Blood Bowl: Life in the Leagues

[Joose]

Hurrah!

I must get around to actually applying at some point. I had a look at what I needed to do, but made the mistake of doing that after a rather taxing day at work so I just sort of stared at words whilst my brain went "boggleboggleboggle". I may collar you on steam chat so you can walk me through it, if thats ok.

[Dog Pants]

Oops! Yes the score was 2 - 1. Poke me whenever you like Joose.

[Dog Pants]

Ah! The game was validated and I earned enough from that game alone to buy my final Tomb Guardian. My team is almost complete, and with a line of STR 5 players across my wings most opponents will struggle to break through. I got lucky with my skill-ups too, giving the second original Guardian a double and allowing him to buy Block (not normally one of a TG's options). I also got Kick for one of my skellies, since it's a useful skill to have on the team, and sacked the one who got injured a few games ago - I still have one sub without him and he was now on MV 4 and only 2 SPPs. Not a huge loss, a liability on the pitch (arguably better being a man down than have a gimped player potentially earning SPPs), and was upping my team value by 40 (which is used as a handicap). I feel quite well equipped for next season, but I'm starting to enter the territory of the veteran players now.

Did I ever link the league tables? They're on Google Docs here for anyone interested. There's instructions on how to join on one of the tabs too.

[Dog Pants]

If anyone fancies joining me in the leagues now is the time. The season officially ended yesterday, although there are still a number of games still pending, but the new division will be formed within the week and so new places will need allocating soon. Give me a poke on Steam if you're interested and I'll talk you through.

[Joose]

I shall poke you tomorrow. I will also ask you about signing up for BB. Wahaaaay!

[fabyak]

[Dog Pants]

My third season sees me in the mighty middling Division E. As usual, due to dropouts and restarts, more people were promoted than one might expect, and again I see myself facing off against an opponent from last season; the unfortunate DeekyFun who got more of a battering than he deserved last season, although he still held me to a draw. Sadly my nemesis since our inception, Jlahnum, and his mighty Chaos team has had to drop out of the league. He was a jolly nice chap. This season has me facing a more mixed bag of opponents; DeekyFun's High Elves as mentioned before, the Necromantic Phantom Menace coached by Rayksh, and in a cruel twist of fate I'm playing Skydancer's Barebone Bareboners - another Khemri team. I am worried about facing Tomb Guardians, and I think Necs get the equally scary Mummies. This is going to be a violent season. Here's the table:

The Phantom Menace (Nec) - 0
Barebone Bareboners (Khe) - 0
Anupshi Rises (Khe) - 0
Dandy-Lions (HElf) - 0

I'm in a far better position to be competitive now after a run of moderate to good success last season, with a full compliment of Tomb Guardians and some decent skills. I've also noticed that despite my initial poor performance, I'm a division above half of the teams I've played so far, and level with the other half. Now I'm starting to delve into the experienced teams though.

[Joose]

I've signed up, but due to numbers (and me not getting around to signing up earlier) I wont be in this season unless someone drops out
Or if three more people sign up sharpish...

[Dog Pants]

The likelihood of someone not signing up to their league or just not turning up are reasonably high. But more people would be lovely.

[Joose]

Woo! Due to mild confusion, I'm now in League 8! I think. I'm supposed to be, and I've applied in the game client. The game client said yay, done! And then it went back to what it had shown before, with no obvious indication that the team in question has applied to shit. Hooray for well designed interfaces!

[Dog Pants]

Remember you need to put in a password, and it needs to be validated by an admin.

[Joose]

Yep, done the password. I think its just waiting for approval.

[Dog Pants]

They work their way down in case people get shuffled about due to non-entries, so you'll be done last once everyone else has applied.

[Joose]

A brief writeup of my first game of the season, done by my opponent:

Failed to keep a full log, but game roughly played out like

bash bash bash, sorta move ball. bash bash bash, turnover, caught in traffic at midfield. halftime. bash bash bash, move ball up field, bash bash, score. Last turn, bash bash, snotling thrown with ball into open backfield, needs 2 gfi to tie game 1-1. Makes first, falls on second. Despite it giving me the win and not tie, I couldn't help but feel cheated for the little guy.

Ogres bashed in a few Beastmen, and by the late second half 9/9 snotlings were injured or KO'd. I dare say Joose outplayed me in the game considering his player handicap early on and some terrible terrible block dice for the Ogres in the first half. I had some positioning derps late first half that prevented a score attempt, and probably played too soft considering the blitz on kickoff. That hot snotling throwing action had me worried, as they were doing better at making the hero plays than standard moves. Totally missed the lone snotling stand up for the final kickoff, hidden before a chaos warrior at the line. Thanks to the terrible kick the ball was autoplaced into his hands. But was not to be.

I don't envy anyone playing with Ogres, let alone the body count you'll have to replace after this game. GL with the rest of the season!

That last failed play made me involuntarily do a Vader style NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Im glad Mrs Joose had not got back from work when that happened, it would have alarmed her.

As they say in the league forums, I got Nuffled quite hard (many bad rolls), but I could have avoided a lot of needlessly squashed Snotlings if I had been a bit more careful about their placement. A lot of turns ended with them standing in blocking range of someone when they could have been just as much in the way one square back. Something for me to keep an eye on in the next game.

I'm a bit torn as to what to do now. I've got 60k monies. Thanks to two deaths and a "miss next game" result, I'm currently one man short of a full team. Snots only cost 20k each, so I could fill up with them. Alternatively, I could go into the next game with a free dood to fill up the empty spot. Option 1 gives me two more Snotlings to play with, which given their tendency to kill themselves with their own feet will probably come in useful. Option 2 on the other hand means I would probably get enough cash from the next game to replace my dead Ogre, and would give me a fair chunk of inducement money due to having a much lower TV than my opponent, but would mean I would have no substitutions *at all*. Basically, its a question of whether I definitely make things hard for myself now in order to avoid potentially making things hard for myself later on. Dilemma!

[Dog Pants]

I'd go for option 2. Those ogres are a necessity early on simply because they need time to rack up the SPPs by injuring the opponent. The sooner you replace the dead one the sooner he can start getting skills. The snotlings, on the other hand, might die regardless. Even a well skilled one is likely to croak at any given block, so the ogres are far more valuable as an investment. You might lose the next game from a lack of Snotlings, but after that you're back on track and the odds of losing another ogre are pretty small.

[Joose]

Yeah, thats the option I am leaning towards. Like you say, I could well buy three shiny new Snotlings only for them to all fall over dead straight away, leaving me just 60k down.

[FatherJack]

Option 2 and in the next match make killing the opposition a priority until it's even.

[Dog Pants]

I think for an ogre team killing and injuring the opponents is a priority in every match.

[Joose]

Priority implies there might be other things we can do.

[Dog Pants]

Anupshi Rises (DogPants, Khe) 1 - 1 Dandy-Lions (DeekyFun, HElf)

Under a blazing sun the two teams square up to each other for the second time in as many seasons, with the lumbering Khemri receiving. Anupshi Rises play a typical fighting and caging game, but the Dandy-Lions prove to be surprisingly effective at going toe-to-toe and take the sting out of the offensive drive at the half way line. The majority of the first half is spent as a scrum with neither team making headway save for a few players off the pitch on both sides. A last minute blitz, though, sees the ball free and the High Elves making a break with it, but it isn't enough and the game is still without a touchdown at the end of the first half.

When the teams take to the field again the attrition of the last half has taken its toll and sees the Dandy-Lions two men short for their lineup. Trying to lure their opponents, the Elves break for the flanks while the ball handler backpedals. The defenders break into three, chasing the flanking runners and sending a couple of men forward to harry the Elven thrower. The plan works, and even while the Dandy-Lions start to wither on the flanks under the assault of the numerically superior and stronger Khemri, a couple of runners get through on either side. Meanwhile the ball-carrier easily outmanoeuvres his pursuers and makes a pass. The Anupshi defenders are again fooled as they rush for the dashing runners only for the ball to land with a stray Blitzer further back. Unable to react with any speed, the skeletal defenders can only watch as the Elven Blitzer trots in the game's first touchdown.
With less than a quarter of the game left the High Elves face the task of holding out against a full strength fighting team with only eight men. Anupshi Rises, on the other hand, face the task of carrying the ball fast enough to score. The badly depleted defence proves too frail, though, as the offence smashes through their right flank and ties down the front line with overwhelming numbers. The Anupshi Thro-Ra careens out of his cage like a cannonball and is barely inconvenienced by a valiant but unsuccessful long range dash by a breaking Elven Blocker. The game ends with one touchdown apiece, and a network synch failure. Thanks Cyanide.

On the subject of the synch disconnect then, DeekyFun saw the end game results, I didn't. Hopefully that means the game was recorded, but I assume we won't find out until an admin gets to look at it.