Halloween Sevens @ Surrey Spartans

This past weekend, three SKABBERs ventured beyond our known universe (Kent) to a tournament at Surrey Spartans Gaming Club in Coulsden.  


L-R Craig, Stew, Oli

One of the bonuses to reaching out to other local leagues (much more on this in the future no doubt) is that we are becoming more aware of nearby tournaments that we might not have been aware of otherwise. We were pointed in the direction of this one by Chris from the Bromley BBL who unfortunately wasn't able to attend himself.

Sundays are generally difficult for me to make tournaments as my partner is usually rowing. Fortunately for me, this fell during my birthday week so I managed to get special dispensation to go. Although with a toddler in the household, being able to do anything can often requirer some negotiation!

Picking Craig up on the way, the journey was only around an hour and a half and we arrived in plenty of time to chat to other coaches as they arrived. I spent quite a bit of time chatting to Bearded Steve who helps to run the local league and discovered that this was the first Blood Bowl tournament that they were running at their club. After the event I caught up with the organiser who said he would email us if any events come up in the future, which I'd be keen to attend. 

All the setup had been done before we arrived, which is a definite bonus to having a dedicated gaming club for the tournament. The rules for the tournament involved tiering and skill packages (tier 1 teams got 2 primary, tier 2 got a primary and a secondary and tier 3 got 2 primary and 2 secondary), as well as Halloween themed weather tables and ball rules. The latter 2 added elements of chaos into games although they were relatively mild in my games in the most part. 

I took orcs with 4 blitzers, 4 linemen and a re-roll with sure hands, mighty blow and guard on blitzers. I was up in the middle of the night with my toddler that evening and realised (admittedly way too late) that I should have taken leader rather than sure hands as it is effectively the same thing, except leader has a wider range of uses. Oh well, you live and learn.

There were 5 games in the tournament and we all ended up with winning records. Oli went 3-1-1 and became the third recipient of the SKABBERs on Tour Trophy, Craig was 3-0-2 and I went 2-2-1. Craig and Oli actually played each other in game 5, and the winner of the SoT came down to the final game with all of us potentially able to take it home. 

There were 14 coaches competiting and I think we ended up with Oli 4th, Craig 6th and Stew 8th although I've not seen the final table. 

There were quite a few races represented - I think that elf union was probably the most popular with at least 3 coaches taking them, but skaven and lizardmen both had multiple representation as well. 

All of my games were enjoyable. Thanks to my opponents Alex (EU 1-1), Kev (EU 2-1), Rob (Lizards 2-2), Steve (Skaven 2-1) and Nick (Skaven 1-2) for the experience. 

As well as having fun I feel like I have learned quite a bit about sevens (and Blood Bowl in general) which is always a thing I hope to achieve along with having fun. Mostly I have learned that rats are big scaredy cats, as can be evidenced by the picture below with them all hiding from my nice cuddly orcs who just wanted to pummel them to death and get a final turn equaliser.




   

Comments

  1. BBBL6 November 2022 at 09:36

    Nice read. Sounds like it was a fun event. Hopefully I can make the next one :)

    ReplyDelete

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