S#4 - Playoffs 1/8

[drogg]

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

sent you a PM followup but yeah.  let's do this!

[drogg]

as soon as carnifex wakes up drogg is ready.  the final die shall be cast forthwith *

*unless carnifex sleeps in and we have to postpone until tomorrow.

[carnifex27]

After much diversity, Drogg and I finished our game.  The final score.....Carnifex's Cripplers 2-0 Huhnqua Huhnqua Burninluv.  I kicked first and Drogg tried to run his sprinty, surefeet skink straight in for a 1 turn score.  His skink promptly koed himself on a gfi, setting the tone for the match.  After much wrangling and changes of possession deep in my half, the ball bounced out of bounds, fleeing in horror from the hands of one of my skinks.  The fans, in their infinite wisdom, threw the ball into the middle of a 6 saurus scrum close to the center of the pitch.  After a few more possession changes one of my skinks came up with the ball and ran in a turn 8 touchdown.

There were no casualties in the first half, but Drogg was down 2 skinks and a saurus from KOs that didn't wake up.  The second half was....not as close as the first half.  I forget the exact sequence, but having guard on one of my sauri and on Slibli meant the KOed saurus was an even greater loss than normal, and Drogg suffered several more KOs.  This lead to my stalling for the last 3-4 turns of the match while knocking his  3 conscious sauri down every time they got up and watching his Krox stun itself repeatedly on GFI attempts.  I normally don't like to stall, but I was worried that if I scored his team would wake up and start inflicting some damage to my team, which I knew I couldn't afford going into a rematch with ICE.

I know we aren't supposed to blame the dice, but the first time we played showed that we were pretty evenly matched.  BB manager says he rolled 17 ones out of 59 rolls on a d6, which is pretty bad dice if you ask me.  Don't get me wrong, I'll take the win and a lot of those dice were rolled because I put him in bad positions, but I would rather have won by out smarting and out playing him than just out rolling him, which is how I felt at the end of the match.

ICE handed me my first defeat of the season and was the only coach I didn't even score on, so this is very much a grudge match to me.  ICE I'm coming for ya.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

Bring, as they say, it on.

[Falconeer]

So, one match remaining. There's only today and tomorrow to play it. What's gonna happen?

[IainC]

Llyse PMed me a few minutes ago, we should be good to play later today (in around 4 hours or so), failing that we'll try and play early tomorrow morning. Unfortunately this week is the last week of a major milestone at work (we're supposed to be feature complete by Friday) and Llyse is 7 hours ahead of me.

[Llyse]

And just got back from a holiday and is still on route home...

[drogg]

After much diversity, Drogg and I finished our game.  The final score.....Carnifex's Cripplers 2-0 Huhnqua Huhnqua Burninluv.  I kicked first and Drogg tried to run his sprinty, surefeet skink straight in for a 1 turn score.  His skink promptly koed himself on a gfi, setting the tone for the match.  After much wrangling and changes of possession deep in my half, the ball bounced out of bounds, fleeing in horror from the hands of one of my skinks.  The fans, in their infinite wisdom, threw the ball into the middle of a 6 saurus scrum close to the center of the pitch.  After a few more possession changes one of my skinks came up with the ball and ran in a turn 8 touchdown.

There were no casualties in the first half, but Drogg was down 2 skinks and a saurus from KOs that didn't wake up.  The second half was....not as close as the first half.  I forget the exact sequence, but having guard on one of my sauri and on Slibli meant the KOed saurus was an even greater loss than normal, and Drogg suffered several more KOs.  This lead to my stalling for the last 3-4 turns of the match while knocking his  3 conscious sauri down every time they got up and watching his Krox stun itself repeatedly on GFI attempts.  I normally don't like to stall, but I was worried that if I scored his team would wake up and start inflicting some damage to my team, which I knew I couldn't afford going into a rematch with ICE.

I know we aren't supposed to blame the dice, but the first time we played showed that we were pretty evenly matched.  BB manager says he rolled 17 ones out of 59 rolls on a d6, which is pretty bad dice if you ask me.  Don't get me wrong, I'll take the win and a lot of those dice were rolled because I put him in bad positions, but I would rather have won by out smarting and out playing him than just out rolling him, which is how I felt at the end of the match.

ICE handed me my first defeat of the season and was the only coach I didn't even score on, so this is very much a grudge match to me.  ICE I'm coming for ya.

solid writeup and great play by carnifex to end our best 2 out of 3.  my dice were certainly not pretty:  carnifex managed to knock out or injure every single skink i had, mostly without the benefit of mighty blow, and KOed two saurii fairly early in the match; nobody woke up the entire game except for one skink on the very last play.  on the flip side, i never managed more than a stun.  further, the toss in after my first skink knocked himself out sent the ball from two squares from carnifex's end zone to about the half way line next to his krox and three of his saurii, including slibli.  but despite all that, i still would've had a tough time with even dice -- despite the tv difference, carnifex has more skilled saurii, and he's a much less reckless player than i am.  in both our games, he methodically wore me down and forced me to roll (and reroll) a lot of dice in an effort to slow him down; 1s were bound to happen sooner or later.

here's hoping ICE crumbles and some manner of lizard team can reign supreme!

[Comstar]

Edit- turns out they were writing the aftermatch results when I logged into the game. The Quarter-finals are ready to start as soon as Falcon wakes up.

[IainC]

Catfud and I got to play our game. Alive Not Dead get to go through to the next round.

I don't know what happened but nothing I tried to do went right. I threw the ball and fumbled it every time, I burnt a lot of rerolls on dodges and I managed to get stupid turnovers at bad points in the turn. Things started quite well in the first half; I elected to kick hoping to play aggressively, grab the ball and run it in before receiving in the second half and that looked like it was going to be a viable plan as Undead went down all over the pitch. The Undead ran the ball around and scrambled it in with three turns of the half to go. I got myself set up for a last turn score and promptly got double skulls trying to make some room. I made a couple of interface errors in the first half, once pushing a random zombie out of the way after a block rather than the ghoul I thought I'd clicked on and then getting a turnover from a failed dodge that I hadn't intended to make while trying to block with an entirely different player.

Second half went much the same way as the last drive of the first. I put some receivers downfield and then got the guy with the ball blitzed down by a werewolf I hadn't realised was in range. The ball went loose in the middle of the pitch and after a bit of a scramble the undead got it clear but dropped it again trying to dodge away with it. I grabbed it once more and threw it out for the only successful Elven completion of the match. The very next turn however the ball carrier got blitzed down by a Wight with Strip Ball and the Undead took possession once more. This time they took a couple of turns to put my team on the floor before walking in a very safe touchdown. I did get a last ditch blitz on the ball carrier but I only got a push and the blitzer was easily batted aside after an amazing series of dodge rolls from the Wight to get away from a shadowing assassin and another marker let him roll in with the ball. There were four turns to play and I had a very slim chance to equalise before the end of the match and go to extra time but it was not to be. I forced a gap and threw receivers down into it only to miss the catch.

BBManager says I rolled 13 ones and 10 twos out of 57 D6 rolls.

[Llyse]

So the long awaited last match of the first round of playoffs has been played!

Having just gotten back from a relaxing zero internet holiday the first thing that I do is schedule my match and get drunk while I wait for IainC to get back from work.

So this is the first time this season that I play against a team where I have a TV advantage and make use of it with some luscious bloodweiser girls which do get used.

Iain wins the toss and elects to receive, he opens up with some decent blocks and actually badly hurts one of my eternal pillars GREGOR, as well as KOing two other players. Being on the defensive I take my time to roll up the field hoping for some return armour breaks. Iain meanwhile burns rerolls on dodges as quickly as I finish my bottle of Yamazaki whiskey.

A couple of slow turns blocking, jostling for position before Iain dodges a step too far and finally frees up for my ball carrying Ghoul to score the opening touchdown in the 6th turn.

This gives Iain a nice 3 turns to equalise but gloriously sunny weather, a short kick, perfect defense, and a witch elf failing to grab a bouncing ball means an ugly scrum on the LOS and no progress for the Hackers.

The 2nd half begins and my KOs recover while Iain receives without his two key shadowing players. It's another slowish start before a 1 die blitz on the ball carrier results in a small scuffle for the ball deep in Iain's half. The play for Alive not Dead to capitalise fails with Calvin the King failing a GFI with reroll. It's thanks to some ninja moves from Atarin and it's 2-0 with 3 turns for Iain to come back.

Luckily no insane kick off events occur and play culminates with a fresh witch elf topping her debut match with 2 casualties and an Interception.

Straz, prepare to be ROCKED  

[Strazos]

Whatever, I've been waiting to face you in the playoffs for the past 2 seasons.

Although, I wish Iain had done me the courtesy of injuring at least one of your positionals.