SKABB League

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 dic

This Saturday was the 9th event in the inaugural South East Tournament Series. Last year onysersix, also known as Justin, ran the first Suffolk Subterranean Showcase .  Four of our league went up with a full on assault on the Stunty Cup, and I managed to come away with the trophy with my halfling team.  We had looked at doing similar this year but when one of the four dropped out a month or so ago and then with BeardedLucha getting sick a couple of days before, we weren't going to be going stunty en masse again. Up until around 6pm the night before I was going to be taking gnomes. A combination of an extended drive and the tail end of an illness - along with the fact that you could only take 2 of any one skill (when really you want to be able to spam dodge on the gnomes) meant I didn't fancy a long journey to have my team wiped out three games in a row.  I changed to playing Amazons who I had really enjoyed at UKTC  and felt like I could play even if I wasn't 100%. My roste

The weekend just gone, we held the third iteration of our annual two-day October Ogre themed event. For the first time ever, we had a sevens event run by first time TO Matt who did a sterling job, with spot prizes, a simple ruleset and including fewest re-rolls as a tie breaker. It meant that not only did those with re-rolls get tutted at, but they were also potentially going to miss out on glory with their underhanded methods. (Note: I'm aware re-rolls are legal in Sevens, it just doesn't feel like cricket). For the sevens event, I decided to take wood elves as their fast and fun. With my choice for the 2-day event being nurgle who I've not played before, are very slow and have lots of skills that I would forget, I wanted to take something that I knew I would enjoy and be comfortable with. My build was 2 wardancers and 5 linemen. You only got one skill, so I put strip ball on one of the dancers. Game 1 v Stu (beardedlucha) In round 1, I was drawn against my fellow commissi

This past Saturday was one of the regular events held at Troll Trader in Bromley. The Skull Cup 2 was first held last August  and was run by my fellow host of the Blood Bowl Tavern podcast. Chris Whitehot.  As always with the Troll Trader events, Chris had a series of Really Stupid plays as the first tiebreaker. These are things which you might not do as the most optimum play to help you win the game but are fun things that will keep it interesting.  This time there as a 1200TV build and on the list for me was Chaos Dwarfs which I borrowed from BeardedLucha Stu to play before the change. This was for a few reasons - I would be able to get all the teams played by the end of the year (my painting schedule probably wouldn't allow another team on the table before the end of December), I would be able to play chaos dwarfs before the upcoming change so I would have something to compare them to, and also because 1200TV allows you to get in lots of stuff for them. There were only 5 skills

The second pairs tournament run by the BriBBe league was this last weekend. For the first event last year , Tommy and I went as an all stunty team. In quite a competitive field, we didn't fair so well.  This year, Tommy wasn't able to make it so I paired up with Damology and we went for a pairing of undead teams - he took shambling undead and I took vampires. There was a rule that meant you couldn't have two tier one teams and we've both played these teams during the league so we were rather confident. We called ourselves the Evil Dead 2 and got these snazzy t-shirts!   For my vampire build, I had all 6 vampires and took dodge and leader on the throwers, strip ball and block on the blitzers, and dodge on both the runners. I had 8 thralls, one with kick and three re-rolls. And as I was told during the day, one coach. I really need to check these sorts of details before the first game.  I normally make notes as I go along, although I didn't do so for various reasons,