Elfpotheosis
This is the end of the Year of the Elf. At the end of this tournament, I will have played 26 games with this Wood Elf team. I cannot say that I have mastered them, or mastered agility play in general, but I can confidently say that I am a much better agility coach than I was this time last year. I identified a hole in my skillset, I set myself a challenge, and, insha’Allah, this will make me a better Blood Bowl coach overall. Coaching a team is the best way to learn their playstyle, and learning their playstyle is the best way to learn to counter it.
Outside of Blood Bowl, this has been a tough year for me. My life has largely come crashing down around my head. My motivation to create – to paint, to hobby, even to write these articles – has cratered and I’m struggling with an identity crisis around that loss. But the tournament circuit grinds on, and we have summer camp friendships to cement!
Nuffle’s Scuffle
Another month, another tournament hosted by someone who supported me as I worked with the GBBLN to grow the Blood Bowl community! This time, it was Chris Knox – I think no relation to Knoxville, his hometown, but I can’t promise that he’s not somehow rich and famous. Chris showed up to the first tournament I ever ran – he even stayed in a hotel for a one-day tournament, which should tell you a little bit about how dedicated he is to supporting the Blood Bowl community.
The next time I saw him, Chris was in Alabama, and won a tournament with a bog-standard Goblin roster. Not only is he a helluva guy, it turns out that he’s a damn good Stunty coach too – truly a man after my own heart! When he told me that he was planning to run a tournament in Knoxville – a mere 4-hour drive from the house – I couldn’t pass it up!
The roster-building rules for this tournament were quite simple – for Wood Elves, I could have 1100K TV, plus 6 skills. I also had the option of taking 4 Primary skills, plus a Star Player, but Wood Elves simply don’t have the spare gold to make buying a Star Player worthwhile in addition to the skills. Because there were no restriction on stacking skills, I took the lessons learned from last time out and took the following roster:
- 1x Wardancer with Frenzy, Strip Ball
- 1x Wardancer with Wrestle, Tackle
- 1x Catcher with Block
- 1x Thrower
- 1x Lineman with Kick
- 6x Lineman
- 1x Treeman
Stacking skills is often an affront against gods Nuffle and man, and I strongly recommend that every tournament organizer should introduce a penalty for it. Something simple, like “a second Primary skill on the same player counts as a Secondary skill/2 Primary skills.” Rather than outright banning stacking, this turns it into a serious decision that a coach must make. That said, I will put as many skills on my Wardancers as I possibly can.
Round 1: Cory’s Black Orcs
Cory was an excellent, excellent coach to play against. Ten times out of ten, I would choose to play him again – regardless of the team matchup or the outcome of the match. He was enthusiastic, he had an excellent grasp of the fundamentals of Blood Bowl, and he was simply thrilled to be playing in his first tournament. Unfortunately, he had two things going against him: first and foremost, this was his first tournament and he just didn’t have much experience in pre-leveled Blood Bowl; and second, he was playing Black Orcs.
Reader, Black Orcs are a bad team – their overall win rates are on par with the worse Stunty teams, except they don’t get the same concessions in the list-building stage. They’re a strictly worse (slower, weaker, and with worse starting skills) version of the Lizardmen team. They are also, to the eternal shame of James Workshop, included in the Blood Bowl starter box. This was a travesty.
I clocked how this match would go around the roll-off for kickoff, when Cory won the “coin toss” and decided to Kick instead of Receiving. A Black Orc team, especially against a fragile team like Wood Elves, should elect to receive, and spend its first turn trying to establish a numbers advantage through blocking and, if necessary, fouling. That’s what the roster is (poorly) designed to do. When Cory elected to Kick, I immediately got a feeling in my gut that it was going to be a rough game for him.
I won’t spend too much time on a play-by-play for this game, but suffice it to say that I was able to execute a Wood Elf game plan to a T. Cory did a great job with the fundamentals of setting up two-dice-blocks, and the casualty count shows it! Unfortunately, he didn’t have a great grasp of when to give up two-dice-blocks in order to apply pressure to the ball, and other strategic concepts. Seriously, though, he was an excellent opponent, and I really look forward to playing him again once he’s gotten some experience under his belt!
Final Score: 4-0 Win, 2 CAS for, 5 CAS against
Round 2: Luke’s Lizards
After a hearty bowl of pho for lunch, I settled into Round 2, up near the top tables! My opponent was Luke, a stalwart of the Knoxville Blood Bowl scene and, by all accounts, a fast learner in the league. Luke brought a very, very simple roster: He had a Kroxigor, four Skinks, all six of his Saurus had Block, and he brought an Apothecary.
Apothecaries are pretty rare in tournament Blood Bowl, especially in the latest edition of the game. The move to a D16 Injury table made bringing a Casualty back onto the pitch much less likely, and there are just better ways to spend the 50K gold in most rosters. The best way to use an Apothecary is generally to revive the first player that suffers a Knock Out, just to keep numbers on the pitch.
Reader, this is exactly what Luke did! I lost the toss and, again, received the initial kickoff. In my initial blocks on the line of scrimmage, Nuffle blessed me and I KO’ed one of his Saurus – a significant part of a Lizardman team. He immediately used the Apothecary to keep the Saurus on the pitch, which ended up forcing me to score on Turn 3 – much sooner than I would have liked to. The fewer turns I have to spend on defense, the happier I am as a Wood Elf coach. The rest of the half was, essentially, the perfect bash team grind – Luke scored on Turn 8, and we went into halftime tied at 1-1.
I used Kick to great effect to start the second half. Kick is a great skill because it gives me options – against a slower team, I can send the ball deep into the opponent’s half to put time pressure on them; while against a faster team, I can kick it short to minimize the space they have to build an effective screen. Not only did I kick it short, but the kickoff event was a Blitz! – with 6 players getting an extra turn, I was able to essentially cut Luke’s team in half and catch the ball as it came down.
With the momentum firmly in my hands now, I pushed to score as quickly – and safely! – as possible. By Turn 11, Luke had used all of his rerolls trying to get the ball back in his possession, and only got as far as getting it on the ground. On my Turn 11, I set a personal record by using THREE rerolls in my Thrower’s action to Rush onto the ball, pick it up, and hand it off to a nearby Lineman.
Reader, I rolled snake eyes on the rerolled catch. BUT! The ball bounced back into a Wardancer’s hands, which meant my turn continued when he caught it. An absolutely ridiculous turn of events, which we (laughing the whole time) confirmed with both the referee and rulebook.
Ultimately, the second half turned into a shootout, but my touchdown on Luke’s first offensive drive was enough to swing it in my direction. This was, without exaggeration, the most fun I’ve had in a Blood Bowl game in a long time. We were evenly matched as coaches, and both of us had ridiculous dice luck (both good and bad!). It really was decided by a fine margin, and that’s the best kind of game.
Final Score: 3-2 Win, 0 CAS for, 2 CAS against
Round 3: Jeff’s Lizards
For my sins, I had to play another Lizardmen team for the championship. Lizards are a consistent Tier 1 team, with winrates hovering around 50%, so it makes sense that I’m playing them twice up at the higher tables. The team’s high average movement and oodles of Strength 4 – plus one of the game’s more reliable Big Guys in the Kroxigor – gives them a broad toolkit to deal with pretty much any problem in the game.
This time, I won the coin toss, which means I received the first kickoff once more! My offensive drive was thoroughly ugly. I focused on hunting Skinks (this is normally a good strategy when playing Lizardmen, because the Saurus have terrible Agility), to the detriment of my actual, you know, progress up the field. By Turn 3 I had Knocked Out two Skinks, but my Catcher with the ball was cramped up against the sideline and running out of space. I tried to switch play to the other side, but Jeff’s team was all over it and the ball hit the ground. The ensuing scrum for the ball dragged out through the rest of the half, and I managed to score on Turn 8 – a perfect stall, achieved in the worst way possible!
I went into halftime 1-0 up, and with a Skink and a Saurus off the pitch in the Casualty box, compared to two of my Linemen out. Our 40K crew talks about the concept of “trading” a lot and, while I’m not an expert, I can confidently say that this was a Good Trade.
I tried a short kick again to start the second half, but I didn’t have nearly the same kind of luck that I had in my last game! Jeff failed his initial attempt to pick up, but he had protected the ball well and I wasn’t able to do much of anything about it. With most of my team buzzing around his cage for several turns, he had to score relatively quickly on Turn 13, giving me more than a quarter of the game to try my own offense.
With plenty of time, and no real need to rush, I immediately tried to save some time by passing the ball forward to a Wardancer. The throw was fine, but for the catch I rolled a 1. No fear, that’s what team rerolls are… oh look, snake-eyes. I hadn’t even taken my line-of-scrimmage blocks, much less prepared my team for the failure state. Luckily, the ball landed in my Treeman’s tackle zones, but Jeff’s Kroxigor was still basing the Treeman and ready to punch…
Until he rolled a Bonehead! This completely ruined Jeff’s plans for his defensive move, and all he could do was set up a screen and bide his time while I tried to gain a few more squares of spaces. I rolled a 1 to pick up the ball on my next turn, but the Kroxigor Boneheaded once more, so we ended up even! I finally got the ball up and in a Wardancer’s hands, and with most of Jeff’s team stuck in the scrum, he could only get a Skink to try and make the tackle. He needed two POWs (on an uphill block), but it was not to be, and I was home free.
Final Score: 2-1 Win, 3 CAS for, 2 CAS against
Debrief
Let us, as they say, GOOOOOOO!! I ended the Year of the Elf on a high note, taking this tournament 3-0. It’s been one helluva ride, and I’m glad – both that I did it, and that I can move on to another team. I strongly recommend any coach trying to improve pick a team and stick with it for a given period of time – maybe a year, maybe a set number of tournaments, however you want to do it! The important thing is to set a goal, ideally one that gets you out of your comfort zone as a coach, and to stick with it*. Pushing through my old refrain of “I have no idea how to elf” unlocked a whole new playstyle for me
*Please note that this is advice not to be genericized, it only applies to Blood Bowl. I will not be taking further questions at this time.
Finally, one more huge shoutout to Chris for putting together an excellent tournament. He’s been playing the game for about a year now, and he’s already won a tournament and organized a wildly successful RTT. People like him exist to remind everyone that we can do anything we want if we just put our minds to it.
Next time, I’ll be trying to defend my Stunty Cup title at the Chaos Cup, America’s largest Blood Bowl tournament. With an RTT win under my belt, I feel good leaving the Year of the Elf in the past, and picking up Halflings like a set of old friends. In 2025? Who knows what race I’ll commit to!
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