Blood Bowl - ** f13 League, Season #2 ** (Over! We have a winner!)

[Ruvaldt]

Poor Murderpig.  As if being born with an unfathomable lack of intellect wasn't enough, now fate has once again conspired against him.  Hopefully his replacement, Homicidehog, will bring honor and pride to his squad in their timeless quest for blood-soaked vengeance.

Murderpig, may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.  You were a saint among swine.

[Strazos]

If you'd like, I can make sure his brothers-in-blood bowl join him soon...you know, to keep him company.

[Ruvaldt]

Your björk-loving, lutefisk munching squareheads will be dining with Odin soon enough.  Your taunts only inflame Homicidehog's burning desire for justice and a leg to munch on.

[Falconeer]

Plenty of time (6 days to go) but we are going slower compared to the past weeks with 4 more games to play. You all organizing your games out there?

[Modern Angel]

eldaec and I are tomorrow morning my time so expect a report.

[eldaec]

Team Snoosnoo 1-1 Silver Horde

Snoosnoo dominated the first half - caught me out of position early on and the rest of the half was just a centre-pitch brawl while the orcs waited till turn 8 to score.

Second half the Horde were receiving, caged up deep in their own half, and boxed in by orcs, but managed to rotate the scrum enough to sneak up the touchline for a score at the end.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/318368/Replay_2010-12-05_15-56-13.db

[Modern Angel]

Team Snoosnoo and Silver Horde FC came to a grinding, cage based tie. It was a tale of two halves, with Snoosnoo dominating the first half and Silver Horde's bruising play and bizarrely effective chain dodges proving effective in the second. Of note, new Snoosnoo Thrower Jerkface scored in his first game with the team, ending with a touchdown and 32 yards on the ground. Silver Horde did end up with several injuries, as well, leaving them in rough shape for the next game; orc lineman Snookums added to the damage with a late game foul causing a fractured leg.

[eldaec]

The defining feature I'm finding with Silver Horde, is that all my best moves are coming out playing the traditional bashy cage, but always moving sideways. Having relatively high quality linemen means there is always a spare guy or two to start reforming the cage, and having agi 3 means at least a couple can dodge out of the existing formation.

I don't know what the stats will say, but it felt like the D6 was loving me today - while the block dice were firmly in Snoosnoo's camp.

[Modern Angel]

I think I'm too nervous about dodges. I should dodge more.

[Ruvaldt]

With goblins, definitely.  Otherwise it can be tough to pull the trigger with orcs.  I make my blitzers dodge on occasion, but usually on defense.

[Strazos]

If someone were so inclined, if you looked at my games, I think the number of dodges I have attempted can be counted on a single hand - my Norsemen prefer to just punch folks in the face.

[Xuri]

Aaand....another loss for me.

North by Northwest 0 - 2 Necco Waivers

Suffered 7 KOs and 3 casualties. Had nearly half my team off the pitch for most of the match ;|

[avaia]

Holy shit, I didn't tie.  Too bad I couldn't stomp on that Yeti's balls some more, regeneration brought back two of his victims.

[Falconeer]

Holy shit. This is Group B with only 2 days to go:

                    pts.             TD diff.

Strazos            7   pts.      (+3)
Falconeer         6              (+1)
Proudft            6*            (+1)
Avaia               6               (0)
Megrim            6               (-1)
Ruvaldt            5*            (+1)
Xuri                 4              (-5)

* These teams have only 1 game left to play.


All teams are STILL able to get to the playoffs! Touch Down difference is going to be SUPER IMPORTANT!

[avaia]

I think I only have one game left, Proudft already had his bye.

Holy shit. This is Group B with only 2 days to go:

                    pts.             TD diff.

Strazos            7   pts.      (+3)
Falconeer         6              (+1)
Proudft            6*            (+1)
Avaia               6               (0)
Megrim            6               (-1)
Ruvaldt            5*            (+1)
Xuri                 4              (-5)

* These teams have only 1 game left to play.


All teams are STILL able to get to the playoffs! Touch Down difference is going to be SUPER IMPORTANT!

[Ruvaldt]

I actually have two games left, I think.  Strazos and Xuri.

[Falconeer]

You are all right, I messed up.

This is Group B with only 2 days to go:

                    pts.             TD diff.

Strazos            7   pts.      (+3)
Falconeer         6              (+1)
Proudft            6              (+1)
Megrim            6               (-1)
Avaia               6*             (0)
Ruvaldt            5              (+1)
Xuri                 4*             (-5)

[Falconeer]

Alright, three games to go and two matches still to play. Don't make me nervous! 

[Strazos]

You all need to get with the program and throw a bunch of 0-0 ties. 

[Teleku]

Welp, Comstar just beat me in the final round of the game, 2-1.  Even with dice again kicking the shit out of me injury wise, I think I'm just coming to the conclusion I'm very horrible at this game.   

Good game Comstar!

[Comstar]

Amazons defeat Wood elves, and this time the Wood Elves didn't get anyone killed or out a game.

I played pretty conservatively  - I fear the Wood Elf dances ease to sack the ball carrier- and my fears were justified when they got a touch down doing it. First half of the game the elves didn't dodge away much, and neither did I - so a low scoring game. After the 1st quoter the elves remembed to start dodging away, but I was in control most of the time.

[Llyse]

Welp, Comstar just beat me in the final round of the game, 2-1.  Even with dice again kicking the shit out of me injury wise, I think I'm just coming to the conclusion I'm very horrible at this game.   

Good game Comstar!

Damn bad luck Teleku, especially now I have to beat up on every Amazon to stay top of Group A...

[Falconeer]

Alright, great. I'll validate your match tonight. Seems like there will be a fantastic tie-breaker on Game Day #7 between Llyse and Comstar. So cool.

In the meantime, please, IainC and Ezrast, make sure to play your game in the next 3 days. It'd be a pity to have our first administered match.

[IainC]

Ezrast and I tried to play last night but despite checking firewall settings (which have been just fine for all of the previous games for both of us), restarting and spamming invites each way, we couldn't get the match to connect. We're going to try again tonight but I have no clue what to do if this doesn't work.

[Falconeer]

Ugh!

Ok, me and Avaia had the same problem. Usually, it means one of you has those damned ports closed. I know this because:

a) I asked on the boards, and they all agree it's about it.
b) I found a way to open my ports on the fly after an hour of fruitless attempts with Avaia, and it magically worked right after I forwarded ports.
c) Modern Angel studied and read a lot about it, forwarded his ports too, and everything worked great after that.

Please note that the fact you haven't had any problem before isn't conclusive of anything. Apparently Blood Bowl is stupid and only prevents SOME players from connecting when certain mystery conditions about ports are met.

So, to cut it short, one of you two (or both) has to access his router settings and open ports 9103, 16962 and 30710. >> Here is the most enlightening post from the official boards I came across (it's from a thread I started). Mind, if you know how to forward ports yourself, then you don't need to follow his links. Otherwise, as Modern Angel did, they can provide an easy shortcut to fiddle with your router settings. You can read that whole thread too, there are a few more info and advices in other posts too. Let me know how it goes!

[avaia]

Uh, that wasn't with me? GET MY NAME OUT OF YER MOUTH

[Falconeer]

Right. Ruvaldt 

[Ruvaldt]

Yeah, it was me.

I've actually managed to dodge that bullet so far, though two games were delayed a little due to it.  I live in a kind of graduate student dorm and don't have the ability to fiddle with router settings.  In two weeks that changes though.

[ezrast]

The aggravating thing is that I have my PC plugged directly into my modem, but the modem wants to act as a router/firewall and the terrible web configuration interface on this POS means I'm never quite sure if I'm disabling everything properly. I'll poke around with it some more.

edit: I, uh, had left Windows Firewall on.



We're playing now!

[IainC]

A failure to make dodge rolls gave Ezrast a 2-0 victory. I failed to score in the first half when my linesman failed a dodge roll to make the touchdown line then failed again on the last turn of the match after successfully picking up the ball to leave one tackle zone which would have let me throw a 3+ pass to a totally unmarked elf who was within range of the TD line. I also managed to fumble the ball and knock myself over every time that it mattered. I doubt I could have won that game but I'm sure I should have at least tied it.

[Falconeer]

Great! Thank you all so much for being awesome! Validated matches and proceeding to Game day #6!

- Group A -

Eldaec vs. IainC
Modern Angel vs. Teleku
Llyse vs. Ezrast
- Comstar BYE


- Group B -

Ruvaldt vs. Strazos
Megrim vs. Falconeer
Proudft vs. Avaia
- Xuri BYE


Important! I *NEED* Teleku vs. Comstar replay as soon as possible! Please, any of you two send it to me quick quick, or I can't elaborate stats.

[ezrast]

Holy hell, that game was epic... for me, at least.

My 6 Pools kicked off to Iain's Spleen Flay Hackers in the first half, but first turn he took too long trying to do unto me before I did unto him - amazons and dark elves are both squishy but neither play particularly defensively, so it was important to get the first hits in. Unfortunately, he didn't get around to protecting the ball before the clock ran down forcing a turnover, and even more unfortunately the dice were on my side the entire night - I managed to injure three of his players, knock down his lone ball carrier, and score a TD by turn three. I kicked off again - this time to a field of only ten elves on the pitch, and he did a better job of forming up and knocking my ladies down (or just stabbing them outright), but couldn't pick up the ball and the game once again ended up on his side of the pitch. I thought I had it in the bag, but I didn't mind his safeties, and at the last minute he made an epic breakaway with the ball, tossed it to a receiver, and GFI'd twice to the very last square before my endzone. In desperation, one of my linewomen - the only one anywhere near his catcher - GFI'd twice to put the catcher in her tackle zone, and on Iain's next turn he failed his 3+ roll to dodge and fell over with the ball in my endzone. Ouch. I formed up around the ball, knocked down anyone who got close (and some who didn't), and stalled out the rest of the half. Score: 1 - 0.

Second half, one of Iain's linemen actually managed to blitz in, make a dodge, and receive his own team's kickoff, but my amazons descended upon him like wolves. The elves put up a good fight, and regained possession once or twice, but were outnumbered and couldn't prevent the Pools from forming a solid cage. Iain led off his next turn with a very ill-advised dodge into 3 tackle zones, and the early turnover meant I had nothing stopping me from running straight up the field and scoring. At this point only eight elves were still in fighting shape, but the fickle dice gods were still not sated in their thirst for seeing Iain get screwed over. As I kicked off to him, fans invaded the pitch and beat down another four of his players, leaving them stunned on the ground. Amazingly, even though I sent as many players up the field as I could, Iain managed to pull a defense together and prevent me from scoring, thanks in part to my actually failing some rolls for a change. Unfortunately, Iain's rolls didn't improve, and his one chance to throw the ball upfield and score was foiled by a bad dodge roll on turn 16. End of game, score 2 - 0.

[Falconeer]

and on Iain's next turn he failed his 3+ roll to dodge and fell over with the ball in my endzone. Ouch.

I hate that shit. Happened to me yesterday in a game in Auld League while playing against the 91st team of the whole League (I'm 1853rd). Same identical thing, only, I had a reroll and failed that too. Ended in a tie, but I tasted the upset of the year and saw it slip away just like that.

[IainC]

Iain led off his next turn with a very ill-advised dodge into 3 tackle zones, and the early turnover meant I had nothing stopping me from running straight up the field and scoring.

This was a last-ditch attempt to put a tackle zone on your ball carrier and force you to roll some dice to move away - either by blocking my elf or making a dodge roll. There was literally nothing else I could do to prevent you from scoring.

[ezrast]

Oh yeah, this: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11780032/Replay_2010-12-07_13-01-13.db

Looking forward to seeing the stats after this, particularly TD difference. My chances as the scrappy underdog of Group 1 hang in the balance.