BBBL Skull Cup, Troll Trader in Bromley 12th August 2023

We took a trip to the Skull Cup run by our friends in the Bromley League on Saturday. The tournament had fairly standard build rules but the quirk of the first tie breaker being the number of Really Stupid Plays you completed. Prior to each game you had to select one of the following things to try to acheive, if you managed it during that game then you got a bonus point:

- Have a player sent off for fouling
- Complete an accurate pass in your opponent's half
- Cause 4+ casualties
- Successfully jump over a prone player
- Use a re-roll in either turn 8 or turn 16.

I decided to get a some practice with my dark elf world cup build so I took a runner with leader, two witch elves (one block and one wrestle), four blitzers (two with dodge and one with tackle), five linemen and two re-rolls. This was slightly different to the roster I took to Thrudball - the key change being having an extra re-roll due to leader. 
 

The other SKABB members took dark elves (Dan, literally copying my roster), lizardmen (Ross with his world cup build) and norse (Alex with a build similar to his world cup build).

Game 1 v SuperTom 

First up I was drawn against Tom from Bromley playing necro. Tom had a cutimals team so as has now become my tradition when I play against one of these teams, I took a photo and sent it to SKABB commissioner Oli to annoy him. 

I got a blitz on the kick off and tried to surf a ghoul. I got a double defender stumbles and Tom opted not to use dodge which prevented the surf. The blitz helped me to turn the ball over quickly and go 1-0 up. 

Tom drove the ball up into my half and left a lone ghoul carrying the ball two squares from the sideline. He immediately realised the mistake he had made as my wrestle witch dodged out to potentially surf his ball carrier. As it happened, I got the pow but the ball went out of play and the crowd threw it to the other side of the pitch. I was able to recover the ball, however I failed the dodge with inbuilt re-roll to get clear which it allowed Tom to recover and equalise just before half time. I did manage to get a spot prize for the 1 re-roll 1 however, so it wasn't all bad. 

Receiving the ball I then received and started to drive up the pitch. Again I snaked getting the ball carrier clear although I managed to recover and screen up the sideline. 

As my Really Stupid play I had picked successfully completing a pass in the opponent's half. On my turn 16 I had a guaranteed win (barring any one turn touchdown or a riot) as I was able to walk the ball in for the touchdown. Alternatively I could have had a roughly 60% chance of a win if I tried to complete the Really Stupid play. I opted for the guaranteed win and took the victory 2-1. 

This was a really fun game and we were both able to laugh at ourselves when our team's messed up, which I really appreciate. 

Game 2 v David (halfabrain)

This was my 100th NAF ranked tabletop game and I was up against another BBBL member, David, who I had first played at the NAF Championship last year. David is a great stunty coach, winning the stunty cup at that event and has also coached goblins undefeated in the BBBL. He was also the winner of the Pissed Up Terry Testimonial, although this was with slightly larger small folk as he won it with a dwarf roster. 

This was nearly a carbon copy of the first time we had played - then I had an Elf Union team playing against his Goblins with Glart Smashrip. Today I had a slightly more sturdy elf team and David had Bomber Dribblesnot. 

The weather for this game was raining which hindered David much more than it hampered me. I kicked to the goblins and swarming the backfield, I had a downed witchelf next to the ball. A goblin tried to dodge out and foul her but failed, giving her the chance to jump up, dodge out, pick up the ball, dodge away and rush for the score. It was a lot of dice to roll but it was worth it to make sure that the goblins had to use a couple of their bribes early in the game. 

David regrouped and scored back against me at the end of the first half but at the start of the second half, he was missing all of his weapons. I started picking off goblins and moved a cage up the side of the pitch and just in front of the endzone to stall out the game. I was trying to take out as many goblins as possible to reduce the chance of the Throw Teammate touchdown working. Unfortunately for David the attempted stalled at the off with the goblin assigned to pick up the ball failing straight away, meaning a 2-1 victory to the dark elves.

The really stupid play I picked for this game was to score 4 casualties. I thought if I can't manage that against goblins, when will I managed it. I failed to put a single goblin in the dead and injured box, meaning that despite getting two wins I had the zero bonus points meaning I was the lowest ranked of the five coaches on two wins. 

There was a small chance that I could win the whole tournament if things went my way, but I was quite pleased as I had already achieved my goal of two wins.

Game 3 v Bowzer

Drawn against Bowzer, I sat down and asked him if my princess was in another castle because I am hilarious. However not as hilarous as the people who shouted "Baldy!" at from a passing car the day before, at which point I realised I had been bald for twenty years and had an emotional breakdown... NOT! (As you can tell my cultural references are all at least 30 years old). 

Bowzer had a win and a draw so far in the tournament and he told me that he usually ended up going 1/1/1 so was expecting me to get the victory. I did check if he wanted to concede and go to the pub but he declined. 

He is from Surrey and is helping to arrange the event in Coulsdon (or nearby) as part of the South East Tournament Series next year, so I'm sure our paths will cross again.

Bowzer was playing an undead roster with two guard mummies, a guard wight and a tackle wight and four ghouls, two of which had block.

I kicked to him which he later admitted had thrown him a bit. As to be expected when you are playing the final game of the day on a high table, it is a bit more intense than earlier games in the day. The undead caged up and with guard on opposite corners and tackle lurking around, I didn't fancy my chances at knocking the ball loose. I targeted ghouls where I could and mainly aimed to slow down the undead's progress as they got further upfield. 

At the end of my turn 6, the undead were pretty bogged down with elves around them (despite having two knocked out on turn one). Bowzer said "you really want me to score don't you?" I pointed out that I'd prefer him not to. 

We he was really not wanting to give me two turns to have a chance to reply, so he stalled out. On my turn 7 I engineered a one die block on the ballcarrier with my wrestle witch but she got a push re-rolled into a push. Bowzer was very surprised when I had done so as he'd not seen it coming. However the undead were so clogged up that they had to make some blocks on their final turn to get the score. One of the mummies made a block needing a push to get the ball carrier free to walk in for the score. The mummy rolled two both downs which was then re-rolled into double skulls. We were both aghast and Bowzer needed some time to compose himself afterwards.

There was no change of me doing anything with the ball, I attempted to surf his tackle wight instead. I got a knockdown and so fouled it to undeath. My lineman managed to successfully argue the call, but unfortunately the wight regenerated.

Chatting at half time, I said that I don't think I would have stalled out on turn 7 if I was playing the undead. The risk of failure was worse at that point than the risk of the 2-turn dark elf score, especially as I was out of re-rolls. 

Starting the second half I was hopeful the match would go in my favour, but things started going wrong very early. My runner failed to pick up the ball and I rerolled it. Thinking back now I was probably safe and should have saved the reroll for later. 

I spent a lot of time trying to form a cage and outrun the undead but didn't really manage much and probably didn't have a clear strategy.  I just ended up sort of zigzagging up the pitch and the game got very clogged up in the middle of the field.

Bowzer managed to bash a way clear to get a blitz on my ball carrying runner. I opted to dump off, which again surprised him. I'm not a big fan of dump-off however when it becomes very likely that your ball carried with no defensive skills is going to get knocked over it is definitely worth a shot. The pass was wildly inacurrate and thrown from the sideline to the middle of the pitch. 

I managed to pick up the ball again after pushing his players with tackle zones away from the ball but I needed to make a bit of a potato play, putting my blodger unprotected into his backfield. I had a couple of players I was able to dodge out to offer support, however the witch elf snaked her dodge leaving my blitzer on his own with a massive target on his head. 

This meant that the undead were able to blitz my ball carrier and got the pow needed them to turn me over.

I made a desperation witch elf blitz to try to dodge in pick up the ball and surf a ghoul but it failed, allowing the ghoul to grab the ball and move up the field in a cage.. I still had shots at getting the ball loose but they were low percentage plays. My witch elf successfully dived into the cage for a 1 dice block but hit a skull with no-rolls meaning there were no shots left at the ball giving the undead a 1-0 victory.

My Really Stupid play had been to use a re-roll in the final turn of a half, but I had used them all much earlier trying to either turnover the ball or hold on to it.

I noticed that I had a lot more of a gung-ho attitude towards re-rolls than I did at Thrudball. The third re-roll seems to allow this a bit more. I feel like I need to balance the cautious nature I had about them previously and the fact I've got an extra one. With three more practice matches lined up against my team mates prior to the event, hopefully I'll work out the perfect balance. 

Winners

In round three Alex and Ross, both on one win , were drawn against each other, meaning a victory for either of them would put them on the same record as me. Alex won the game 2-1, and finished a couple of places ahead of me due to having completed one of his Really Stupid plays and got his first SKABBers On Tour Trophy. 

Dan finished undefeated with his dark elves getting a win in his final game to go with two draws from earlier games.

Purplechest, host of One World One Bloodbowl, won the tournament despite being under the weather. The runner up was Gumbi, James (gj703) got most casualties with a 4 mighty blow dwarf roster, totalfuzzylogic got most touchdowns (I think... I may be wrong no this) and halfabrain won the stunty cup.