SKABB Dungeonbowl 2023, 24th June 2023 at Chaos Cards, Folkestone.

 This weekend we held our first event Dungeonbowl event. As a niche variant of a niche game, we weren't sure how much interest there would have been for it. In the end we had a capacity of 16 with 10 attending, and 4 who wanted to come but had to drop out in the week or two beforehand. This at least shows there is interest in it, and we will likely consider running another event next year. 

It also marked our return to Chaos Cards, our spiritual home, where we hadn't run an event since October. Whilst we usually have our league night there every Monday with maybe 5 or 6 games being played, it's nice to be back with an all day tournament.

Stu (BeardedLucha) was running a SKABB Event for the first time and did so swimmingly. We commandeered the ruleset for Doreset Dungeonbowl give or take the odd detail here and there, and also used the Bonehead Podcast mats which allowed for speedy setup between rounds. As it was, despite there being a 1 hour 15 minute limit for games most rounds finished early such that we were even able to have a friendly round after the tournament itself had finished.

The ruleset allowed for all BloodBowl teams and all Dungeonbowl teams to compete with points awarded being 30 for a win within 45 minutes, 20 for any other win, 3 points per casualty (to a max of 3 casualties per game) and 1 point per chest opened. All teams got a free wizard with BloodBowl teams being able to choose which wizard they wanted and College teams being compensated for their lack of choice with a bonus re-roll. 

With SKABB having run a Dungeonbowl season between seasons 7 and 8 of the league, many of our coaches were familiar with the format with 4 of us attending the tournament having competed in the Dungeonbowl league.

For the league season I took College of Fire and found that the gnoblars were the stars of the show. With not many players having tackle (and the majority of them being on my team) they were difficult to knock down and if they had the ball, they could sneak past everyone. 

I'm not one to brag (total lie) but Tourplay has me down as the top UK College of Fire coach and second in the world. Now, it may be that the dataset is 2 coaches, I don't know. It's definitely a small dataset as the lowest any of our coaches is at their college is 18th in the world. 

For this tournament, I took the College of Shadows. Knowing that the maps aren't massive, that there was bonus points for quick wins, I wanted a team with a lot of speed and agility. Shadows were popular with 4 coaches taking them on the day. The rest of the contenders was made up from 1 college each from Life, Heavens and Beasts plus 1 team from Dark Elf, Norse, and Imperial Nobility.

I focussed on the high speed and agility players and those with either dodge or block. As such, I took 4 gutter runers, 2 dark elf blitzers, 1 witch elf, 5 goblins and 4 re-rolls (one being complimentary) which along with the college of Shadows wizard (able to move a player 5 squares at the start of your turn with the exception that it can't be the ball carrier) rounded off my roster. 

Each roster was able to take 4 primary skills and 1 secondary skill. I turned three gutter runners into blodgers, put wrestle on the witch elf and tackle on one of the blitzers, forgoing the secondary skill. 

Game 1 v James (Fluffles) playing Imperial Nobility

James joined our league the season before last and has been playing Norse, so Imperial Nobility marks a big change in play style for him. This was the first tournament for both him and his son Jack who hasn't yet played in the league but has had several practice games against league members. 

There really isn't a lot to say about this game. I won in a ridiculously short 14 minutes. 3 gutter runners covered 3 chests with one opening one that happened to have the ball in. On my following turn I used the Shadow wizard to move another gutter runner 5 squares, handed the ball off to him and danced into the endzone. I felt invincible.

James really didn't do anything wrong to lose so quickly. Getting the ball straight off and then being in a position to score was really an extremely fortunate circumstance that played into my team's strengths. Had he actually got a chance to hit any of my players, things probably would have panned out differently. As it was my rush the game with fast, agile players strategy worked and I felt invincible. 

I think I went first in every game I played which allowed this swarming tactic to be a possibility. I discovered that on turn one I can get gutter runners next to three chests and if I hadn't found the ball, on my following turn I can cover at least one more of the chests unless my opponent has managed to open it. This is very much a quirk of the pitches and having fast movement players, and normally wouldn't be possible if you were using the Dungeonbowl tiles. 

The pitches are great for tournament play as they require minimal set up, however we may need to think about whether any changes need to be made for a second tournament to balance it slightly. 

Game 2 v Oli (eldritchfox) playing College of Life

Oli is the SKABB Commissioner and I doubt that there is anyone I have played more at BloodBowl. We are both as addicted as each other. 

He was playing a College of Life roster with a strip ball wardancer, a tackle wardancer and a stand firm beast of Nurgle as my biggest concerns. 

I took the exact same tactic as in my game against James, swarming the chests and I happened to find the ball straight away again. Planning to win quick, I used my Grey Wizard to move a gutter runner in scoring range at the start of my second turn... just before Oli used the College of Life's Jade wizard to cast the Grasping Vines spell and old my ball carrier in place.

My official complaint to the TO about how mean my opponent was being to me by stopping me winning quickly fell on deaf ears!

After this point, the game was really back and forth, with us both having possession of the ball several times, and then the weight of numbers starting to go in my favour, especially when both wardancers left the pitch. I ended up getting 4 causalities during the game which got me as many bonus points as an early victory. 

Oli's main hope at this point was to stall the game out as much as possible to attempt to get a draw but ultimately with the weight of numbers I managed to get the victory with just 2 mins left. I think this was the only game across all of the 20 games played on the day that was close to being a draw. 

Game 3 v James (gj703) playing Dark Elves 

This was the first time that James had been down to one of our tournaments but our paths had crossed a few times and I had played him at Troll Bowl in Bromley a few months ago. We were on the top table - as I think we may have been when we played before. Our previous encounter had been a really difficult game for me but this match was a lot more even.

I was quite pleased he didn't have tackle as I had hoped my gutter runners would prove the difference between the teams, although he did have a blitzer with mighty blow which came in quite handy for him. He had opted for the Amethyst Wizard from the College of Death which allows for an immediate injury roll on a player that you are marking at the start of one of your turns. He didn't have the need to use it but it could have been game changing. 

I found that playng another reasonably fast team was an issue, especially as he had the strength advantage on me. 

After quite a bit of back and forth, I managed to get a golin holding the ball and darted back around towards my end zone. I used the grey wizard to move a gutter runner so that they were unmarked. My plan was to then dodge the goblin through to hand it off and then rush off and hopefully be uncatchable and able to score the following turn. Unfotunately the goblin fluffed the dodge dropping the ball in a perfect spot for James to gather it up. I did have one shot to save the game but the same gobbo dodging out to cancel an assist and allow me a 1 dice block on the ball carrier failed again leaving James free to walk the ball the few squares to the endzone. 

Game 4 v Sid (Insidious) playing College of Metal

For my final game, I played Sid for the third time this year having played at both Pissed Up Terry Testimonial and UKTC. The record was one win apiece at elvens but this was our first Dungeonbowl match. 

This time it took until the final chest before we located the ball. However as I'd gone for my strategy of covering as many chests as possible, I was able to open most of them making it more likely I would end up with the ball. My speed really helped with maneuverability and allowing me to block off most of his routes to the chests. All the time the ball hadn't yet been discovered  

I managed to get into a position where the use of the wizard allowed me to get a gutter runner the ball in an unstoppable position for the victory. 

Awards 

Craig playing College of Shadows was the only player to win all four games and took first place and a Chaos Cards Voucher.

Amazingly I took the most casualties award, mainly due to the four caused against Oli. I really wasn't expecting this as I wasn't playing a bashy style and I won my first game without doing a single block. I was aided by the fact that all casualties helped I think. 

At SKABB we have a one award per coach rule, and the award that I thought I might have won - the one for opening the most chests, went to my final opponent Sid instead.

And the final award was a special MiniMorg Award which went to Jack (theultimatechampion) playing Norse in his first ever tournament.

We finished with enough time to play a few friendly games afterwards. One of the things with organising a tournament where the games could take 2 minutes or 2 hours is working out the timings. Whilst we could feasibly have extended the tournament by a game I think the right decision was to keep it at the advertised number of games. With this being our first Dungeonbowl event, we may be able to take a few learnings from it to make the next event even better. 

Having gone from zero to over 20 Dungeonbowl games played since the start of the year, I can say that I really love it as a variant of the game. You don't need to learn a whole new ruleset and it allows for a shorter crazier version of the game. 

I do think there is a bit of discrepancy between some of the colleges. Shadows seems easily the best in my mind. Craig won both this tournament and our league playing with them (a competitive record of 9-0-1) and my own experience playing them in this tournament and placing second suggests maybe some sort of tiering would be good in a tournament setting. 

I'm really looking forward to seeing how Gutterbowl plays and we're looking to have an evening at Chaos Cards shortly after release to play through a number of games.