Double Bangers, London 29th November 2025

The final event of the London Tournament Series for 2025 was a pairs event held at Bad Moon Cafe in Holloway. 

I teamed up with Ashley (cleaver88) and after trying out a few rosters we decided to take our most recently painted teams so we had chaos renegades and humans. 

In a complete contrast to Elf Bowl last week, this was a very bash focussed ruleset, with lower tiered teams getting either 1 or 2 banger skills in addition to their skill allocation. 

My renegades build was a rat ogre with block, a troll with guard and a block and guard ogre for the big guys, then a dodge dark elf, wrestle skaven, orc and goblin with no added skills and then 2 block and 1 dirty player linemen, with the roster filled out to 13 players, 3 rerolls and an apothecary. 

Ashley had 3 guard on his humans which based on the matchups he ended up having (human mirror, khorne and chaos chosen) probably wasn't enough. 

The bash heavy meta is not how I normally prefer to play (despite having a fair number of most casualty trophies), but I'd been practicing renegades a fair bit on Bloodbowl 3 and I'd been doing ok and having a bit of fun with them - even with the turns when all 3 big guys refused to do anything - so I was hopeful of having an enjoyable day. 

I had the only elf at the whole tournament on my team - the poor guy must have been feeling a bit lonely.

Unfortunately in the week before this I had managed to come down with the lurgy (thanks probably can go to my daughter for bringing it home from school) and by the end of the day,  I was really struggling. Whilst the venue was good, the location of it underneath a train track meant that it was quite noisy and this didn’t help my headache and sore throat due to having to shout a little at times. They did amazing pizza though. 

I am writing this still with a bit of a fuzzy head from my lurgy,  and Kpop Demon Hunters on for the 20th time, so apologies to my opponents if some of the details aren't quite correct. 

Round 1 v Philip (king_ghidra)

The last time I played Philip was at NAFC in 2024. That match up was quite a one sided affair and sits on my NAF page as the most touchdowns I've scored in a game.  This match was a better contest, with Philip having chaos chosen including 2 stacked block guard blockers. 

When practicing on BB3, Chaos Chosen was a match up that I had struggled with for renegades, especially when they pressure a lot. 

I won the choice at kickoff and elected to receive so I could try to bang first, and knocked out a beastman on turn 1. 

I misjudged my blitz with my rat ogre hitting a chaos warrior that I had inadvertently thought was a beastman. After rolling the correct dice I still managed a knockdown but my rat ogre was a bit isolated and was picked off quite early. The apothecary saved him but he wouldn't be back until the next drive.

The removals swung in Philip's favour and despite a casualty on a beastman with guard, I was outnumbered and when my big guys started either forgetting to do their jobs or falling over, the ball was recovered by the chosen who were able to score for a 1-0 lead at half time. 

With the chosen receiving, I knew I needed to put a lot of pressure on. My ogre threw my goblin deep into the chosen half but whilst it landed, it was one square short of being able to  steal the ball and score. However the pressure eventually meant that the chosen ran back and tried to hold the ball to seal out the win. 

This left me an opportunity and my skaven dodged away and then dodged through the screen on a re-rolled 5 before getting a knockdown on the ball carrier and then leaping their prone body on a 5... only to be able to roll the 3 needed to pick up the ball for what would have been an unlikely draw.

Ashley had a difficult draw playing against Gumbi, and we lost both games this round. 

Round 2 v Chris (bondy)

After a loss in round 1, you would normally expect a slightly easier game than we were given, with Ashley playing tyler_swaft and me facing Bondy. 

As Bondy had a made up team,  we both agreed that I should have a default victory and we'll just call it there.  Unfortunately, that was apparently against the rules, so we had to play it out. 

The slann came with a kroxigor and a large number of rerolls. I won the choice and elected to receive against to get the first hit in. My rat ogre casualtied the strip ball linefrog turn 1 but the apo brought it back. 

I was able to pick up the ball but not to keep it safe, and the wrestle linefrog jumped in and knocked it loose. I wasn't able to stop the frogs from taking an early need. 

I had a chance to pull one back. After the ball was knocked loose again it was caught by a renegade lineman and i manufactured some chain pushes to allow them a 3+ dodge to then perform a handoff and get out of range. They didn’t manage this and in honesty I was lucky not to be 2-0 down on my drive.

With the frogs receiving they made it through my backline and were stalling out, perhaps too much as my heroic goblin as able to dodge out and rush for a one die pow which resulted in the ball going out of bounds, however fortunately for the slann it was easily recoverable for them and they soon got their second.

My heroic goblin wasn't done there though, as he successfully scored a one turn touchdown without any rerolls and earned his spot on the starting lineup for my final game. 

Round 3 v Graham (borek_g)

The last game was against notorious elf hater Graham who had a shot at the only elf in the whole tournament. The elf had so far not made it to the end of a game. Spoiler alert: he survived all 16 turns of the game despite Graham's best efforts. 

Of the 38 players on other teams,  there were 23 I hadn't played previously. As fate would have it, I played 3 of the 15 that I had played before. 

Graham and I had both painted our teams green and despite the fact he was playing OWA I still managed to get myself muddled on a few occasions. 

I kicked for the first time of the day and I was able to put a lot of pressure on, meaning the OWA drew back into their half. 

My dirty player kept kicking and stunning the troll slayer up until the point when the ogre was on the floor when it switched it's focus and after about 7 turns finally removed the ogre without being spotted. I think I fouled around 14 times this game, only being spotted on the 12th! 

With a great blitz from the ogre who needed 2 rushes, the ball was knocked loose and recovered by my skaven who helped us to take our first lead of the day.

When we received, we were able to move up the middle of the pitch and remove a couple of OWA players before taking a 2-0 lead. 

Graham pushed to score one back and was in a position to do so as my blitz didn't knock over the ball carrier, however needing to blitz free and then dodge, the catcher fell over Nuffle's trip wire and we ended with the win.

Conclusion

It's probably not a great idea to play a BloodBowl event when you're unwell, but I obviously didn't want to let Ashley down by leaving him without a partner. However, I felt that all the games were competitive at least. 

I think I like renegades more than I thought I did. They've been fun to practice with, although whether the big guys fire or not is often very critical to how the whole game plays out.

I am currently considering them for the new season of the SKABB league, although I'm very indecisive so I might change my mind 20 times before it starts in February!