RPS Blood Bowl League - The many, many Divisions of Death!

[Rakysh]

The Phantom Menaces (Rakysh, Necromantic) 2-0 Barebone Bareboners (Skydancer, Khemri)

Ra'kish the Beastman-manager of the Phantom Menaces had really gone overboard on the pre-game sacrifices. Three draws last season had been acceptable, but this time he needed a win. As such, nothing was to be left to chance.

Skydancer got thoroughly Nuffled. Plenty of KOs and two injuries from a heretofore entirely pacifistic Flesh Golem (finally got the levels of pre-match drugs right, apparently) meant that despite kicking possession away, the Menaces were able to score in turn eight of the first half. Apart from a rather nice (if I say so myself) crowdsurf on a mummy in the first turn, I didn't really do anything to deserve this, but apparently my players were armoured in the righteousness of Nuffle. The Khemri's bad luck was compounded by the fact that not one of their four KOs woke up for the second half, meaning the full complement of the Menaces faced off against only three mummies and three skeletons. A ghoul ran in a two-turn touchdown, and a few players returned. After the kickoff, despite managing to cage successfully, the Khemri were unable to make much progress due to the large piles of zombies in the way.

Skydancer was a pleasure to play with, and was very good about the way the dice went. I think I got a level up or two and I definitely have a Flesh Golem to invest in, so could someone validate? Thanks.

[Skydancer]

Sigh sob sniff

[President Weasel]

Chad, I would caution you against fouling. It's not very helpful unless you have a deep bench, and with a starting team you won't have one. Once you have a sub or two (or a player with 'sneaky git') fouling becomes a much more attractive option. You're swapping a chance of getting your own man sent off (and out for the rest of the game) for a chance of breaking your opponent's armour (and maybe only getting stunned, or KO'd which they can potentially wake up from).
Once you have a sub (so getting a player sent off becomes less damaging to you) you can consider strategically fouling the opponent's better and more fragile players with one of your cheaper ones. Getting them both off the pitch is an excellent deal for you.

Al Hutton, it's possible the game against you was the straw that broke the camel's back - that idiot minotaur just watched you run past again and again.

[mrpier]

Applied to div 3. :-)

[ntw]

Applied to div 3. :-)

Accepted, started and checked!

Also Div7

[ntw]

@ Rakysh - Result validated, along with all the others on the sheet.

[Rakysh]

Thanks NTW, you're a dude. Ghoul got leap (for personal amusement), and I'm finally up on all of the positionals (so should lose a werewolf any day). Ace.

[aerisdead]

Chad, I would caution you against fouling. It's not very helpful unless you have a deep bench, and with a starting team you won't have one.

I think you meant to aim that at me, and you are right, of course: but I think with this game, there were definitely points where it might have been worth fouling his werewolves!

[President Weasel]

I think you're right, I did mean to aim that at you. On the second count I'm less convinced - the further behind you are in players, the worse a 1-for-1 swap is for you, and it sounded like you spent most of that game badly behind in players.

For example, if you both have 10 players standing and you manage to swap a beastman for a werewolf you're now looking at 9 v 9 and you've given yourself a small edge in terms of quality.
If you've only got 7 players and he has 10 and you make the same swap, you're now looking at 6 vs 9 which is propotionally a better advantage for him. (Not to mention you need 3 or 4 assists to make fouls a reasonably good prospect in the first place, and it's often hard to get those players free when you're already outnumbered).

[ChainsawHands]

Of course, sometimes you foul your opponent's 1-turn-TD gutter runner on turn 1 and give him a -ST...

[Heliocentric]

Fouling is great when you have 14 players with 11 of them on the pitch and you can get 7 assists, but your opponent is down to 3 players.

What, why are you looking at me like that?

[squirrelfanatic]

Accepted, started and checked!

Also Div7

Great news! Thanks to everyone involved - especially mrpier - for making this happen.

[Jarvis]

Red Skull Reavers (Pres W., Chaosmans) 1 - 1 Cute Harmless Hippies (Jarvis, also Chaosmans)

What a match! Many exciting things happened; here are some of them:
I was one Go For It from getting a 2-dice shunt off the pitch chance on Jarvis's ball carrier. GFI fail, man falls over. Jarvis scores.
I have two turns to try to get an equaliser before half time. Riot, ref lets the clock run for a turn. Damn you ref!
Jarvis's mino fails a wild animal roll or loners out (to save time, let's assume I have typed this about eight times during this match report. He was a total liability, as bad as mine was the day mine handed the match to Groovy and I sacked him right afterwards).

I scored a touchdown! Yay! (and despite handing the ball to Professor Brian Cox on the line, to get him the SPP, he did not drop it)

Sweltering heat and casualties made big holes in both teams.

Jarvis skulled out at a bad moment and I got the ball, one go for it away from the line.

Jarvis put a bunch of players round the ball carrier and his little posse of defenders.
I managed a bunch of 2-dice blocks to clear them away, with no rerolls left.
I was only one square from victory!
I only needed one Go For It to score...
GFI fail.

It was just possible for Jarvis to score. He needed a blitz from the mino, 2 go for its, a pickup, and a long pass from a chaos warrior, a catch and go for it and handoff from another chaos warrior, and catch and go for it from a beastman. I was willing him to succeed purely because of how awesome it would have been, but it wasn't to be. The chaos warrior failed his GFI at almost the exact same spot my beastman had, and the game ended with them lying side-by-side.

Great game, Jarvis, cheers for playing.

They weren't important rolls else i'd not have made them but there was not one but two occasions where I chose to block you with 2 dice against getting 2 POWs. And then a third occasion getting a BD and POW when I happened to have block while you didn't.

[President Weasel]

It was infuriating! But late in the game I got some decent rolls of my own (like the time you skulled out when you were out of rerolls) so I stopped being grumpy :)

[aerisdead]

I think you're right, I did mean to aim that at you. On the second count I'm less convinced - the further behind you are in players, the worse a 1-for-1 swap is for you, and it sounded like you spent most of that game badly behind in players.

Aye, well understood. I only started to lag badly in players in the mid-second half, however, and there's a gambler's instinct in me that makes me think had I remembered and chanced fouling his werewolves earlier, it could have been better.

BUT: the actual thing I should have done is keep my bloody beastmen about four squares away from the edge of the pitch!

[darkweeble]

Just attempted to play my game with PresterJohn and it got stuck trying to synchronize. I was unable to click the "Try Again" button because the block result window was up. Here's a shot from my Steam profile: http://steamcommunity.com/id/DarkWee...83/?tab=public . We're going to try the game again later this week as we'd like to get him his SPP, so can we please reset?

EDIT: Seems like there is no record of the match having been played. Thanks anyway, ntw!

[ntw]

Just attempted to play my game with PresterJohn and it got stuck trying to synchronize. I was unable to click the "Try Again" button because the block result window was up. Here's a shot from my Steam profile: http://steamcommunity.com/id/DarkWee...83/?tab=public . We're going to try the game again later this week as we'd like to get him his SPP, so can we please reset?

Either it has been done already, or it didn't assign anyone the default...

[Prester John]

Just attempted to play my game with PresterJohn and it got stuck trying to synchronize. I was unable to click the "Try Again" button because the block result window was up. Here's a shot from my Steam profile: http://steamcommunity.com/id/DarkWee...83/?tab=public . We're going to try the game again later this week as we'd like to get him his SPP, so can we please reset?

EDIT: Seems like there is no record of the match having been played. Thanks anyway, ntw!

Darkweebles luck sucked, mine didn't , i was going to win, win big maybe but most importantly get SP's!!!! Then Cyanide struck, even when i'm lucky i still get unlucky. Lots of Network Sync problems until Darkweeble couldn't click yes to reconnect due to the block box.

Bah, should be able try again hopefully.

[Jiiiiim]

Monopole Magnates (Jim, lizards) vs Let Them Eat Lembas (Alethron, helves ft. nuffle)

Magnates are getting seriously wealthy now, with 2120 TV against Al's measly 1840. He hires a wizard and an apo which is probably a good choice with elves. My own aim is to get him to use the wizard in a non-critical situation, and to protect the skinks, as he has a couple of mighty-blow-tacklers I will cheerfully push off a cliff. Al wins the toss and elects to kick, and I have a bad feeling, losing a reroll on double skulls before dropping the ball on both pickup attempts. The ball bounces into the hands of a nearby skink, and I can hear Alethron's diabolical laughter as he lines up his mighty blow tackle bastard. 2 dice....push-push, okay, reroll....skull-skull. His first action of the half gets that monstrous catcher knocked out.

This basically characterises the half. I play boringly, Alethron rolls disastrously. His next action is a failed rerolled dodge from my Krox. By Turn 3 I'm just waiting on the touchline, about to score. Al hurriedly uses the wizard which succeeds in lightning-bolting my ball-carrying skink but there are plenty around to react. I pick up, and make to score...and misclick, moving another skink instead. So that's the ball-carrying skink stuck on the sidelines. Whoops.

Alethron uses this well, getting a blitz in and picking up the ball with his blitzer, and positioning helves around him so he can't be hit. I can't really do much, so I make sure there's as much tackle and diving tackle around, as the blitzer has leap and could run away with it next turn. The tackle doesn't work but the diving tackle does wonders, and the ball scatters back to the middle of Alethron's half. I get the pickup and move back towards a scoring position, he does another wonder-blitz to knock it out, but it's not overly difficult now to blitz down the surrounding elves and pick up the ball (though this took a reroll). Top Hat is the lucky skink, making it 1-0 on my Turn 7.

And then Nuffle decides to dance around in his pants at the elves' designs of scoring an equaliser in this half, awarding me a Blitz! kick-off result. I close down every elf I can, blitz a gap on the right and run a couple of skinks through, one in range of the touchline, one only just getting some diving tackle on his thrower. Sure enough, his thrower falls on the attempted dodge and all I have to do to end the half 2-0 is run a skink up to the ball and pick it up. GFI...succeeds! Pickup....fails! Rerolled pickup....fails! Dammit. 1-0 at half-time.

Nuffles continues as he left off, as the high elves take I think four rolls to pick up the ball. I set up some ridiculous convoluted push using a bucket line of skinks to get his mighty blow bastard back off the pitch and pressure the ball as best I can. Alethron finally hurts a skink (only BH), picks it up...throws...drops the catch. Hooray! A line-elf gets BH, the area around the ball is cleared, gutterskink picks up the ball and tries to hand it off...okay, he fails that, scattering it right into the open.

Alethron continues to try elfball, blitzing the area around the ball clear then picking it up, chucking it through a forest of lizards, straight into the hands of his nerveless catcher on the sidelines. He just has to jink past his Saurus bodyguard and he'll equalise...nope, falls. I compound the misery, surfing another elf, retrieving the ball, and building a MASSIVE cage around gutterskink. He pulls of another good set of dodges, knocks said skink over, then falls on the GFI, no rerolls left now.

I get a bit cocky about all this failure and try to pick it up with a saurus. This fails, obviously, and so does the reroll, but Alethron just failed something again, so I try again. Yep, definitely not going to be able to pick that up there. Okay I forgot they were elves. He runs a blitzer to the line, gets the ball, and....fails the throw. Oh God. I pick up the ball with a skink this time, and just peg it towards the touchline with a couple of sauruses in tow. There's nothing Alethron can do as he furiously fails more GFI rolls, and I finally hand off the ball to the Saurus Thimble for a 2-0 win that will live long in the memory of people of purists.

Final Score: 2-0 to lizards

[Nullkigan]

Ripper Bolgrot: cannot punch an elf wearing butter.