Suffolk Subterranean Showcase 3, Ipswich, 25th October 2025

This Saturday was the third Suffolk Subterranean Showcase. We made the annual pilgrimage (which is always a lot shorter than I expect it to be) to play in the event which usually falls around my birthday. This year, it was on the day itself, so I got to celebrate my birthday with a day of playing and talking about Blood Bowl. It was excellent!

Now that Oli has moved to the South West, I don't have anyone to annoy with my indecisiveness so much that they tell me what team to pick. I ended up dilly-dallying to the last minute (and I generally hate dilly-dallyers) and opted for snotlings with Morg'n'Thorg. 

There were a number of reasons for this: 

- I'd played slann at Octogre the previous weekend which hurt my head. I wanted a team with one tactic.
- I painted up a Morg model ages ago and hadn't used it.
- I heard rumours of some ridiculous star builds and didn't want to get squashed by one.
- All my car mates were planning on taking stunty teams (as we did on our first trip to Ipswich in 2023)
- I wanted to chalk up a stunty cup with snotlings.

As well as Morg, I had 2 trolls with block, 2 fungus flingas (one with pass) and 2 stilty runners (one with sure feet). The rest of the roster was linemen to 16, riotous rookies and 3 re-rolls.

I did not use sure feet once, so I think if I played this again, I'd switch that skill to a second pass so that the second half bomber matches the first half bomber. 

Round 1 v Brian (bmacbri)

Brian was a lovely guy with some wood elves. He is a relatively new player, but hadn't encountered snotlings before, so it was a really tricky match up for him. As I love wood elves, I gave him a bit of advice after the game, but to be honest, it wasn't too much of a game. 

My team chose to receive and removed 2 elves on turn 1. Players continued to be removed - some on my side as well - and I walked in on turn 8 for the score. Brian did try to cage dive a couple of times, but his dice let him down when he did.

I fouled for the first 7 turns, and managed 3 more in the second half. I was very disappointed with myself for the 6 turns I didn't foul, but when I discovered that a coach with the black gobbo had done 21 fouls in a game, I realised I was never going to win the most fouls award! 

In the second half, when Brian tried to blitz through at the side with his ball carrying wardancer, he knocked over a snotling who then hit a geyser (due to the subterranean weather table) and was launched into the wardancer, knocking him over and making him drop the ball which resulted in a turnover and a recovery for the snotlings who were able to slowly move into the endzone for a 2-0 victory. 

Round 2 v Darren (howlinggriffon)

This was moved to the top table and was recorded to be shown on the YouTube channel of BloodBowl Live at some point. You will probably hear me knocking the microphone multiple times as I'm not really used to having one on!

Despite being at a large number of the same events, this was only the second time Darren and I had played, with the first being in 2019 at one of my earliest tabletop events (he had won that one 2-1). 

We rolled the result on the weather table "Bubbling up from below." We had actually rolled this in my first game as well, but that changed to "Thermal geysers" at the first kick off. This meant that all players had their movement reduced by 1. This was not a big issue for Darren and his humans, but with most of my players only being movement 5 to start with, it really hampered my team. 

I receive but I don't get anywhere near as many removals as the previous game. Due to the reduced movement, Darren is able to get some decent hits on Morg, but fortunately his armour holds. I make an error with a troll who didn't have a friend to stop him being stupid and it messes up my positioning slightly, and the humans are able to steal the ball. I manage to make a couple of hits which result in knockdowns and then a troll blitzes the ball (needing and successfully getting two re-rolls) and knocks it loose. I'm not able to protect it well and he gets a hit on it which effectively stops me from scoring.

On his drive a bomb knocks the ball loose but as I'd left it to the last activation of the turn, I didn't have a way of sneaking in and recovering it. He moves around a lot and I don't have enough players to do much to stop him and my last ditch efforts fail when a troll eats a snotling rather than using him as a missile. A three die uphill on the ball on my turn 7 actually resulted in a push to a spot where Morg could have blitzed the ball carrier... if I hadn't already blitzed with him elsewhere at the start of the turn.

I have a shot at a throw team mate touchdown, but a blitz means that I use a re-roll trying to clear the space for Morg to move and the attempt peters out and the game results in a 1-0 loss.

Round 3 v Carl (charlemagne800) 

I had played Carl at his first ever tournament in September last year at COSH. I had a fouling underworld roster against his khorne that time and this time I had a fouling snotling roster against his khorne. He did have Max Spleenripper on his side, but all Max proceeded to do was roll 1 on the kickback roll (twice) and then take himself out. 

There were special rules in play that meant once during the tournament you could play a trick on your opponent (a random player might get knocked out) and once per tournament you could have a magic sponge to move all the KOs into reserves.

My troll sat out the first drive because of this, and when he knocked out the other troll, I used my sponge at half time, which was very useful. His block mighty blow piece didn't sit out a single drive due to the trick. 

Carl did have a few eggs in fewer baskets - with both block mighty blow and sneaky git dirty player stacks.  

In the first half the khorne were down to 4 players after Max took himself out, the sneaky git got sent off first foul, and Morg did Morg things. They still had an attempt at a pass for the score, but it doesn't quite work and we go in 0-0 at half time. 

On my drive a lineman catches the ball and I move up, constantly denying the khorne a hit on the ball and removing almost all of his team. A last gasp hero blitz succeeds the first two 4+ dodges and the first of two 3+ dodges, but fails the final one and we walk in for the score and a 1-0 victory. 

Conclusion

I successfully managed my goal of winning a stunty cup with snotlings. Here's me with Justin (onyersix) the TO and a heap of very generous prizes that I won. Now I only need to win one with gnomes and I'll just the list of 16 heroes who have won a stunty cup with every stunty race!