1066 Battlebowl 2, Hastings on 28th June 2025.

For the first Battlebowl last year, I took Dimmy's favourite team - Imperial Nobility. This year, I decided to take their slightly less noble cousins, humans. This was partly based on the fact that I thought they got a reasonable package (seven primaries and one secondary) compared to tier 1 teams who were limited to 5 primary skills. It was also partly because I'd been a bit disappointed with how I had done with them at Superbowl last year and had hoped that I could do a bit better. 

As I much prefer fast agile teams, I went for a slightly unconventional build which had 4 catchers, none of whom had skills. The skills went on the ogre (block), blitzers (4 guard) and linemen (2 block). This left me with just 2 players - my thrower and a lineman - who didn't have any defensive skills at all. There was the possibility of both chainpushing and thrown team mate one turn touchdowns. I would have felt confident if I'd managed to get any practice in, however when I tried on BloodBowl 3, I had a lot of coaches conceding against me. Never mind, how hard could it be?

Round 1 v Chris (hexbaron)

I was drawn round 1 against hexbaron - one of the 5 coaches at the event with a rating over 200 with a team, and someone who has won roughly a billion tournaments. Chris is also an exceptionally lovely guy - he runs Barton Bowl which I've not yet been able to make and the SCRUBB League based in Southampton.

We had actually never played before and I had mentioned the week before the tournament that I would like to play him at some point. Dimmy made the joke that I'd have to win a game, to which I responded that I wouldn't need to if we got drawn first round...

Advice from my friend Primhak was that I should dice Chris. So that's what I set about doing. 

Chris had Old World Alliance, with as much guard as me, a mighty blow slayer, a block tree, a leader thrower and a break tackle catcher. I meant to catch up with him about whether that came in handy in either of his other games, as it didn't in ours.

Chris put me in to receive and forced me to score in 4 after I'd broken down the side. I had planned to camp out there for a while, but my ogre double skulling allowed him to put a bit more pressure on than I would have liked.

When he tried to score back against me, I thought I had blocked out all his routes to scoring by putting my whole team just in front of the ball. I hadn't noticed a dodge from his thrower, followed by a rush and pass would allow him to score. It was all going perfectly until he failed the 3+ catch with a re-roll. 

Players stated to get removed on both sides, and Chris was down all of his dwarfs. I lost a blitzer early, my ogre in the middle of the second half and I had around 6 players on the pitch when the OWA formed a sideline cage. I worked out that I could get a 2 dice uphill surf attempt with my catcher if a few dodges succeeded. As the best shot at winning the game, I gave it a go. The 6+ dodge worked without needing a re-roll and getting a stumbles and both down on the roll, I was knocking his ball carrying thrower down. He chose the both down to knock down my catcher and the ball scattered out of bounds and up into the middle of his half.

This is where we make a mistake. As I'd been going for the surf and the ball scattered out, it wasn't until I was having my sandwich after the game that I realised it should have been a turnover. As it was, we'd both assumed the surf and no turnover, which in the heat of the moment meant I moved my catcher who I'd left free to pick up the ball. 

This is one of those mistakes that can happen occasionally, even with 2 experienced coaches. I apologised and offered to play out the last few turns again - as we'd finished early, there was plenty of time - but Chris thought it would be too difficult and accepted it was a genuine error.

As we played it out, he had a heroic halfling blitz the catcher with the ball, which resulted in a both down casualtying them both. A free blitzer picked it up and scored to make it 2-0. However I'll put an asterisk by the win. Hopefully I'll get to play Chris again for a rematch. I might even let him dice me as an apology.

Round 2 v Luke (TotalFuzzyLogic)

Round 2 didn't get any easier. I was drawn against the winner of the South East Tournament Series 2024, Luke. We had played once before in Bexley where I had felt we were both quite lucky not to have lost the game.

Luke is currently playing through all the races and often has what some would call "dirty" builds. This time he had underworld denizens with a halfling master chef. As there were no star players in the tournament, it didn't feel like he was giving up much to take it.

I got some removals early, but it was just goblins and snotlings so I wasn't doing any real damage to the team. On turn 2, a rat ogre blitz took out my ogre and got the prehensile tail on my ball carrier. Having no way of making a favourable block, I go for the 4+ dodge with a re-roll which fails and the underworld steal the ball and hide it well. 

A desperation blitz that required some successful dodging fails to roll a both down or pow on 4 dice using my only re-roll for the half, and the gutter runner dances free for the score. 

This gives me a turn, but a sold defence roll stops and chance of me getting a one turn touchdown. 

In the second half, Luke quickly gets round the side and camps out near my endzone. I start sending players in to attack the ball. A catcher fails a 5+ dodge in. On the next turn the rat ogre double skulls but successfully uses one of my re-rolls to push my blitzer back onto the sideline. The blitzer doesn't think anything of it as he succeeds a 5+ then 4+ dodge to knock down the ball carrying gutter runner - all with no rerolls. Amazingly the ball scatters to a large number of players and comes out to a spot which is fairly recoverable for me. A catcher dodges in, picks up the ball and dodges out. At this point I start to think that a draw would be unkind on Luke. As such, I allow him to knock over my ball carrier, steal the ball and get in for a 2-0 win. 

At least that's what I'll tell myself. Luke ends up winning the whole tournament and having played 2 of the better players there, I end up with the joint hardest strength of schedule. 

Round 3 v Will (Willdebeast)

For round 3, I'm drawn against Will from our league. Will has only joined fairly recently, but has had some solid performances. He has been enjoying playing Chaos Chosen, who he had here today. With a block minotaur, 3 block and 1 guard blockers and sure hands, guard and sneaky git on beastmen, it was a reasonably solid build. I questioned the sneaky git but he did do a fair few fouls with it!

I kick and force Will to score early. I do manage to remove the guard blocker early in the game, but he still has 11 to defend with. He gets his players in my way a lot, annoyingly so! I have to make dodges and do a lot of manoeuvring to try to keep the ball safe. My dice hold and we go in 1-1 at half time. 

I shuffle about on my drive, progressing slowly and on one turn he notices me smiling and asks what I've noticed that he hasn't. I manage to get dice needed to push a player off my ball carrier, move through and hand off for the score. I think it might have been the one mistake he made with his defensive positioning all game. 

A time out on the kick off table gives Will an extra turn to score, although he wouldn't have actually needed it. The ball goes out for a touchback and he gives it to a blocker. I remove the guard beastman and he is down on numbers, but I'm running low on re-rolls. He pushes down one flank and with some dodging, I'm able get 2 catchers in front of the blocker and 2 dice on the ball carrier.... which is the exact worst moment to roll double skulls. Any other result would have at least made a score more difficult. As it is, he is able to blitz one of the catchers with the ball carrier and then a 3+ dodge allows him to skip away into the endzone for the equaliser. I curse my lack of re-rolls, which was caused by an unnecessary rush after I decided not to follow up a block at the start of the half. However, a draw was probably a fair result in the circumstances.

Conclusion

I still haven't learned how to play humans. They're supposed to be able to adapt to any opponent, and I think my brain struggles a bit with that concept. I like knowing my game plan ahead of time, and being practiced at it. I think playing humans well probably requires a lot of repetition and practice of certain match ups to know how to adapt to them.