The Turkey Bowl 2012: Godzilla v. King Kong: The Beasts' Feast

2012, The Turkey Bowl inaugural Blood Bowl event: the Beasts' Feast. 

At one end of the pitch: the low-cunning, the primordial punishers, Godzilla's Gators!

At the other end of the pitch, nature's new-comers, the beasts with brains, King Kong's Killers!

One night only in an exposition match for the ages!  Who will emerge triumphant? 

Will the Gators prove why they've been the apex predators since the days of the dinosaurs, or will the fresh young Apes earn their title of King showing that the new epoch belongs to primates?  We'll soon find out as the match is about to begin!

This Thanksgiving, be thankful the beasts are on the pitch and hope they don't come into the stands for you!

- My friend Bill wanted a chance to play some Blood Bowl over Thanksgiving, and wanted to test out a theory, to see if I just have bad dice luck when playing Blood Bowl, or if it's something more serious. 

The experiment would involve both of us using reverse die rolls when rolling skill tests.  So when rolling a d6, for something like a dodge, or to catch the ball, a result of 6 would count as 1, a 5 is a 2, a 1 is a 6, etc.  But we'd treat 2d6 armor & injury rolls, ball bouncing, kick off results, etc as normal.  He wanted to find out if I'd continue to roll low numbers, indicating the dice just wanted to roll low numbers, or if I'd roll high numbers and fail the tests, possibly indicating some bad karma I need to burn off- maybe I was a horrible person in a past life, like Andrew Jackson. 

He wanted to play the Gators, and I thought Apes vrs Reptiles would make for a fun theme, so the Apes once again played under the Human roster.  

For team construction we used the upcoming North America Team Championship guidelines, for Day 1, where you get 1 double roll skill and 2 regular roll skills with 1.1 million team builds.

The Gators -Lizardmen- took a Kroxigor with Break Tackle, 6 Saurus -one with block, and 4 skinks -one with Sure hands and 4 Re-rolls. 

The Apes -Human team- took an Ogre with Block, 4 Blitzers -one with guard, 3 catchers -one with block, a thrower & 3 linemen and 3 Re-rolls, a Cheerleader & an Assistant Coach. 

Pre-game: 

I won the fans roll so had +1 Fame. I won the kick off and elected to receive. 

I set up to try to take the Kroxigor down with my blocking Silverback, Kong.  My plan for the half was to keep control of the ball and score late, trying to eliminate the vital ball-carrying skinks. 

Shouldn't be a surprise with such rivals and all the publicity, as soon as the ball was kicked a riot broke out! 

This ate up a turn of my precious time.  Kong knocked down Godzilla and broke through his armor! Could I be so lucky?  No.. just a stun.  That could have been a game-winner right there on my first turn.  A chimp catcher broke through the reptile line to distract, threatening an early score if the ball was thrown to him.

Seeing this, 3 skinks went to surround him!

To relieve the pressure, another agile chimp, and the monkey, Inka Martishka ran down to provide additional receiving targets. With so many skinks far from my blitzer gorillas, I gave up on my plan to stall and tried to pass to Inka Martishka on Turn 4, but I failed the throw and it scattered.  Too early to say on the dice-tests but one tally mark in the 'reversed dice bit me' column! 

The ball on the ground drew more players from both sides. With so many tackle zones on the ball it was looking like it might be impossible to pick up. 

While Gators and Apes pair up to duke it out, Godzilla dodges away to blitz, and does it on his own meager agility, break tackle not required! Unfortunately for him he got a both down: re-roll: both down, knocking himself down to the pitch!  But he did put a line chimp in the knock-out box.

After a turn of pushing, a chimp and monkey push two skinks out to the crowd!  The crowd knocks out one and injures the other! Turn 6 though.. time is running out to try to score! 

The heavier hitters ignore the ball completely and focus on settling old scores of their own!

Access to the ball had not improved by much by Turn 7. It looked like the Gators were going to succeed in denying the Apes a Touch Down. 

On Turn 7 the Gorilla hit the skink, which was pushed back onto the ball- knocking the ball into the endzone while the Gorilla stepped into the area the skink had been. Then Inka hit the skink for a 2 die block with the chimp's assist, knocking him away from the ball.  Dr. Z then dodged away from Godzilla, ran up, picked up the ball he'd thrown earlier and scored!  

1-0 for the Apes on Turn 7. 

Skinks do not find 2 turns a burden to score, with their move of 8, so I set up with a deep net: out of range of the Gator Saurus.  The knocked out skink came back and one of the 2 line chimps came back from the knock out box too. 

The apes attacked the skink with the ball, which bounced out, hot-potatoed out of an apes hand and was grabbed by a Gator! I set up a tackle-zone mine field, which the Gator tried to blitz out of, but knocked himself down, and the half ended. 

The Gators are down just 1 skink, with 10 players on the pitch. The Apes are down one line-chimp, but still have 11 on the pitch. We set up, I kick.. and another Riot! These fans just will not remain calm! 

Knowing I do not have the strength to go toe to toe, I set up with two line-chimps and a catcher on the line, with a strong net to catch & counter-attack. The Gators set up to drive strong on one side with Godzilla.

The Sure-hands Skink went to pick up the ball: Fail: Re-roll: Fail! just a 1/9 chance of that: the reversed dice not helping out the Gators this time! I seized the chance and drove for the ball with a Gorilla and Inka Martishka, With King Kong trying to tie up 2 Gators.

Turn 3 the Gators knocked out another Line-Chimp: those chimps were really taking the brunt of the reptile attack. Casualties were very low this game though.  The Gators got the ball and brought it to the center, but I then knocked the ball free.  A skink called a blitz to get to the ball hoping to go further but failed a dodge to get in.  

Trying to take advantage of the situation, an Ape made a 1die block on a Gator and got a skull! Re-roll? Skull! So we both had our share of this type of luck. 

The Gators recover the ball and move it to safety.  Looks promising for a tie!

But King Kong back-swiped the small reptile!  The ball went free!  Inka ran for the sidelines, while a chimp recovered the ball.  A Gorilla stunned a mid-field skink, and there was none who could reach Inka.  The following turn the chimp threw the ball: dodge, dodge, throw: accurate long pass: Inka Martishka catches it and runs in for a touch down!

The game ends 2-0 for the Apes! 

Post-game there was a riot that lasted into the night, fur and scales flying.  

Coach of the Apes, Grey Mattur said "This just goes to show that no matter how long some scaly reptile has been dominant, times change!  They may be stronger, but you can't underestimate the value of an opposable thumb!" 

Coach of the Gators said "This means nothing! We've been around since these chumps were tree shrews, and we'll be here long after they're gone, ruling it all." 

I had a great extended weekend vacation for Thanksgiving: I really needed a vacation!  This was just one highlight of a great weekend.  

Results of our reverse die rolling experiment?  I kept track of every failure by reverse and success by reverse. I had 6 rolls where the reverse caused a success and 7 rolls where the reverse induced a failure.

Conclusion: More date needed.  But early results suggest it's just blind luck, perhaps some games just going south because they want to, but maybe this shows I was not a terrible person now karmic cursed with bad Blood Bowl dice.  Phew. 

Enjoy!