GWpertinent and MORE

The playoffs for the first season of the new NaBBLe league were played out today.

The Semis
The first was between 1st seed (me) with my Karond Kar Raiders and 4th seed (Tyler - actually placed 5th, but 4th place couldn't attend the playoffs) with his Warpstone Stealers - harbouring his dreaded OTT gutter runner Kritsskabak - who won league MVP (most SPP), league top scorer (most TD) as well as most hated (by coaches voting), he gained a free Pro skill, a free Fend skill and a free Fan Favourite skill. Due to being named most hated, he has a bounty of 100K on his head!

From my first kick off roll of Pitch Invasion (subsequently stunning 5 of his players to my 2 - including Kritsskabak. I took advantage to try and foul him out (we played in Naggaroth which meant as long as you break armour - doubles don't get you kicked out + any casualty counts for SPP) things went my way. I didn't manage to do anything to Kritsskabak until KO'ing him in the second half - and Tyler did score an early touchdown due to my focus on the league MVP. I ground out the rest of the first half and scored on my last turn. In the second half, I received the kickoff and drew his players in by keeping the ball in my end. Once they were all spread out (well and 2 dead, and several KO'd - including Kritsskabak) I pushed my ball carrier forward and blocked off his return path to hold out until turn 8 to score, giving him 1 turn. Fortunately for me, he failed to get more than 1 gutter runner back from the KO box and he only had 7 of his 16 players available, making it pretty difficult for him to tie it up. The kickoff result was brilliant coaching so he had no benefit of an additional turn, giving me a pass into the finals with a 2-1 win (4-1 CAS).

The second was 2nd seed (Alex) with his Bilgewater Brawlers vs. 3rd seed (Chris) with his Innsmouth Invaders. They met twice during the regular season, with Chris winning once and the other game ending as a draw. Apparently a tight game, where any time an advantage was gained, it was quickly torn away (how fickle nuffle is...) - Alex managed to even out the head to head match up with a close fought 1-0 win, putting him into the finals with me, and relegating Chris to the 3rd place match vs. Tyler.

The Finals
The finals saw me face off vs. Alex and his Lizardmen. I was again very fortunate that Chris had armour busted his Kroxigor and thus a very important piece was missing from Alex's team for the final game. He had 400K inducements and took a dirty trick, 2 bloodweiser babes, and a wizard (he had 4 rerolls in his base team)

Early I was able to put pressure on the ball, and it traded possession for the first four turns of the first half. Around the 5th turn I managed to get a witch elf away from the scrum carrying the football, when Alex had another spell of misfortune, when he managed to roll a 1 for his wizards lightning bolt. This combined with my focusing on his skinks (and any saurus unfortunate to be stuck on the ground during my turn) meant he rarely had enough players to really make an impact on the game.

Second half I received the ball, and just maintained my space while slowly whittling away his few players left (he started the 2nd half with 5 saurus and 1 skink - and finished it with 2 saurus) scoring on turn 8 to avoid giving him a chance to roll his KO's back for much of the game - holding out for a 2-0 win and taking the Witch King's Cauldron. Therefore my Karond Kar Raiders will be touring the olde world for next season as season 1 champions (dynasties are boring!!) and I plan to bring my Jawbreakers "counts as" Slann for season 2. Finished the season 10 / 1 / 1 and am really happy with this season - wish me luck in season 2!

NaBBLe

This weekend coming up on April 15th I will be participating in the NaBBLe season 1 playoffs. I have already earned the Seasonal Award for First Place/Best Coach - going 8 wins, 1 draw, 1 loss through the regular season. This seeds me vs. 4th place and gives my Karond Kar Raiders a free +2 FF as well as a temporary additional reroll to use throughout the playoffs.

I have been a bit lazy about updating the blog with my games, but if you are interested, you can check out my games here. Some of them have cool write ups and some don't. I will definitely post up about the playoffs. My goal is (obviously) to win both games, but also while doing so, would like to get SPP on a couple particular pieces - my runner is 3 away from his next upgrade & a blitzer is 3 away from his third upgrade. I believe the commish has plans that the playoffs winning team will take a season off, as they "tour the olde world" - and if that happens to be me, getting those pieces their next upgrade would (IMO) give the Raiders the required level of ability to compete with teams that have gone through two seasons (this is looking forward to season three!)

Big props to Christian the commish, he has run several leagues before but I think he has done a brilliant job of keeping this league fun & exciting, without letting it get bogged down. 10 regular season games is just enough I think and the playoff format is enticing. Well done!

Q'ermitt
Next weekend, April 21/22 is the Challenge of Q'ermitt tournament for 2012. I have finally gotten the spark of motivation to work on a team I have owned for a couple years now that could count as amazons, humans, norse or even woodies. I want to bring this team to Zlurpeebowl this year & since Q'ermitt allows star players (as does Zlurpeebowl) I figured it would be a good testing ground. I am basically planning to take the exact same roster - except with the extra 50k you get for team build at Q'ermitt, I am taking an apothecary - since Q'ermitt is league rules and dead is DEAD.

The tournament organizer has wanted some special swag for his tournament for a couple years (last years was cancelled due to losing the venue) and it's come in for this year. This pic isn't mine, these belong to wapcaplets who had the genius idea of using crayons to fill in the engraving to make them more legible. I do think I might use black on the yellow "sunny" marker but other than that these look the bee's knees! (haha, see what I did there?)

L to R: blizzard, pouring rain, nice, very sunny, sweltering heat

This post is meant to start getting me posting on the blog again. While I have been pretty active with gaming and even modeling/painting so far this year the blog has been languishing. I will get some pics up soon of my new team along with the full roster I plan to bring to these tournaments.

Let there be blood (bowl)!

awards;

First Place/Best Coach @ NaBBLe Season 1
Witch King Cauldron Champions (NaBBLe Season 1 playoffs)

background: Based on the hated '80 Superbowl Champion Raiders. Every player is named after a player from that year, with the correct jersey number.
condition: 24/24 models complete quality standard (100%) painted by Thomas
motto:
naf ranking: 132.89 (30th in Canada) aka LAST
race: dark elves

record: overall 22/6/16 w/d/l