Bucks Open, High Wycombe 24th February 2024

This past Saturday, Oli and myself took a trip to Tabletop Republic in High Wycombe to take part in the Bucks Open event, previously known as Pitch Invasion. 

These events are run monthly by nonumber who manages the store, with a ruleset that remains constant throughout the year (although access to stars had recently been removed - I blame Oli for taking a broken undead roster last time he went).

I'd been wanting to make one of these events for a while but this is the first time that the date worked out for me, so I was pretty excited. So much so, that I actually had 3 breakfasts rather than the 2 that I normally have pre-tournament. I have the potential to get very hangry, which can obviously affect how the games go. 

I took Lizardmen, mainly so that I had an incentive to paint the team in time, and partly because I haven't played them before. I've never had much of a desire to play them previously but I've always hated playing against them and I'm aware they're a very competitive team. 

With the ruleset being extremely generous - with the option to get 8 primary skills and no restrictions on stacking them - this suited Lizardmen well, and I put block on all of the saurus, stacking mighty blow on one and tackle on another.

I'd played a couple of practice games with Oli, including one where we talked through each turn as we were taking it, which I thought was a really great learning experience and something that I'll probably try to do a bit more of in the future.

Game 1 v Mike (mccnaol)

There is no tiering in the ruleset, which hugely benefits tier 1 teams. As such, to be drawn against the only stunty team in the tournament, meant I had a distinct advantage on the pitch in my first match up. My opponent Mike (at least, I think it was Mike - I asked twice and forgot to write it down both times due to excitement about starting. My apologies if your name is something entirely different) had got halflings with Rumbelow Sheepskin.

Tier 3 teams were the only ones allowed a st2ar player and Rumbleow being my favourite, I had a reasonable idea of how his roster would play. Both trees had block and grab, which I found very interesting/annoying, with grab being exceptionally useful if a tree roots. 

I received the ball and started inflicting damage upon the flings, although the trees kept keeping at least one saurus occupied at all times. I potentially made a mistake with my initial set up and could have left them largely alone but it didn't seem to affect my chances too much.

I moved the ball deep into the flings half, reasonably well protected and in the middle of the first half with Rumbelow on the floor, I fouled him into the casualty box, swinging the odds even more in my favour. 

I'd been making slow progress and scored on my turn 8, which allowed the halflings a shot at the one turn throw team mate score which unfortunately for them didn't come off.

Defending in the second half, the halflings tried to score quickly but they failed a catch. This allowed me to clinically remove players until there was just two rooted trees left on the pitch before I scored my equaliser in turn 15. 

This allowed the flings another shot at the one turn and the lizards, taking pity on them for their brutal play during the game, kicked the ball out of play for a touchback. After pushing a player from the line, a tree picked up a catcher with sure feet who successfully landed and danced around some players to pull one back.

The lizards tried for a one turn themselves and got all the pushes they needed but the chameleon skink who successfully picked up the ball, failed to dodge past a treeman to hand it off to his team mate, meaning that it ended with a 2-1 win to the lizards.

Game 2 v Tom  (BBBaka)

Aside from my game, all the other games bar one had ended in a draw, so I was up against Tom's necromantic horror. There were only 3 coaches who had not opted for tier 1 teams, and I got two of them in my first two games. I also managed to avoid the 4 coaches who I had thought of as potential winners when looking at those attending. If I was going to stand a good chance of hitting my unstated goal which was to be competitive and finish in the top few spots, then the draw for the first two rounds was really helping me out. I know that there are often some good coaches that attend these events and I wanted to test myself and see how I fared against them. 

Tom had said that lizards were the one team he wanted to avoid facing. It was his first 11s tournament, with his previous events being sevens events (including the one arranged by SOBB, so I'm expecting to see him when we go there in May). He was mainly wanting to see how he fared playing four games in a day. 

I kicked to my opponent and I managed to put a lot of pressure on and get a turnover. A lot of early removals for me really helped to swing this game. I ended up with 5 casualties, 2 of which regenerated, however of those that didn't, they were key positionals with a flesh golem and a ghoul not returning, along with a wraith who decided that the KO box was nice and cozy. I scored my second late in the first half and then when receiving I marched up the pitch, scoring with 3 turns left for a potential consolation score for my opponent. 

He didn't have the resources to do so and I pushed for a third, however a werewolf was able to prevent me from doing so.

After two games, being clear at the top of the leaderboard was a bit exciting for me. However, I tried not to get too carried away, as I knew that this would mean I'd likely be facing a couple of strong players in my final 2 games.

Game 3 v Oli (eldritchfox)

We had joked in the car on the way up that if we came up against each other on the top table in the final game, I would need to concede in order to get a lift home. Fortunately this wasn't the final game, and Oli's partner had told him that he had to give me a lift home regardless when he mentioned it to her.

Oli had skaven and we had practiced this matchup a couple of times in the last two weeks, including one game which we treated as a proper training excerise, talking through all of the decisions we were making and discussing whether there were better options. I found it to be a really good training experience, as someone who wants to get better at the game and improve their competitiveness. As such, we had a fairly good idea of each other's game plans.

Oli kicked to me. I got some key early removals. The guard blitzer went into the casualty box turn 1, and the rat ogre a couple of turns later, with some of their team mates joining them. It made it easy for me to camp out near his endzone and score in turn 8. He attempted a one turn touchdown in response, but it didn't work out.

In the second half, I got a blitz and managed to put a lot of pressure on the ball and got a skink underneath who caught it. It didn't take long for the rats to steal it back, but a gutter runner with the ball on the sideline was able to be surfer after a skink dodged in behind and a saurus blitzed them off. The ball bounced favourably for me, and I was able to recover it and move it up the pitch with the rats not having many options, and I went 2-0 up with two turns left to play. 

Low on numbers, the skaven weren't able to keep the ball safe and my skinks swarmed forwards and managed to get a third touchdown to really rub it in the rats noses. We finished the game in about half the allocated time available, which is how one sided the game had been with the early removals being decisive. We even had time to have a practice half and still grab a coffee and chat to others before the round officially ended.

Oli looked up the NAF record between us which now stands at one apiece for 11s games. 

Game 4 v Tom (nonumber)

Going into the final game, there were three coaches that could win the event. Myself, nonumber and wulfyn who was playing Oli in the final game. I was in a great place to get the tournament win, being the only coach on three wins (the others were on a 2-1-0 record). To guarantee it, I would need to beat Tom. That would be no mean feat, with Tom having won several events previously, and also being a member of Team Wales. A draw would mean I might take the title if Wolfyn failed to win his game - but if he were to win he would take it on strength of schedule. 

My strength of schedule was poor as the two early wins that put me in the position I was were against coaches who finished in the bottom half of the table. At this point, I was already very pleased with how my day had gone, and I would have been happy regardless of how this game went. As such, I took it as a great way to test myself against a high quality opponent.

Tom was playing chaos dwarfs and I didn't really have a strategy to play against them prior to the game. He opted to receive the ball, meaning he would get the first shot at beating down my team with all of his mighty blow and guard pieces. He also wasn't afraid to foul with his hobgoblins to try to get a numbers advantage. He managed to knock out a saurus early in the game, and I opted to use my apothecary to keep them on the pitch. This was actually the first time my apo had been needed all day, which was a testament to how good my dice had been.

The chorfs managed to put some pressure on my right flank, but I threw everything at halting their progress, including putting some sacrificial skinks in the way. These were dispatched of and I was running low on the stunty part of my team with some of them in the ko box and one in the casualty box. 

A dwarf failed to knock down one of my saurus which gave me chance to hit the ball carrier with my kroxigor for two dice and when that failed to blitz in with a saurus for a further dice. It took all three dice to knock down the hobgolin with the ball which bounced onto the side line. I dodged a skink around even past a tackling dwarf, but failed the dodge into the square to pickup the ball. 

This gave the chorfs a chance to recover which they did and the hobgoblin hid on the line behind some of his larger friends. My kroxigor blitzed one of these friends out of the way and tagged the ball carrier with his prehensile tail. I then moved a saurus in to also tag the hobgoblin and make the score much more difficult. The chorfs found a way out - first with a guard dwarf cancelling my krox's assist and giving an assist along with another friend, to enable the hobgoblin to do a 2 die blitz and get away from the krox. He got the knockdown meaning he didn't need to dodge, and he swung around into the endzone. 

I woke up at 6am the following day thinking about how perhaps I should have put the saurus one square further down which may have increased the difficulty of the score but you live and learn.

I had an attempt at a one turn touchdown and got all the required pushes, but was unable to get the ball to the player who needed it, so went in 1-0 down at half time.

The second half was a very slow progression up the pitch, trying to swing round one flank or the other and shut off the dwarf's route through. It was often slow progress but I was being patient and protecting the ball carrying skink as best as I could. Eventually, having got a stun on the minotaur, I was able to swing down the left, dodging skinks through and even dodging a saurus away for extra cover after a re-roll. 

I was worried about the exact positioning of the ball carrier as I thought a hobgoblin could potentially dodge through and get a shot at them, but nonumber clearly thought the best shot was elsewhere, as he tried to chip away at my screen. I got down to the dwarf endzone and stalled out as I didn't want to give them two turns to score back with the bull centaurs able to easily make that distance and Tom did pressure me into having to roll a reasonable amount of dice to make the score, but I think had been resigned to a draw from the middle of the second half.

The crowd opted not to riot, fortunately for me and the match ended 1-1.

Final standings

I was very pleased with my 3-1-0 record and figured that was enough to get me second place, however I got a bit excited when I wandered over to Oli's game and noticed that he was looking like scoring against Wulfyn's undead. It turned out that they drew 1-1 which handed me my first ever ranked tournament victory. Here is the face of someone looking very chuffed about that! Oli also picked up his first most touchdowns award, so we were both reasonably happy on the drive home. 

I hope to be able to make it back to another event at High Wycombe in the near future if the dates work out.