~D&M~ ROUND 1 - It begins

[Ruvaldt]

**Mic check!  Anyone out there still playing?**   

Yep.

Emperors of the Pitch 1 - 0 Wilson's Beard

Teleku banged up the Emperors pretty good, nearly killing a lineman who was saved by an apothecary and giving Maximinus Thrax, my star quarterback, a permanent -MA via a smashed hip.  Three or four others were KO'd as well.  In the end though the Emperors prevailed.

I knew going in that I had to take some risks in order to get ahead because without a strength advantage bashing teams really don't have much of a chance against dwarves, and humans do need to throw some blocks in order to be effective.  I threw a lot of one-die blocks and made some pretty hairy dodges into coverage, but after a first half in which I waited out the half with Max at the end zone I was able to play keepaway with the ball in the second half enough to keep Teleku from scoring an equalizer.  By the end of the match I had five humans left on the field, but apart from Max no permanent injuries, thankfully...though that one is pretty severe.  Teleku played great as always, but the block dice didn't help him.  I definitely got lucky in places, but we both played one hell of a game, and I hopefully won't have to play any more dwarves for a while.

[lamaros]

2 Sidewindin' Stars - Llyse     ~vs~     Leisure Suits - Lamaros 3

Close game but a misclick in the final few turns by Llyse gave me a strong run on the ball, and with a Wizard in the bank I managed to pick it up and run it in to score. A bit of an anticlimatic finish to an otherwise good game.

[luckton]

By my count, we've still got 10 matches to go.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

Conveniently we also still have 10 days in which to play them.

Speaking of which: Proudft, I saw your message on Steam the other day but was rushing off to other obligations at the time.

I should be available this weekend to get one or both of my games played, though life has been busier than usual.

[Llyse]

2 Sidewindin' Stars - Llyse     ~vs~     Leisure Suits - Lamaros 3

Close game but a misclick in the final few turns by Llyse gave me a strong run on the ball, and with a Wizard in the bank I managed to pick it up and run it in to score. A bit of an anticlimatic finish to an otherwise good game.

Like Lamaros said a solid game until my mundane fail.

Ah well, least my permanent injury was just to a line elf, my precious +1 agi catcher lives to fight another (another) day!

[Megrim]

By my count, we've still got 10 matches to go.

I'll be happy to play my match whenever this eldaec nerd shows up.

[proudft]

I've been stalking him too, but all I keep seeing on Steam is 'last login 7 hours ago'.   

[Sjofn]

The Eclipse ties ... uh ... IainC's team. Whose name I forgot.  

Elf bullshit is basically what kept this a draw, I did some elfy bullshit in the first half that had me leading 1-0 and recieving in the second, but the fact I had 6 dudes (I think it was 6, might've been 7 thinking about it) did not bode well. Eventually I tried a desperation pass that I probably could've set up slightly better, which did not pay off, and IainC scored the equalizer on turn 16 while my remaining elves (down to 5 or 6 by then, I believe) curled up into tiny balls on the ground, praying for the end to come.


EDIT: Deadly Bears! Right. Oh, the score was 1-1, in case that somehow wasn't clear. 

[IainC]

Sjofn and I played our round 1 match today. Lots of excitement and blood!

I opted to receive and set up to bash pointy ears through Elvish skulls. The first round of blocks saw a dead line-elf to open that account. Two more KOd Elves are carried off the pitch in the next couple of turns and Sjofn is having to resort to increasingly desperate plays to get break down my loose cage without exposing too many of her players to damage. They manage to get a blitz on the Ghoul with the ball eventually and knock it free but can't get to it. I injure the Elf marking it and then swoop in with my Sure Hands Ghoul who manages to fumble the pick up. Somehow the Elves disengage a lineman, get the ball and throw it to him after a long series of dodges. The Eclipse aren't out of the woods yet though as I manage to mark the ball carrier with a Zombie before blitzing him down with a Ghoul, I get a both down on the block dice and take it. The Elves push away the Zombie marking the ball and stand their lineman back up who dodges away from the Zombie and picks the ball up before running a bit closer to my line and far enough away from the nearby Undead. I don't have anything that can realisticlaly prevent the score so I move some players down so that she can't loiter for long and concentrate on breaking all the Elves I can reach. A blitzer is injured and then Sjofn walks in the score with one turn of the half still to go. I push the Elves around to no great effect before throwing a short pass for cheap SPPs, in return Sjofn kills a Werewolf but he regenerates.

For the second half, the Dark Elves have only 8 players left despite all of their KO rolls succeeding. I continue my policy of focused genocide KOing an Elf and Badly Hurting another. Meanwhile Sjofn is using up her rerolls at a fearsome rate on failed dodges. She has a receiver surrounded by Undead and she tries to throw the ball out of the increasingly vulnerable cage to him but the throw goes wide and is caught by one of the Ghouls marking her receiver. I gank the lone Elf in my half of the pitch and the Ghoul scampers out of range with the ball. From then on it's largely a case of Sjofn trying to minimise casualties. There isn't enough time for me to score twice and I don't want to risk Elven Bullshit giving a mauled Dark Elf team a last minute win so the Ghoul with the ball loiters in the far corner while the remaining 5 Elves on the pitch are pushed back against the opposite sideline by the rest of the Undead team. Sjofn wisely decides to leave fallen Elves on the floor and by turn 16 I've run out of targets so I walk in my score to equalise.

It was a good game but Sjofn keeps her unbeaten record vs me. One Ghoul and a Zombie levelled on my team and apart from the dead line-elf, there were no permanent injuries on either side.

[eldaec]

Should be online all day tomorrow so hopefully will get one or both matches cleared then.

Six teams have already played both matches, the embryonic table looks like this...

	Blackrock & Roll
	Gutted
	Sidewindin Stars
	Leisure Suits
	Deady Bears
	Pony Elves

[proudft]

Golden Hamsters lose 0-2 to Nerve Damage.  The rats were fairly helpless against the beefy sauruses, but on the bright side, no rats died.  Moral victory!

[eldaec]

Nerve Damage beat Golden Hamsters 2 goals to nil.

First half the Hamsters receive a short kick in the centre, but can't move it away or cage sufficiently. Lizards capture the ball and grind inexorably down the field for turn 8 TD.

Second half was the same only without the turnover at the start.

Key thing that made it possible was proudft was playing rats almost like khemri, forming lines to slow me down head on. He probably needs to concentrate on bullshit plays that make the most of rats speed - running around the cage to wherever it is weakest and trying to knock a corner off. If the opponent scores quicker you just get the ball back faster.

Rhyan Gordon, Ricky from San Francisco, and John 'Stumpy' Pepys all reach level 2, and take block, frenzy, diving tackle respectively.

Eric 'Stumpy Joe' Childs has picked up a niggling injury, and will probably be summarily executed at some point.

[HaemishM]

Weird game between Sjofn and I. My Blood Bowl has been having occasional bouts of freezing since I moved to the new computer. It was happening all game with my game against Lamaros, and now with Sjofn it kept happening and I clicked "Close Program" instead of "Wait for Program to Respond" once on the 16th turn. Program crashes. This was when Sjofn was leading 1-0 and about to score to make it 2-0. I had 4 injuries, including 2 smashed ankles, a badly hurt and a death. I had nobody left standing on the pitch. There's no way either of us should have to replay that game, as it was almost over, she was kicking my monkey ass and it was my fuckup that caused the match to reset.

My team is royally screwed. 2 missing next game (thrower and blitzer) another dead and only 30k winnings with no SPP built up from the last game. Royally fucked.

[Sjofn]

The Eclipse beats Balls and Chain, 2-0. It was ... it was bloody. Killed one of his blitzers pretty much right out of the gate, which essentially set the tone. He had three ladies left face down on the pitch by the end. He accidently closed the program during my last (or second to last) turn, but the result was pretty obvious, and he declined to attempt a rematch or anything.

Carlisle the blitzer went up and took dodge, and James the random lineelf went up and took wrestle. Because I got extra monies, I finally have an apothecary! I also got to replace the lineelf IainC murdered.

[Ingmar]

Dwarves beat Khemri 2-0, so put me down for a  in the standings!

[proudft]

Golden Hamsters lose to a DIFFERENT lizard team, the Warriors of the Sun.  This game was not nearly as lopsided, however, and ended 2-1 for the Warriors after some vigorous lizard stalling.  Again, thankfully, no rats were injured in the making of this game.  

[eldaec]

Didn't notice it at the time, but on reflection, skaven vs TWO lizard teams is a really tough draw.

[HaemishM]

Statement, The Sequel 2 - Balls and Chain 0

Having 4 mercs on the team didn't help me (3 loaners and 1 bought merc), but I really don't like my Amazons. I had some amazingly good block dice early on, which netted me 3 KO's on against an orc team but no injuries. Which means no SPP. I couldn't make a pass, failed many dodges thanks to loner or just shitty dice, and his AV9 vs. my AV7 made a big difference later the game. Some hilarity ensued, but it was mostly just watching my Amazons trip all over themselves at the worst possible times.

[avaia]

As Haemish said, he had some pretty nice block dice.  In fact, he was 27/40 success blocking with 1.48 dice per block, while I was 24/73 with 1.93 dice per block.  Damn dodge.  Anyway, I did get the block dice when I needed them, so I shouldn't complain too too much.  No levels for me.

[Teleku]

How many games left?  I got 3 level ups in my game against Ingmar, and I want to bring out the team again.   

[Strazos]

I still have a game I need to play against Avaia.

Unfortunately...we've been without internet for a few days. And when I say we, I mean an entire country.

Whole country. No Internet.

Well, I shouldn't say NO internet - a few folks are able to occasionally get something through the cell network which connects down to South Africa I think, and some folks (like my place of work) use satellite as a supplement/back-up. As such, it seems the telecom's temporary solution is to route through...Cote d'Ivore. Now my connection is even more awesome than before. 

Maybe it will be better this weekend, who knows. Regardless, I'll look for you, Avaia.

[Ruvaldt]

I still have a game against Carnifex to play.  We would've played on the same day as my match against him with the Ex-Presidents but I was crying too hard and couldn't see the screen anymore.

[avaia]

Awesome.

[Llyse]

I still have a game against Carnifex to play.  We would've played on the same day as my match against him with the Ex-Presidents but I was crying too hard and couldn't see the screen anymore.

I feel ya brah   

[Megrim]

I think I need to play both ICE and eldeac still. Sorry for the delay people, I've been quite busy this entire week.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

Yep. Hopefully we can get our game done on the weekend (I am mostly-busy tomorrow and tonight.)

[eldaec]

Table with four matches left, I'm sure fevered theorycrafting is possible with this.

 
Blackrock & Roll

 
The Eclipse

 
Wilson's Beard
Sidewindin Stars
Leisure Suits
Deady Bears
Mab's Malignancies *
Emperors of the Pitch *
Warriors of the Sun *
Nerve Damage *
Statement, the Sequel *
Dead Risen *


Gutted

 
Going Forth by Day
Golden Hamsters
Pony Elves
Balls and Chain
Pound Pound Mantrain **


Each * represents a match still to play.

[Ruvaldt]

Emperors 2 - 0 Mab's Malignancy

We had a crash problem in our first attempt to play, but Carnifex was a real sport and disconnected as well so it would cancel out.  The first half was fairly standard, but I had good block dice and really dodged a bullet on a Carnifex's fireball.  The fireball did a ton of damage, stunning my ogre and two others, but in the blitz on my ball carrier that followed Carnfex rolled skulls and I was able to line up an eighth turn TD.

The second half saw Carnfex running up a side of the field with a hand-off after I overloaded one side.  I managed to knock down the ball carrier and the ball was stuck on a sideline.  Carnifex pulled off an amazing last ditch effort at this point, picking up the ball with two markers and making, I think, three dodges into multiple tackle zones, and then dodged out to be two squares away from my endzone.  I used Trajan, my frenzy blitzer to surf her, and from there we had a kind of comedy of failed ball pick ups and mistaken pushes that ended with me moving the ball down the field to a waiting blitzer on the last turn, scoring a second TD.

Good game against a good coach.  I wish he hadn't gotten two permanent injuries, but that's how it goes for elves sometimes.

[eldaec]

Can we get the three remaining games to confirm they have a date/time set.

[Strazos]

Between country-wide internet failures and my inability to sync up with Avaia, we've had no luck.

[avaia]

Are you stable as of late, Strazos?  If so, I can shoot for a way off-hours (00:00 - 06:00 my time) match.

[Strazos]

That actually works terrible for me since it seems I am 8 hours ahead. 

The next two days are not going to be great as I have a colleague in town for whom I am responsible for. Genereally, evenings my time (8-10 pm start times) work, as does practically any time Friday night, Saturday before evening, and Sunday afternoon/evening.

As for if I am stable yet...I have no idea. The connection comes and goes at times, but is More Stable at night. http://mybroadband.co.za/news/telecoms/41339-fibre-maintenance-and-up-time.html

[eldaec]

Nerve Damage 0 - 2 Pound Pound Mantrain

First half the lizards managed to grab the ball briefly, but the norse were able to stay on the pitch no matter how many times they went down. They had the numbers at the end of the half to run in a score. Nerve Damage were down a krox and couple of skinks.

Second half the numbers told and Pound Pound came out on top of a massive centre field brawl.

No permanent injuries to Nerve Damage, though Mantrain's star kicker has a broken collar bone.


2 games left.

[Megrim]

I had a gander at the stats, and to be fair, it was 143 to 57 Block Dice in my favour. So that probably has a lot to do with my AV7 guys staying on the pitch.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

The lizards revenge: Warriors of the Sun defeat Pound Pound Mantrain, 3-0.

An even game that slowly but surely favoured the lizards -- and increasingly unfairly, as the second half progressed. The Warriors scored all three of their TDs in the second half, including the last one off a Blitz! event. Both teams struggled to break armour, but bad Norse KO recovery rolls did at least allow the lizards to gain a slight edge in available players. The Norse managed to kill a Saurus and MNG a Kroxigor in the dying moments of the game, to my immense annoyance, but it was too late to make a difference in the game.