The sun was high in the sky over the Blasted Wastes, beating
down on the parched earth of the practise pitches of Up-Town Park, home of the
Wasteland Hammers. The ground, baked
hard by the heat, was shaking as the team's Bull Centaurs practised their
sprints on the far side of the field.
Sweat flew from their flanks as they hurtled down the side-line at full
pelt before skidding to a halt and punching one of the unfortunate Hobgoblin
assistant coaches as hard as they could. “Take that, you green twat!”, bellowed
Trevor Booting, the team’s star player, as the limp body of Slaven Bile-Itch
crashed to the turf again. Attendants
rushed onto the pitch with smelling salts to revive him and get him in position for
the next pass. It had been a grueling morning
and his face bore the bruises of a successful day’s punching. “Get him to turn round and bend over!” came
Trevor’s voice from the far end of the field as he turned for his run-up, “I’m
going to punch him in the arse this time!”
Clyde Beast,
one of the Chaos Dwarf Blockers, noisily hawked up a gobbet of phlegm and spat
it on to the ground beside him.
“Trevor’s having fun”, he said.
“Aye”,
replied Stewart Spearson, “he’s always like this before the first game of a new
season. Like a kid in a sweet shop…If
that kid was a tonne of muscle...”
“with severe
anger issues….”, added Clyde
“And the
sweets were Hobgoblins he could punch…”, finished Stewart.
“He’ll get
bored in a day or two.” Said Clyde, raising his voice to be heard above the
screams of Slaven Bile-Itch who had just discovered that there are worse things
than being punched repeatedly in the face and one of them was being used as a
hand puppet by a clearly amused Bull Centaur.
“I hope he
washes his hands before lunch…”, mused Clyde.
“Who’s the
new guy”, asked Stuart, jerking his head in the direction of the Chaos Dwarf
being shown round the facilities* by the Head Coach.
“Ach, he’s
just a merc, they’ve brought him in for the game against the
Humans while Geoff is in the injury room.
I spoke to him earlier, seems a decent enough sort. I can see him fitting in if he wants it…”
First game of the 8th season of the Blood Bowel League and I found myself once again matched against my longtime foe, Henry Pootles. Although this is the 8th season on Blood Bowl 2, the Blood Bowel has a long and illustrious history stretching back to Blood Bowl 1 and incorporating one season on FUMBBL. That one season of FUMBBL being the unfortunate season that Pootles and myself played 3 games on the trot due to the vagaries of a Swiss pairing system. Last season, my first game was a hard fought 1-1 draw against him and his seasoned Human team, Big Al's Flying Circus and now we get to fight it out once again.
My team took a fair battering in the previous season and both my Dirty Player Hobgoblins had died, my Sure Hands/Block/Kick Off Return Hobgoblin had died, and one of my skilled Bull Centaurs had, you guessed it, died. They had all been replaced but none of the Hobs had received a skill yet and the Centaur only had Block. On top of that one of my Chaos Dwarfs was MNG for this game so a lot rested on the shoulders of Trevor Booting, my Block/Break Tackle/Mighty Blow/Tackle Bull Centaur. He would be Supported by 'Filthy' Phil Sparkes and Stewart Spearson, Guard/Claw and Guard/Mighty Blow Chaos Dwarfs, respectively. I had 20k inducement money and enough in the bank to splash out on a Mercenary Chorf to bring me back up to 6. Having won the toss, I set up to receive the ball and commence the grind.
The first half began fairly well when Julian Fists, the Mino, badly hurt Little Al, the Ogre, and a cheeky foul KOd a lineman. Both in Turn 1. Unfortunately, that was about that in terms of any removals (bar my losing a Hobgoblin after an over officious ref spotted a foul) and it became a very tight contest where I inched up the pitch, shifting the play from right to left and back again while Pootles fell back into columns in front of me. You know it's been a tight game when at the end of T6 we both had all our RR left. No risks were being taken at all, it was very cagey. Finally, in T7, I felt that I had shifted the Humans over far enough to one side and made a break for the other. Trevor Booting broke cover and ran as far as he could but it wasn't completely safe. The humans had to make 2 GFIs to get a player on him and then a simple 3+ dodge for a 1 dice shot on the ball. Fortunately for me, they failed the second GFI and used a RR to keep the player on his feet. The dodge was successful but my luck was in and the Block was a Skull. A few pointless blocks later and Trevor break tackled away to score in T8. So far, so good.
The Humans had 1 turn left in the half, their KO stayed out but with a couple of reserves we had equal numbers on the pitch. The merc Chorf was deployed on the line of scrimmage and first block he was killed stone dead. In what had been a fairly sedate game up to that point, the dice rolls went 4/6 for Armour, 6/6 for CAS and a fourth 6 for the Casualty. Standard Blood Bowl. The first half petered out and we lined up for the second half.
Turn 9 was almost innocuous but a foul by the dirty, dirty Humans saw a Chorf KOd while I could do nothing in return. I didn't defend well and in T10 Pootles took advantage to get in behind me with the ball after a short pass from Big Al, the Thrower. On the way to completing that pass, another block with no kill skills managed to, in fact, kill another Chorf. Frank Lamp'em-Ard was about to be pronounced dead when the Apo rushed on to the pitch and managed to patch him back up. He'll be missing next game but there's no lasting injury. In my T10 I took a risky series of dice rolls for a 3+ dodge, 3+ dodge, 2 2+ GFIs and a 2D block against a blodger to get the ball carrier down against the sideline. I had to use a RR but I was thankful that it came off. Sadly, the ball did not bounce out and the Catcher was unharmed. Inspired by this clearly amazing play, Julian the Minotaur took this opportunity to Wild Animal. This was to become a rather unfortunate theme during the 2H. Luckily, 'Filthy' Phil Sparkes was there to pick up the slack and he punched Just Al so hard in the face that he instantly died. The next turn saw the humans recover the ball and then, despite getting 4 dice on the ball carrier, I couldn't bring the Blodger down. The following few turns were played out to the music from the Benny Hill Show as I unsuccessfully chased after the catcher with the ball before forcing then Humans to score in their T15. In a sad accident for the Human team, Sir Hitalott had delusions of Elven grandeur and tried to dodge away from his marker. He failed, obviously, and the resultant injury saw him take an armour bust. I assume he'll be shown the door very soon....
I had two turns left to try and pull off the impossible but with both teams having been reduced to 8 players on the pitch by this stage, the impossible proved to be exactly that and the game ended in ignominy as the Minotaur capped a woeful second half performance with a double push leading to a frenzied double skull and the game ended the same way as last time with a 1-1 draw. In all honesty, I'd say we were both happy with that although we could have done without the injuries. The next game will be a little tougher with only 5 chorfs on the field.
Overall, I felt I played OK, not great but OK. I think I was too slow getting forward in the first half although Pootles excellent defence certainly hindered me in that respect. I was fortunate to get away with my score although I did give him some dice to roll and, well, Nuffle is a fickle God. Second half was poor for me. I didn't defend well and struggled to adapt to losing players so early. I pushed forward too fast and managed to get myself completely out positioned. It was always hard after that with slow, low agility Dwarfs and as has been proven many, many times, you can't rely on a Hobgoblin. So, many lessons learnt and much to take away from this game. As always, an absolute pleasure to play Pootles and I look forward to meeting him again.
My team took a fair battering in the previous season and both my Dirty Player Hobgoblins had died, my Sure Hands/Block/Kick Off Return Hobgoblin had died, and one of my skilled Bull Centaurs had, you guessed it, died. They had all been replaced but none of the Hobs had received a skill yet and the Centaur only had Block. On top of that one of my Chaos Dwarfs was MNG for this game so a lot rested on the shoulders of Trevor Booting, my Block/Break Tackle/Mighty Blow/Tackle Bull Centaur. He would be Supported by 'Filthy' Phil Sparkes and Stewart Spearson, Guard/Claw and Guard/Mighty Blow Chaos Dwarfs, respectively. I had 20k inducement money and enough in the bank to splash out on a Mercenary Chorf to bring me back up to 6. Having won the toss, I set up to receive the ball and commence the grind.
The first half began fairly well when Julian Fists, the Mino, badly hurt Little Al, the Ogre, and a cheeky foul KOd a lineman. Both in Turn 1. Unfortunately, that was about that in terms of any removals (bar my losing a Hobgoblin after an over officious ref spotted a foul) and it became a very tight contest where I inched up the pitch, shifting the play from right to left and back again while Pootles fell back into columns in front of me. You know it's been a tight game when at the end of T6 we both had all our RR left. No risks were being taken at all, it was very cagey. Finally, in T7, I felt that I had shifted the Humans over far enough to one side and made a break for the other. Trevor Booting broke cover and ran as far as he could but it wasn't completely safe. The humans had to make 2 GFIs to get a player on him and then a simple 3+ dodge for a 1 dice shot on the ball. Fortunately for me, they failed the second GFI and used a RR to keep the player on his feet. The dodge was successful but my luck was in and the Block was a Skull. A few pointless blocks later and Trevor break tackled away to score in T8. So far, so good.
The Humans had 1 turn left in the half, their KO stayed out but with a couple of reserves we had equal numbers on the pitch. The merc Chorf was deployed on the line of scrimmage and first block he was killed stone dead. In what had been a fairly sedate game up to that point, the dice rolls went 4/6 for Armour, 6/6 for CAS and a fourth 6 for the Casualty. Standard Blood Bowl. The first half petered out and we lined up for the second half.
Turn 9 was almost innocuous but a foul by the dirty, dirty Humans saw a Chorf KOd while I could do nothing in return. I didn't defend well and in T10 Pootles took advantage to get in behind me with the ball after a short pass from Big Al, the Thrower. On the way to completing that pass, another block with no kill skills managed to, in fact, kill another Chorf. Frank Lamp'em-Ard was about to be pronounced dead when the Apo rushed on to the pitch and managed to patch him back up. He'll be missing next game but there's no lasting injury. In my T10 I took a risky series of dice rolls for a 3+ dodge, 3+ dodge, 2 2+ GFIs and a 2D block against a blodger to get the ball carrier down against the sideline. I had to use a RR but I was thankful that it came off. Sadly, the ball did not bounce out and the Catcher was unharmed. Inspired by this clearly amazing play, Julian the Minotaur took this opportunity to Wild Animal. This was to become a rather unfortunate theme during the 2H. Luckily, 'Filthy' Phil Sparkes was there to pick up the slack and he punched Just Al so hard in the face that he instantly died. The next turn saw the humans recover the ball and then, despite getting 4 dice on the ball carrier, I couldn't bring the Blodger down. The following few turns were played out to the music from the Benny Hill Show as I unsuccessfully chased after the catcher with the ball before forcing then Humans to score in their T15. In a sad accident for the Human team, Sir Hitalott had delusions of Elven grandeur and tried to dodge away from his marker. He failed, obviously, and the resultant injury saw him take an armour bust. I assume he'll be shown the door very soon....
I had two turns left to try and pull off the impossible but with both teams having been reduced to 8 players on the pitch by this stage, the impossible proved to be exactly that and the game ended in ignominy as the Minotaur capped a woeful second half performance with a double push leading to a frenzied double skull and the game ended the same way as last time with a 1-1 draw. In all honesty, I'd say we were both happy with that although we could have done without the injuries. The next game will be a little tougher with only 5 chorfs on the field.
Overall, I felt I played OK, not great but OK. I think I was too slow getting forward in the first half although Pootles excellent defence certainly hindered me in that respect. I was fortunate to get away with my score although I did give him some dice to roll and, well, Nuffle is a fickle God. Second half was poor for me. I didn't defend well and struggled to adapt to losing players so early. I pushed forward too fast and managed to get myself completely out positioned. It was always hard after that with slow, low agility Dwarfs and as has been proven many, many times, you can't rely on a Hobgoblin. So, many lessons learnt and much to take away from this game. As always, an absolute pleasure to play Pootles and I look forward to meeting him again.
The final
whistle blew bringing to a close a brutal first game for the Wasteland
Hammers. The fans cheered wildly, drunk
on the carnage they’d witnessed. The
score had finished 1-1 but that wasn’t the whole story and the sounds of
moaning from the injury area of the dugout accompanied the 8 players left
standing as they limped off the pitch.
“Frank doesn’t look good”, muttered Clyde, casting a glance over his
shoulder at the prostrate form of Frank Lamp’em-Ard Jnr on the treatment table.
“Could have
been worse”, replied Stuart, “He was dead for a while out there. He’s lucky the doctor got there in time”
“Where’s the
new guy?”, said Clyde, “He promised me a drink after the game.
“Err, well,
you know how Frank got lucky with the quack…well, the boss decided that you
only get that kind of luck if, you know, you’re a permanent member of the
team.”
“Bollocks! he owes me 5 gold pieces", spat Clyde, "Some people will do anything to get out of paying their debts..."
*The term facilities is used very loosely here and actually covers the equipment shed with a broken door that doubles up as the team toilet; the tin bucket which is home to the 'magic' sponge; and 2 bright orange cones with a white fluorescent stripe round the middle. Nobody knows where they came from or how long they'd been around but when they weren't being worn on the head of drunken Hobgoblins during the Nufflemass celebrations, they were used to mark out the presence of pot holes in the club cart park.
*The term facilities is used very loosely here and actually covers the equipment shed with a broken door that doubles up as the team toilet; the tin bucket which is home to the 'magic' sponge; and 2 bright orange cones with a white fluorescent stripe round the middle. Nobody knows where they came from or how long they'd been around but when they weren't being worn on the head of drunken Hobgoblins during the Nufflemass celebrations, they were used to mark out the presence of pot holes in the club cart park.
