Chunky does Komplete Fanatik

[chunky04]

Upon hearing of GWs decision to include Blood Bowl as part of their Komplete Fanatik tournament, I knew I had to find a way to attend. One of the often overlooked Specialist Games, Blood Bowl is my favourite game, and I figured if people didn’t support the event, it wouldn’t happen again, so I sent my entry off ASAP, before the rules for the tourney had even been announced!

The tourney was to be a TR100, normal league style affair. Personally, I do not think this is the best format for tournament BB, as it means your bad luck can haunt you for a number of games if Nuffle turns his eye towards you at the wrong moment. This being said, I had done well in my last tournament like this, managing a win with my trusty Humans. These Humans would be my team of choice for this event as well.

Humans really fit my style of play well, possessing speed and versatility. I try and play a very mobile game, using the fast, Blitzers with their lovely Strength skills as the fulcrum of the team.

My starting roster consisted of 4 Blitzers, 2 Catchers, a Thrower, 4 Linemen, 3 Rerolls and Fan Factor 3. Fan Factor is normally a must have, however with only 5 games and a variant kickoff table, this was reduced a lot. My plan would be to use the speed of the Cacthers and Blitzers to really pressure the ball, while using the linemen to try and hold off any of the opposition heavy hitters and pin less mobile players in place. Nuffle willing (Nuffle is the god of Blood Bowl, and generally considered to be the source of all bad dice in Blood Bowl!), I would be able to do quite well.


Game 1 – Tim’s Dwarfs – 3-1 Win

Tim was a fairly new player to Blood Bowl, and this was to be his first game using Dwarfs. I did my best to help him out with plenty of tips, but I’m not the best Dwarf coach myself, so I don’t know how effective my tips were for him.

Unfortunately for Tim, Nuffle seemed to be looking in his direction a bit today, and he rolled many of the dreaded double skulls at crucial moments, and combined with good offence from the Humans this was enough to carry the day fairly comfortably. However it was not all plain sailing, as he was seriously injured two of my players, so I would only have 9 to start the next game! I ended the game playing matador defence (wave the red flag then get out of the way!) to preserve my remaining players.

Winning 50K at the end of the match, I looked carefully at my options. The rules allowed me to reset my team if I wanted, but with the serious injuries only requiring my players to miss the next game, I decided that by freebooting two linemen, I would be in a better position, as I had acquired two skills from the first game – Accurate on my Thrower, and Block on one of my Catchers.

Game 2 – Ians Orcs – 2 - 2 Draw

With this tourney being dominated by Orcs and Dwarfs, it was not overly surprising when my next opponent turned out to be Orcs. This was not the sort of match I was hoping for to lick my wounds from the first game!

This was a really strange game, with my Humans displaying stringing together large stretches of utter incompetence before having a single turn of utter brilliance that left me wanting to buy 8 lottery tickets on the premise that one in eight turns seemed to carry similar odds to winning! Each of these super turns gave me a touchdown, however the other 14 gave Ian’s Orcs the same thing, and the game ended in a frustrating but appropriate Draw!

Unfortunately my poor Humans had suffered further losses, as I retired my other catcher who’d suffered an agility decrease and could no longer be relied upon to catch! Unfortunately the apothecary had already been used to save one of my Blitzers from an untimely death! I was able to purchase another freebooted lineman (oh no a trend is forming) to bring me up to 11 for next game with the 40K worth of winning however.

Game 3 – Anthony’s Humans – 3 – 1 Loss/Win (I’ll explain)

Next cab off the rank was Anthony, a GW staffer using another Human team. Anthony’s team was somewhat different to mine, with an Ogre and less rerolls. I felt going in that I had the better team, as despite my lack of numbers my players had more skills, particularly in the ball handling department. This was to prove crucial, as ball handling errors from Anthony’s team gave me opportunities that my skilled players were equipped to take advantage of, pilfering the ball to get to the point of a clear victory.

Then disaster struck, as I realised I’d forgotten to put away one of the freebooted linemen from last game, and had been playing with an extra man at the start of the game. Said offending player had soon been removed from the pitch, but this still meant I’d been down less on numbers than I should have been. The way the game had played out, I didn’t think it had had a dramatic effect, but who knows what might have happened? With my conscience gnawing at me, I had a decision to make.

On the one hand, a victory in this game (which was assured at this point) would put me at two wins and a draw, and put me amongst the tournament leaders in a very strong position to push on for victory. On the other hand, I didn’t believe it was fair to Anthony or the rest of the players if I was allowed to benefit from my mistake. My sense of fair play warred with my competitive instinct, but in then end, I decided to concede the game to Anthony to ensure he received the win and myself the loss. Anthony wanted to just leave the result as is to his credit, so we went to the tournament organiser and explained the situation. They suggested we finish the game as normal (meaning I wouldn’t be crippled for the rest of the tourney – I’d suffered further casualties this game), but that they would award Anthony the win and me the loss, which all were happy with.

I therefore now finished the day with a 1/1/1 record, but it turned out that the tourney was extremely close, and I would still have a chance to do well if I played well the next day.

Game 4 – Marcus’ Orcs – 2 - 2 Draw

Onto Day 2, and I was again drawn against an Orc team. I was told before the game that Marcus was a fairly new player, but it certainly didn’t show on the pitch! I had freebooted the Mighty Zug for this game, hoping to cause a bit of damage to the Orcs in return for what they were sure to do to me. Of course neither team caused a single casualty in the entire game! This meant my Humans had now gone 4 games without causing a single casualty. As a fairly bloodthirsty player, this was rather unusual – I’d been breaking armour often enough, I simply couldn’t roll over 9 on injury rolls.

This game Nuffle decided to turn his gaze on my Humans a bit. My drives went quite well with one exception, as I don’t think Marcus had defended much against my style of offence. Unfortunately that one exception cost me dearly. I had cleared out in the final turn of the first half to the point where to score I needed only a pass to a catcher and a handoff to a Blitzer to get a two turn equalising score (about as much of a sure thing as you can get with Humans on a two turn drive with a deep kick). Unfortunately my Catcher got a case of the dropsies, and we were behind going into the second half.

On defence, we were able to open up numerous blitzing opportunities on Marcus’ ball carriers, but we couldn’t get the dice result needed to knock them over and allow us to pilfer the ball. This meant the game ended in a hard fought draw.

Game 5 – Paul’s Wood Elves 5 – 0 Win

I already knew Paul from an online Blood Bowl league I play in, and it was nice to meet him in the flesh. His Wood Elf team was a welcome respite from the bashy hordes, and I was quite confident as my Humans tended to do quite well against Elf teams in general with their combination of strength and speed. For this final game I had hired two freebooter linemen to boost my numbers to 12 (a reserve!), while Paul had opted to freeboot a Wardancer. Wardancers are the biggest thorn in the side for the my style of play, as I like to throw up loose screens and advance the ball safely behind them, but with their Leap skill, wardancers make a mockery of this sort of offence at times. He would be a priority target to become my first casualty of the tournament.

Nuffle made his presence felt right throughout this game, and fortunately he wasn’t looking in my direction. Paul’s Wood Elves failed more rolls than I thought possible, and I succeeded in killing the Wardancer (first casualty was definitely worth the wait!). I was able to push my luck to extremes as well, scoring touchdown after touchdown to come roaring back into contention for the tourney.


In the end, I thought I’d done very well. With a team that was constantly undermanned, I had managed to go through the tourney undefeated on the pitch. In the end we managed a very respectable fourth overall finish. My difficult decision was also rewarded in the end, as I was very pleased to receive the Best Sportsman award, something I was very chuffed with, as it had been a difficult test for me.

A bit of a critique on the tourney itself:

Tourney ran on time, and with the draw system used, opponents were known before the end of the round, which was excellent as it allowed you to start the final game of the day early and get home a bit earlier. Organisation in general was excellent.

Prizes were also outstanding. Hopefully next year there will be enough to get some of those excellent pieces of framed artwork like WHFB received.

I thought the scoring system and normal league rules were a bit off. I tend to prefer Resurrection style tourneys - I'm now 0 for 3 at in terms of losing players in the first match, and it really does throw a spanner in the works for future games. It really does mean that a bit of bad luck can haunt you through multiple games.

I also personally don't like scoring systems that give bonuses for getting lots of TDs and/or casualties. This is mainly because to me the most satisfying, and hard fought victories tend to be those really close games, or the ones where you copped a shellacking in casualties, but overcome it for a stirring win. This sort of scoring tends to imply that a 4-0 win where you smash the opposition team to bits is better - which simply seems wrong to me.

However these issues are fairly small, and all in all I had an excellent time and look forward to hopefully coming back next year.

[Leipziger]

Nice report Chunky, sounds like you had a good time. Like you said, a 5 game league system doesn't sound like the best way of sorting out a tourney (swiss is definitely better), but its good to see a detailed report up of the event.

Cheers

Leip

[chunky04]

Actually the draw part of it was fine. Swiss would have been overkill given there were 12 players and 5 rounds. It was more the league style of advancement - players getting hurt, spps for skills etc.