Squad Tournaments
This, reader, was my first squad* tournament of the year. I’ll be honest, I’m not a big fan of squad tournaments. They tend to have overwrought player packs, with team- and squad-building rules that require a lot of coordination and horse-trading between coaches in the buildup to the tournament.
*Because the individual models in Blood Bowl represent players on a fictional sports team, the convention is that “player” refers to the models, “coach” refers to the meat-human playing the game, and a “squad” is a group of coaches.
My normal workflow for tournament gaming is to settle on a standard list and modify it slightly for each tournament based on the player pack. Once I’ve gotten my roster into a rut, I find it very hard to break out. Does this inflexibility make me a worse coach? Probably! But this is who I am as a person.
Despite all this, the Palmetto Cup had two things going for it. First, it was held at one of my favorite stores (more on this later), by a community that made a big effort to show up at a tournament I hosted earlier this year. Second, the squads were two coaches each. Much like cats, Blood Bowl coaches get exponentially more difficult when you need to wrangle more than two. A two-coach squad is the best version of a squad, as long as you get a decent partner…
My Partner
And, hoo boy, did I knock it out of the park with this one. My partner for the weekend, Josh, single-handedly kickstarted the Atlanta Blood Bowl scene in late 2019, and kept it going safely through the next couple years. Mostly, this mean running a single tournament in the August of 2019, and then maintaining an active Discord community for about 18 months before we felt comfortable gaming in person again*. On top of this, he’s a solid coach too! He likes to hamstring himself by playing some of the worst teams in the game – seriously, his favorite team to coach is Nurgle, closely followed by Ogres – but this is just part of the job of a league commissioner.
*Not sure if y’all know this, but we had a really weird couple of years
Josh was an absolute champ of a partner, and did a solid 95% of the legwork to prep for this tournament. Once we decided to go together, I sent him the roster that I planned to use and promptly forgot about our conversation for a week. The next time I opened Discord, I came back to find a man possessed by optimization, thinking about matchups, and building rosters to offset the inherent weaknesses of Wood Elves.
We He eventually settled on a pretty standard Dwarf team – two Block Runners, two Guard Blitzers, and two Mighty Blow Trollslayers. We had 25K gold pieces left over when our rosters were all said and done, which is an effectively useless amount of money. I think we each took an Assistant Coach just to fill space. My roster was:
- Wardancer with Strip Ball
- Wardancer with Tackle
- 2x Catcher with Block
- Thrower with Dodge
- Lineman with Kick
- 5x Lineman
- Treeman
- 2x Reroll
The Palmetto Cup’s gimmick was that at the start of each round, the coaches would all exchange rosters, then roll off. The squad that won the roll-off would choose to either 1) pick which teams would play each other, or 2) pick which teams would kick or receive the ball in each game. The logic was that we had a 50-50 chance of picking our matchups, so instead of two flex teams, we should take a bash team and a dash team and hope like hell we could pick what was best for us.
With rosters (printed by Josh – I’m telling you, he did all of the prep work for us) in hand, we headed east to Anderson, South Carolina for the tournament!
Empire Games
I’ve spent a lot of my time in a lot of game stores. As a teenager, I didn’t really care about the physical environment I was playing games in. I was just happy to be around like-minded people! As I’ve grown older, and maybe even matured a little, I’ve come to appreciate game stores as a true third place. I want places that I’m spending my leisure time to be clean and comfortable. I want them to be pleasing – or at least pleasant – to as many of my senses as possible. I want them to be well-organized, to smell good, to be roomy enough that noise doesn’t feel oppressive, to have comfortable playing spaces. I’ve played tournaments in game stores with shelves that look like rummage sales, and game stores that had folding tables and those chairs from middle school (you know the ones) to play games on.
Let me tell you: Empire Games is one of the best stores I’ve had the pleasure to play in. The first tournament I played there, I pulled up and thought “oh no…” The front of the store is a dinky little brick number across the street from a historic town square. There are about 7 parking spaces, and it looks like the store would be well over capacity if they were all filled.
It turns out my kindergarten teacher was right, though – you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover! We walked in the door, and were greeted by a bright, clean, well-organized shopping area. It’s a really small thing, but all of the walls were lined with light-blonde slatwall boards. These do double duty to make the store a cinch to reorganize, and reflect plenty of light back into the space. Little details like this can make a huge difference to how a store feels.
Through the back of the shopping area, though, is what really blew me away. The gaming space was seriously huge. A mixture of solid, formica card tables and high-top standing tables, with an aisle down the center giving coaches plenty of space to walk up and down and observe. Even better, the tables were already laid out with pitches, dugouts, and table numbers before coaches even started to arrive – a level of organization that most Blood Bowl tournaments can only hope to aspire to!
Frankly, I’m running out of superlatives to express just how great of a game store Empire Games is. If you’re ever in western South Carolina, stop by and say hey! They also have a well-developed Blood Bowl community, which is objectively a marker of an excellent shop.
Game 1: Joe’s Orcs
For the first round, Josh and I were paired up against The Mean Green Blocking Machine, consisting of an Orc team and a Gnome team. We won the roll-off, and decided that Dwarfs would get the most mileage out of playing the Stunties. This was a little disappointing to me, because I’ve been really excited to see the Gnomes in action ever since they came out, but it was almost certainly the right call. Now that they’ve been around for a few months, it seems like the best Gnome roster spends all of its skills on Dodge. Dwarfs having Tackle everywhere is a hard counter to this, and means that most of a Gnome coach’s picked skills will go to waste.
Joe’s team was great to see on the table, because it was straight out of the 1994 Blood Bowl third edition box. The chunky, monopose sculpts have a real charm to them. Joe mentioned that he was relatively new to Blood Bowl, having purchased the box when it was released and shoving it into a closet until sometime last year, when he and his son broke it out and they got involved in the Empire community. His roster consisted of:
- Troll with Guard
- 4x Big ‘Un Blocker with Block
- Blitzer with Mighty Blow
- 3x Blitzer
- Thrower
- 2x Lineman
- 3x Reroll
This was very much a game of two halves. We rolled Pouring Rain for the weather, and it stayed that way all game for a -1 modifier on all ball-handling rolls. Despite this, Joe chose to receive. The kickoff landed right on the sideline, and while he was able to pick it up, his team was pretty spread out. With my first turn, my Strip Ball Wardancer pushed the ball carrier, forcing it to drop the ball into the crowd.
The throw-in took the ball clear across the field, away from the Troll and relatively unprotected by Joe’s team. While I managed to flood that side of the field with elves, I didn’t have any players in range to actually pick it up. I had to content myself with threatening the ball and disrupting the Orc operations as much as I could. After several turns of mud wrestling, where we both failed multiple pickup attempts, Joe managed to secure the ball and form a solid cage by Turn 4.
I did my best to put together an elf screen, but a few bad rolls in a row meant that the best I could do was slowly retreat and hope that Joe made a mistake… which he didn’t! He scored on Turn 8, and his setup was strong enough that I didn’t even bother trying for the one-turn touchdown. All told, it was basically the perfect half for an Orc team.
Luckily for me, the second half was the perfect half for a Wood Elf team. I knew that I needed to score, and score quickly, if I was going to have a chance to turn this around. The kickoff went deep, so I didn’t even bother spending a reroll when my Thrower failed to pick it up on the first turn. The Orcs were far too slow to seriously threaten me, and I executed a standard two-turn elf touchdown to tie the game 1-1 on Turn 3.
My second kickoff to Joe was where things got really interesting! With my Kick elf still on the field, I played it short, looking for a Blitz! Kickoff event. What I got instead was a blessing from the rain – the Orc Thrower failed to pick it up, rolling two 3’s with Sure Hands. This would have been good enough to get the ball in nice weather, but the rain meant that he was caught out.
Instead of trying to pick up the ball and potentially putting myself in the same position Joe was now in, I set up a screen just behind the ball and positioned one of my Wardancers on it. This way, I had players immediately ready to respond if the Orcs picked up the ball, or ready to snatch it to safety if the Orcs failed. Joe tried to blitz my Wardancer off the ball to make the pickup easier, and rolled double skulls – not good for him! He marked off a reroll, and… Double skulls again! That was essentially the end of the game, as he had no other players in range of my ball carrier.
Results: 2-1 win, Squad victory with 1 win and 1 draw.
Game 2: Nate’s Necromantic Horror
In the second round, we were paired against the creatively named Team Nate and Nes, consisting of Nate’s Necromantic Horrors and Nes’s Gnomes. Once more, Josh and I won the roll off, and paired the Dwarfs into the Gnomes.
Nate’s Roster:
- 2x Wraith with Guard
- 2x Werewolf with Block
- Ghoul with Sure Hands
- Ghoul with Kick
- 2x Flesh Golem with Block
- 4x Zombie
- 3x Reroll
Another pretty much standard roster! No surprises here. Nate chose to kick the ball to me, and I scored on Turn 3 – nothing exciting to report, not even a single removal for either of us. When I kicked back to him, he failed his first pickup, but it was deep enough that I couldn’t quite grab it out from under him. He managed the second pickup, and built something of a cage near the sideline, somewhere around midfield.
As you can see above, I proceeded to strangle out the Necromantic offense. Rather than risking elves on cage-diving antics, I waited for Nate to get desperate and make a mistake. On Turn 8, he had to attempt several dodges and two Rushes without any re-rolls to score. Nuffle must have been laughing at him, because everything went well until the final Rush to cross the goal line: a 1! The half ended 1-0 in my favor.
For the second half, Nate’s offense went much better. He pulled off a beauty of a passing play, getting the ball to a well-protected Werewolf deep in my half. In typical elf fashion, I dodged all over the place to get most of my team back and threatening the ball. My Strip Ball Wardancer rolled a POW! to knock the ball out, and it bounced around a little scrum a few times before landing in the wide-open. My last elf to activate that turn scooped it up and handed off to the Wardancer who’d knocked the Werewolf down, and I trusted in Blodge to keep the ball safe.
Nate, of course, rolled a POW! to put the ball on the ground, and executed a neat little chain-push to free his ball carrier and score on his Turn 5. With only four turns left to break the tie, I was starting to feel the pressure. That’s plenty of time for an elf team to score, but everything had to go right and I had 3 fewer players on the field than Nate did. Luckily for me, he got greedy and chased surfs on both sides of the pitch, leaving the smallest of gaps in the center than I could exploit. I pushed my Catcher and enough bodies to screen the ball through the middle, and stalled out the game to score on Turn 8 for the win.
Results: 2-1 win, Squad victory with 2 wins.
Game 3: Travis’s Khorne
I… am afraid that I really don’t have much to say about this game. The key points are that:
- Josh and I lost the roll-off this time, but Team Ide and Coop decided that we would choose the matchups so that they could choose the kicking teams
- Josh and I, once more, paired his Dwarfs against the Gnome team. Maybe one day I’ll get to see what those li’l foxes can do!
- Travis chose to receive the ball, and I sacked it on Turn 1 before scoring on Turn 2.
- By the end of the first half, the score was 3-0.
- My game notes simply say “I have not failed anything yet” around half-time.
This was the most disgusting dicing I’ve ever seen, and I felt bad about inflicting it on my opponent. Nearly every turn, I rolled a string of 4s and 5s to make the most unlikely sack plays, then threw the ball to safety across the field. To his credit, Travis was laughing the whole time and encouraging me to try more and more daring plays as the score racked up against him. I’d happily play the man again, and wouldn’t even blame him if he asked me to swap dice.
Results: 5-0 win, Squad victory with 2 wins.
Overall Results
Josh and I had played our third round at the second table, so we knew we weren’t in the driver’s seat. However, as an undefeated squad with some pretty impressive tie-breaker numbers (5 wins and one draw with a +10 touchdown differential), we were hopeful that we’d be able to sneak our way to the top of the tournament. Alas, it was not to be. We took second place, only beaten out by an Amazon-Shambling Undead squad. On individual awards, though, my drubbing of the Khorne team catapulted me to both the most touchdowns on the day and the Best Individual Performance award.
Parting Thoughts
I definitely feel like I’m improving as an elf coach! I stretched the field when I could and scored quickly when I couldn’t. I wasn’t afraid of trying things – as ridiculous as my third game was, I wouldn’t have been able to dice Travis so hard if I hadn’t seen the lines of play and tried them. On the flip side, I still have some work to do when it comes to protecting my players. Picking the right moment to commit is a skill that I’m still developing.
This was probably the best version of a Wood Elf roster, with all of the tools I need. Bringing two Catchers is huge for offense, because my opponent can only blitz one of them when I go for a fast score. Kick is an amazing utility skill, letting me control how far my opponent will have to take the ball – or how long until I’m trying to sack it.
Next time out, I’ll be traveling to beautiful Baltimore Maryland to bring my (literally) sweatiest team to the second annual Swelter Bowl at the Goonhammer Open! We’ll see how my elves handle warm Natty Bohs…
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