Well played in those Besters, that's a good effort. On the other hand it should be said your team were helped enormously by fielding 12 Amazons for the entire first half drive against my Skaven, who as a result were reduced to 7-8 players for the second half and were knackered for Game 4. Btw you assured me the NAF rule in that situation was to randomly select one player and remove it to the reserves box (which in the last turn of the first half meant nothing, and was no penalty whatsoever). For future reference that isn’t true. The NAF rules pack states:besters wrote:An end of tournament slump not helped by forgetting I had a wizard in games 4 and 5 and the contest with Itchen in game 6 to see who could fail most dodge and pick up rolls!
‘If there are 12 players on the pitch, you can remove one randomly, choose one to remove, or restart the drive/game. You decide!’
Given the large impact in a situation like that I think a restart would be fairest really, perhaps with 2 minute turns on a clock as it was the last game of the day? However I do respect and understand Robin’s decision that we had to continue as we only had the hall till 6.30pm (I assume the commish is the ‘You’!).
I hope the above doesn’t sound like sour grapes, these things do happen (although of course I can only help but wonder though what would have happened, had game 3 been played properly, or there had been any kind of penalty offered for the 12 man infringement...). Of course it’s only a silly game after all, most of it was great fun and I accept mistakes do happen. We just need to try and avoid this happening again, particularly when it affects everyone around the top of the table. Personally I’m quite new to tabletop and will certainly be counting my opponents players too from now on!
The other reason I wanted to post is that in my opinion this also cost Itchen the title. He beat Besters in the last game, ended with the same record, and only lost out on marginal ‘strength of schedule’ points. I accept it was an honest mistake by Besters, but it was his primary responsibility to field the correct number of players in game 3 so he was rather fortunate not to be docked ‘strength of schedule’ points for that big infringement (it was surely a weaker schedule as a result)?
To close on a brighter note I must tell everyone of a really outstanding piece of sportsmanship. In game 2, my opponent was coasting to a 2-1 win down one wing at the end of the 2nd half. One of my gutters somehow managed to sneak in and get a lucky, one die pow blitz (needed a pow). That would have been meaningless if the ball had scattered onto the pitch anyway, which I said it had. But my opponent corrected me that it had scattered into the crowd, knowing full well that other gutters were well placed to run off with whatever throw in and win 2-1 – which they promptly did. That opponent happened to be Itchen, and had he kept quiet on that he would again have won the title on the final standings. What a sportsman – in my opinion he deserved the title on both counts! Would have made a nice story too, having got the Wooden Spoon last year Opponents like that make the game a pleasure to play.
Big thank you once again to Block and the other Admins too for all their hard work, particularly on a progression-style tournament which is a lot more complicated to run. Without their selfless hard work there isn’t even a competition, well done guys! I’m sure there will be more players next time out, many of us are middle-aged family guys so I’m sure a lot of coaches were off for Bank-holiday weekends… Please put me down for the Trophy – 95% sure I can make it;)