SBL Condiment Cup, 7th June 2025 in London

This Saturday, I made the trip up to the Big Smoke to play my first event in the London series. The series began this year after the spate of series that started in 2024 and it's great to see so many events and interest being created in the London scene, which is one of the busiest in terms of leagues but has perhaps been a bit underserved by tournaments in recent years.

The Condiment Cup was the first tournament run by SaltyMurcutt (aka Rob from the Channelled Fury podcast). Rob has run the SaltBowl League for many years which bans tier 1 teams, and it was no surprise to see that for his first event whilst they weren't banned, they were given a package such that they wouldn't be very inviting. Only one player took one - Dinlo with orcs - whose focus was to knock the opposition down and foul them every turn if possible to win the most fouls prize.

I took the opportunity to try out khorne which I'd just recently finished painting, accidentally in World Eaters colours. I tend to pick football teams for colour scheme inspiration (this time it was Man City) but when I shared with friends, one pointed our the World Eaters coincidence. As someone who has never played any other GW games, it was definitely a nice coincidence. 

I played one and a half practice games with Oli who convinced me not to take the Bloodspawn. He costs a lot, and you can make the team a little bit more reliable without him... but also a bit less fun perhaps. Either way, he joined me on the day just as my apothecary and my team was 4 bloodseekers (3 block, 1 guard), 4 khorngors (1 block, 1 guard, 1 leaders) and linos to 13 with an apothecary and 2 re-rolls (plus leader).

I wasn't filled with confidence about how they would perform, but I was excited to try them out.

Not wanting to drive into central London, I got the train up from Ashford where I met DimmyGee with a coffee. As he'd been to the venue before, I trusted him to get us there from Kings Cross. After walking around in circles for a bit, I felt entitled to give him a bit of BANTA (TM) after the amount that he gives me when my car's satnav takes us on an unnecessary detour.

The venue was pretty neat. The Archanist's Tavern is a pub that rents out space to gamers, including special booths for D&D campaigns. We were mostly downstairs, with a couple of tables upstairs although with slightly worse lighting for playing Blood Bowl.

Rob had gone all out on the swag, we got a patch, some stunned makers and a metal D3 scatter template. On top of this, he'd got a bunch of prizes for the raffle and some pretty cool looking wooden trophies. 


Round 1 v Ben (gingerb) 

In the ruleset, the two teams who because de facto tier 1 teams by the harsh tiering of actual tier 1 teams were necromantic and elven union. I'd been hoping to avoid necro as I figured I had a good way of dealing with elves (fists) and not much way of dealing with necro if they hit me hard.

I decided to receive and I manged to get a couple of removals and marched up the pitch. However, I was unable to shield the ball, partly due to my players frenzying themselves out of position so after taking all of the blocks possible on my turn 5, I did a double rush to score.

I nearly stopped Ben scoring back as I engineered a 2 die block on the ghoul with the ball with a khorngor, but even with a re-roll, I was unable to get a pow and he didn't struggle to get away from the player marking the ball carrier. 

On turn 4 of the second half, with the ball in my half, I worked out a way to get a potential 6 dice on the ball. I only needed 4, and the ball fell nicely for a khorngor to pick it up and run away, to allow us to end up with a 2-1 victory. 

Round 2 v Alex (vonleppard)

Alex and I had played at Backbreaker in 2019. I remember this mainly due to his goblin build featuring a hail mary bomber and that blowing my fragile little mind.

Alex had a reasonably standard OWA build, and I was fairly hopeful that I might get something out of the game. 

I receive the ball and surf 2 players (thanks juggernaut for the assist). The tree double skulls and fails the loner re-roll and it's looking good for me as I have the ball deep in his half and what I think is reasonably well surrounded. I wasn't expecting Alex to play OWA like elves and he dodges his catcher through for an uphill blitz that pushes my ball carrier next to another of his players. Double rushing a guarding dwarf in, he gets a 2 die block which results in a knockdown. He then does a cheeky dodge into a tacklezone, pick up in a tacklezone and handoff to a player who runs away. 

At this point, I use my last re-roll on a rush which is designed mainly to prevent the stall and I get 2 turns to score back. I make a mistake in putting too many people on the line, and then not pushing enough forward so that when a block goes wrong, Alex is able to blitz my only scoring threat, and then send a catcher in to pick up the ball. On his next turn, he uphill blitzes (with a re-roll) his catcher free and scores. It wasn't until midway through the next drive that I remember his catcher had actually received loner from a prayer to Nuffle. It wasn't either of our faults really - the fault is mainly in poor game design. Prayers to Nuffle are short term effects, except when they're not, and there's no easy way to mark them and remember them. I for one, will not be upset if a future edition erases them from existence. 

Alex apologised when I remembered, but there wasn't a way to go back at this stage, and for me the game was effectively over anyway as he scores quickly on his drive to make it 3-0. At best at that stage, if we'd remembered the PTN, I would have been 2-0 down.  

I manage to save a bit of face and get one back relatively easily having removed all dwarfs bar the slayer, as well as a number of other players. Alex pushes for yet another touchdown but being in a tacklezone when he attempts the pass into the endzone, it goes wildly inaccurate and I have a khorngor who is able to recover deep in his half and get a consolation on my turn 16 to lose 3-2, with the score looking much more flattering to me than it really was.  

Not that I can blame the dice in the game, as my strategy was quite out, but a quad skull definitely doesn't help.

Round 3 v James (dampsquig) 

James had black orcs. It wasn't until I tried to take my first turn when receiving that I realised what a bad match up for khorne this is. With a couple of guard, and keeping everyone together, they out strength me and I'm unable to get a decent hit. 

Trying to push my guard into a good position, I get a both down on a one die block which I decide to take. This was probably the wrong idea. After a kerfuffle, the ball scatters to the troll. I try to hit the troll and re-roll pushes into double skulls (I probably had around 8 or 9 double skulls for the day, although that's to be expected when you're rolling so many block dice). 

The troll is able to blitz himself free and eventually score even though I'm able to put a reasonable amount of pressure on. 

Before the game, I was tied for most casualties, but I'm not getting any many this game. A double both down on James' drive gives me an opportunity at the ball and I frenzy blitz a black orc out of the way. The blitz on the ball carrier works but trying to dodge a khorngor out to pick up the ball fails and James recovers.

I manage to knock the ball loose again and I dodge a lineman out and he picks up the ball in a tacklezone but is stood next to a goblin. Unsure whether to dodge or not, I take what I think now is the wrong decision and do so- it fails and the ball comes loose with James eventually scoring a second. I think in the state we were in, with a couple of removals including a guard black orc, and all of the others tied up or out of range, I should have just stood there and pushed forward on my next drive. However, with a lot of squares to cover and not much time, I took the gamble in the heat of the moment. 

Conclusion

This was a great fun event, and it was good to see a lot of the London players. I will definitely try to make it again next time if the dates work out for me, if only for the awesome swag.

Khorne are a definite challenge. After my practice game hurt my head, I knew they would be. With only opportunities to practice on FUMBBL or tabletop (until they're released on BB3 tomorrow) I didn't have much familiarity with them. I played them in a league under the old rules, but that was such a long time ago that my memory of anything I had learnt has gone.

I'll definitely be wanting to give them another go at some point, but will want a lot of BB3 practice to try to get a better strategy down than just hitting things! 

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