Blood Bowl match report: Da Fragile Rokkaz vs. My Little Warband half 2

So, over two months after this happened, we finally got to play the second half. In that time summer happened, democracies descended into anarchy, empires rose and fell, and I got married.

Previously, on the Imperial Cabal Network...

Things weren't looking good for our plucky Goblin 'heroes':

• They were down 1:0 at halftime
• Due to referees who followed the rules there would only be 10 players starting the half, none of those being non-Troll positionals
• The Chaos Chosen team were receiving

And now for the conclusion...

I deployed pretty conservatively, with my two Sidestep Gobbos on either flank and the meat in the centre. His deployment was asymmetric, although I'm not sure why.

The ball scattered back onto the dead centre of his half, after he got brilliant coaching (so we were now both on 4 re-rolls), and the half began...

His turn 9 saw him push some of my players around, but no one went down. In my turn I came up with some plans, but then this happened very early on in my turn:

Stunned Troll, fine goat :¬(

He then capitalised on this and pushed forward some more, bringing his ball carrier up as well. However he didn't spot that I could get a 1-die blitz on his ball carrier with my #14, Tokey Mokey. But unfortunately I rolled a push, and I was too scared to re-roll so left it at that.

It's starting to look like a mess

But Tokey Mokey got to blitz again next turn, again getting a push, and again I chickened out. Meanwhile my opponent was starting to get very annoyed with my #9, Gobo da Gobbo, who was using Sidestep to keep a tackle zone on the ball carrier.

At this point my opponent gloated that he'd surrounded my Trolls. But I pointed out that it was actually his team who were surrounded by my Goblins!

By the end of his turn 12, this is where we had gotten to.

What happened next completely made the game for me.

Tokey Mokey made his third blitz on the carrier, and "third time's the charm" proved to be true as he knocked the Beastman down and got a KO!

Sprokkit, the green Troll, then CASed the Beastman in front of him, smashing his collar bone (-1 strength). The silver lining for my opponent's team is that at least there'd be steak on the menu after the match!

How things looked, post The Smashening

After this the match descended into an exercise in how many tackle zones could be put on the ball at once.

Gobo da Gobbo, he of the infuriating Sidestep fame, carefully explaining to the Blocker what his Troll mate will do to him

The next couple of turns maintained the violence: on turn 13 a Goblin was badly hurt and Fish Stikz (the blue Troll) blitzed and KO'd a Blocker, and then in my turn 14 Sprokkit managed to get his second CAS of the match (this time only a badly hurt).

I regret nothing!

After that nothing much happened other than a bit of jostling, leaving us like this at the end of the match:

Post-match interview

Given how badly the first half went, that was pretty good! OK, yes, I lost, shut up. But after getting no removals in the first half I managed four this half (to my opponent's one), didn't concede another touchdown, and nobody died. And I got my first two casualties!

My opponent played well, but was hurt by the lack of Block and facing a Dodgy opponent. He also spent too much time focusing on my Trolls (which he noticed independently), rather than going after my soft, green, gooey centre. In other news: he learnt to hate Sidestep :¬D

Admin

My MVP went to the Fanatic, as for the third time (out of three games) my MVP didn't go to either of the two Trolls, even though I always nominate both of them :¬( That's a 1/27 chance...

My opponent got 60k from the gate and gained one Fan Factor, whilst I got 70k and lost one Fan Factor. That leaves me with 150k to either spend or hoard in my private vault. Decisions, decisions...

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