What Happened to the Stars??

Well, reader, I lied to you. My life has taken several exciting turns in the last couple months, and I was too busy clinging onto sanity to compete in the Starfall Festival that I promised you last time out. I would love to tell you all about it, but 1) this is an article series, not my diary, and 2) I’ve been officially forbidden, on pain of Vacation, by the Head Goons to discuss it in public. 

The best thing about the Blood Bowl tournament circuit is the community that you become a part of. There’s nothing quite like celebrating and commiserating over the whims of Nuffle to bring people closer together. Over the years, my “summer camp” friends have turned into real friends as we see each other five or six times a year. It’s not uncommon to see coaches traveling hundreds of miles for one-day tournaments, simply to show support for a fellow coach-turned-TO.

The Splendid Cup

This year, Denny Franks ran a tournament dedicated to Slaanesh* – Chaos god of excess and beauty – in Rocky Mount, NC. Denny is a North Carolina local, which hasn’t stopped him from stomping me at tournaments all up and down the Eastern Seaboard for the last two years. He’s the triple whammy of an excellent Blood Bowl coach, an excellent painter, and (worst of all) an incredibly nice human being. When he mentioned that he’d be running a tournament, I planned to move heaven and earth to be there to support him. Luckily, all I had to do was drive to North Carolina!

*For some reason, the Blood Bowl community in the Southeast loves their Chaos gods. The only Chaos god whose tournament I haven’t attended in the last two years is Nurgle, and that’s only because I was busy that weekend.

The roster building rules were pretty strange for this tournament! As the god of excess, Slaanesh demanded that any player that was upgraded be given at least two skills, with one player given between three and six – this is absolutely bonkers, especially given that Wardancers already come with the two best utility skills in the game. To make matters better, Denny put Wood Elves, High Elves, and Elven Union in the 2nd of 3 tiers, meaning I could take 9 skills – including two secondaries. This is a level of roster-building freedom that I simply am not used to! I ended up taking:

• 1x Wardancer with Frenzy, Strip Ball, Juggernaut
• 1x Wardancer with Wrestle, Tackle
• 1x Catcher with Block, Sidestep
• 1x Thrower 
• 1x Lineman with Dodge, Guard
• 6x Lineman
• 1x Treeman

The two Wardancers would give me the flexibility to take on basically any combination of skills on a ball carrier – Frenzy and Strip Ball combine to give me as many block dice as possible to get the ball off of a Block/Dodge piece, and the Wrestle/Tackle is there in case the opponent is carrying with Sure Hands. Plus Tackle is just nice to have in almost every matchup, especially otherwise-slippery Stunties.

Round 1: Luke’s Ogres

Oh look! Stunties! Ogres really rely on mass Mighty Blow to get a numbers advantage that snowballs, so my plan was to avoid the big guys, use Tackle to snipe Gnoblars opportunistically, and score before I ran out of elves.

I won the coin toss, and with perfect Blood Bowl weather there was nothing to dissuade me from choosing to receive. Luke set up a pretty standard symmetrical defense, and I set up for a two-turn touchdown attempt, skewed to my right side because I could only afford one Catcher. The kickoff was up, and… Perfect Defense. Luke had the opportunity to change his setup, and I groaned to myself (and a little bit out loud). He moved a few Ogres over to shut out the wide zone that I planned to make my fast score through, and I gritted my teeth for a long, grinding offense that would surely see my elves decimated…

EXCEPT! Luke’s Runt Punter, upgraded with Leader (an extra team reroll, as long as that player is on the pitch) and Stand Firm was only two squares away from the sideline. My Frenzy/Juggernaut Wardancer was the perfect piece to push the ogre into the crowd, and I dropped all pretense of going after the ball to prioritize the Leader. Luke had only brought one rostered team reroll, with the Leader giving him a second, and Ogres are a reroll-hungry team. 

I managed the crowdsurf, and the crowd was bloodthirsty – Luke’s Leader went straight into the Casualty box, with no hope of returning. Luke managed to knock out the Wardancer in return, but that meant I still had Tackle on the field to menace all of his Gnoblars. He put up a spirited defense, but I was able to simply outrun his team, switching play to the left flank. I ended up scoring on Turn 4 under heavy pressure, having to dodge my ball carrier away from multiple Tackle Ogres to dash in.

My kick back to Luke was perfect – near the corner between midfield and the sideline, which meant he was immediately under pressure to secure the ball before it was swarmed with elves. Of course, this is Blood Bowl, so the Gnoblar that went to pick the ball up fell over on a Rush before it even got close. I managed to recover the ball and went on to score on Turn 8, slowly removing Gnoblars the entire time.

By the time the second half started, with me kicking off to Luke once more, he was down to 5 Ogres and 4 Gnoblars on the pitch, and only a single reroll. I put up a spirited defense, but Luke managed to get the ball across the line after I was simply unable to knock down his Gnoblar carrying the ball – they’re sneaky little gits! After he scored on Turn 6, I wrapped it up with another two-turn touchdown.

Final Score: 3-1 Win, 3 CAS for, 5 CAS against

Round 2: Amazons

I have never timed out during a Blood Bowl tournament. I play quickly, and even when my opponents play painfully slowly, I’ve managed to finish every match I’ve played. When my opponent sat down and immediately insisted we play on a chess clock, I got a bit of a sinking feeling. On top of that, his roster was hand-written on a sheet of A5 paper torn out of a spiral notebook, and thoroughly cramped. 

To make matters worse, he thoroughly demolished me. My notes from this round are a bit sparse (chess clock, you see), but I’ll muddle through as best as I can! I won the coin toss and chose to receive, but the kick went very deep – not great for me, because it would give my opponent time to set up a real defense with a formidable team. Worse still, he brought a wizard to the match! On Turn 3, he turned my Catcher, who was carrying the ball into a frog. 

Reader, frogs are not very good at playing Blood Bowl.

The rest of the first half consisted of me attempting more and more desperate plays to stop my opponent from scoring in what should have been my offensive half, and hemorrhaging elves to do it. By the time the second half started, I had 6 elves on the pitch, including exactly one (1) non-lineman. Don’t be fooled by the casualty figures, that only counts the ones we inflicted through blocking. I removed another three or four of my own elves through failed leaps and dodges.

The only real consolation from this match is that, while I lost spectacularly, it was to the coach that would eventually win the tournament. Small miracles, I guess!

Final Score: 0-3 Loss, 1 CAS for, 3 CAS against

Round 3: Gabriel’s Slann

Slann are an incredibly nerve-wracking team to play against! They can Leap over anyone, ignoring tackle zones as they do it. The only saving grace (for me, as their opponent) is that they are incredibly dependent on the dice – they can do pretty much anything on a 3+, but when all you need is a 3+, Nuffle has a way of giving you 2s. They’re also a pretty expensive roster, and reroll-hungry, so roster-building is an exercise in compromise. Gabriel brought two Blitzers, three Catchers, a Kroxigor, and enough linemen to bring the team up to 11 players exactly, with four rerolls. A decent balance, but awfully low on players if any removals crop up!

I won the coin toss (again! Three for three! That must count for something, right?) and chose to receive. Much like Luke in the first game, Gabriel was caught off guard by my Frenzy wardancer, and I was able to surf one of his Blitzers on the first turn. This was great, because Diving Tackle is a surefire way to ruin an elf’s day. I Knocked Out one of his Catchers on Turn 3, but was too scared to try and leverage the numbers advantage into a stall. Slann are scary!

Both of the kickoff events in the first half were Time Out, so even though I scored in 2 turns, Gabriel ended up only having four turns to try and even it up before halftime. He must have been feeling the time pressure, because he tried to use Leap to get his entire team over my defensive line, starting with the ball carrier. The ball made it, but the second or third lineman he was planning to cage with failed the roll, which left the ball very exposed in my backfield. I sacked it and recovered, but Diving Tackle stopped me from running off and scoring. 1-0 at halftime with effectively no damage to either side – a pretty finely balanced game, really!

The second half started with a full-on shootout. Gabriel started with a perfectly executed two-turn touchdown, so I replied with a two-turn of my own. With such a heavy loss in the second round under my belt, I knew there was no way to win the tournament. Instead, I was eyeing the spot prizes and aiming for Most Touchdowns. I was happy to let the shootout continue, but Nuffle had other ideas.

My second kick of the half went deep into Slann territory, which made a quick score much less likely. If I was going to score again, I would have to do it the hard way. I sacked the ball quickly, but it bounced straight into another Slann Catcher’s hands, and he hightailed it up the field. On Turn 15, I sacked the ball once more, bouncing it off the pitch into the crowd. The groundlings must have really loved me, because they threw the ball right to my Thrower, who needed a 5+ to catch it (two tackle zones and a further -1 to catch a throw-in)… and did! The Thrower handed off to my Catcher around midfield, and the Catcher ran like crazy, skirting around a scrum to end up exactly within two rushes of the end zone. Gabriel tagged the Catcher with a Diving Tackle Blitzer, but on Turn 16 I managed to knock the Blitzer down and score with the final action of the game.

This was one of those sequences of play that makes Blood Bowl worth all the pain, and by the time I was rolling the dice for the throw-in distance, Gabriel was actively cheering for it to go my way. 

Final Score: 3-1 Win, 2 CAS for, 2 CAS against

Debrief

2-1 ain’t bad! I also came out of the Splendid Cup with the trophy for Most Touchdowns with 6. Only the winning Amazon team scored more than I did, with 7 total across the three games. More importantly, I got to see several coaches I don’t see often and showed up to support Denny. 

Lessons Learned

Another strong showing, coming towards the end of the Year of the Elf! The biggest takeaway for my gameplay is that sometimes, the best thing you can do is try and preserve your team. I think my second game could have gone a little different if I hadn’t kept throwing elves into nearly-impossible dodge sequences for pride. I may have been able to put up a more respectable fight if I had simply walked my team away from the ball, conceding the first half to conserve strength for the second. I don’t have many tournaments left this year, so the pressure is on to end the Year of the Elf on a high note.

Maybe the best takeaway from the Splendid Cup was how Denny chose to judge the painting competition. As usual, every coach was asked to put a mini up during the lunch break if they wanted to participate. The TO usually makes a show of examining the minis but (here’s the secret) being a TO and being a paint judge are skills that are completely independent of each other. Many times, TOs will simply pick the model they like the best, regardless of technical ability, or (even worse) have a prescriptive rubric that ignores “looking good” entirely. Instead of doing any of this, Denny simply asked the bartender to come over and pick the miniature that she liked the best. It was completely objective – she had no prior experience with minis, didn’t know any of the coaches – and there was really no room for anyone to feel bad. More people should know their limits and find creative workarounds!

Finally, I’m going to end this article with the spiciest take you’ve read today – good opponents make good games. Whether you’re winning or losing, the best thing you can do is smile, cheer your opponent’s good luck (or commiserate their bad), and offer to buy them a beverage afterwards. The shortest game I played this weekend was the most mentally draining, simply because we got off on the wrong foot and I was ready to be done even before the dice turned against me. Be excellent to each other, aim to be the best person each of your opponents plays at the tournament. Not the most skilled, just the best person.

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