comments:

Dr. Willett's Workshop said...

Super report and gold metal for best post title!

Spacejacker said...

Great photos and report. Blood Bowl is confirmed in my mind as the greatest game ever to come out of the UK.

The Angry Lurker said...

Excellent read and pictures, thoroughly enjoyed it.

Michael Awdry said...

Ahh Bloodbowl, now I get it! Sounds like a great way to spend an afternoon.

Tristan M said...

Sounds like great fun! Scotlings as goblins seem perfect to me! Glad you enjoyed - just remember that interception comes before accuracy - as silly as that is.

Laughing Ferret said...

Glad you guys enjoyed the report :) Glad you liked the title Dr.W ;)

I agree Spacejacker- if not the best, one of the best games, and easily my favorite game GW ever began- I won't start in on my dumbfoundedness of why they don't support or continue to invest in the game, but probably just as well they don't.

It was great fun, Blood Bowl always is.
Interception roll first? Never noticed that- definitely counter intuitive since chance to fumble (which is in the roll for accurate throw) would come first considering the thrower's hands is where the ball starts. Odd.

Dan R. said...

Great summary and a great tourney. You had some wild games there! See you at the next one. :-)

Dan R. said...

Yes, that's right, you roll for interceptions first. It's mentioned in the Q&A section at the very back of the CRP. They admit that it's odd, but suggest you don't think about it too hard.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...