Warhammer: Underworlds Nemesis Clash
When we left off, my roommate and I had retired for “quiet time with the boys,” as he called it on the phone with his wife. After a quick nap, we headed back down the stairs for three rounds of Underpantsworlds in the Nemesis format! Underworlds has been taking off in a big way in the state of Florida, thanks to the efforts of James Luft, who spearheads Florida Blood Bowl.
James is an absolutely stellar human being, and if you’re at one of the Games Workshop Open events this year, swing by the Blood Bowl tournament and say hi! He’s running those, on top of the biggest tournament in North America, the Chaos Cup, and organizing the best Blood Bowl community around.
I’ve been running Grinkrak’s Looncourt lately, paired with the Voidcursed Thralls Rivals deck. This is a great combo, because several of the Voidcursed Objectives score off of numbers – outnumbering your opponent in various territories, having four dead fighters between the two warbands. This makes a horde warband a great match for the deck.
My first game was against Cathy’s Farstriders. These are one of the myriad Stormcast warbands, with a focus on range and mobility. Each fighter has a Range 3 chip attack and a more powerful close-range attack, and inspires by making both attacks in a single round. This meant that Voidcursing her fighters would not only reduce their Defense dice, but also completely prevent them from inspiring.
After we set up objectives, Cathy won the roll-off to go first and immediately charged a fighter forwards to shoot into the horde of goblins opposing her. I counter-charged with one of my fighters, baiting her into a counter-counter-charge onto an Objective hex. She took the bait, and I was able to play Reshaping Snare in her power step, Voidcursing 1/3rd of her warband. By the end of the first round, I had traded two goblins for one Stormcast killed and one Stormcast Voidcursed, unable to inspire. An excellent deal for me!
I would go on to table Cathy with the first activation of the third round and win the game, 15-9.
My second game was against Josh and his Headsmen’s Curse. I won’t spend too long on this one, but suffice it to say that it didn’t feel very good to win! Josh whiffed on all three of the attacks he made in the first round, and by that time I had established a strong enough board position that he simply couldn’t recover. He put up an excellent fight, though, and was a great sport throughout. I can’t speak to how he treated his dice, though – I imagine they’re in jail for the foreseeable future…
With two solid wins coming into the final round, I ended up at the top table against Tom, with Hedkrakka’s Madmob. The Madmob is an older Orc warband, but they still mix well with the Tooth and Claw deck. The combination of aggro from the warband with more aggro and chip damage from the deck, was perfectly tuned for my high-model-count, low-wound warband.
Neither of our decks especially cared about Objective hexes, so when I won the first roll-off, I elected to place the second board. I set up the long hallway, hoping that I could force him to come to me. Unfortunately for me, this strategy worked.
I did what I could, but I simply didn’t have the damage output to compete with the big, burly orcs. I lost a goblin almost every time Tom activated. My initial hand of objective and power cards were all very useful, but I didn’t adapt quickly enough to the changing situation. I held onto cards in the first end phase past the point I could have scored them, and by the second end phase the game was already practically over.
A 2-1 record wasn’t quite what I was hoping for, but I can content myself with a top-table showing! Hopefully the Underworlds community in Florida will continue to thrive.
Blood Bowl Game 4: Josh’s Skaven
After a remarkably good night’s sleep for a hotel and a surprise breakfast sandwich from my roommate, who went down early to hit the breakfast buffet, it was time for the Sunday games! My morning game was against Josh – yes, the same Josh – and would settle our standing 1-1 tie for games on the weekend.
Josh’s Roster:
- Gutter Runner with Wrestle
- Gutter Runner with Wrestle & Strip Ball
- Gutter Runner with Strip Ball
- Rookie Gutter Runner
- Rat Ogre with Juggernaut
- Skaven Blitzer with Tackle
- Skaven Blitzer with Guard
- 5x Rookie Linemen
This is a pretty solid Skaven roster, built along the same lines as my own team. There’s a good mix of sacking skills, and enough damage/utility skills to mix it with some of the lighter bash teams. The most intimidating part of his roster is definitely the Gutter Runners, any one of whom is a serious threat to my ball carriers.
Josh won the toss and chose to receive, setting himself for a classic fast touchdown and trying for some damage to my team along the way. He sent his Wrestle Gutter Runner to the left flank while the rest of his team moved right, and I was completely powerless to avoid the bait. The dice smiled on me once more and the Gutter Runner ended up in the Casualty box. By his second turn, he had lost that Gutter Runner, lost a Blitzer to a Knock Out, and had a linerat caught fouling and ejected from the game. Josh cut his losses and scored on Turn 3.
The Blitzer immediately woke up to help with the Defense, and I racked up a near-perfect 2-turn touchdown, with no damage to either side. This game was shaping up to be a shootout, which suited me just fine – I was still in the lead for the Most Touchdowns award with 9 from the first day, and Josh was my nearest rival with 8.
On his second drive, Josh pushed another cage forwards, this time using a linerat as a “scoring threat” instead of hanging another Gutter Runner out to dry. Because of its Agility 3+, I ignored it and went hard on trying to break the cage and get the ball out. While I got a couple elves in, I wasn’t able to get the ball on the ground, so Josh managed to dodge away and… hand off to the linerat I had written off as a non-threat. Two Rushes later, and the linerat scored.
I received the final kick of the half with three turns, but a deep kick and good pressure from Josh forced me into a longer pass than I would have liked. My team was too stretched out to put together an effective offense, and I went into halftime trailing 2-1.
The second half was more of the same. My next big hurdle in coaching elf teams is putting together a slow offense – when the kickoff lands deep enough to make a two-turn touchdown unfeasible, or I want to give the ball back to my opponent for as few turns as possible. I’ve been substituting speed for protection, and at higher levels of play coaches are able to exploit gaps that I leave and disrupt my drives. Sometimes I can recover and score, but in the second half, Josh scored two touchdowns on his defense. I did manage to score in between them, but I need to be scoring more consistently when I have the ball.
Result: 2-4, Loss
Game 5: Adam’s Dwarfs Griff Oberwald Mules
Not only did I lose, dropping down to Table 5, but Josh had overtaken me with the most touchdowns. It was looking dire for me! Luckily, I was about to play an easy…
Shit. Dwarfs. Not just Dwarfs, but Dwarfs supported by Griff Oberwald, who had taken my lunch money in Game 2.
Adam’s roster:
- 2x Trollslayer with Mighty Blow
- Runner with Block
- Blitzer with Guard
- Rookie Blitzer
- 6x Rookie Lineman
- 1 Reroll
- Griff Oberwald
Adam and I have played each other at every single tournament that we’ve both attended. It’s just one of those weird things. Better yet, he’ll never let me forget the first time we played, when I accidentally cheated by rolling a D16 on the Prayers to Nuffle table instead of the D8 that’s appropriate for exhibition play. He was playing a Snotling team with the Black Gobbo, and I rolled the effect that means every single foul results in a Sending-Off. It did not go well for Adam, and I won the game 2-1.
This weekend, three years later, when I sat down at the table, he said “Morning! Planning to cheat again?” It’s all in good fun, but gods, I feel like an awful person every time.
I won the toss and elected to receive, planning to score early before his Mighty Blow players began to tell. On the one turn Adam got this drive, he pushed an elf into the crowd with a Trollslayer, who immediately followed him on my turn. Both of them were apparently popular with the crowd, though, and only ended up in the substitute’s box.
When I kicked the ball back to Adam, he took full advantage of his Line of Scrimmage blocks, Casualty’ing my Treeman and a Catcher before making a long pass on a 4+ to Griff – he needed to use his only reroll and Griff’s once-per-game Consummate Professional reroll to score, but the ball still made it across the line.
On my drive, a deep kick gave Adam an opening to pressure me a few squares inside my half. I made a long throw of my own to send it upfield to a lone Catcher, but rolled snake eyes and the ball ended up on the ground with only two turns left in the half. Adam tried to focus on removals for his Turn 6, but rolled a 1 on a Rush to crowdsurf another one of my players. This let my Catcher pick the ball up unopposed and run it into for my second touchdown.
In his two remaining turns, Adam halfway tried to assemble a scoring drive, but his heart wasn’t in it and it fizzled out in his own wide zone. On my Turn 8, I darted in with my Tackle Wardancer to hit Griff on the off chance I could do some damage… and rolled a POW! (the equivalent of a 6) on a single block die. Not only that, but I knocked him out as well! I was very excited, until the half ended, and Griff immediately woke up, none the worse for wear.
To start the second half, I kicked off to Adam with eight elves left on the pitch, and did my best to stop his slow march up into the end zone. I made a valiant effort, but elves were being removed left and right. I even managed to get the ball on the ground at one point, but I had run out of team and could only count on Adam to fail his pickup rolls – which he did not!
Result: 2-2, Draw
Final Results
2-1-2 in five games? Perfectly balanced, as all things should be. I’m pretty happy with this record, especially against the opposition I faced. I stayed in the top half of the standings the entire time, ultimately finishing 15th out of 34 coaches. I scored 13 touchdowns and conceded 8, which is pretty good. However, those two 4-0 wins did juice my stats a little. I’m not complaining, but I don’t need to get complacent because I scored a lot of touchdowns.
Oh, and speaking of scoring a lot of touchdowns…
I pulled off the Most Touchdowns award! Josh, my Skaven opponent in Round 4, scored one more than me, but finished in 2nd place overall. This tournament spread the wealth, meaning no coach could win two gameplay awards. Painting awards, on the other hand…
I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect to win anything in the painting competition! I almost didn’t put this model up for judging, because I thought my Wood Elf team was a much stronger showing. Judging was separate for teams and individual models, though, and I had this guy in my case for the weekend. With nothing to lose, I threw him on the table, and the judges liked him!
Parting Thoughts
This was an excellent tournament for practicing my agility-focused play! The Florida coaches (not FloridaMan – he was there, but I didn’t play against him) are consistently great, and they mostly took advantage of the openings I left.
I had a couple more harsh lessons in keeping space open this tournament. I’m still overcommitting to the side I initially pick, which makes it much harder to switch play and stretch out my opponents’ defense. Instead of overloading one side, I need to keep a more dispersed screen that stretches across more of the pitch. Blood Bowl is a game of options, and more space to play in means more options.
Finally, I need to take better pictures. I remembered to take pictures of (almost) all of my games, but they aren’t very good ones! I struggled to parse what was happening in most of them, and I was there. I need to work on my angles, and think about the story each picture is telling instead of taking pictures just to check a box.
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