Christmas Market Gutterbowl, Chaos Cards 11th November 2023

Last year we started a tradition of having a secret santa within our league (called Secret SKABBer) and we had some silly, fun games being played on an ad hoc basis. This year, having previously held the first Gutterbowl tournament in the universe, and also having recently run a Gutterbowl league in our off-season, we took the decision to run a Christmas Market themed Gutterbowl tournament on the Secret SKABBer night.

The rules were took the basic Gutterbowl team building rules, but adding a Letters to Santa rule where at the start of each game you rolled a D8 and depending on the result you got either a present or a punishment. 1-2 meant Doctor Sawbones visited and a random player lost a point of movement, 3-4 a player gained Pro, 5-6 meant a lesser magic potion and 7-8 meant you'd been really got and you got you a re-roll.

As people started registering their teams on Tourplay I noticed a couple of Christmas puns and so I then decided I need to pick my team based on the best Christmassy name that I could come up with. I crowdsourced some opinions on this and came up with We Tomb Kings of Orient Are, so I could make more use of the team I had borrowed from my league mate David for OctOgre Cup 2

I figured they would be pretty rubbish at Gutterbowl but as you mainly play the game for silly fun, that wasn't much of a concern for me. 

In Gutterbowl you are limited to 5 positionals. Two blitzers seemed like a no brainer, from then you definitely wanted at least one thrower and one tomb guardian. The final positional is then a choice between a second thrower and a second guardian. I opted to go for the thrower for speed. This left me with 130,000 to spend, so I went for a Superior Magic Potion and 3 fans. 

Game 1 v David (Clownzombie)

Of the other 11 coaches there, I drew the one whose team I was borrowing. Amusingly it did take him until the end of the game to realise I was using his team.

David was playing humans and with him kicking to me I thought that the best thing for my strategy was to try to get a good few removals early on. I did manage to get several and but I couldn't take the ball in for the score and the half ended scoreless. 

In the second half, I was just about able to stop them scoring and have the ball covered but  the humans having a chance to get a winner in the final turn with a lot of dice rolls. This was quite feasible as his thrower had received a potion that improved his passing. However David opted to do an unnecessary block with his ogre who fell over meaning he didn't have the chance at the winner. The game ended 0-0.

Secret SKABBER

We took a quick break her to do our Secret SKABBer and as last year I was amazed at some of the presents given. There were dice, weather tokens, models... but I'm always really impressed by the gifts of nicely painted models. Stu (BeardedLucha) who organised the Gutterbowl tournament got a personalised coach model of his wrestling alter-ego, and I got an amazingly painted Rumbelow figure. I'm probably going to have to a have a year of the fling at some point now!


Game 2 v Oli (eldritchfox)

For the second round I was up against Oli and his skaven. We rolled the Sudden Downpour weather which is similar to rain in regular BloodBowl but mainly affects pickups and rushes, so is slightly different.

For this game, Santa gave me a superior potion to go alongside my rostered one and both of my blitzers ended up with leader and sidestep. Gaining a re-roll from the kickoff I had suddenly gone from no re-rolls to 2. 

Winning the toss, I opted to receive to try to get a few hits in early. With my tomb guardian knocked out I scored reasonably early in the hope he would recover. as it was he decided to sit out the rest of the game. 

There was no chance that I could stop the rats scoring at the start of the second half. They then rushed me after kicking and I ran around one of the market stands to make it more difficult for them to get to me. As it was I had a skeleton in range of scoring in the final turn with my thrower next to Oli's rat ogre. The thrower made the 6 that he needed for the pass at which point the Rat Ogre was not to be outdone and rolled a 6 himself to deflect the ball out of the air meaning the game ended 1-1. 

Game 3 v Fluffles (James)

At the start of this game, I realised that I had been playing the skeletons as only movement 4 when they are actually movement 5. I think I had in my head that they were effectively undead linemen, forgetting that undead have the choice of two types of players!

However the extra speed was countered by the fact that my letter to Santa was unsuccessful and my tomb guardian's movement was reduced to 3 for the game!

I kicked to James who scored quickly. He had managed to get his norse down one flank and outstrengthed me with his yhetee and ulfwerener meaning I was unable to get to the ball carrier. 

For the rest of the half I managed to get a good number of removals including the yhetee into the casualty box but due to the short halves and my players lack of speed, I was unable to get an equaliser before the half. 

I received at the start of the second half and moved the ball up to the middle without realising I'd left a gap for an ulfwerner to get through and blitz me to knock it loose. The next few turns were a battle over the ball with the ulf getting up and hitting my player who had just knocked him over to pick up the ball. 

My numbers advantage paid off and I managed to break loose and down a flank. I sent both a blitzer (who had received extra movement through a potion) and my ball carrying skeleton who rushed to get in range for my final turn. The skellie failed the rush but fortunately on the final turn the blitzer who had been put there for this such eventuality managed to pick up the loose ball and rush in himself for the score in my final turn. 

The game ended 1-1.

Conclusion

I drew all three games again - exactly as I had done in the previous Gutterbowl tournament giving me a 0/6/0 tournament record! 

The tournament was won by Craig (hellbentginger) who seems to excel in the variant format. Oli (eldritchfox) got the most casualties. Although there was no official award for this, he demanded that we recognise how much of a bully he is. 



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