SKABB League

Last year was my first time at Thrudball . I hadn't planned to go this year as it clashed with my wife's birthday. But then I accidentally won a ticket at Glowbowl  earlier this year, and she told me I had to go. Thrudball is an annual event held in Swindon each year, with a focus on raising money for charity along with promoting a family friendly inclusive Blood Bowl event. Last year, eight SKABB league members travelled up although for various reasons, this year it was just myself and Oli (eldritchfox). After a brief stop in Reading to pick up a stranded German (Joe aka Zallas) we arrived just in time for me to join in the Sevens event whilst Oli set up the items in advance of Saturday evening's auction.   I had decided to play vampires to get a bit more practice in with them. I'd used them in our between seasons Sevens league and found them to be very hit and miss, winning about half my games and losing the other half. The format of the event is that you get to assig...

I've heard Thrudball described as the Glastonbury of BloodBowl. It's certainly the only event that I've been to where the majority of coaches were camping, and the BloodBowl was only a portion of the whole experience.  I'm going to write about the non-BloodBowl bits first, as I feel that is most interesting. If you just want to hear the nitty gritty of how my tournament went, feel free to skip the first bits. Most Thrudlike Thurd the Barbarian is a character created many moons ago and Thrudball are allowed to use the character by kind permission. One of the ways that they take advantage of this is by the Most Thrudlike competition.  I've heard that it was a bit less family friendly (and likely contestant friendly) in the past, but this year it was very much just a whole lot of silly fun. When you complete the booking form, you can opt to be put into a draw for contestants and 6 names were pulled out at random. It just so happened that 3 of the 6 were SKABB league me...

This year was my first trip to Thrudball. I was stopping by on the way home from a family trip to Devon.  Traffic on the M5 was a literal nightmare and I was sat in traffic watching our ETA at the Supermarine Rugby Club edge closer and closer and then finally past the time that the Friday night sevens event was due to start. I'd messaged Mike (sann0638) to let him know I was running late and effectively registered from afar who managed to reassure me that I'd still be able to play. I ended up arriving just before the draw was due to start. This did not help my stress levels as I really hate being late for anything but it all worked out in the end.  Game 1 v Ryan (rydog) I was paired up against 3 opponents within the space of about 5 minutes for this game. Firstly I was going to be playing twelfman, host of the Anything But a One podcast. Then it turned out I was going to be playing FallingdownJoe, the spare player as twelfman was late. And then finally I was playing against ry...