SKABB League

The SKABB League has a good history with GutterBowl. In 2023, we ran the Universe's First Ever GutterBowl Tournament (TM) . We then ran a Christmas one that year and it now seems that will be our festive tradition, along with our Secret SKABBer gift distribution. A quick analysis of the NAF database also shows that we've run more GutterBowl tournaments than any other league. Admittedly only 3, but it's still the most.  Santa's Sleigh Slam was being TO'd by BeardedLucha. Listeners to our podcast will be aware that he loves AI, and didn't hesitate to ask one of the multiple machines that will one day rise up and take over to write the ruleset for this event.  As such, we had a slippery floor which meant -1 to rushing and dodging. If a team didn't roster a re-roll, they they would be given a gift from Santa at the start of each game which could be an additional skill, a re-roll or a handicap to your opponent. I decided to play gnomes for this. There were a few ...

This Saturday was the final event in the South East Tournament Series (I'll probably write up some thoughts on that in due course).  It was my first trip to Bexley as last year's event had been on the same weekend as the Alicante World Cup . One of the great things about the tournament series has definitely been meeting a lot of the local community. I think looking round the room, I could name over 80% of the players, and some of the others I recognised. Obviously not everyone has been an addict like me and been to every event, but I hope that it is a sign of how the series has helped to bring different parts of the community together. For anyone interested, there were a few games streamed and which will be available on YouTube soon hopefully. I've just had a look at some of the ones from last year and they look well produced so I'll probably check out the videos when they are up. They are done by Dizzy Dwarf . I went for my standard amazon build - block and wrestle on ...

This is an update on all time SKABB League stats! To read previous iterations, there is one for Season 9 and Season 8 .  Games Played Across 10 seasons, a total of 900 games have been played. We should pass the 1,000 mark during season 11! A total of 2,491 touchdowns have been scored (an average of 2.77 per game) and 3,178 casualties caused (an average of 3.53 per game). Stewart has played the most games at 113 and Oli managed to break the 100-mark this season (just). Tommy has made the top 10 for the first time with Pete Gridley just dropping out. Alex and David Macey both sit on 52 games, with James on 47 and Stuart Miller on 44. It's likely that one of more of these will make the top 10 after season 11 at the expense of Dan and Steve. 16 coaches have now played 5 or more seasons. This is up from 12 last season - with Wes, David Macey, Gordon Hebdon (just) and Stuart Miller all playing their 5th season in the league. Touchdowns The most touchdowns in a game remains at 7. This ha...

 On a rainy Saturday morning, myself and Dimmy Gee took a trip up to St Albans for an event run by Chicken, 23rd of his line. Chicken (some people seem to call him 'Tom') was running his second event with the first being called, unsurprisingly, Dark Fire Bowl. The satnav took us to an industrial estate which I thought was a mistake (the satnav on the car can often do crazy things) but Dimmy assured me was the right place and we found the venue, tucked away down a small turning. I dropped Dimmy along with my stuff, and everything that Tom has ever owned (he may have left it in Folkestone previously. A funny story that has definitely not been brought up in every conversation since) as I found a parking spot round the corner. I had decided to play amazons. One of my Blood Bowl goals (I'll probably share them all at some point) is to get a team above a 200 rating. As I've been having a reasonable amount of success with zons I thought that they'd be a good team to try th...

 The 10th and penultimate event in the South East Tournament Series happened yesterday.  The South Sea Pirate Playoffs were held at Dice in Portsmouth (technically Southsea but my friend who I stayed with said that people always want to be in Southsea rather than Portsmouth for the prestige). It's a great venue with food and drinks available - table service and the option to open a tab making everything really easy. I would go back to an event there just for another jackfruit quesadilla!  I took norse to mark my 15th unique race played this year. With stacking allowed, I went for a mighty blow tackle berzerker, two ulfs with guard, two valks - one dodge and one wrestle, a yeti with block, 2 pigs and linemen to 14 with 3 re-rolls. Each game, a random player got given a random grog from the captain. You would roll d8 for a random potion (I think they were the potions from Gutterbowl) and that effect would last for the game. I will let you judge as you read through, but I fe...

Strip ball is a skill that makes me play much much worse if I remember my opponent has it. It scares the beejebus out of me, but should it? How effective is it? As I’m taking Norse to a tournament this weekend, I thought I’d look into it. What does it do? Strip ball allows an attacking player to make an opponent carrying the ball drop it when they hit them with a blitz and push them back, as long as that player does not have the sure hands skill. Effectively, when you hit a player carrying the ball, if you get a push result (or a defender stumbles result and the player has dodge) then the ball gets knocked loose when it wouldn’t previously have done so. The effect This means that hitting the ball carrier with a strip ball player should be more likely to result than hitting with any other player. How more likely is it, though?   It’s quite easy to calculate, although there are a number of different scenarios in terms of the relative skills for the players and the number of...