Blood Bowl match report: Da Fragile Rokkaz vs. My Little Warband half 1

With my fiancée off on the first of her two hen dos, my best man's 6-year-old son invited me to a second stag do of my own. So on Saturday I made the trek to Guildford to see what he had in store for me: it was playing on the Wii, two games of chess, about 10 minutes of painting before he got bored, and "the fighting game" (a.k.a. "Uncle Ross getting jumped on"). I brought a couple of beers with me to numb the pain.

Pre-match

Once the two kiddiwinks were in bed we started the game of Blood Bowl we'd planned. My opponent had nearly finished painting up his Chaos Chosen team (one Beastman was still grey plastic), dubbed My Little Warband (motto: "Violence is magic!"). For my Goblins I'd hired a new Looney to replace Kutta Monsta and a Fanatic named Waaagh!-nimal. This left me 30TV higher than him, so he induced a Specialist Assistant Coach.

Was me starting the game with no inducements (such as BRIBES) a good idea? Maybe not. But compared to playing Goblins at all it was relatively sane.

He had 10,000 fans in attendance, and even though it was an away game for me I had 12,001 (the extra due to his eldest thinking my models had the better colours, a.k.a. a moral victory).

Given I was playing Goblins I expected to lose, but I saw two things in my favour:

1. His models were all freshly painted, and so destined to fail horribly.
2. One of his models was unpainted, and so would only be able to roll 1s.

Evidence for both of these universal laws can be found in point #5 in this link.

Drive 1

I won the toss and so elected to receive, but then we rolled a riot so I was down a turn already :¬(

I set up ready to cause as much damage as possible

The opposition were staring down some scary (mostly) greenskins!

The Fanatic went first, blowing a re-roll on his first block, but managed to cause a mess and knock down his first target and base another one. One troll blocked, another blitzed, and the Looney fouled, and so I had one prone and two stunned Beastmen. But then a bad thing happened: my Goblin who went to pick up the ball failed, giving my opponent a turnover, and I realised I'd left a one-square opening in the centre of my line. Oh bugger!

Can you spot the hole on the left of centre?

My opponent duly exploited this, and before he knew it ol' butterfingaz had two Beastmen and a Chosen running at him. I worked out this probably wasn't good, so decided to make my first dice roll of my third (although really second) turn the pick-up, so I could use a team re-roll if needs be and amscray out of there. Fail. Re-roll. Fail. Turnover. 1/27 chance of failing all three pick-ups. One sad Goblin.

At the end of my opponent's third turn things weren't looking great for me

Things hadn't changed much by the end of my fifth turn

It was my opponent's fifth turn when he eventually scored, and I won't provide a blow-by-blow account of the journey there, but here are the key points:

• By this stage I had broken armour a lot, but hadn't getten one single KO or CAS, which was crippling given I needed these to stay in the game after this drive.
• My opponent had trouble finding the Pows! on his dice, even when rolling 3 or 2 with a re-roll. The Goblin who failed the pick-ups must have been positively smeared in butter as he never went down.
• The Beastman who eventually scored was Beefy Blond, the unpainted one!

Convinced I'd done something to upset Nuffle, we went into the second drive on my turn 6 with no Goblins in reserve and a full Chosen team in front of me.

Drive 2

Even though I was disappointed in my heavy-hitters, the fans must have enjoyed the violence as their cheering brought my re-rolls back up to 3. And then I had some good luck: the ball landed in the paws of the Goblin on the far right of the LoS!

My set-up for the second drive

Hmm, how could I use this to my advantage...

My play was executed as follows:

1. Goblin in the left of the picture above dodged in to provide an assist against the Beastman in the centre of the LoS.
2. Green Troll passed Really Stupid.
3. Green Troll 3-dice blocked the Beastman to push him back.
4. Blue Troll declared a pass.
5. My opponent looked at me as if I was crazy.
6. Blue Troll passed Really Stupid.
7. Blue Troll moved next to the ball-carrying Goblin.
8. Blue Troll was not hungry.
9. Blue Troll fumbled the throw on a 2.
10. I looked at my re-rolls, and had three to use in three turns: "Re-roll!".
11. Blue Troll failed Loner on a 3.
12. I was sad.

How the pitch looked after my failed TTM

My opponent moved in to threaten me and made the TTM landing harder, but avoided basing my trolls

I tried to TTM again on my seventh turn, again failing with a fumble and rolling a 3 on the Loner roll

And on my turn eight? I yet again failed the TTM with a fumble and rolling a 3 on the Loner roll

My opponent ended the half with a traditional gang foul

Half-time punditry
That did not go well. I messed up at the end of my first real turn by leaving an opening, but other than that I don't think I did anything really wrong. Things just didn't go my way, Nuffle-wise:

• Failing three 3+ pick-ups in a row.
• I must have broken armour through blocks and fouls at least 6 or 7 times, and didn't get a single KO or CAS.
• I failed three TTMs on a fumble and rolling a 3 for Loner.

We called it there as we needed to sleep, so we'll play the second half another day. But being 1:0 down with only 8 Goblins (stupid not-blind ref!) and 2 Trolls versus a full Chosen team does not bode well...

My Little Warband: 1
Da Fragile Rokkaz: 0
Nuffle: 1 broken heart