Pissed Up Terry Testimonial, 4th February 2023

Last Saturday we ran our first event of 2023, The Pissed Up Terry Testimonial. This was a goblin themed tournament, revolving around Pissed Up Terry who plays for Proper Dinlo in our league. A 3-season veteran, Terry has broken all conceivable fouling records and will rightly go into the SKABB Hall of Fame at some point in the future.

We had initially intended to run the event at Chaos Cards, where most of our previous events have taken place, however SKABB league members took 13 of the 16 available spots straight away, and so we looked at alternative venues, settling on the Grand Hotel Burstin in Folkestone. This allowed us to double the capacity, and in the end we had 28 coaches on the day.

The change of venue also allowed us to fit in a fourth game, which we are unable to do at Chaos Cards due to their opening hours. It makes it a longer day, but allows for more value for money. For me, the day actually flew by - I hope others didn't feel it was too long. I defintely had less distance to travel back than many others. 

There was a little bit of confusion initially with the venue. The Burstin had put up signage to allow everyone to find the room we were playing in and because we had previously mentioned that we ran the event at Chaos Cards, they had put up CC branded signage. We must apologise for CC for the confusion, and if we run any future events there, we will ensure to tell them to put up alternative signage. 

After the event, we prepared a feedback form (something I think we will do for most events going forwards as it really helps us to gauge what people want from an event) and with 71% either liking or loving the venue, with only one respondent disliking it, it is likely an option we will consider again for future events.

There was a reasonably complex ruleset, involving every team needing to take a goblin, star players being restricted to those who are goblins, secret weapons or dirty players, various different weather tables, prayers to Nuffle (well prayers to Terry) table and round specific rules.

We provided support for this, in the form of weather tables and specific round rules on the tables, as well as a souvenir matchday programme with all of the rules inside for reference. 

The majority of the feedback around these was positive, with some people absolutely loving the rules. There were one or two who were slightly less keen on some elements, but it is obviously not possible to please everybody. However, all of those who responded either liked (21%) or loved (79%) the event and 100% said they would attend another even that we run, so that is very positive.

On the day itself, everything went fairly smoothly. We had one coach unable to make it meaning we had odd numbers. Oli who was due to referee and not play stepped in to even out the numbers although he ended up only playing the first 2 games as someone was unable to continue due to feeling unwell. He mentioned (and I have written here previously) that it is easier to run an event when you aren't playing.

Along with the programmes, we had a pack for everyone containing various goodies - dice, goblin fan mini, secret objectives - and spot prizes to be won during the day. These along with a number of prizes for the winners meant we were giving out more than we've done at tournaments previously. 

For my tournament, I took an undead roster with two mummies (one with guard), two wights (one with tackle and the other with mighty blow), three ghouls (one block, one sure hands, one with no skill), three zombies, two goblins and Bomber Dribblesnot. Spoiler alert: Bomber did not perform for me. I also had a biased referee (which was probably a waste of money) and a mascot (who pulled his weight). For the mascot, I used the goblin that had been very generously given to me by duffins at last years NAFC as he had crocheted them all himself. 

I played Max (chaosmaxident) who had come down from South East London with three of his league mates and may have been attending his first tournament. He was playing Chaos Dwarfs and despite getting both of his bull centaurs in the casualty box before the end of the first half, along with three of his dwarf pals, I struggled to get a touchdown (at least partly caused by the snotling ball suit) and he beat me 1-0. He ended up 2/1/1 which is a very decent result in a tournament (I'm mainly saying this as I ended up with the same result!). I have still not got over rolling double skulls in turn 5 (with no re-rolls left) followed by the first action of my following turn being triple skulls. Here is a picture of the offending mummy who has been appropriately chastised.

In my second game I came up against Damien (damology) who will be joining the SKABB League for the upcoming season and had been to a couple of our tournaments previously. He had taken Black Orcs and was really unsure about whether it was a good choice or not! We played out a 1-1 draw which I think was the same as the result in a friendly we had played a few weeks before (albeit with different teams).

My third game was against Jake (titchyterror) who is a 10 year old from the Bromley League. He was playing wood elves and I ended up winning 2-1, but only because he made an unnecessary rush which he failed looking for the equalising touchdown. I did try to talk him out of making it, but he ignored my warnings so I managed to sneak the victory.

The final game of the day was against the lovely Sid (insidous) and another Black Orc team. This time I managed to sneak a 1-0 victory, although it was looking very shady at times. 

The winner of the event was halfabrain with dwarves, with Amselvs being runner up with humans. Neilwat taking the prize for the most fouls - 67 accross 4 games, aided by rostering the Black Gobbo. Most touchdowns went to Stowelly with skaven and I managed to pick up most casulaties with my undead. The most important prize went to whitehot for the best silly hat with a unanimous vote from the organisers, for a hat which was made using a few Bloodbowl figures. A very special award of one of only two Dinlo scarves in the world (made by my mum) was presented to Jake by Terry's coach Tommy B as Terry is a big fan of promoting the yoof.