S#4 - Playoffs 1/8

[Celer]

Beardstorm! 1 - Burrowing Beetles 0 in possibly the bloodiest game I've ever played. 4 deaths, 2 on each side

PLAYOFFS BABY! 

[Falconeer]

MEGRIM HASN'T UPLOADED HIS WIN OVER LAMAROS ON BBMANAGER. This is bad bad. Please do so as soon as possible. Thank you.

[Teleku]

Lamaros out?  Details anybody?

[Megrim]

MEGRIM HASN'T UPLOADED HIS WIN OVER LAMAROS ON BBMANAGER. This is bad bad. Please do so as soon as possible. Thank you.

Actually, I'm pretty sure I did. I'll check again now.

 * Edit: it's there, under Season 4.

[IainC]

Lamaros out?  Details anybody?

First page.

[Strazos]

Holy hell...I can't even imagine how you can get 20 armor breaks, I block A LOT.

Maybe someone can finally break Andy's elves' faces.

[Ingmar]

Holy hell...I can't even imagine how you can get 20 armor breaks, I block A LOT.

Maybe someone can finally break Andy's elves' faces.

I think I average nearly 20. :p

EDIT: I guess that's overstating it, I averaged 16 for the regular season. Dwarves are like that, strength access on everyone but runners means mighty blow is easy to get, guard access everywhere means a lot of 2 die blocks, and all the tackle canceling dodge means more chances to roll armor breaks.

[Teleku]

Lamaros out?  Details anybody?

First page.

Gah, that's weird.  I'd been following down the thread, but its like my eyes suddenly glossed over those posts and picked up again at the mention of the blood bath game.

[Falconeer]

MEGRIM HASN'T UPLOADED HIS WIN OVER LAMAROS ON BBMANAGER. This is bad bad. Please do so as soon as possible. Thank you.

Actually, I'm pretty sure I did. I'll check again now.

 * Edit: it's there, under Season 4.

I'll fix it this time, but as stated in the thread opener, please upload in BBManager under the f13 S#4 Playoffs section, not the Season 4 old one.

[Strazos]

So the bloody battle between the Norse of Diplomatic Immunity and the Chaotic Ex-Presidents has been decided.

As luck would have it, I won the toss. Naturally, I elect to receive as I normally prefer to take the initiative. Oddly, the kick was very short, and ended up in the hands of someone on the line of scrimmage. I clear it out and box up on the line. Failing to inflict any injuries on my first strike, my box is quickly surrounded on 2 sides. With a bit more bashing, I was able to open a seam and attempt to break the ball to the outside. Unfortunately, the Chaos players were a bit too tough to simply be discarded so casually and manage to get enough players into a decent defensive position. Somewhere in here, the Chaos merc Star Player is sent from the game on a stretcher, much to my delight. After a bit of a row lasting late into the first half, the Norse manage to open a hole and attempt to break the ball out to the opposite wing. As they close in on endzone with just a runner ballcarrier and accompanying beserker after a handoff, Chaos is able to get a single 4STR goat on the carrier. Luckily, Norse have enough players in range to cancel assists and offer their own, and with a successful dauntless-fueled blitz, manage to gently push the goat aside and walk the ball in right before the half to make the score 1-0.

As the Norse kick off in the second half, things start to turn a bit ugly as far as armor is concerned. The Norse lose a lineman to a mortal wound, and accidentally call in the apoth, though the wound was so severe that nothing could be done (note: massive misclick, though luckily no one else suffered a severe injury from here on out) for the poor chap. The Chaos players are making good progress as their cage slowly plods down the field, and though the Norse are doing a good job slowing them down, KOs are starting to mount. Just a few yards from the endzone and a tie game, the Norse manage to stand strong and force Chaos' hand - while they manage to get the ballcarrier down, the ball is still precariously close to their endzone, and Chaos has enough players in range to make a game of it. Without much of a choice, a goat is forced to dodge in order to make a pick-up attempt, but the last man back makes a monumental play, throwing a diving tackle which takes the goat out of the game and ends the Chaos' turn. With a timely dodge (without using a reroll) by a werewolf to give support, a beserker is able to snatch up the ball and extricate it from the mess. On their last turn, Chaos makes a good go at a desperation play - they need to take this carrier down with a 2d block, get a favorable bounce to allow another goat to 2xGFI to attempt a pick-up, and then try to toss it downfield to a CW who would be waiting in the endzone. Unfortunately, this tension never got to mount, as the goat tripped over his own hooves at the carrier's feet, effectively ending the game with a 1-0 score in favor of the Norse.

This one was a real nailbiter, possibly fueled by 2 or 3 small mistakes on my part. And I must say, I really hope I'm not in Ruvaldt's division next season. Totally unrelated, but in somewhere in that mess my STR 5 werewolf has hit level 4.

[Comstar]

My game vs the best offensive team in the league starts in an hour. I'm tried and all my energy is being used watching new My Little Pony Music Videos.

Personally, I can't see anyway I can really stop his catchers and wardancers doing anything they please to get as much touch downs as they want, what with 2 of my guard Blitzers out of the game.

[Ruvaldt]

Diplomatic Immunity 1 - 0 Ex-Presidents

The Ex-Presidents' post-season aspirations are over after a nail biter of a game that felt excruciatingly even the whole way through.

As an inducement I picked up a star player for 300 points who looked like he could actually make a real difference in that after my match with Andydavo I didn't have a bench.  Strazos elected to receive after I lost the toss and we got started on a pretty standard physical game.  I used my killer beastmen each round but continuously failed to get any casualties, but did manage to get two KOs in the first half, I think.  Mid-way through Strazos' drive my star player was badly hurt, leaving me wishing that I had picked up a wizard instead.  By the end of the first half both of my mighty blow beastmen were KO'd, and I was out of position.  I had one last goat to dash across the field and make a two-die block on Strazos' ball carrier, but after a block and then a reroll I was unable to get a knock down.  Strazos blitzed through the defenders I had to rush over and scored on the 8th round.

Strazos made a tremendous kick to start the second half and I had to start in my own endzone.  I did score a casualty and a death in short order to start the half, however, and I got a few good KOs as the half progressed.  I paced my advance down the field and continued to move my cage until I was within two rounds of scoring, but still had two extra rounds left in case something went horribly wrong as I knew we were going to go into overtime by this point.  I felt confident I could win in OT due to some KOs.  With Pierce within scoring range, however, Strazos got a knock down on a daring one-die roll, covered the ball, and I was left with having to score in two rounds.  I set myself up to recover the ball and blitzed with Pierce, but due to a diving tackle was unable to pick up the ball, it was knocked out of bounds, and it was grabbed up by the Norse.

It was a close game.  One or two rolls going another way could have produced a different result, and my inducement's failure may well have made the difference as well, but that's just how those things go; I had a similar problem with a Halfling Chef earlier in the season.  My lack of guard is also extremely painful for the team, but Thomas Jefferson finally leveled (and was promptly injured) and a Chaos Warrior got MVP so I'm not completely disappointed.  Overall, I'm happy with how I played, except for over-committing to my left side of the field late in the first half, which aided in Strazos' TD.  I also could probably have been more daring; I didn't use all of my rerolls in either half and stayed pretty cautious throughout.  Strazos played a good game and I wish him luck further in the playoffs.

[Megrim]

MEGRIM HASN'T UPLOADED HIS WIN OVER LAMAROS ON BBMANAGER. This is bad bad. Please do so as soon as possible. Thank you.

Actually, I'm pretty sure I did. I'll check again now.

 * Edit: it's there, under Season 4.

I'll fix it this time, but as stated in the thread opener, please upload in BBManager under the f13 S#4 Playoffs section, not the Season 4 old one.

I don't actually have the option to select the Playoff league anywhere. I'll have a fiddle with it later this weekend, but I uploaded to where I could when I did it.

[Strazos]

You have to scroll through the large list and find it if you haven't uploaded to it previously- it's right there, alongside the FailOffs.

[Comstar]

Not pictured - the Wood Elf Kicker who got killed on my last turn.

Hazardous Hippies | 0 - 2 | F13 Catfighters

With 2 Guardswomen down, I had the inducments, and I choose a Wizard and a barrel of Beer. Both worked well, waking up my KO's in the second half.

The game stated off in a blizzard, which was bad news for the fast moving throwing elves. Then it got worse. The Treeman through a three dice block against a mud wrestling Amazon...and choose a both down by mistake. The Treeman didn't stand up for another 6 turns, and then got rooted immediately. Having that one wrestle...won me the match.  

The elves lost a player every 3-4 turns, and they couldn't stop the Amazon's from blasting the ball carrier down after the Wizard fireballed a one-elf gap, big enough for the ST 4 Bloding Doding Sidesteping Mighty Blowing star Amazon Blitzer, to knock down the ball carrier .  The Wardancers did their best, but the Amazon's got a slow walk down the pitch to get a touch down on turn 8.

With 4 Elves down at the start of the second half the Wood Elves were up against it. Sadly they took even more causalities and ran out of elves before the Amazons ran out of rerolls - I ended the game with 3 out of 5 rerolls left. The Treeman rooting himself AGAIN didn't help, and an easy Amazon touchdown late in the second half was somewhat inevitable. The Elves played defensive and the  Wardancers did their best and got the ball loose twice, but there wasn't enough Elves standing to take advantage of it.

The Treeman rooted himself on the second last turn, the injured Elf Kicker was killed on my last turn (the 2nd of the game, the first one apoc'ed early in the first half) and the Elves finished with a failed short pass that needed a 2+ to work.

I was able to make a hand off to allow one lineswomen to get the second TD and her first skill, and my +ST Blitzer went to level 5. I had one badly hurt. The Elves ended with 1 dead, 3 out for their game, 1 niggling injury and a skill for a wardancer.

Teams

	Hazardous Hippies	F13 Catfighters
Race :	Wood elf	Amazon
TV :	1770	1570
Treasury :	30000	210000
Rerolls :	3	4
Apothecary :	1	1
Fan Factor :	9	10
Cheerleaders :	1	0

Match Report

	Hazardous Hippies	F13 Catfighters
Score :	0	2
Touchdowns inflicted :	0	2
Touchdowns sustained :	2	0
Passes :	0	1
Catches :	1	1
Interceptions :	0	0
Knockdowns inflicted :	3	14
KOs inflicted :	0	2
Injuries inflicted :	1	6
Deaths inflicted :	0	1
Tackles inflicted :	1	3
Yards gained passing :	2	12
Yards gained running :	36	74
Ball Possession (%) :	38	57
Own occupation:	64	35
Opponent occupation :	35	64

Note of the match: 15/20
Spectators: 32000

[Modern Angel]

I approve.

[Ingmar]

Just 2 games left to play, Drogg-Carnifex and Llyse-IainC.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

Watching the Teleku vs. Comstar replay now -- has anyone ever tried watching one of these things with the 'automatic' camera on? It is hilarious. So far the only thing I can figure out about how the game is going is that it's snowing...

Will post a summary of my & Ezrast's game in a bit.

[ezrast]

7 Deadly lose 0-2 to Negative Capability.

I'd recap but the game as I recall mostly consisted of me having terrible positioning for 16 turns and generally getting surrounded and denied any good plays. I'm sure there was more to it than that but I just haven't had my head in this game lately. This was way easier back when everyone was low TV.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

So yeah, Negative Capability 2-0 over 7 Deadly.

After scrutinizing the lineups before the game I decided to cut my amazombie (a free donation from Comstar earlier in the season) to bump ezrast's available inducements below 200k -- but obviously I wasn't the only person thinking about last-minute changes, as the lizards showed up to the pitch with two more Skinks in reserve than expected. While this meant no inducements for the lizards, I was not too happy about the outcome -- with only one sub in reserve I was worried about the potential chain reaction of a few successful Skink fouls. As it turned out, this concern was misplaced -- there were no fouls, and my star zombie made his regeneration roll to recover from death on the only lizard-inflicted injury of the game.

As for the game itself, I think ezrast is being a little hard on himself -- though it definitely was the case that a couple of key errors cost him the game, I think apart from that it had less to do with his play and more to do with my significant Guard advantage, and my season-long investment in Tackle for as many players as possible (I don't think I took a single other skill all season, except for the second +str on my werewolf.)

Time also seemed to be a big factor -- in the first half, the lizards ran out of clock before they could move to fully screen off the ball carrier, and my tackle Werewolf was able to make a GFI-reroll-fuelled blitz to knock the ball free. He caught it off the bounce to boot, and despite finding himself surrounded on four sides by lizards on the next turn he managed to blitz-frenzy his way through a Skink and run it into the end zone.

Ezrast's second drive had more success, as I overcommitted somewhat to the blocking wars and he was able to get his carrier and a proper cage all the way down one side of the field and into scoring position. I scrambled a defense into position with some good luck on the blocks, but the best I could do was force a three-dodge run in for the Skink -- which with stunty, a Dodge, and a reroll was pretty good odds, even though I had some tackle in place. Ezrast pushed a few of my guys around and then decided to block with the ball carrier rather than attempt the score -- not a bad move either, except that he ended up following up his successful block on my werewolf, leaving the carrier standing directly in front of my ghoul, without much support. This allowed me to get six dice worth of block on the poor lizard, which predictably knocked the ball free. Unfortunately, I was not able to get the ball up the field for the clinching score -- my best chance was foiled by the clock as I blitzed a Wight free but could not click fast enough to get him up the field in time for a last-turn double-GFI attempt.

So the second half started with the Necromantics up 1-0 and receiving -- a pretty good position, but from my point of view a fairly shaky one, as I am remarkably bad at offense, especially against speedy, dodgy teams. But despite a fairly clumsy drive, the lizards' dice (lots of skulls, especially in the second half) and lack of skills (specifically, Tackle) came through for me, and I was able to stall for a turn and run in a second TD on turn 13 or so.

The lizards' consolation drive was fairly short-lived, due to another double-GFI blitz from my werewolf -- the ball bobbled around for awhile and was eventually pushed out of bounds. My Wight made a heroic GFI-GFI-pickup and threw a 6+ long bomb on the final turn of the game -- the throw was inaccurate, but it scattered back onto the square of the intended target, only to have my +agi ghoul fail the comparably-easy catch. So no last-turn score for me, but still a fairly comfortable 2-0 win.

[carnifex27]

Me and Drogg are going to try when he gets back Sunday night.  We were planning on playing yesterday morning, but not everyone had applied for the playoffs yet.  We did play an exciting game in the feeder league, where he let my vamps score 3 times while his halflings were busy annihilating my thralls.  Think he got 3 badly hurt, 2 serious injuries and a kill to go a long with the 2 badly hurts my vamps inflicted while feeding 

[Sjofn]

Those little bastards sound vicious. 

[drogg]

got our game set up after carnifex got home from work, but he accidentally didn't spend his inducement money     falc, when you see this, could we get a reset?  thanks dude!

[carnifex27]

got our game set up after carnifex got home from work, but he accidentally didn't spend his inducement money     falc, when you see this, could we get a reset?  thanks dude!

I M SOFA KING WE TODD DID  

[carnifex27]

So ummmm, the good news is me and Drogg played today, just a little later than planned.  I hit confirm instead of hire on the star players inducements page, so we decided to quit out and get Falc to reset it.  The bad news is that we were tied at the end of the game, and overtime would have meant that Drogg missed his flight.  So we quit out again.  If Falc is willing to reset it again, then we will play again tomorrow morning.  If he has had enough, and I won't blame him one bit if he has, then give Drogg the win, as my boneheaded mistake is the reason we didn't play at the previously arranged time.

That being said it was a really entertaining game.  I kicked off and Drogg snaked through my lines with ease, but I managed to force him to use all of his rerolls and score on turn 4.  He kicked off to me and of course got a reroll from the kickoff event, but I managed to slither my way into a touchdown late in the half.  When Drogg kicked off the second half two things of note happened, first he got a blitz, second he flubbed the kick.  Drogg used the blitz to frenzy my left wing saurus off the pitch, using a reroll on the gfi and 2 assisting sauri (I don't know the plural to saurus, I will use sauri from now on unless corrected).  I of course gave the ball to a different saurus and ran up the right side of the pitch, then pushed the frenzy saurus out after my own.  After a long and ugly and slow advancement, wich included my fouling his krox after it rolled a 1 on its break tackle, I managed to score on turn 14.  With only a few turns for him to score and me in pure defense mode, he managed a 4-5 dodge, 3 gfi score on turn 16 to tie it up.  On turn 17 he would have kicked to me had we not agreed to a stoppage.  I had 2 rerolls to his 0, but I also had 1 saurus koed that did not wake up, so we were basically neck and neck at that point.

All and all it was an extremely exciting game for my first playoff game, too bad it (hopefully) didn't count.

[Comstar]

The tension is killing me. Sounds like it's going to be a very close re-re-match.

[Modern Angel]

I question the dedication of anyone not willing to miss a cross-country flight for a playoff game.

[Teleku]

Sorry, had to go away for the weekend right after the game, and have been distracted until now.  So I should probably give my own summary of the game.

First and foremost, Comstar is a great coach and had awesome positioning throughout the game.  Truth be told, right from the get go, something that fucked me over was his defense.  I really wasn't sure how to crack it.  He stuck two sidestep blodging players at the ends of either side, and then had it perfectly setup so that I couldn't bring a double dice charge against anybody else who could leave a hole in the line.  Nobody yet this entire season has hit me with that strong of a defense.  Which meant my only chance of clearing a path for my catchers was to throw a perfect hit against one of his ends on a 1 dice block, which isn't god damn likely.  So I just said fuck it and jumped both my wardancers over his line to work as catchers.  But even throughout the game, he did a great job of positioning his players to make every action most difficult for me.

Having said that, now to the nuffle bitching.   

To start off with, the ENTIRE game was played in the snow.  This is the absolute worst thing that can happen to a wood elf team.  Not only do all of your GFI rolls suddenly become much harder (and while I've always had bad luck with them, wood elves still need to make use of them to fully out-range their opponents), it limits you to ONLY the two shortest passing options.  Not a negative against long passes.  You just can't physically throw beyond the first two rings.  For all of you who have played me before, you know that is NOT how my team operates.  Not that I had much of a chance to pass even, due to what followed, but still, it forced me to leave my quarterback closer to the line of scrimmage so he could get close enough to throw something.  This led right off to Comstar marking him after turn one.

What followed was that every time I got touched by an amazon, one of my players got injured.  I think I got spoiled this season as no matter how much I got hit, my players mainly got knocked down, and the odd injury beyond badly hurt was successfully saved by my apoth.  Only in the game against Modern Angel did I suffer a Llyse style injury fest.  So of course, first game of the playoffs, it happens.  First half I think I lose about four players to serious injury (my apoth saved against death for my veteran catcher, but it saved to something not badly hurt, so he was still out for the game), on top of a few normal knock outs.  I took several more for the 2nd half, making it almost impossible to deal with the amazon number advantage.  Still, even out numbered, my brave wardancers managed to knock the damn ball lose a couple times in the first half, and ALMOST managed to escape.  Alas, he got somebody to charge the running wardancer, didn't roll anything good, then managed to use a reroll to roll a direct hit, knocking the ball loose.  I had actually been quite tempted to pass the damn thing to a fresh catcher behind, but further away, after picking it up.  But of course the snow made that impossible.    

After all this back and forth, he just managed to barely score on turn 8, which sealed my doom.  2nd half started with it still snowing, me down to half a team, and him receiving the ball.  I try as well as I can, but its no good.  In the course of the fight, I lose both my wardancers, one to badly injured, and one knocked out.  With no Wardancers left (including my suped up dauntless wardancer wannabe catcher), its impossible to do anything.  Dice just fail left and right for me the entire game, not counting the horrible injury rolls.

To add final insult to injury, I actually had a very good chance to score on the final turn.  I got my Nerves of Steel catcher beyond his line.  He marked him with 3 players, but that didn't matter because of the nerves of steal.  He just had to make 2 dodge rolls to score if he caught the ball.  Nealtor, best passer in the league, runs up, and due to the god damn snow, throws what is normally a very easy pass.  So of course, with his pass skill for rerolls, he rolls 1 twice in a row, to fail.  For a fitting cap to the whole game.

Oh yeah, and as Comstar mentioned, my fucking treeman was either on the ground or rooted the entire game.  It was my stupid fault at the beginning though.  I accidentally hit the both down dice instead of the push dice after making a block.  Once down, he never got up again the first half.  2nd half, he promptly rooted into place.  Oh well, at least I destroyed my division!  Maybe I'll make it to round 2 of the playoffs next year!   

I approve.

Have you deleted your team yet?  I remember you decided to abandon them for good in e-Bushido shame after your Orcs got raped by a bunch of girly liberal pot smoking elves.



 

[Ginaz]

I approve.

Have you deleted your team yet?  I remember you decided to abandon them for good in e-Bushido shame after your Orcs got raped by a bunch of girly liberal pot smoking elves.



 

Actually, his Orcs lost to my Lizardmen in the Failoffs.

[drogg]

So to add insult to injury, I just got back to my apartment after a week on the other side of the country and it appears my ISP has deactivated my account. Oops! Posting here from my phone.

 Said account is in my girlfriend's name, and she's still on the east coast, so I'm hoping we can get this resolved early enough tomorrow so as to still let carnifex and I play our match a third time before he goes in for the graveyard shift tomorrow night PST.

[Llyse]

Iain has been messages and it's back to holiday mode!

[Modern Angel]

Have you deleted your team yet?  I remember you decided to abandon them for good in e-Bushido shame after your Orcs got raped by a bunch of girly liberal pot smoking elves.



 

Nope! It had to be a two way wager. Ginaz decided he really liked his team and the potential for next season, so he didn't want to go HARDCORE EXTREME with me. This was probably the correct decision, even though he won.

[avaia]

Coward.

[drogg]

So this morning Comcast informs me I'm not going to have internet at home until thursday at some point between 4 and 6 pm    I can't wait that long, so I'm going to do the hyper nerdy thing and go to a coffee shop to do my match with carnifex.  Hopefully there won't be any girls there.

[carnifex27]

Would 7pm be ok for you?  I could wake up earlier if necessary.