Brighton Piers, 7th September 2024

The second pairs tournament run by the BriBBe league was this last weekend. For the first event last year, Tommy and I went as an all stunty team. In quite a competitive field, we didn't fair so well. 

This year, Tommy wasn't able to make it so I paired up with Damology and we went for a pairing of undead teams - he took shambling undead and I took vampires. There was a rule that meant you couldn't have two tier one teams and we've both played these teams during the league so we were rather confident. We called ourselves the Evil Dead 2 and got these snazzy t-shirts!

 

For my vampire build, I had all 6 vampires and took dodge and leader on the throwers, strip ball and block on the blitzers, and dodge on both the runners. I had 8 thralls, one with kick and three re-rolls. And as I was told during the day, one coach. I really need to check these sorts of details before the first game. 

I normally make notes as I go along, although I didn't do so for various reasons, so some of the below might be less accurate than normal. 

Round 1 v Ewan (ewanl, All Our Own Stunts)

There were a few all stunty teams this year. We were the only ones last year. We are clearly trendsetters.  We were drawn against Ewan and Ben. Ewan plays in the BriBBe league and has played a few tournaments, but this was the first for Ben who was playing gnomes. Ewan had a fun snotling build. No stars were allowed so he had maxed out on the positionals giving one troll block and the other strong arm, pass on both flingas, sure feet on both stilties and pile driver on both wagons and induced the rookies, a biased referee and two bribes.

The game started off with one of Ewan's fungus flingas doing some good work for him and getting a few knock downs. I received the ball, and attempted to score as quick as possible. I had aimed for 2 turns but it took a little bit longer. However, all the weapons successfully argued the call and my quick score had no impact on the number of players he had for his drive. I play a high aggression defence and manage to steal the ball to go in 2-0 up at half-time with the bribes having to be used this time.

Damo was also winning his game, so we were looking good for the round. Kicking to the snotlings, they score quickly. Failing to pick up the ball and with them throwing a player into my backfield, it looked like I was conspiring to throw away a comfortable win. Fortunately the dice gods shone on me, and I actually regained control of the ball and got a 3-1 victory. With Damo winning 2-0 and the tie breakers being based on a combination of touchdowns and casualties we were top of the table after round 1.

Our game did run on into lunch - I think a combination of the two teams both requiring a lot of thought and a lot of dice, and probably a bit of chatting led to the overrun.  

Round 2 v David (halfabrain, Halfachest)

With us top of the table, we got a pretty difficult draw. Without wanting to give away spoilers for how this round went, Halfachest comprising David and David (PurpleChest being the other one) ended up winning the whole event.

PC had a fairly simple vampire build to my own although had managed to fit in an apothecary by dropping a thrall and a coach and had slightly different skills (wrestle over kick, and block over dodge on a thrower). Damo's game wasn't going great until PC looking to get an extra score blitzed from the wrong angle and pushed one of Damo's players in range. He managed to get an equaliser, but then PC pulled out the vampire 1-turner and just snuck a winner at the death.

My game against David was the fourth time we've played. With the score standing at 2 wins to me with 1 draw. However each time we'd played previously, he had been playing a stunty team. Today he had renegades who were unlikely to be such a walkover as in our last encounter. 

I kick to him and decide to go big or go home. I've got an opportunity at the ball turn one and I'm jolly well taking it. A knockdown and a favourable bounce could see me recovering and getting in a very strong position. I fail a hypnogaze that means I can't cut the corner, meaning more dice are involved. I don't think I'd be able to gaze the ball carrier, meaning that when I blitz them, and the best result I get is defender stumbles, then I fail to knock over the ball carrier and I've burned through two re-rolls for minimal gain. 

In fact, I'm quite out of position now. David is able to quite easily move up the pitch and even with my strip ball blitzer knocking the ball loose a couple of times, it never falls nicely for me and I don't have a chance to recover it. David goes 1-0 up on his turn 8 and I look to set up for a 1-turn touchdown. With 2 big guys and a lineman on the line, I realise I need to hit the lineman to have control over the situation and not allow David to chose the results of my block dice rolls. Unfortunately due to the big guys confusing me I set up incorrectly, meaning that I am only able to make the first push and the attempt fizzles out. 

In the second half, I'm under a lot of pressure and running out of players. A thrall makes a desperation play to pass the ball up the pitch to a runner in scoring (possibly stalling) range. They roll a 5 on the 6+ throw meaning it is inaccurate rather than wildly inaccurate. I decide to take it because the ball will then be far away from my endzone. However, the renegades manage to recover it and I end up losing the game 2-0.

Round 3 v Nick (kendrallsharne, Total Fuzzy Sharne)

We got another pretty difficult draw in this round. Damo was up against Luke and his humans. Luke currently has a sizeable lead in the South East Tournament Series so is clearly a good player. Nick has been playing vampires a fair amount and so our mirror match was probably always going to favour him slightly. 

Damo lost his game 2-1 after going a couple of key players down early in the game. My game was looking more hopeful.

I kicked the ball and my strip ball blitzer was annoying Nick a lot. I was down to just 1 thrall on the pitch early on which obviously restricted my options somewhat. Under the pressure, Nick scores on his turn 7, allowing me 2 turns to get an equaliser. I manage to do so and going in drawing 1-1 at half time, I'm fairly confident that I will be able to at least get a draw out of this.

That feeling increases when I get a numbers advantage with 10 players against 7. We'd twice received bribes on the kick off table, so I was trying to remove his players and compound this advantage. I use the tactic Nick took when we first played, of running away with the ball. My thrower in the back field was just waiting for the right time to do anything with it.

However Nick quite cleverly kept hypnotising any player that they might want to throw it to, so on my turn 15, the only played who could catch the ball was a thrall. I decided to dodge out a vampire to be out of range from a blitz from the strip ball blitzer on Nick's team. My plan is then to pass to the thrall, rush twice for the handoff and then the game should hopefully be wrapped up, save a double pow on a blitz from the opposing runner who would have been the only player who could hit my ball carrier. 

After a successful pass, the thrall drops the ball at their feet and it is recovered by the opposition. I still have a chance to stop the score, and I knock down the vampire holding the ball. However some vampiric shenanigans allow them to recover it and score the winner on their turn 16.

We both ended up 1/0/2 and the same result as a team. It wasn't the exact result we had hoped for, but it was a fun day nonetheless, as it always is in Brighton.