Thursday, April 11, 2013

Blood Bowl: Victory!

Season one of our league ended last night. My dwarves barely squeaked into the playoffs on tiebreakers and then had a potentially rough road through the playoffs. #2 in the other division, #1 in the other division, #1 in my division, who was one of my two regular season losses. I remember after that game ended feeling quite annoyed because the dice were pretty slanted in his favour. 5 casualties to 0, despite me having the board position to throw way more blocks.

The finals decided to reverse that particular trend, as his team got significantly better at killing dwarves between then and now, but his dice were only slightly above average instead of way above average. And in one important case, his claw/mighty blow guy, much worse than average.

In the quarterfinal game I got beat up badly, but used an agility potion and an apothecary in order to have an out in overtime. I managed to get a guy free for a long pass, pulled it off, and then Mike couldn't roll a pow on 4 dice to finish him off. The semifinals were against an undermanned skaven team, which induced a wizard, and decided to go for the gusto by engaging my team with a huge fireball. I barely managed to hold on to the ball, and the massive scrum that ensued worked out well for the team with block, guard, mighty blow, and 9 armour as opposed to the team with 7 armour. I did fail a 8 in 9 dodge roll at the end of the first half to score, but had such a numbers advantage in the second half that I was able to get the ball off him and stall out. Stall out an awfully long time, as I waited until turn 20 to score. The Cyanide game uses a questionable overtime system where if the game is still tied they just add 4 more turns instead of kicking off again. So I just didn't score and kept grinding down rats until it was a guaranteed outcome. Most of the damage was KOs, so I really didn't want to give him a chance to stand up and pull off a miracle.

The finals actually didn't go to overtime, but it was a very similar situation to the semifinals. I had a man advantage in the second half and just tried to protect the ball with minimal men while grinding out the rest of his team. Repeated blitzed with a mighty blow dude resulted in KO after KO on his 8 armour dudes. I certainly got luckier this game, but I also feel like I had a good game plan. My opponent actually scored on turn 3 of the first half which gave me time to move the ball down the field and score myself as well. I think the real lucky part was not getting murdered by the claw/mighty blow guy. I'm not convinced I can pull that off if I had to do it again. On the other hand, the game actually crashed on turn 6 when I felt I was in a strong position the first time around, and got into a similar position the second game, so maybe it would work out?

We both had a guy die in the finals, which should have made the bloodthirsty fans happy. Woo death! Woo!

I was strongly considering making a new team for the next season. Dwarves are very one dimensional, though I have built up a pretty good passer for surprise plays (and having that option won me my quarterfinal match). But as defending champion I feel obligated to bring them back again for more. Especially since I want to level up my blitzer who had mighty blow and +MV and give him piling on. More killing!

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