0 and 1. And counting.

Hi,

With the Maurice campaign on hold a couple weeks, while my ally Watts waits for the opportune moment to crush the opposition, I got in a game of Blood Bowl last night with my newly acquired figures, against ChrisB and his rather spiffy, much converted Wood Elf team.  ChrisB is one of the better painters in our group (in real life, he's a legitimate art-guy), and his work on the table shows it.  Not sure the pics will do his figures justice, but check out his blog for the pretty.

Mainly for gits and shiggles, we decided to play a league game, meaning I got in my first game that counts with neither a coherent uniform, nor a determined team name.  I took humans, figuring that would be a good, flexible team with which to learn, and went with a roster decided by the available figures:  2 throwers, 2 catchers, 6 linemen, 2 blitzers.  Mostly, I tried to remember as much as I could from my first games against Otherdave, and to not lose too hard.



I won the roll to receive (giving me the final turn of the game as well), and deployed partly in response to ChrisB, and partly to cover the field.

We had a couple turns where the ball bounced around (I managed to blow 2 three up rolls with a re-roll, if I recall) and I scrambled to screen the ball from ChrisB's very nimble wood elves.



Eventually, I managed to get possession, and set up a half-decent screen to protect the ball carrier.




I pretty quickly cottoned on the idea that I wasn't going to out-manoeuvre the Elves, and simply started to hit them instead.  This worked a bit better, but also resulted in a few of my players being ejected over the course of the game.



I did, however, learn a valuable lesson:  when you have the opportunity to foul a Wardancer, you do it.  Hard and dirty.



What made the game challenging was the high Agility of the wood elves, coupled with their high movement, meant that even with knock-downs, etc., they could quickly regroup to block my progress.  I don't think I made it past the line of scrimmage in the first half.  Add in that my armour break rolls were low (I could knock them down, but not out), and it felt like swimming in jello.

Eventually, ChrisB managed to strip the ball from my carrier.




He then proceeded to use his elfy, leaping-about skills to get past my line and score.

With only a few turns left in the first half, I managed to receive the ball, but didn't have a chance to score.







I then kicked off to him for the second half.



Despite my best efforts to put the boot in:



He pulled off a sweet little passing play, and scored.



We were running short on time, and while I managed a decent break out on the left, ChrisB was able to set up a defensive formation that would have slowed my advance to a crawl.  I might have been able to score, but not enough to even things up.  We called it for ChrisB.

For whatever reason, I found the game much more fun this time around.  Maybe because I was less concerned with basic rules, and more with just figuring out how the game played?  At any rate, I'm liking the humans, and am actually keen to get some painted, and get in a few more games.  The remaining questions are what uniforms and what team name.  The figures I have are wearing some sort of leonine plate on their shoulders, so I've been looking at cat names, but egregious puns are on the table as well.  Stay tuned for details.

Next week we've got a club game, hosted by ChrisB, of Star Fleet: ACTA.  I've got dibs on some Romulan warbirds, and will have pics up.  I've been getting the itch to paint (finally), so will try to get something small done for the weekend.  Until then, enjoy.

FMB