Stunty Success

I posted a couple weeks ago about starting to play stunty games of Blood Bowl. It's an even swingier version of Blood Bowl if that can be believed. On the one hand I hate the swinginess as it is, so stunty can be frustrating. On the other hand I do like seeing guys get killed and that happens more often in stunty. And before anyone starts complaining, I do like seeing my guys die too. As long as I get to kill some back. I don't like being solely on the receiving end, but I'm fine with death for all!

At the time of my post my team was 1-4-2 and I didn't think I had enough time to start a new team before the major stunty tournament started. My team is now 6-4-3. Maybe I've gotten better at playing the team? Maybe having block on my three strong dudes is really making a difference? Maybe I'm just getting luckier? Probably some of all three, really. Two of those games were just random pick up games before the Fighting Cockerel Classic qualifiers started but the other four were part of the event. It turned out to be an 80 team field, with 16 groups of 5 each playing round robin. Top team of each division advances to a single elimination bracket. People have a week for each round but my division was really gung ho and have finished all relevant games. My 3-1 record is good enough to advance. Woo!

My last game was against an opponent who's profile talks about how he has the record for highest coach rating in the history of the site, and how he doesn't view any tactic as 'too cheesy', and how there should be no whining. So I was rather surprised when he spent the entire game against me whining up a storm. I had some things go my way for sure, and definitely used a cheesy tactic of my own, but I'd think he should be above whining given his profile. Especially since some of the 'lucky' things that happened for me or against him were avoidable if he'd planned differently.

For one thing, I have a guy who throws bombs. Bombs knock down anyone they hit, and have a 50% chance of knocking down anyone around the explosion. Throw a bomb at someone and they get a chance to catch it and throw it themselves so generally it seems throwing it at people is a bad idea. So mostly I throw bombs beside people and hope the 50% shot it good enough. This opponent, however, had multiple guys with the 'no hands' skill which means they aren't allowed to catch balls. Or bombs. So I just throw my bombs at those guys with the guaranteed knock down and the 50% spill over. My very first bomb took out 5 people. Because he built a nice little clump of dudes beside a guy with no hands when he kicked off and I got to bomb them before he got a turn. Sure, I got lucky to hit all 4 of my 50% shots, but he probably shouldn't have been stacked so close together.

For another, many of his guys had blood lust which means when they start moving if he rolls a 1 he has to eat an ally or get removed from the pitch. He rolled about his fair share of 1s, but he just threw his blocks as normal with the expectation of eating a nearby ally after the block. A couple of times this worked for him, but a couple of times his block ended up knocking his own guy down. In one case he even used piling on to knock himself down after getting blood lust. All of these resulted in his guys leaving the field.

Now, maybe that is ok, because they'd come back at the next kickoff. But the cheesy thing I did was limit the number of kickoffs. I received in the first half and decided my goal wasn't to score, it was to keep him from scoring. I didn't want to score for a few reasons. I have 4 secret weapons on my team and only enough inducement money to get one bribe. My team had a bunch of miss next game injuries the previous game so my bench was short. Having to kick off on turn 8 would just mean rolling more secret weapon dice since I didn't have the bodies to bench them for that short drive. Also I'd gotten a key knockout on turn one (with the bomber) and didn't want to give that guy an extra chance to wake up. And with his bloodlusting I didn't want to let those guys back on either. So in the first half I delayed a bit then threw a hail mary pass the length of the field. I put a couple guys in the area to keep him busy, don't get me wrong, but I wasn't going to score. But by doing so I got him to focus on dealing with those dudes instead of the important guys (like the bomber) and was able to use my turns killing his squishy dudes instead of really trying to score.

The one KO check ended up working in his favour since his guys came back and mine didn't, but my awesome secret weapons didn't get kicked out either. He really had no answer for a 4/5/1/10 guy with Foul Appearance, Juggernaut, Dirty Player, Mighty Blow, No Hands, Frenzy, Block, Guard, and Break Tackle. Getting two full halves with that guy was pretty awesome. Especially in an environment that is so block light and has so many 2 strength dudes... He gets 6 dice when he attacks and succeeds on two of the faces. And when they get knocked down they tend to leave the game.

I don't know when the next section of the event will finally start since most of the qualifiers are no where near as close to done as mine is. But it's nice to advance in my first stunty event, with my first stunty team. Woo!