S#5 - Game Day #1

[eldaec]

Oh god the blood...

[Ulysees]

Oh god the blood...

Can't wait for the match report on this one - both teams werewolves killed in bizzare berserker love triangle?

[Strazos]

Diplomatic Immunity vs Silver Horde FC

Game starts with DP winning the toss and electing to receive. They proceed to plod up the field, making decent progress in removing a few Horde players from the pitch. Even so, FC manages to clog up DI enough to stall the run, and come close to getting a hand on the carrier. The star DI runner then breaks out of the pack with the ball, flanked by a single lineman for cover. About halfway through the half, and the ball on the goal line, the Horde close in on the carrier...but, seeing as the ball was in the hands of one of the league's better runners, the non-trivial dodge is made and Diplomatic Immunity go up 1-0 with a few turns left in the half. The rest of the time is spent bashing about, and both teams are starting to suffer losses - a Silver Horde player managed to take two players off the pitch with a single hit.

Second half starts with a kick to FC. With both teams losing players at a steady clip, Silver Horde starts to lose steam around midfield. The ball pops out into the stands, and is tossed back in by the DI goal line, far from the scrum. A few risky failed blocks later, and no Horde players are able to get to the ball before the end of the game. DI plays it safe and keep all Horde players covered...which is unfortunate, as a last-moment TD may have been possible if players had been in position.


A few players were almost crippled or killed, but saved by apothecaries. Unfortunately, I'll be down a werewolf next game, in order to avoid -1AV on him. I also narrowly missed leveling a player to 5, but he flubbed the short pass attempt.

[eldaec]

Silver Horde vs Diplomatic Immunity

Immunity win the toss, elect to recieve.

Old Vncent kicks deep and left, Diplomatic Immunity make a quick snap and get contact with both Horde wolves on the wings. Caleb the Ripper is immeadiately knocked out and the massed immunity line takes control of the centre, however Reginveig seems to take an age to pick up the ball, Mrs Cake knocks BjorkBjorg off the pitch, letting Nijel the Destroyer through to attempt to sack the DI ball carrier before a cage can form. Voltan the Indestructable is badly hurt on the right wing at the same time.

Immunity are able to push Nijel off the ball carrier, and seeing that the Horde have left their right flank exposed, Reginveig starts a run down that side. Detritus the troll reacts quickly charging into the DI cage and knocking out Grimgeirr the beserker in the process, and the Horde form a new line one third of the way into their half. A maul forms, Bruce the Hoon knocks out Eilif Skalla-Grimir and Badly hurts Ketilbrandir (both linemen) with a single block, it looks like things are going the Horde's way but a failed dodge by Immortal Jenkins gives the diplomats the opening they need. Rakr Ulfhedinn (wolf) badly hurts Eric Stronginthearm (lineman), letting Reginveig complete a handoff to Bergi Kormak, who makes it to the TD line with support from Ospakr the Mad (STR4 lineman). Bruce the Hoon and Reginveig and knocked out in the ongoing melee, while Mrs Cake (wolf) and Mad HAmish (tackle lineman) combine to stun Ospakr, and force a -1 dodge under tackle from Bergi. But the diplomat's dice hacking coach is able to carry it off : 1-0 on turn 6.

With 3 turns to score, the Horde try a brave run through the centre, but too few players are on hand to screen Bruce the Hoon's run, the DI team see out the half, Bruce the Hoon is knocked out, while Mad Hamish is badly hurt in the process.

Second half, the depleted Horde side recieve, but morale is high since it stands to reason that now there are more Diplomats than Horde, they will be easier to hit. The ball lands in the end zone and is retrieved by Bravd the Hublander, who cages deep in his half before spotting an opportunity to make a run on the left. Meanwhile on the LoS Grimgeirr is once again knocked out. As Bravd approachs the halfway line, Bersi Kormac finds a way through to knock down the ball carrier, Bruce the Hoon fails to retrieve it, and a scrum forms around the ball. Rakr Ulfhedinn is taken off with a groin strain, while Bersi Kormak is badly hurt, on the Horde side Nijel the Destroyer also comes off hurt before Bruce the Hoon retreives the ball, but he too is knocked down and the ball falls to Old Vincent, Bersifrear reacts quickly for the Diplomats, landing a seeming fatal block on Old Vincent, but the Horde Apothecary is able to reduce the damage to a broken jaw. Bersifear's cowardly tackle has pushed the ball into the crowd, and wanting to see justice done, the crowd throw the ball back deep into diplomatic territory. Unfortunately, it is not enough, as Nuffle choose the moment to fuck over any horde player attempting to dodge from the melee or even GFI in the general direction of the ball. Detrutus knocks himself out running for the ball, and the game ends.

Silver Horde 0 - 1 Diplomatic Immunity

[Ice Cream Emperor]

I can't believe I am watching Strazos' +1 strength pro tackler lying on the ground between 4 players, with a random Kick dude standing nearby just dying to apply a proper boot to his head, and instead eldeac sends a ball carrier downfield with no protection at all. How am I supposed to win my games if you people can't even permanently hurt each other!

Edit: Okay well at least later that Werewolf got hurt. I'll take what I can get!

[ezrast]

Hunqua Hunqua Burninluv 2-1 over Rouge Rogues.

With 350k in inducements I took one babe, two extra apothecaries, and one bribe that I never used. Drogg elected to kick off the game, and I picked up the ball easily, but couldn't get anyone upfield to receive it except for one Catcher, who got knocked down by the sideline and marked up by three Skinks. While all his larger pieces were committed to preventing my Linemen from advancing, I managed to break away my other Catcher and started pounding away at his Skinks backfield. Just as it was looking bleak for my dwindling numbers on the line of scrimmage, the first Catcher pulled out of the melee and jogged into the endzone, where he received a beautiful pass for the score. Best of all, it took 6 whole turns for all this to happen, which was almost enough to put the brakes on Drogg's 2-1 grind attempt. Almost. HHB received my kick, picked up the ball and caged up cleanly. I marked up all the heavy hitters I could, but that left me with hardly anyone to deal with his lone ball-carrying Skink as it broke away from the cage and toward my endzone. I made some absolutely amazing dodges to pull back and mark the Skink from all directions, but it paid them little heed as it sped to the endzone to tie up the game at the half.

Being down a player or two and having used all three apothecaries, I knew the Rogues had to score quickly in the second half lest they be ground to dust. Burninluv's defenses were mostly midfield so I gave my Catcher (just had one standing by this point) the ball and ran a cage up the sideline. It was instantly set upon on all sides by oversized reptiles, so my Catcher tossed the ball to my Blitzer, who was still on the line of scrimmage. The Blitzer stuck out his tongue at the lizards and ran in the opposite direction, but not quite far enough - I had used my reroll for the turn and feared failing a GFI. A scuffle over the ball erupted, with a Saurus ending up catching it on the bounce. The Saurus handed it to a Skink, and once again I couldn't quite muster the manpower to properly mark up the slippery bastard. The TD came on turn 16 and brought the score up to 2-1.

[Reborne]

Wrestlers 1 - 3 Insatiable

I scored in the first half!

Magrim opted for scoring over doing damage to my snotlings and it worked out for him.
I made some stupid plays in the second half and got punished for it with bad dice to go with my stupid plays.

Fun moments
Double 0s for Megrim's halfling chef 
Cid Vicious showing that his levels were not wasted since passing is the reason I scored.
Both of us making illegal kicks in the first half.
Megim denying me more SPP by getting rid of his thralls.

Fail offs here I come!

Game uploaded

[Megrim]

Bit of a fortunate game for me, as I was lucky enough not to take too many injuries until late into the second half (when it didn't really matter). The Chef was a hilarious failure, and the situation wasn't helped by my propensity for rolling triple 1s on key plays. Nevertheless I managed to slither through the Ogre lines via a combination of Bonehead and Gaze to put myself ahead after the initial Snotling score. After that it was just a matter of riding the inevitable Thrall collapse 'till turn 16.

[eldaec]

I can't believe I am watching Strazos' +1 strength pro tackler lying on the ground between 4 players, with a random Kick dude standing nearby just dying to apply a proper boot to his head.

Fouls have a 31% chance of resulting in a sending off, and assuming an arbitary 2 assists, the foul would have a 24% chance of removing an AV8 foulee (who might come back anyway if it is a KO).

Broadly speaking, fouling removes as many foulers as foulees and so when you are already behind on player count, it is usually unwise. Strazos put in a couple of fouls in the second half, but that made sense as he was a couple of players up, so his small numbers advantage would become more significant if we both lost players.

Choices on the second drive were basically 'run for the line and hope for a lucky roll' or give up on the TD and just punch Strazos in the face, needed two unmodified AGI3 dodges for a half assed cage, but didn't get them so was reliant on a bad block roll for Strazos which also didn't come.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

Well at that point you still had 3 turns to get downfield, which is why the uncaged rush forward surprised me, vs. some bloody fouling and a more careful advance. As for the fouls, 4 assists vs. av7 is prettymuch a 40% chance of KO-or-better, and the potential tradeoff is a linesman with Kick vs. a guy with +Strength, Pro and Tackle.

Also I really wanted that 4 strength tackling pro to be absent from my next game, which I think you will agree is the most important consideration of all! 

[Strazos]

Actually, I didn't foul at all - at this point most of my players are a bit too valuable to lose, and I didn't have that much of a player advantage.

Though, I hardly ever foul anyway.

[eldaec]

nm, I thought I remembered you kicking my troll a couple of times.

[Paelos]

I foul anything big, and if I'm losing.

[luckton]

I foul anything big, and if I'm losing.

[Sjofn]

I think I fouled once by accident. To be fair, until recently, I didn't have any spare dudes to start with. 

[Ingmar]

I'm not opposed to fouling, but not with my kicker. (Should I be playing a team that needs one, anyway.)

[Sir T]

I cant believe we are having a discussion on the morality of FOULING in a game called BLOOD BOWL.

[Ingmar]

More like the math of fouling. 

[Paelos]

I cant believe we are having a discussion on the morality of FOULING in a game called BLOOD BOWL.

I foul the biggest guy you have in the hopes he stays down longer.

Also, if you pull the "I'm stopping my guy on the goal line and waiting" move, expect me to use every trick I have in the book to murder one of your guys that's close by.

[Modern Angel]

Since my Goblin team is built on fouling I expect our more gentle-hearted members to be screaming bloody murder as they get repeatedly fouled.

[Strazos]

I prefer to take players off with good blocking - I prefer SPPs. 

[Modern Angel]

Goblins... I'm not going to have that option.

[drogg]

Hunqua Hunqua Burninluv 2-1 over Rouge Rogues.

With 350k in inducements I took one babe, two extra apothecaries, and one bribe that I never used. Drogg elected to kick off the game, and I picked up the ball easily, but couldn't get anyone upfield to receive it except for one Catcher, who got knocked down by the sideline and marked up by three Skinks. While all his larger pieces were committed to preventing my Linemen from advancing, I managed to break away my other Catcher and started pounding away at his Skinks backfield. Just as it was looking bleak for my dwindling numbers on the line of scrimmage, the first Catcher pulled out of the melee and jogged into the endzone, where he received a beautiful pass for the score. Best of all, it took 6 whole turns for all this to happen, which was almost enough to put the brakes on Drogg's 2-1 grind attempt. Almost. HHB received my kick, picked up the ball and caged up cleanly. I marked up all the heavy hitters I could, but that left me with hardly anyone to deal with his lone ball-carrying Skink as it broke away from the cage and toward my endzone. I made some absolutely amazing dodges to pull back and mark the Skink from all directions, but it paid them little heed as it sped to the endzone to tie up the game at the half.

Being down a player or two and having used all three apothecaries, I knew the Rogues had to score quickly in the second half lest they be ground to dust. Burninluv's defenses were mostly midfield so I gave my Catcher (just had one standing by this point) the ball and ran a cage up the sideline. It was instantly set upon on all sides by oversized reptiles, so my Catcher tossed the ball to my Blitzer, who was still on the line of scrimmage. The Blitzer stuck out his tongue at the lizards and ran in the opposite direction, but not quite far enough - I had used my reroll for the turn and feared failing a GFI. A scuffle over the ball erupted, with a Saurus ending up catching it on the bounce. The Saurus handed it to a Skink, and once again I couldn't quite muster the manpower to properly mark up the slippery bastard. The TD came on turn 16 and brought the score up to 2-1.

ezrast put up a hell of a fight here -- the three apoths plus the kegs meant that it was hard to keep his elves out of the game, even with me having a few lucky streaks of injury rolls.  nuffle was pretty generous to me, all told, with a few bog-standard exceptions (drogg the krox failing multiple boneheads in a row, bungling a break tackle on a 2+; three successive 1 rolls on GFIs), and ezrast doggedly kept bogging me down until a final lucky break on turn 16 that was by no means a sure thing.  some real david-goliath maneuvering by an excellent coach.

[Sir T]

Things have come up for me in real life and I cant play canklebiter tonight. hopefully we will get that match out of the way tomorrow.

[Falconeer]

I can't access BB Manager. This is a major problem. Can any of you? It says remote server unreachable.

[Ulysees]

Been trying to all day today (after I noticed Ginaz had played his match) and have been getting the same error for about 12 hours now.

[Ginaz]

Been trying to all day today (after I noticed Ginaz had played his match) and have been getting the same error for about 12 hours now.

Getting the same error now.  I submitted my match Sunday afternoon before 4 pm my time (Mountain Time) and it worked fine then.

[Ingmar]

It is pretty much just the one guy who runs it, so I expect he's having some ISP trouble or some such.

[Kail]

Squigskins thrashed by Hazardous Hippies, 1-3

Weird, weird match.  First off, I seem to be having some issues where I can't rotate players off the field before kickoff.  I get eleven on the field, but I can't find any of my reserve players.  So I had to field all my secret weapons on the first drive.  I spent most of my inducement money on a star player, Ripper, who got hit with a rock on the first kickoff and taken off the field immediately.  The first point is scored by Teleku on turn two, by a Wardancer who prances unopposed through my front lines, though we did manage to exact revenge in the next drive by chainsawing an eye out of a wardancer's head.  However, that wasn't enough to stop them from blitzing my ball carrier and running in another point.  And a third point.  At this point, confidence is low, but I'm not going to take this lying down.  Figuratively speaking, that is, because in a more literal sense, I lost a pitch invasion and everyone on my team was knocked down except for a troll and a lone goblin, who attempted to hold the elves back from scoring a fourth point, and very nearly failed, until the wardancer who knocked the ball away from him failed her leap roll and ended the half by plowing into the ground in the endzone next to the ball.

In the second half, things weren't looking good, but since the third drive, the weather had been sweltering, and the elves had been taking losses.  So had the goblins, of course, but I had a sea of green with which to replace them, while Teleku was undermanned.  With three trolls on the field, the mounting injuries and opressive heat eventually opened enough holes in the elf lines that my pogoer was able to bounce in for a point.  The heat continued up until the final drive of the game, at which point Teleku was down to two players on the field (neatly mirroring the first half) and stalled for time as my wall of green charged him down.  Unfortunately, the clock ran down before I could do anything productive with this, and the game ended in a 1-3 goblin defeat.

[Megrim]

A few quick points on Goblins:

 * don't bother with Star players unless you have over 300 remaining AFTER the purchase,
 * buy all the bribes first and a Wizard. Gobbo bribes are 50k apiece and can be used to keep you weapons on the pitch,
 * foul like a mad man,
 * screen your chainsaw. If its getting close to the end of the half or drive and you have no re-rolls left, use him to foul,
 * keep recycling Bombers untill you roll a doubles for his first level, and take Hail Mary Pass.

To rotate players on and off the pitch, check the top right of your screen on set-up, as well as your endzone. The game sometimes rotates players through there.

 * more fouls.

[Scadente]

The Gentlemens Club went 2 - 1 up to Slann the Mann. It was an exciting match, which could have gone both ways.

I picked up the Hypnotic Gaze Star Player to make cage-breaking easier, and giving me the ability to take one Saurus out of the equation, it kind of worked. My blitzers kept themselves occupied by taking out Skins, not very successful at that. Jean Baptiste Colbert dead, and a TD scored on my last turn. Nice match, and happy with the result!

[Strazos]

BB Manager is back up, by the way - I see there have already been a goodly number of deaths.

[eldaec]

Much like last season, stormbringer division is the first to finish every week so far.

Just saying.

[Ginaz]

The Gentlemens Club went 2 - 1 up to Slann the Mann. It was an exciting match, which could have gone both ways.

I picked up the Hypnotic Gaze Star Player to make cage-breaking easier, and giving me the ability to take one Saurus out of the equation, it kind of worked. My blitzers kept themselves occupied by taking out Skins, not very successful at that. Jean Baptiste Colbert dead, and a TD scored on my last turn. Nice match, and happy with the result!

Considering I haven't played since my last Failoff match, it wasn't too bad.  Lots of elves dodging away from my guys and perfect passing doomed my lizards.  Hypnotic gaze from his star player messed me up quite a bit too.  I did manage to level my krox(I'm thinking stand firm to go with guard, +str if I can get it), injured his star player, some sort of permanent injury on a lineman and another dead elf lineman.  Its never all bad when you kill an elf I guess.  

I don't think I'll be playing my lizardmen team next season as I've come to see that the skinks are too much of a weak link but you're screwed without them.  The lizardmen are still more fun to play than my undead team, though.  I'm thinking maybe necro, dwarf or...wood elves .

[luckton]

I don't think I'll be playing my lizardmen team next season as I've come to see that the skinks are too much of a weak link but you're screwed without them.  The lizardmen are still more fun to play than my undead team, though.  I'm thinking maybe necro, dwarf or...wood elves .

Halflings, baby.  That's where the money and fun's at.