Troll Bowl III, Bromley, 15th June 2024

This Saturday the fourth event of the South East Tournament Series 2024 was held in Bromley. I love the events in Bromley - not too much travel, a lovely group of coaches and in Troll Trader, an excellent venue. 

I had been wanting to take snotlings to the last 11s event that was held there - the Winter Cup -  but riotuous rookies was not an allowed inducement, so it seemed like not the best idea. After badgering TO and friend Chris Whitehot, he included them for this event which made me feel like I had to take them.

It was a 1.1m build with all stars allowed, although a 2 skill tax for stars and a 4 skill tax for megastars. Not wanting to be that guy who brought along a Morg and Hakflem build, I looked into more interesting options. I settled on Nobbla Blackwart and Fungus the Loon. Along with this, I got a full complement of positionals (except the pump wagons), a full roster, a couple of re-rolls and three bribes. And it only took me 3 attempts to get a legal roster! Initially I had just assumed it was a 1.15m build, and then for some reason I thought that biased referees were an allowed inducement. I really need to spend more time reading rulespacks.

Round 1 v Damian (damology)

I picked up Damo from Ashford on my way there, and Chris's fixture computer was having some fun - not only did it pair us up first round but also brothers minimorg and dinlo were paired up.

Damo had gnomes, and we had played each other in the first league game of the season two weeks before. We had been looking to play a practice game for this event the following week but it didn't come to pass. As it was, we got to play the game now. His build meant he had all the positionals other than one illusionist and Karla von Kill.

I had only played 3 games with snotlings before, and this was mainly to try to get the rules sorted in my head. I wasn't terribly confident but they are good fun. As with goblins, I figured the best thing to do is to receive and try to do as much damage as possible, which is what I did. I had the chance to blitz Karla with my chainsaw on my second turn - but I opted to hit a gnome instead, so as not to be stood next to her if it failed. It turned out to be the wrong decision as the gnome went to the casualty box. Had I gone for Karla and removed her, the game might have played out differently, as she was a big difference maker the longer the game went on.

With my weapons removing themselves and running low on snotlings, I felt like I had to score mid-way through the first half. This gave the gnomes a reasonable amount of time to score back against me. Annoyingly all of my accurate bombs with the fungus flingas into the middle of the gnome cages were being not just deflected but caught and returned - once by a treeman! With the ball in a fox's mouth, I had to roll a lot of dice just to get a 1 dice block and to get in it's way. I managed to get a both down and stun the fox, leaving Karla as the best option for a gnome equaliser on their turn 8. Fortunately for me she failed a rush and then the loner roll and I went in at half time 1-0 up. 

Receiving, the gnomes were in a significantly better position than me and pushed to score early and go for a winner. Unfortunately for both of us, neither was able to get the ball secure and get the winner and we finished with a 1-1 draw.

As with all of the Bromley BBBL events, there were bonus points for trying to achieve objectives. We had both gone for causing 4 casualties by any means. Damo ended with 8 and got his bonus point, whereas I fell 1 short and only got three. 

Damo's gnomes were the recipients of the best painted award, and rightfully so. They're really lovely and Damo is one of the best painters in a our league, so I'm pleased he got the prize.

Round 2 v Sam 

The second game was against Sam from London who must go to the same barbers as me. He was playing humans with 2 tackle blitzers and a lot of block as well as a leader. Sam has only recently started picking up the game again but had a good grasp of all the key concepts.

Things started off going well for me. A tackle blitzer was taken out fairly early and he kept failing all of the ball handling rolls. When he tried a handoff to score in the middle of the first half, it wasn't caught and this allowed me to recover the ball and I was about to run away with it and potentially be uncatchable, when the player who had just picked up the ball in tacklezones failed the dodge away. 

At this point, the game kept getting worse for me. Nobbla and Fungus both took themselves out on blocks, both passing the loner re-roll and then failing the loner re-roll. Players kept disappearing from the pitch, and Sam ended up with 12 casualties against me and a 2-0 victory. 

My bonus point attempt for the game was to get a player sent off for fouling - which I failed to do as I either removed his players with blocks, or failed to knock them down - so I didn't have many opportunities to make fouls.

Round 3 v Thomas (irdeaded)

Thomas is one of the organisers of the Bexley league, and will be helping to run their event in the South East series in December which will be the final event of the series.

I had met him briefly at the Kent Team Championship this year, but it was good to have a chance to chat to him. He had brought along an awesome Amish themed Chaos Dwarf team that he had 3d printed. It didn't look like a great match up for me on paper, especially as he won the toss and elected to receive.

I managed to somehow stop his forward progress. His minotaur suffered an injury early on. He used his apothecary but obviously he was off the pitch for the drive. 

I scored fairly quickly and was just hoping I'd keep enough players on the pitch to be able to hold on for a draw. As it was I managed to dispossess the chaos dwarfs. It was raining for the whole game and they were struggling to keep hold of the ball. Both Nobbla and Fungus lasted the whole game - neither had managed that in either of my previous 2 games - and this was definitely helpful. I was trying to do as much damage as possible before scoring and my team conspired to fail things and try to stop me getting a second but I managed to do so as the ball was fairly well protected, and ended up winning 2-0. 

My bonus point in this game was for jumping a prone player, which I managed to do in a random throwaway moment. 

Conclusion

Normally I make notes after the game on how it went straight after. This is helped by the fact that I play quickly, and so have more time to do so. 

Snotlings take a lot longer to play. The additional players, along with additional rules and so many dice to roll, meant that my games were all not too far from timing out. So I forgot to make notes and it appears from looking at the table that I conceded 1 more touchdown than I remember! However the results and general gist of the game are right.

I can really see why people take Morg with snotlings. The fire power and someone to absorb hits if necessary is really helpful as your little guys just can't do any sort of hitting. You're relying on tricks and your trolls (or pump wagons if you've got them) and it's very difficult. They're still very fun to play and I'll probably give them a go at another point.

The models are also so very small, and it is difficult to tell (at least for someone with my eyesight) which ones you've turned around to indicate that they've been already.

They also seem very swingy - perhaps the most of all the stunty teams. However when they work, they work well. It is a lot of dice rolling though, and I rolled so many 1s - but that's just because I was rolling so many dice overall.

The South East Tournament Standings have been updated on Talk Fantasy Football. If you've got this far and also live in the South East, can you take a few momnets to fill out the feedback form on the BBSE Discord and the SETS as this will really help to determine how both of them will look in the future.