South Seas Pirate Playoffs, 10th November 2024

 The 10th and penultimate event in the South East Tournament Series happened yesterday. 

The South Sea Pirate Playoffs were held at Dice in Portsmouth (technically Southsea but my friend who I stayed with said that people always want to be in Southsea rather than Portsmouth for the prestige). It's a great venue with food and drinks available - table service and the option to open a tab making everything really easy. I would go back to an event there just for another jackfruit quesadilla! 

I took norse to mark my 15th unique race played this year. With stacking allowed, I went for a mighty blow tackle berzerker, two ulfs with guard, two valks - one dodge and one wrestle, a yeti with block, 2 pigs and linemen to 14 with 3 re-rolls.

Each game, a random player got given a random grog from the captain. You would roll d8 for a random potion (I think they were the potions from Gutterbowl) and that effect would last for the game. I will let you judge as you read through, but I feel that I got the worst of this in my games!

Round 1 v Jim (salontiger)

I was trying to get Tourplay up on my phone when Jim called to me "Table 9". We played each other earlier this year at SuperBowl and it was nice to have the opportunity to play him again. This time he had undead with a block and guard mummy, 2 wights - one guard, one skilless, 4 ghouls (2 block and 1 wrestle) with a combination of zombies and skellies to make 13.

With the potions, I gained an agility point on a lineman, whereas his wrestle ghoul gained a point of strength. 

The start is quite uneventful. My yeti (Marshmallow) decided he didn't want to hit anything for 4 of the first 5 turns which was rather inconvenient. Jim managed to get a cage around one of my flanks and I manage to make space to risk a cage dive. It fails but with my Valkyrie just prone and unable to knock down any of the nearby players, Jim feels like he has to score which gives me three turns to reply. 

I move the ball quickly up the pitch and he puts quite a lot of pressure on. I manage to push away the players marking my ball carrier who is in range... but manages to snake the rush into the endzone meaning we go in to half time 1-0 down. Jim immediately says he thinks he's got away lucky there, and it proves to be the case.

On my drive he gets a perfect defence. With the ball near to the touchline on one flank, he puts a number of his players near it, allowing me to quickly pass with one valk to the other and then screen off down my right flank. I get a number of good removals into the KO box and it isn't an issue to stall out. I think about pushing for the win, but without knowing how many KOs will come back, it is a big risk so I settle for the 1-1 draw.

Round 2 v Julian (whiskeymancer)

Justin manages Dice and was specifically on a table in the corner in case so he could keep an eye on if he was needed for anything. He was playing halflings with a giant and Puggy. From the grog, one of my pigs gained an extra point of armour while one of his flings gained animal savagery, frenzy and +2 strength. 

I receive the ball and get a re-roll from the kick off table which replaces the one stolen by the masterchef. 

I like to think I'm into stats and data, but Justin put me to shame. He was able to keep track of how many armour rolls I'd made, how many had been successful and calculate how much more than average that was. And it was a fair bit more than average - I was removing a number of halflings at a fair pace.  I'm not sure if this sort of thinking would help or hinder my game play - I think it might actually make me a worse player as I'd be too focussed on the maths and get down when the dice are not going in my favour. It was very impressive how he was able to keep it in his head.

In total during the game, I gain seven casualties which points me joint top after this game.

I march up the field and score in my turn 8, with the kick going too deep for a one turn touchdown attempt. 

On the halfling drive, they struggle to pick up the ball and I manage to steal and run away, scoring a second on turn 7 after needing to dodge away from the giant. At this point, with only 4 players the halflings don't have enough for a one turn event so the game ends 2-0 to the norse.

Round 3 v Kev (coach_kev)

This was my second time playing Kev, although we've spoken on many occasions at various events so I know him well. He had a fairly standard lizardman lineup except that rather than 6 block saurus he had 5 block saurus and a tackle kroxigor. 

Kev had played AndyDavo in the previous round and looking on Tourplay whilst I watched another game, he had been 2-0 up. His face didn't show that though and Mr Davo pulled it around to be a 2-2 draw.

I kicked to Kev and was losing players including my dodge valkyrie to the casualty box. This meant that I was struggling to put pressure on to stop him scoring and we went in 1-0 down at half time. 

The luck on the removals started swinging my way and after Kev used his apothecary on a badly hurt saurus, I was able to keep reducing the numbers and gained a significant player advantage, meaning I was able to easily stall out myself. I looked at going for a quicker score and a turnover but I wasn't confident that it would pan out that way so I settled for a draw and an undefeated day. A blitz even confirmed this as it allowed me to hit the one skink who could potentially be used for a one turn attempt. 

Conclusion

I enjoyed playing norse. When I play against strip ball, I play a lot worse, but none of my opponents were visibly concerned about it. Perhaps they're better at hiding their strategy than I am! As I only managed a couple of casualties in this game, I fell one short of the award which was won by Hexbaron.

I'll probably play norse again soon but once I've played through the races, I think I'll start looking to focus on one team to try to get really good with them.