1066 Battlebowl, 7th July 2024 in Hastings

This past Sunday was the first ever 1066 Battlebowl in Hastings. I believe that this was actually the first NAF event ever in the old seaside town. It was being run by dimmygee, and as a first-time TO he was a great host. I know from chatting to him recently that he had been a bit worried but the event went really smoothly and everyone I've spoken to had a lot of fun.

As dimmy loves Imperial Nobility and has been heard to proclaim "nobs op" at every available opportunity, I thought it would be rude of me not to take them along. I went for an ogre with block, two blitzers with dodge with one having tackle stacked and then four bodyguards with guard. This allowed me to get linemen and ladies to 12 with 3 re-rolls. Ignoring the thrower entirely because they don't seem very good to me, at least not in tournament play. 

On the suggestion of Damology after our road trip to Bromley, all of my players were named Dimmy A, Dimmy B etc with Dimmy Gee being my ogre. 

The venue was a really light round room (even when the weather outside got very rainy) with plenty of space and the possibility to extend the event in future years. All the local leagues sent good contingents - I thik there were 4 from Bromley, 2 from Bexley, 5 from Brighton and an amazing 9 from SKABB (not including host Dimmy himself). For 4 of our contingent, it was their first ever event and from having spoken to them, it seems like it definitely won't be their last.

Round 1 v Nick (greenturtle)

The draw was done on Tourplay and I was up against Nick who I had earlier given some NAF dice to as he had signed up for this as his first tournament. He had brought black orcs, so we were playing the Season 2 boxset matchup. His line up was a block troll, six black orcs with guard, 1 sneaky git goblin and others to 14, with 3-re-rolls. This meant that there was a total of 10 guard on the pitch!

I tend to play quite quickly and I like to think I'm quite helpful to new players (e.g. reminding Nick that he had brawler whenever he was able to use it) so hopefully it was a good first game for him. Nick had come down from Ely and I pointed him in the direction of the league there in case he's interested in playing a bit more tabletop.

During this game, I was sat next to Tofu, the other nobility player and we were joking about seeing each other on the top table in the final round. 

I received the ball and stalled as much as possible. I broke down one side and tried to hurt as many goblins as I could (which turned out to be not many) before I felt pressured to score. Nick tried a throw-teammate touchdown which didn't come off.

When I kicked to the black orcs, I managed to slow them down with all of my stand firm and fend, and also got a hit on the ball carrier. Nick tried a desparation throw team mate for a last minute equaliser. All of the dice went right until the goblin tried to land on a 3+ but rolled a 2. I was quite lucky to come out of the game with a 1-0 win.

Round 2 v Maria (mefspores)

I first played Maria at the NAF Championship in 2023. She hadn't been to many tournaments at that point, but has been playing a lot since then, having played 34 tournaments since late 2022 which is not far short of the 40 tabletop tournaments that I've managed since 2018. She has clearly been playing a lot and I could see that in how she played the game, as it was a really tough match.

She had amazons with 2 blockers with guard, 2 blitzers with block and a linewoman with wrestle. I kicked the ball - I think this is the best option for a team that has the key strength in defence - and whilst I wasn't able to stop her scoring, I was able to make her feel like she needed to score early, which gave me the time to equalise before half time.

I receivd the ball and moved up one side, getting a lot of removals of the amazons, including two casualties in one turn. I had a distinct numbers advantage - I think it was around 10 v 6 - and I was thinking to myself that I was in a situation where I wouldn't lose the match. How wrong I was! I tried to do a handoff to a blodging blitzer to keep the ball as safe as possible, but they failed the 1 in 9 catch, leaving the ball exposed. Amazons were able to do amazon things and nick the ball and run off and get the winning touchdown in turn 16.

It was a really fun match and Maria is a really fun opponent. She often does drawings after the game as a memento for her opponents. She asked me which player I would like a pitcure of, and I picked Dimmy K, the linelady who had double both downed ruining my last ditch attempt to do a desparation blitz on the ball carrier.

Game 3 v Bob (phuqster)

This was the 4th time I'd played Bob in a NAF ranked game. We've played a few times on FUMBBL as well (I think he won them all) and the three earleir NAF games had been 2 draws and a win to Bob. I gave my team a pre-game team talk about how he was my nemsis that I'd never beaten. It seemed to do the job.  Except for my ogre, who rolled this in an early turn. 

I've got way more pictures of triple skulls on my phone than you would think is mathematically possible. Fortunately the ogre passed his loner and took a fling off the pitch. I had kicked the ball and managed to sneak a blitzer into the backfield to attack the ball and get the ball carrier tagged. The ball carrier failed the dodge away, using a reroll to do so as they were marked by my tackle blitzer. I was able to recover the ball. I stalled out to score in my turn 8 and avoid the one-turn touchdown option whilst removing as many flings as possible.

My nobles were in a killing mood. I ended the game with 7 casualties and with hardly any flings on the pitch, I scored a second. I was nearly able to sneak a third. I had overcome my nemesis!

Awards

When the game finished, I had a sizeable lead and it looked like I might be able to get most casualties, however Thomas (irdeaded) from Bexley also managed 7 and beat me by a few.

The winner was the lovely Tofu, my fellow noble coach who took it out of the three coaches on 3 wins because of his strength of schedule. You can see Dimmy's jealousy that someone else won a tournament with nobles! It was a really enjoyable event and hopefully the first of many in Hastings.