Blood on the Sand, Folkestone 9th May 20262

This Saturday we hosted the first SKABB event of the year, Blood on the Sand. It was the first time that damology was TOing a full Blood Bowl event after dipping his toe in the water with our Christmas Gutterbowl. He was being assisted by Fluffles and DaKanariez as well.

The event was Tomb King themed, with the Canopic Jar inducement being available, the Tomb King kick off table and ancient, possibly cursed 3D printed trophies for the winners.

Bretonnians had been tiered with the stunty teams to encourage coaches to take them, and you will find that two try hard coaches did just that, along with a little friend. The friend I chose was Skrorg and the friend Star Ferret chose was Griff. There were other players on our teams with a few skills, but they were really just there to round out the numbers. 

Round 1 v Dan (danc)

Dan has joined our league this season and doing well with Amazons. He'd brought humans along to the tourney and thinking that my team relies on Skrorg hitting and removing things I receive and hit and punch things.

However, the Tomb King kickoff table has a scarab in your boot result which stuns a random player. Somehow Skrorg got stunned despite the fact that he doesn't wear boots! My grail knight then double skulled first dice roll, and it felt like things weren't going to go well for me!

I manage to recover positionally and Skrorg knocks out the ogre and casualties the human captain. I make my way down one flank and score on turn 8, with Dan forgoing the option to throw a halfling in favour of just punching things.

He scores in 4 meaning I've got time for a winner, and it was looking good until the human ogre throws a halfling at my cage corner and knocks them down meaning the ball can easily be blitzer. The halfling rightly decides to die but the damage is done. My knight fails to recover the ball and the humans push someone onto the ball which bounces to a blitzer who gets away. The best I can do is to tag the ball carrier, so I push people out of the way and do just that, making sure to leave a scoring threat just in case.

The dodge away fails and the ball falls just in front of my knight who gives it to my thrower, who runs down and passes to the catcher who gets what a few minutes before seemed like an unlikely victory!

Round 2 v Graham (borek_g)

Graham now has a literal book of grudges for his dwarf teams (and he pretty much only plays dwarfs these days, with the odd exception for a OWA dwarf heavy team). 


We had played a couple of times before and I was quite keen to get into the book! I kick the ball and his sneaky git / dirty player gets sent off on the first foul he does! A dwarf is also knocked out, so they are getting outnumbered and they decide to rush with the ball. One snake later and I swarm the ball and recover it, being able to put it in late in the half. 

I score relatively early on my drive to go 2-0 up but I did make it perhaps a bit more complicated for myself than needed! My strip ball grail knight (elite skills were at a premium) manages to pop the ball loose to prevent a consolation touchdown at the death of the game. 

My win means I make the book of grudges!


Round 3 v Andy (Primhak)

Primhak is my nemesis. If you speak to the New Dice Please gang they would say that he has me on toast. 

He had chaos chosen and I receive the ball. I get no removals and skrorg gets hit and fouled but fortunately stays on the pitch. I manage to manouever around the side of his lines to score on turn 7 and a failed hand off allows me to push his only scoring threat out of range. 

On Primhak's drive, he needs to dodge through my lines to get safe but the ball carrier's dodge fails which allows me to recover and run away, to win 2-0 and finally beat my nemesis!

Conclusion

StarFerret and myself ended up 1st and 2nd (he just pipped me on the Strength of Schedule) and it probably shows that perhaps Brets were undertiered. Schoolyb came 3rd also on 3 wins (amazingly there were only 5 draws in 36 games).

If I'm being honest, I don't think Skrorg was amazing himself, but having the strength 5 reliable blitzer (except for when he double skulled, obviously) gave the team something that is lacking on their roster. With nobles and humans both having access to an ogre and a strength piece, it does feel like they're generally going to be stronger choices. 

I'm not sure how much I'll play Brets again, but I have now played all 31 teams in tournaments! I do however need one more match with goblins to get the official badge for playing all the races as one of my games was against a non-naffie before non-naffies were a thing. I'll look for an event to play them in soon, although I do have my eye on a nice Clockwork Orange themed goblin team so I might save it until I've got them. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nufflenomics S3: Picking up the Ball

Failing to pick up the ball at the start of your drive has been a source of annoyance for Blood Bowl players for as long as I have been playing the game. Now Games Workshop have decided to try to remove that annoyance by introducing a new Secure the Ball Action, meaning that Blood Bowl coaches will need to find something else to grumble about instead. Secure The Ball Action The Secure the Ball Action allows a player to attempt to make a 2+ roll rather than making an agility test to pick up the ball assuming there are no Standing opposition players that are not Distracted within two squares of the ball. This will end the player’s activation. A 2+ is an 83% chance of picking up the ball, which becomes a 97% chance if you use a Team Re-roll on a failure. It seems like this is designed to remove frustration and help less agile teams against teams that are likely to swarm in and take advantage of any failed pick up. When wouldn’t you use Secure the Ball? The obvious answer will ...
Read more

Brassbowl XXI, 13-14 December in Ostend, Belgium

Image
This last weekend, a band of plucky explorers from all over the South East journeyed under the sea to a mystical land known as Belgium.   Back in 2023 at the World Cup I had randomly started talking to one of the referees, Sjape, who it turns out lived in Belgium and had visited Folkestone for tournaments - in the days before I had joined the SKABB league. We've remained in touch, seeing him at the NAF Championship, and them bringing a team over for the Kent Team Championship earlier this year.  I decided it was time to return the favour and visit Belgium for one of it's flagship events, Brassbowl. This is held in Ostend which is a port town. When I was a child, it was still possible to get a ferry from Folkestone to Ostend, so I had assumed that Ostend was a very similar town to Folkestone. It is not. It is in fact a city, and much much bigger and livelier than I had expected, although that could partly be because the tournament was running at the same time as a Christma...
Read more

SKABB Season 11 Playoff Final

Image
Last night, was the playoff final for SKABB Season 11. This was been my vampires (Pitchfork Pines Preschool) and Oli's khorne (Stonefolk Skullhunters). Before I get into talking about the match, I want to add some context. Oli is the person who got me into playing Blood Bowl much more frequently and seriously. He was at the first tournament I ever played in 2017 that two school friends had convinced me to go along to. I took ogres as I thought I'd do badly anyway, and ended up with the wooden spoon. A week or so later, I go to collect a parcel from the post office and he's working there. We have a good chat and I say that I'll try to join up the league after my wedding is out of the way as that plus a long honeymoon meant I couldn't put a lot of time into playing the game for a while. We have played far more times than I can remember, both in person and online, in both competitive and friendly games. We've had games before tournaments where we've talked abou...
Read more