Bromley Winter Cup 2, 2nd December 2023

Our friends in Bromley ran their final event of the year this past weekend, the Winter Cup. The event sold out in roughly 2 hours which is a testament to both the popularity of BloodBowl at the moment, and also to how well Chris and the BBBL run their events.

With a 1100 TV build, this meant teams were going to have slightly slimmer rosters than they normally would at a tournament. I went back and forth over what to take. Having played halflings a lot recently, I had considered taking them. With teams likely to have fewer re-rolls stealing them could be a lot more impactful. I then thought about snotlings. I have recently finished painting my snotling team and came up with a full roster before reading the rulespack (the wrong way round, I am very much aware) and discovering that there were no riotous rookies. Finally I did what I normally do and got Oli to pick my team for me.

I ended up taking a Chaos Chosen roster with a block minotaur, four warriors (2 block, two guard), 7 beastmen including one with guard and one with sure hands and 2 re-rolls. I hadn't played Chosen in an 11s tournament previously, although I've played two tabletop seasons, one online season and several sevens events. I'm not unfamiliar but they hadn't yet been ticked off my list for the 29 so I thought I'd give them a go.

On a cold and frosty day I arrived early and decided to keep warm by grabbing a coffee in the shopping centre before heading to the venue and chatting to a few other coaches outside.

For the BBBL events, they have had "Really Stupid" plays. These allow a bonus point for acheiving your selected really stupid play during the game. With no other bonus points available, acheiving these can be the difference between first and second place. 

Game 1 v Izaak (izzinatah) 

For my first game I got drawn against Izaak and his norse. Having won the toss in a bash match up, I thought the best option for me was to receive the ball. The first dice roll of the game was a double skull from my block warrior. With only 2 re-rolls I thought about it for a moment before deciding that it was best not to surrender the advantage that I had gained from winning the toss. I re-rolled and immediately removed a lineman, and got another off the pitch during the same turn. 

The removals kept going my way with Izaak's yhetee getting injured mid-way through the first half with a valkyrie shortly after. 

Even when my minotaur rolled triple skulls, it still felt that things were going my way and I opted not to attempt a re-roll on this. 

I managed to stall out and score on my turn 8 having removed a sizeable chunk of Izaak's team. He tried to score quick with a potato play. I failed to knock down his ball carrier on a blitz and he successfully blitzed away for the score. 

Receiving the ball, I was quite safe. The norse's best shot at me was with a 1 dice blitz with the valkyrie although and sure hands ball carrier (selected primarily because I play much worse against teams with strip ball) was knocked down but I managed to recover the ball and drive up the pitch for a turn 16 score and a 2-1 win. After clarifying whether all casulaties count, I totalled up 5 for the game which I though meant I might be in the running for most casualties later in the day.

My really stupid play for the day was to have one of my players surfed. I shot myself in the foot in a way as I didn't leave any of Izaak's players alive to be able to surf me! No bonus point for me in round 1.  

Game 2 v Ryan (RedSawn)

For my second game I was drawn against Ryan and his Skaven. The rain started pouring down for this game and I kicked to him. The rats had a number of gutter runners - one with wrestle and one with block, blitzers with mighty blow and guard, a block rat ogre and a number of linemen.

Kicking to them I managed to surround them which forced a gutter runner to find a spot, dodge through and score early. 

I received and picked up the ball and caged up. Despite successfully dodging his rat ogre out to hit the corner of my cage, I was able to successfully stall out and score on my turn 8. My really stupid play was to use a re-roll on either turn 8 or turn 16. After scoring, I realised it would have made sense for me to re-roll a 3 die block on turn 8 when it was relatively safe to do so. Nevermind, I'd rather have the touchdown in the bag, especially against those sneaky little rats!

Collecting the ball, I again formed a solid cage with a guard piece on opposite corners and slowly marched up the pitch to score on turn 16 - after successfully remembering to re-roll a three die block to achieve my Really Stupid play!

I set up to stop the skaven one turn touchdown as best as I could, with Ryan admitting after that he wasn't confident enough to try it anyway. I kicked off with only a time out potentially preventing me from winning the game... and proceeded to roll 3 on the kick off table, double checked that it was indeed time out and cursed my luck.

Ryan was attempting to do his really stupid play which was a pass in my half. With the rain and him focussed on this, there was a possibility that it might fail, especially as he was out of re-rolls. However the sneaky rats managed a 4+ pick up, 4+ handover, 2+ dodge, 4+ pass, 5+ catch and 3+ 3+ 2+ dodges to get the equaliser. A calculator tells me that this had less than 3% chance of succeeding and now I wish I hadn't worked that out!

I do like the randomness on the kick off table, however this is one that really annoys me as it has on a few occassions turned a well managed drive to win the game into a draw, with very little that can be done about it. Nevermind, with a win and a draw in the bag, I couldn't go home with a losing record which is always a nice feeling.

Game 3 v Tom (chewitt666)

My final game of the day was against Tom and his high elves which won the award for best painted. I did think that someone had taken a photo of them but I can't now find it. They were very lovely but I enjoyed them a lot better when they were in the casualty box!

There was a smattering of dodge and block across the team as well as a lineman with kick. Again the rain continued and attempting a score in his turn 3, Tom's catcher failed to get a hold of the wet ball with a beastman breathing down his neck and the Chosen surrounded the ball, almost fearful to pick it up in case it bounced out.

When they finally risked it, it did bobble free but was recovered. The elves did then manage to knock it loose, however they weren't able to capitalise with a touchdown and after a somewhat crazy chaos passing play, I went into half time 1-0 up with a number of removals. 

The second half was much more standard Chaos Chosen tactics as we gathered the ball and marched down the pitch.

For this game I had selected successfully jumping over a prone player as my Really Stupid play. The others seemed a bit too tricky for Chaos, so I thought this might be feasible at a point when I've got the game well under control. With a 1-0 lead and the ball very safe, I sent a beastman to hurdle an elf that I knocked over on turn 15 and he heroically made it without even needing a re-roll! I scored on turn 16 to secure what I thought was a 2-0 victory.

That is until the fans rioted again (why have they got it in for me?) and allowed the elves a couple of turns to score. With a 2 touchdown lead, I wasn't as annoyed as in the previous game as the match was still in the bag, but I did try to prevent the score as much as possible by blitzing and surrounding all of the available receivers. Unfortunately for him, Tom failed to get the dodge away. 

With a further 4 casualties in this game, I thought I may have been in with a shout of the award but it was won by Titanium Boy with a whopping 19! I did however finish in fourth place and unbeated which was much more than I had expected at the beginning of the day, and I'm very pleased with that. 

A great day at Troll Trader as always, and looking forward to the next event there hopefully early next year.