Yesterday four intrepid adventures from Kent travelled up the A12 as part of #teamstunty to launch a full frontal assault on the stunty cup at the Suffolk Subterranean Showcase.
As it was shortly after my birthday and also Stu's birthday we thought attending the event would be a perfect birthday treat for us both. We roped in Tommy and Craig and between us we took all of the four stunty teams and even created special headbands for the occassion.
Next year's event (provisionally scheduled for 26th October 2024) will be part of next year's South East Tournament Series and it also seemed like a good excuse to go there and meet organiser Justin (onyersix) and some of the other local players.
The ruleset looked quite stunty friendly allowing a foul that was guaranteed not to be seen by the referee, and allowing you to take star players and retain two secondary skills to attach to your big guys. There was also a special weather table for the occassion - which didn't come up in my games apart from turn 16 in one game - but seemed to create lots of fun in some other games.
The rosters we lined up were:
Me - Halflings with Rumbelow Sheepskin and Puggy Baconbreath
Stu - Ogres with Griff Oberwald
Craig - Snotlings with Varag Ghoul Chewer and Fungus the Loon
Tommy - Goblins with no stars
Overall there were 26 teams, with 6 competiting for the stunty cup. 19 races were represented with 3 norse and humans, 2 each of snotling, dwarf and goblin, and 1 coach bringing orcs, dark elf, khorne, black orc, imperial nobility, nurgle, shambling undead, halfling, skaven, wood elf, elf union, campire, necromantic and ogre.
We found time to record a short interview with Justin which will be on the next episode of the new podcast focussing on BloodBowl in the South East, The Blood Bowl Tavern. During this we discovered that it was the first event that he had run which you would never have guessed - it all ran very smoothly, there were great prizes and awesome looking trophies.
I took Halflings to the NAFC and have pretty good success with a Griff based roster. However I had found it rather 1 dimensional at times, and very reliant on Griff staying on the pitch and so I opted to try a couple of stars that I'd not previously tried on tabletop.
Round 1 v Will (wabe2009)
The round was drawn and I was just sitting down to play and saw my opponent chatting to Mark also known as mevans and I discovered that Will was his 12 year old son. Mark and I have played twice, most recently at UKTC.
Will had brought along humans with Griff Oberwald which I would have complained about, had it not been for the fact that I've taken Griff myself previously.
I kicked to Will and he broke away quickly into my backfield with Griff holding the ball. My attempt to get a two dice block on him meant dodging away Puggy for the blitz and hoping for a pow. Mr Baconbreath failed the dodge and sent himself straight to the casualty box, making my game much more difficult. Griff successfully dodged away and put the humans 1-0 up.
Receiving the ball I managed to get a fling with the ball through into the backfield and out of range of most of the human players who had rushed forwards to apply a lot of pressure on me. I used my tree foul action to get a tree to foul a prone player (I managed to get a treeman foul in each game this way which tickled me) and was successfully stalling out but the humans got enough pressure on me to force me to score turn 7. Ideally I would have waited another turn, but barring a riot we were going to end the half at 1-1 as I'd set up to make it nigh on impossible for a one turn touchdown for the humans who didn't set up for it anyway.
Obviously a riot was rolled, giving the humans an extra turn to score which with Griff was quite an easy ask and they then kicked the ball far too deep for me to have a chance at a Throw Team Mate touch down. So rather than looking at what I thought a few minutes ago might be a 2-1 victory, I was looking at trying to hold on and get a 2-2 draw.
Entering the second half and my chef stole a lot of Will's yummy yummy re-rolls which would have made it even more difficult if it weren't for the fact he had Mr Oberwald on his team as well. I was trying to stall out again but had to send a catcher down towards the endzone and was forced to give Will two turns to win the game.
On my turn 15 I managed to stun Griff making it much trickier for them, but sending a catcher through into my backfield with the ball on a side that I had slightly abandoned to take Griff out gave the humans a decent chance to grab the win. I dodged out two flings - one to assist and then the second to blitz. I rolled a push and a both down and I decided to take the both down meaning that several of the human players would be one square of movement short of a potential winner and therefore guarantee the draw.
The final result was 2-2 with Will outscoring me on casualties by 5-2.
Of my #teamstunty pals, Stu and Craig both won their first match up with Tommy losing.
Round 2 v Robert (tomatosplat)
After a short lunchbreak we were back and I was drawn against Robert and his Norse. I don't think they are a great match up for stunty teams. With all that block, it makes it much easier for them to take out the wee little fellas on my team and I entered the game with trepidation.
I kicked to Robert and he managed to score on his turn 8 although his team had been leaving the pitch in numbers, with the yhetee being my biggest scalp. A deep kick again stopped me from having a one turn attempt.
In the second half I ambled up the field but I wasn't able to protect my ball carrier enough to stop valkyries getting a hit on the ball and with strip ball it went loose a couple of times before I was eventually able to score. I'd been planning to stall out to guarantee a draw but it wasn't feasible, so Robert had 3 turns to try to take the win.
He moved the ball up perhaps quicker than he needed to which resulted in a failed catch on the halfway line. A hefty was able to dodge in and make a pass in a tacklezone to a catcher in my backfield which then allowed me in my final turn to free up a treeman to drop back and throw the catcher who managed to sprint into the endzone for the victory.
Final score was a 2-1 win with 5 casulaties for me and only one on turn 16 for Robert.
For this round, Stu and Craig were paired together and played out a draw. Tommy also managed a draw in what looked like a fun game as he and his opponent high-fived at one point!
Round 3 v Pete (petew)
Amazingly with only 2 players on 2 wins I was on table 2 against current Team England captain Petew. I didn't have a lot of hope of a victory here, especially after seeing his Snotling roster contained both Varag Ghoulchewer and Hakflem Skuttlespike.
I did manage to steal all but 1 re-roll with my masterchef in the first half and with Hakflem failing to pick up the ball on each of the first two turns, there was at least a small opportunity for me. I tried to dodge a halfling hopeful through to pick up the ball but he ended up knocking himself out... and the game didn't really get any better from there. Hakflem then blitzed my player away, picked up the ball and ran off. My players kept departing the field and I didn't have a shot at the one turn after the ball fell to a spot where I couldn't move it to the halfway line.
I tried a quick score in an attempt to get a few more of my KOs back as I only had 9 of my 16 players on the pitch, but it unfortunately failed and led to the snotlings going 2-0 up. On my turn 15 I managed to get a fling within a few squares of the endzone to hopefully score a consolation touchdown on my turn 16. I attempted to get out of range of Varag who could have dodged and blitzed but without having a re-roll the 1 stopped me from scoring.
I've gone over in my head whether this was the right thing to do rather than making Pete try the dodge blitz. Having now put this through a calculator, my rush was an 83% chance of success against Varag dodging which would have had a 40% success rate with a re-roll, so effectively a 60% chance for me (although this is then ignoring that I'd probably still have to dodge away) so I made the right decision mathematically but it didn't feel that way at the time.
Pete tried to get a third touchdown for an additional bonus point but it failed. A three-nil loss would not have felt like it was too harsh based on how the game had played out.
This game was a reminder of how elite players can optimise their team roster and play without making mistakes so that even when the dice go against them (as with Hakflem's failed attempts to get the ball) they are still in a very strong position. I tend to play a bit more fast and loose which is definitely something I need to think about changing if I want to improve.
Stu. Craig and Tommy all lost their final games meaning Stu, Craig and myself were all on a 1/1/1 record.
Results
PeteW just managed to scrape the overall victory by just 1 bonus point and because of this, the stunty cup filtered down to me as I managed two more bonus points than Craig with Stu being one point behind him. This is my second stunty cup that has filtered down this year after the
BBBL Skull Cup in August meaning I've now won them with three stunty teams - the ogre one was a genuine victory. I now feel like I need to start playing snotlings to complete the set.
Winner: petew (Snotling)
Runner-up: dankin (wood elf)
Most TD: dankin (wood elf)
Most Cas: @Howlinggriffon (humans)
Stunty cup: @Stewbacca (halflings)
Suffolk Slayer (most cas in a game against a member of the local leagues): legion_uk (dwarf)
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