Pitch Invasion!!!

I'm so bad at updating this blog. Sorry, again. I blame the house move.

Anyway! I got to my first Blood Bowl event in nearly 2.5 years, and my first of the new 'edition' at all in the last weekend. This was a fun one-day event at the Tabletop Republic (see pic) run by good friend and Team Wales stalwart nonumber, or Tom to his pals. It was in High Wycombe, a town I used to work in some time ago, and it's only about an hour by car from my new house so along with two fellow Welwyn Wargamers members I made the trip!

I've played 3 practice games of the new edition over the last few weeks to familiarise myself again with the rules. I had found for the most part not much had changed, some skills had new names, there are a few more skills, and there are rosters that have differed and even new teams. Joemanji in his post on tournaments had said he was looking forward to learning the new edition again and that's very much the take I had after this event. A lot to get your head around and work out.

This was a TV115 event, and you could pick either 8 primary skills (singles to veterans like me) or 6 primary and 2 secondary. As it was my first event in the new edition, I went with my first ever tournament team, orcs. They seem pretty good now, with MV5 Big Uns (not Black Orcs, Wil...). But animosity was a new thing, more on that later.

I had: 4 Big Uns (4 block), 4 Blitzers (3 guard, 1 mighty blow), Thrower, Lineman, Troll, Goblin, 3 Rerolls, an assistant coach and a cheerleader.

Solid enough, I couldn't decide between mighty blow and tackle for the 4th blitzer so rolled a dice and it came up mighty blow!

Game 1 - vs Boatpig (lizards)

A tricky draw first up, that speed and plenty of strength is an issue, as is the krox. My opponent had 6 Saurus (1 x frenzy, 1 x block+mighty blow, 3 x block), Kroxigor (block), 4 skinks (1 sure hands), 3 rerolls.

I lost the roll off and had to kick in this one. I was managing to break the saurus armour early doors, although only stuns resulted. The pressure was able to tell on the lizards though and I managed to force a turn 5 score. My reply started a bit iffy with a failed pick up on a deep kick, but I managed to remove a saurus and get my goblin in range when the time came, and animosity didn't bite as he scampered in for the equaliser.

Second half I got numbers up and although I'd lost a guard blitzer, the saurus were always marked and armour 10 (still 9 to me, sorry GW) held up enough to get me the win.

Result: 2-1, 2-1 CAS

Game 2 - vs hekdar (undead)

Another tricky matchup, and I began to regret my decision to take mighty blow with 4 blodging ghouls lurking. He had: 2 mummies (guard), 2 wights (guard), 4 ghouls (4 x block), 5 zombies, 3 rerolls.

This time I won the kick off roll and chose to receive, hoping to remove some players. I did manage to cause some damage as my drive progressed, including chain surfing a ghoul to the CAS bin. However, a stupid troll allowed my opponent to get a 1 dice hit on the ball carrier and he got a POW, knocking it loose. It was tricky to recover after he made dodges to mark the ball, so I decided my best bet was to push his player on to the ball and hope it moved to a better location. It bobbled about and went off the pitch and 11 squares towards my endzone. Oh dear.

I managed to recover and sack the ghoul ball carrier running through, with 3 tackle zones near the ball. However my opponent without a reroll made a 4+ dodge, 5+ dodge and 5+ pick up but waltzing out to score on my drive. Ufff.

Second half I had to play pressure as he didn't need to score, and in turn 3 I had him in a real pickle with the 3 remaining ghouls and a wight pinned to the sideline. His first move was to 1 dice blitz with the ball carrier, and dodge out. If that failed, 4 players got surfed. It didn't, so 0-2.

I had a goblin and was hoping to get an early reply to give me a chance, but that was scuppered by a kick into the endzone and a failed pick up. I was able to remove a guard wight permanently and did enough damage to eventually score a consolation.

Result: 1-2, 3-0 CAS

Game 3 - vs Juck101 (ogres)

My first game into stunties, but these ones had no star players. Still, if he didn't bonehead, and mighty blow worked, I could be in trouble. He had: 6 ogres (2 block+break tackle, 1 guard, 1 leader, 1 juggernaut, 1 other?), 6 snotlings, 2/3 rerolls.

We got pouring rain in this one so I chose to kick when I won the toss, and the ogres struggled to pick up the ball early as I applied the pressure.

That said, I lost a Big Un turn 1, but was happy to remove an ogre shortly afterwards. The ogre drive was floundering although bonehead wasn't too bad for him, and eventually he opted to go for a TTM in turn 7 as he was still a distance from the end zone. That worked out, so 0-1.

The two turn TD in the rain was looking tricky, but I managed to get 3 in range and animosity didn't bite again to see a blitzer scoot in.

Second half and the orc line up got on top, killing a second ogre and removing all the snotlings pretty quickly. It was a fairly comfortable 8 turn drive as thrown snotlings failed to hit their mark and with only a few on the pitch the one turner became a real problem when I rolled quick snap (or whatever it's called these days).

Result: 2-1, 5-1 CAS

Game 4 - vs Mr_Frodo (khorne)

One of the new rosters, and a frightening amount of claw! He had: bloodspawn, 4 bloodseekers (2 x block + claw, 2 x block + mighty blow), 4 khorngor, 3 bloodborn marauders, 2 rerolls, 1 assistant coach?

I had to kick in this one, and was fearing the worst with that bloodspawn. Fortunately it failed it's unchannelled fury in turn 1 and only managed a stun in turn 2. So I knocked it out to put it out of its misery. I also injured a bloodseeker which was a big start for me.

That said, I started to see my fairly reliable block dice change with 4 double skulls in the first half in this game - including 1st action of one of my turns when I chose not to reroll as I was already down to 1 reroll remaining.

My opponent wasn't having all that great dice either and I was breaking armour, but he managed to score in turn 7 or so.

My two turn attempt saw me get players in range (3), and although he marked them the best play was to make 2 rushes (GFIs, come on now) to mark the thrower. Out of rerolls, I made a 3+ dodge out and was about to throw to the goblin for some more heroics, when finally animosity came back to bite me. Well, fine then.

Second half, another deep kick saw me fail to pick the ball up for 3 turns in a row. So the score early and look for a winner option disappeared fairly quickly and I shoved it up my orc jumper and smashed my way up the pitch to equalise in turn 16.

Result: 1-1, 3-0 CAS

All in all, a 2/1/1 record was ok. Few rolls went against me at key moments, but that's tournament Blood Bowl. It was lovely to see some old tournament friend faces again and roll some dice after such a long time. I really do need to properly look through the rosters and start having a play with teams again, almost like learning the game all over again!

The best bit was seeing a member of the club, Ben, win most TDs with his goblin team!

Thanks for reading!