The weekend just gone, we held the third iteration of our annual two-day October Ogre themed event. For the first time ever, we had a sevens event run by first time TO Matt who did a sterling job, with spot prizes, a simple ruleset and including fewest re-rolls as a tie breaker. It meant that not only did those with re-rolls get tutted at, but they were also potentially going to miss out on glory with their underhanded methods. (Note: I'm aware re-rolls are legal in Sevens, it just doesn't feel like cricket).
For the sevens event, I decided to take wood elves as their fast and fun. With my choice for the 2-day event being nurgle who I've not played before, are very slow and have lots of skills that I would forget, I wanted to take something that I knew I would enjoy and be comfortable with.
My build was 2 wardancers and 5 linemen. You only got one skill, so I put strip ball on one of the dancers.
Game 1 v Stu (beardedlucha)
In round 1, I was drawn against my fellow commissioner and fellow podcast host (BloodBowl Tavern, available wherever you get your podcasts, except Apple because they hate us for some reason), Stu. He is currently in a year of the orc, entitled 202forc. He has a beautifully painted wrestling themed orc team, with players such as the British Bulldorc, and Ultimate Waarghior. I don't think I'd actually played against them before so it was a delight to be able to do so.
Stu had both a re-roll and a thrower with leader, so you can imagine the amount of tutting I did. I kicked the ball (I think almost always the right choice in sevens) and he did a side cage down my right flank. I got a wardancer to dive in for the surf but only got a both down. I start moving other players without realising his ball carrier didn't have block. I think I had assumed he was carrying on a blitzer. We resolve the block and the ball goes out of play and is thrown in nicely for my other wardancer who literally dances away for the score - rushing to do so to earn me the spot prize.
I score quickly to tie up the game, although only after Stu throws one of his re-rolls at jumping a prone player to base my ball carrier (an acceptable use of a re-roll). I manage a little chain push to give my wardancer an easier job of dodging out and down the line and into the endzone.
I manage to turn him over again and get a third to rub it in a bit, but with a most touchdowns prize on the line, I felt it was worth it.
Game 2 v Josh (lumpy)
Josh had brought ogres along to fit the theme and also had a leader skill, this time on a runt punter. He had juggernaut on an ogre with block on another and then to round out his skills a gnoblar had sure feet.
This game was a ridiculous feast of elf nonsense. I kicked the ball and managed to turn him over twice and then score early in the second half to be 3-0 up with the game very comfortably in the bag.
Josh pulled one back and with only one turn and no chance of scoring myself, after a blitz on a gnoblar, my players were content to head off for an early finish - basically I left the ball entirely unguarded to give the ogres a chance to throw a gnoblar for another score. The throw failed with a bonehead, but I encouraged the runt punter to make two dodges to kick the gnoblar who successfully landed, picked up the ball and double rushed for the ogres second of the game. A 3-2 victory for me that looks closer on paper than it actually was.
Game 3 v Jez (paganagent)
I'd chatted a lot with Jez at various events and he has helped out with design for the Kent Team Championship next year and also with a logo for Brighton's upcoming World Cup bid so we were very familiar with each other but I think this is the first time we had played.
He had a necromantic horror team who were in a low tier due to their low win rates. This meant that he had 4 skills across his team which all went to positionals with both wraiths gaining guard and the werewolf and ghoul getting block.
With the standings hidden on Tourplay, I didn't know prior to the game, but I was the only player on two wins at this point. We were playing on top table with Jez having had a draw and a win.
I get a blitz and get a player under the shallow kick who unfortunately fails to catch it. With the players on the sideline, Jez goes for a blitz on an elf with the wolf to attempt a surf. He gets a knockdown and manages to recover the ball, although at the cost of me surfing his ghoul.
He gets a side cage with the werewolf carrying the ball. I attempt a cage dive surf - which would have been uphill due to the guard wraiths lurking nearby. It fails and Jez moves the cage up the pitch, electing to stall. I therefore attempt the cage dive again and this time the dodge succeeds and the werewolf leaves the pitch. With the ball flying up the pitch and both of his ball carrying positionals in the dug out, I'm able to recover it and go in 1-0 up at half time.
When I receive, I move everyone up quickly and go for a quick score to attempt to secure the win. I manage to pull it off and start to relax a little. Jez fails when rushing for a consolation and I attempt to go for an egregious third but it doesn't come off.
With three wins out of three, I pick up the tournament win. Here you can see me making my standard "Oh My Gosh, I've Won Something!" face.
This was my third NAF tournament win ever, and third of the year. I'm only one away from AndyDavo who has 4, which means I'm nearly as good as him, right? I guess he might have won bigger, more prestigious events, but they all say "Winner" on them so I'm calling it close.
In the days prior to the event, we had begun a mild amount of trash talking with the BriBBe league from Brighton, and we now have a thing called the Bashes. Whenever 3 or more coaches from each league are at an event, we take the best three places and whichever league gets the lowest total position will win the Bashes. For this event, Brighton came out on top by just one position and were the inaugural winners of the trophy.
For the main event, we had decided to test out the BloodBowl Tournament Manager software which can be found at
bbtm.app. This had been used in the Amorical Cup earlier this year, and the designer, Seanh1986 was really helpful with any issues we had on the day, despite being in a different timezone!
The software is similar to Tourplay in that the coaches enter the results, although unlike Tourplay it only needs to be entered once at the end of the game, and touchdowns don't need to be assigned to any specific player on your team.
I was the spare coach on the day, so I ended up playing four of the six games due to players not being available for all of their games. I had planned to take nurgle as it was the nearest event to my house and I didn't want to travel a long way to have what I thought might be a miserable time. I took a skillless rotspawn, 3 bloaters with block (one had guard stacked), 2 pestigors - one with sure hands and one with wrestle and leader - a bunch of rotters to 11, Lord Borak and 1 rostered re-roll.
I don't think I would take this roster again. What nurgle really lack is ball handling skills, so I think I would drop Borak and grab an extra pestigor. I'd probably then utilise the leader skill elsewhere. We live and learn.
Round 2 v Paul (eyeballpaul)
As Paul and his kids had missed the first round, we ended up drawn against each other. It wasn't an easy first round as he had lizardmen which he is skilled with, against me playing nurgle for the first ever time on tabletop.
Echoing our game from the
World Cup last year, an officious ref had a problem with a star player. This time it was on my side, and the referee stunned Lord Borak before the game had even begun! I received the ball and I got excited when Borak killed the kroxigor in the first few turns. I was difficult for me to protect the ball and the lizards nicked it and got out of range and were going to score, so I just spent the half hitting things and hoping they'd leave the pitch. Not many did. For his part, Paul was repeatedly fouling my leader pestigor but never managed to get anything more than a stun.
In the second half I successfully jumped a prone player with a pestigor to wrestle the ball carrying skink to the ground, but where it bounced I had no way of recovering it, so I go 2-0 down.
Receiving, I place my ball carrier a little too far forward and the ball is stolen for the lizards to score a third.
At one point, we both roll snake eyes on consecutive fouls, with the only difference being that I manage to successfully have a word with the referee, who was probably feeling sorry for my team at this point.
Round 3 v Jake (dinlo)
My second game of the day, and my second member of the same family. Jake had chaos chosen with a lot of block. I received the ball and I tried to hurt a lot of players. I got a numbers advantage, which snowballed after fouling the minotaur into the casualty box, and had screened the ball but Jake managed to dodge round and blitz and get the ball loose. He kept recovering it and looked like scoring but I was just able to stop the sscore.
In the second half, with a significant players advantage, I manage to steal the ball and move up, scoring to win 1-0 with all of his players on the floor.
Round 4 v Josh (minimorg)
We had been looking at the table overnight - Paul and his boys were staying over with us - and saw that Josh and I were next to each other in the table. Josh is the only Andrews that I hadn't previously played (ever - not just in the tournament) and we had discussed how annoying my rotspawn might be for his snotlings.
Sure enough, we were drawn against each other, and I was the first person to play against all Andrews not only in a tournament but also in a row.
This game was good fun, with my rotspawn holding a large number of snotlings in place. At least until he didn't. My players were causing annoyances to his, but not enough to allow him to run riot on me. Whilst the below triple skulls was re-rolled and didn't cause any issues, the snotlings did and I fell to a 2-0 loss.
Round 5 v Will (gotrekgrumble)
I had just been watching the end of Will's game in the previous round and we were drawn against each other here. I received and did a slow grind down the pitch. He put a lot of players in front of the ball but I managed to find a way through.
On his drive he scored quite quickly to allow us both to play for the win, but ultimately neither of us managed to do so.
I managed to get another triple skulls in this game. See?
I forgot to make any notes on these last 2 games, so the above is from a very hazy memory. I didn't play the final game, which meant that I was able to do a lot of work ensuring that the software was all working ok before we announced the winners. Overall winner with a 4/2/0 record but just winning on the bonus points was Joeseph - not his first NAF win, but the first that came with a shield. Congratulations to him!
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