BBBL Winter Classic IV, 31 January 2026

I am just a couple of races away from having played them all in tournaments, with just gnomes and bretonnians to go. I had been putting off gnomes for a while as i wasn't sure if I'd enjoy them.  I decided to play them at a local tournament, as travelling back after NAFC or UKTC would be a long way to travel if I had had a rough time! 

I therefore took them to Bromley, complete with my political statement about the municipal borough status of Bromley and my long running campaign to reclaim Bromley as part of Kent. (Screenshot) I'm sure this wss missed on everyone else but it amused me.

This was a good event for stunty teams as there was only 1 million gold to spend on your team,  so some of the traditional strong teams might struggle a little. I was able to take a 14 player roster of 2 trees (1 guard), 2 beast masters (both dodge), 2 foxes, 7 lineg nomes (2 with dodge) and Swiftvine Glimmershard so was a cheap star that i could fit in without compromising the postionals I wanted and the skill allocation. I got a friend to 3d print me a model and painted it up ready. I then decided to replace my old trees which didn’t have much detail on them with the 2 unpainted GW trees that I acquired a while ago, meaning I had an intense painting spree before the event... right in my busiest time of the year work wise! I’ve discovered if I have to paint something quickly it gets done, unlike my chaos dwarfs which i should be playing next season that have been on my painting desk since October.

Round 1 v Charlie (chiggles) 

Charlie also had gnomes but with Akhorne the Squirrel. We were the 2 who had picked fun star players with the other two try who took stars having gone try hard with Deeproot Strongbranch and Jordell Freeshbreeze. 

I kicked in this game and Charlie clearly wanted to win the One Turn Touchdown award and went for it on turn 1. It failed and I was able to recover the ball. Charlie is a junior player and was clearly there for fun, but wasn't sure exactly what his team could do. I targeted his two beast masters and when they were removed I made a comment about it, and he didn't realise they had Guard. 

I won't go too much into the detail of this game as it pretty much continued in this vein, with me ending up a 4-0 winner. 

Round 2 v Max (chaosmaxident)

I hadn't expected to be top table after game 1 in my first outing with gnomes, but that's where I found myself. 

Max and I had played previously (he got the victory after a bouncing squig ball kept getting away from me). He had just won a snotling mirror match 3-0 which meant we were probably an unlikely 1 and 2 in the standings.

I opted to receive and got off to a really favourable start. One of his trolls was knocked out, a pump wagon injured and Swiftvine stabbed a stilty off the pitch in the first few turns. This made my procession up the pitch fairly event free. 

Max tried for a one turned at the end of the first half, but it didn't come off. He then tried again at the start of the second half in an attempt to get the victory and/or put the pressure on me, which again (unfortunately for him) failed and left me in a great position to go on and win the game. It ended up 2-0 and a third attempt at a one turn touchdown failed when I got a Charge at the kick off and was able to put a lot of pressure on.

After 2 games, I had 2 wins, and had conceded no touchdowns. Things were definitely going better than I had hoped.

Round 3 v Luke (voldermortscleaner)

I had strong words with Chris the TO when it turned out I had to play against a proper team. I was hoping for a third stunty game! Although that would have been against Tyler Swaft and his Jordell halflings so it might not have been really what I would have wanted...

Luke had necromantic horror and was able to get 2 block, 3 guard and a tackle. I chose to receive on the assumption I would need to do some damage early to stand a chance in this game. I managed to KO a zombie on turn 1 but not much happened from thereon, and the necro were able to methodically thing down my numbers.

They popped the ball loose and I had to try desperation plays to stop them scoring both on my drive and on theirs in the second half. Amazingly, they came off repeatedly. A an uphill blitz on the ball carrier re-rolled into double pows made it look like they wouldn't score, and twice Swiftvine blitzed the ball carrier and successfully stabbed them - but on no occasion was I able to make a good attempt at recovery and this ended with a 1-0 loss (it would have been 2-0, or perhaps 2-1, but Luke didn't want the admin of scoring and resetting!). 

Conclusion

Luke won the event on the tiebreaker of the most really stupid plays completed - pipping Tyler Swarf into second place. As the flings got runner up, I got a hand me down stunty cup, meaning I now have one with each of the stunty races (although 3 of them were hand-me-downs so I may try to earn them again at some point). 

I enjoyed the gnomes more than I thought I would. With the ability to reasonably safely do uphill blocks, and also with being able to add dodge to a large number of players, I think they definitely do better in tournaments than in leagues, but there were still quite fun- and obviously the models are awesome.

Swiftvine feels like perhaps an underused star. Whilst she doesn't really have any defensive skills to speak of, she isn't too expensive and the stab was really useful against the lower armoured teams. I didn't use her special skill in earnest - only frivolously at the end of each half - but it could situationally be very useful both for scoring and for cage diving. If I use gnomes again, I'd probably try out a different star player, but I'd probably be pining for her at the same time.