Orion Cup 2017 - result = 2nd place, lost 1st on tiebreakers (2/12)

Saturday June 24th I participated in a 4 game, 1 day, turncoat style blood bowl tournament in Toronto, ON.

For this years Orion Cup - Stimme decided to steal the turncoat style from a Belgian tournament and use it here. Basically it meant you had to play using your opponents team for rounds 2 and 4.

I chose to take Chaos Pact, and I borrowed a team from Stimme the organizer.
Simply because I would only need to play 2 games with them! :)
I was hoping to get a few other teams knocked off the 24 list, unfortunately played teams I've already used a lot :(

My roster was all 6 positionals, 6 marauders, 3 rerolls and 3 FF.
I gave Block to Ogre, Juggernaut on Minotaur, Dodge on Dark Elf, Wrestle on Skaven and Sure Hands on 1 of the marauders.

Game 1 - 1-1 draw vs. Brent (Me = Chaos Pact, Him = Orc)

This was Brent's first NAF tournament, he played Orcs.  (Block on Troll and 2 BOBs)
Pretty much a text book first half.  I even got a CAS against a BOB with Block and KO'd some other orcs, while he couldn't break my armour.  Finished HT up 1-0 not down any players at all.

Then in the second half my big guys and lack of block screwed me. I'd already managed to turn him over and get the ball with the Dark Elf, but the Ogre failed bonehead, and I turned over on a skull/both down or both down/both down by marauder even using a reroll.  Just needed a push to make dodging the Elf away reasonable. (3+, 3+, 2+ with dodge) rather than (4+, 4+, 3+ ,2+).

It let Brent grab the ball and even though he failed a pass action to score, I turned over on a 2 die block with reroll again and then he picked it up and walked it in.  I had 2 turns to score, but was only able to get the skaven within scoring range (I threw the goblin without the ball, unfortunately he scattered back towards the LOS and couldn't land in a tackle zone - perhaps a mistake, could have waited and thrown him last turn, but he was so aggressively positioned I knew if I had 2 guys deep, I'd be able to have a good opportunity to score)


Game 2 - 2-1 win vs. Scott (Me = his Orcs, Him = my Chaos Pact)

I was worried this tournament was taking a downward turn at the start of this game.  Scott's troll (who I was controlling) was very very stupid.  His blodging blitzer failed a dodge 2nd turn of the game & KO'd himself (never to return).  Scott then managed a single die blitz on my ball carrier, picked up the ball and scored in his second turn of the game (after kicking to me).

Then he kicked to me again, and the ball went right off to the sidelines, I surrounded it and failed a sure hands pick up, and it squirted to the worst possible square.  He blitzed a guy off and went and picked it up and ran off!!  Luckily for me, he tried a pass or hand off and it failed and it let me get ahold of the ball again.  After that I played more cautiously than I think I ever have and just ground upfield to tie at half time, then took the entirety of the second half to score a second.

WHEW

Game 3 - 3-0 win vs. Robert (Me = Chaos Pact, Him = Skaven)

So back to Chaos Pact.  Robert really liked using his speed to re-deploy every turn, I was planning to slow grind anyways so it was very challenging to just keep maneuvering my cage around while freeing up my ball carrier all the time.  He never tried anything too risky, just put a tackle zone on him by blitzing a bit of the cage free - however he did leave his gutter runners too vulnerable. Anytime I had a block available that would free my ball carrier, I used that to give me a chance to blitz his gutters with either the Mino or Ogre and they spent a lot of the game in the KO box.  Scored turn 8 in the first half.

Second half, he made an aggressive push down my left hand flank, but probably set himself up for failure by leaving nobody in the backfield or around where he was planning to make a pass action. He fumbled the pass and from there I swooped in and even though I couldn't blitz his thrower off the ball, I had the area secured and then ran in with the Sure Hands marauder and grabbed the ball and dodged away.  Back to the same pattern as earlier, I kept moving my cage around in whatever way let me throw a non critical blitz with a big guy against a key player - by this time both his blitzers were out of the game, so he struggled to even safely blitz the corner away any time his Rat Ogre rolled Wild Animal (2-3 times in second half).  I scored on my turn 7.

Then rolled a blitz on the next kickoff.  I blitzed a hole and ran a marauder up and based his thrower. Ran a big guy around his LOS and tied them up.  Then he failed his first block of his turn 8, so I blitzed my guy in his end free and got him the ball and he ran it in for a bit of icing on the cake!

Game 4 - 2-1 win vs. Tim (Me = his Slann, Him = my Chaos Pact)

Game 4 and I'm undefeated - now I get to use Slann which I'd played a ton of leading up to Amorical Cup - so I was fairly confident I could at least leverage the team I had to play to my advantage. Unfortunately I felt Tim's roster left something to be desired - he took Block on both catchers where I'd really rather have had Dodge.  It cost me twice early in the game, and I had to just eat dirt right after taking the ball away from him the second time because I knew I would need the last reroll I had later on for something more important.

So we went back and forth - quite a bit of failures, however they only counted against me!  He had two CAS very early and each half caused at least 3 KOs.  His AV dice were FIRE!!!  There wasn't much I could do when needing to save that reroll for something impactful, so he ended up beating me up before handing off and taking off with his skaven.  I did manage to blitz him but rolled both down and I chose not to reroll it.  He could either choose wrestle and have a chance to pick up the ball freely next turn or take the both down and roll the dice.  He chose wrestle and then even though he did a bunch of risky stuff first, he still stood up, grabbed the ball and scored.

So he kicked to me and I ran a loose formation up the right flank.  He got a bunch of guys fronting up and protecting behind leap range so it looked tough, but I lucked out with knocking his player down and was able to run up, leap over and dodge away to score a tying touchdown - needing that reroll so it was worth it!!

Alex caught me off guard this time

Second half he kicked to me again and I just held the ball deep and let him press.  Then around the middle of the half, while I was still pretty safe, I ran a blitzer deep in his end and did two GFI to get well within scoring range.  He based him and felt that was enough and kept pushing, and then he got slanned!  I leaped and dodged my other blitzer over his LOS, and blitzed that player off my other blitzer.  Then ran and leaped my catcher into range to make a pass action, caught the ball and ran it in to score.

I kicked to him again and he failed to get the ball very far forward, so I managed to seriously tie it up and kept 2-3 tackle zones on the ball all the time - he popped it whenever I got ahold of it, but luckily it always stayed in my tackle zones so by the end of the game, I'd held him off and finished the tournament undefeated!


Unfortunately for me, even though I was tied for first place on points - I lost out to the opponent strength tiebreaker to Grant - so I finished in 2nd place.
His opponents finished 3rd, 4th, 5th & 10th whereas mine finished 5th, 8th, 9th & 10th.

Grant also poked some fun at the photo of me receiving my award :D

Also a big congrats to Grant and Alex who both completed the 24! They have played a NAF tournament with all 24 rosters! Well done you fogeys!

NAF partners for lyfe!

No more TT until Brewhouse Bash III in Waterloo - July 22nd/23rd unless the next season of our HoBBLe league starts up before then.  Any guesses as to what race I'll be playing at Brewhouse?