RacketBowl, Tunbridge Wells 14th December 2024

My final tournament of the year was the first iteration of RacketBowl, which will be a part of the South East series next year. I had been really struggling with the lurgy for a few days beforehand and I was unsure if I was going to be make the event. Waking up on Saturday morning and not feeling worse than I did on Friday, I thought I'd give it a go. I drove up to Maidstone and fortunately got a lift from BeardedLucha Stu the rest of the way which is great, as my concentration was really starting to wain at that point. 

Upon arrival at the venue, we were greeted by TO Reximus in his finest mafia attire. 

The ruleset for the event has no star players allowed, but everyone had to take one of their custom WiseGuys. You could take a second if you wished (and could afford to do so). I opted to take 2 - one who was a essentially rat ogre with block and claws, and one who was basically a chaos warrior with block and mighty blow. On top of that, I had three ogres with block, a lot of gnoblars, a couple of re-rolls and a willingness to accept that it would all go wrong.

Ogres was the perfect choice for me for this day, as I was also going boneheaded throughout the day due to my head cold! The reports might be a bit shorter than normal for the same reason!

Round 1 v Izaak (izzinatah)

I had played Izaak previously in Bromley almost exactly a year ago. This time he had humans and I fancied my chances if I was able to get a couple of key removals early on. Izaak had the Eldril equivalent Wiseguy, who was definitely rather annoying!

I kicked to him.  A perfect defence on the kick off table allowed me to put all of my muscle on the line, and this made Isaac score very quickly, allowing me to set all my big guys up on the line of scrimmage again for hopefully some tasty hits.

They let me down considerably. In the first half, both of my big guys double skulled and with only gnoblars as cage corners, the humans were able to cage dive on a 3+, recover the ball and then head out of reach. Or so they thought. There was a catcher hugging the sidelines and I was able to kick a gnoblar near enough to blitz him. The kick failed but I had one re-roll left. Do I use it to re-roll the kick, or to attempt a one turn touch down?

The fun option (and probably the best tactically) was to try to prevent the score, so I re-rolled it and the gnoblar landed on it's feet. It promptly rushed over and uphill surfed the human catcher. The crowd were so excited that they forgot to pummel the catcher to death. 

The ball bounces to where I can get it and a gnoblar tries to make a long pass - he rolls the 5 needed and I get very excited until I realise that he's in a tackle zone making it wildly inaccurate. The humans were able to scoop it up on their turn 8 and score. With the one turn attempt failing, the ogres were 2-0 down at half time. 

In the second half I progress steadily. The humans keep knocking the ball loose, but I also keep knocking them out. The ball bounces to my rat ogre proxy who catches it. I'm on my turn 6 and to realistically have a chance of drawing the game against the 3 humans left, I need to score now. The big guy blitzes and knocks down the catcher. Needing a 4+ dodge to score and bring about an exciting end to the game, he trips over his tail. Amazingly the human catcher gets up, runs off and manages to avoid all of my players that try to halt his progress to dodge past them and rush twice to get what felt like a bit of a cruel third touchdown. 

Izaak went on to win all three games and the whole tournament, so I will claim an assist!

Round 2 v Dave (daithi)

After a trip to Roddy Burger (recommended by someone on the BBSE Discord, thanks!) I returned to the venue to be paired up against Dave and his Underworld. He had the same wiseguy as me, the Strength 4 block mighty blow piece.

This picture shows that my block dice continued in the same vein as the first game.

I receive the ball hoping to do some damage early but I don't manage much. Unable to keep the ball safe I get turned over and I'm quickly 1-0 down with my rat ogre in the casualty box after a foul. 

In the second half, the skaven thrower fails the pick up. I throw team mate and am able to swarm around the ball. I nick the ball and dance around trying to keep safe, but unable to progress well. 

The underworld take the ball back but then I get it back from them again. I'm a bit surrounded on my turn 8 but a blitz pushes me ball carrying gnoblar into a square where he could just dodge away for the equalising touchdown. However, there are 2 three die blocks with block I can take to remove the need to dodge. As there's a much lower chance of failure, I opt to do this instead, and free up the gnoblar to just walk in for the score.

Round 3 v Ollie (icarpy)

Ollie had skaven with a slightly unorthodox set of skills. He'd gone for 2 gutter runners with strip ball, a kick lineman and an accurate thrower, along with the rat ogre star in place of the regular rat ogre. 

With me kicking the skaven fail to pick up the ball. I throw a gnoblar towards it and he could potentially dodge away, pick up and score.... although I decide that fouling his star is more important. Unfortunately it failed and the skaven record to score. 

I manage to score back with rushes and hand offs, so we are 1-1 at half time.

Receiving the ball, I move up and don't get any decent shots at the ball. I remove Ollie down to 3 rats, and score on my turn 8 for a 2-1 win.

Conclusion

A 1/1/1 record with ogres is something I'm quite pleased with, having not played them for a while. I was really expecting more casualties than I got. I managed 2 each game... with 5 block mighty blow players! However I did reduce most of my opponents to 3-4 players, so they were definitely doing their job.

I'm most happy for this smiling guy who got his best ever tournament finish - in 3rd place (level on points with 2nd) and a 2/1/0 record with orcs, winning his first ever SKABBERS on Tour Trophy, it's Mr Stu Miller!