Glowbowl, 6th April 2024

Back in October, Oli asked me if I wanted to go to Glowbowl. For anyone not in the know, Glowbowl is essentially a tester event for the Thrudball ruleset, played at the same veneu but as a one-day event rather than the larger two-day event. As I wasn't intending to go to Thrudball this year due to it falling on my partner's birthday, I thought it would be a great idea (despite it being a 6 hour round trip) as the community and people were what made Thrud such a great experience.

I decided to play Black Orcs. I'm currently trying to play through all of the teams in NAF tournaments, and they are one of the few that I've got painted but not yet played. They were in tier 5 of 7, along with chaos renegades, old world alliance and perhaps surprisingly, high elves. 

I was able to skill up all my black orcs (guard on three and mighty blow on the other three), put sure hands on one goblin, sneaky git on another, hire the star player 'ooligan Gymir and take a bribe. This did mean I only had two re-rolls but I've been trying to work a bit on re-roll management and I feel that having fewer re-rolls very much helps this.

Oli and I had managed a practice game a couple of weeks ago, but other than that my only experience of playing the teams is a dozen games on the ladder BloodBowl 3 (which wasn't real practice because most of my games I was down at least one of my black orcs) and in the recent SKABB Gutterbowl league. My goal for the day was to tick the team off my list and to hopefully not lose all of my games.

Round 1 v tiki1985

There were no table numbers to try to add a more relaxed feel about it, with the more competitive players being mixed in with those who were there just to have a bit of fun and roll some time. This less formal way of organising an event meant that at the start of each round, there were usually a couple of people ambling around or shouting the name of their opponet. I was just stood looking about and tiki managed to come and find me. Having tops with your name on definitely does help in these circumstances!

Tiki was a really lovely guy. I know this because we had an hour or so to chat afterwards due to our game finishing rather quicky. He plays online with some of our friends from the Thanet league, and also runs a league in the west country. He clearly loves BloodBowl and is obviously a competent player. However the dice really let him down in this game.

He was playing khorne with a fairly standard line up with some block and guard across the positionals and juggernaught on his bloodspawn. 

I received the ball and after causing two casualties on turn 1, his bloodspawn double skulled on tiki's first dice roll. He decided he had to attempt to use a re-roll but the loner failed and the big guy was on the floor. 

The situation just got worse from there. I proceeded to hit and kick his players off the pitch before scoring in turn 8. Tiki had four players to set up for the second half, and the situation got worse. I got some more removals and scored a second early in the second half. He was left with 1 marauder lineman to set up. I was able to chase the kick and score a third, and still the KOs stayed off leaving him with the same lineman to set up. The same thing happened again, I was able to chase the ball down. Tiki encouraged me to foul his lineman (who had 3 die uphilled my troll for the fun of it) off the pitch and pitch clear him, which I did the turn before scoring a fourth. 

I really hope I get to play tiki again at some point where the dice aren't horrendously slanted in my favour.

Round 2 v fatboyslimming

I figured after scoring 4 and causing 9 casualties, I'd probably be up against a good player and it turned out that it was against a former Thrudball champion who was playing chaos renegades. Winning the toss, he decided to receive the ball in the rain and it looked like the opposite of the last game was going to happen to me. Karma meant there were two removals on his first turn with a couple of black orcs sitting in the casualty box. 

I decided to work with what I had available and across the next few turns, I managed to get favourable blocks on both the rat ogre and minotaur who, with the use of Gymir's dirty player, were both fouled into the casualty box. With the sides a bit more even, the renegades decided to score mid-way through the half, which allowed me time to get an equaliser

Receiving in the second half, the ball went onto my sideline. Fearful of both the dark elf getting it and nicking it and being surfed if I was on the sideline, I managed to get my sure hands goblin to rush to the sideline, pick it up and rush back. It's not safe, but it's not unsafe. 

The sneaky dark elf still does find a way to get a hit on the ball carrier and knock it loose onto the sideline again. However, with only a both down result and having double rushed for the hit, they're stuck on the sideline next to a goblin. With a bit of shennanigans on my turn, incluing blitzing in a guard assist, I managed to surf them. 

A turn later, I end up taking the risk on pushing a player onto the ball from my blitz and the ball bounces into my half near the sweet spot.  A skaven manages to get near it and look threatening but my mean goblin bruiser linemen team up for a two dice block which ends up putting him in the KO box. Over the next couple of turns, I managed to pick up the ball and take it up the sideline, screening off from a possible attack and take the victory 2-1.

Round 3 v ceetee

With just under 60 players, there was the possibility of about 7 coaches ending up winning all three games. I tried not to get too excited about how the event was going and just focus on the game at hand. One of my league mates had played Chris at NAFC last year and had told me that it was a really difficult game, and so I went into this expecting to have a difficult match up.

With a bash based match up ahead of me, I decided that I wanted to get the first hits in and elected to receive the ball. This decision paid off, as the mean black orcs reverted to their game 1 form and took two chaos dwarfs off the pitch early. I slowly moved up the pitch and scored turn 8, leaving no time for the chaos dwarfs to score back (and for good measure, I even got a blitz to knock down a centaur).

I kicked the ball and forced the chaos dwarfs down one side. Ceetee either thought he was under too much pressure to stall, or wanted to push to try and then turn me over for the win, and decided to rush to score. Unfortunately for him, he had a 1 re-rolled into a 1 and the game turned on it's head. A score at that point leaves it wide open. As it was, I was able to retrieve the ball and quickly move it to safety and then into scoring range, stunning both bull centaurs for good measure. A couple of successful rushes and I won the game 2-0.

Results

Myself and the lovely Torquemada playing high elfs were the only two players to win all three games. I was frankly astounded as I had thought winning one game would have been achievement. Not knowing what the tiebreakers were, we were unsure which of us would take it. I was honestly just delighted to have won all three of my games with a team I expected to struggle with. 

I had assumed that playing an elf team Karl would have outscored me, but it turns out that my 4-0 win early in the day meant we had both scored 8. I'm still not sure exactly what the tiebreaker was, but it fell in my favour and somehow I won the event. I was dead chuffed. My goal for the year had been to try to win an event, and I've now managed two. I got a LOT of luck - the removals in the first two games, and the snaked rush in the final one. To win a tournament you do need to be lucky, and it just seemed like it was my day for it.

The prize for winning Glowbowl is a ticket to Thrudball - the event that I had decided not to go to as it's on my partner's birthday. However, I think I may have permission now... watch this space.