Boudica Bowl II
This weekend, I attended Boudica Bowl II, a NAF registered Blood Bowl tournament run by the Huntingdon and District Wargames Society. They are a great group of seasoned Blood Bowl coaches and I have met most of them before at other tournaments, especially at the Bunker Bowl events that I have run before. I missed out on attending their first tournament last year as unfortunately it clashed with Mother's Day. Thankfully there were no such conflicts this year so I wasn't going to miss it!
I decided a while ago that I wanted to join the "24 club" - which means using each of the NAF approved teams in a NAF tournament. Of the painted teams I have, that meant I could only choose from my Chaos, Chaos Dwarf or Dwarfs teams as I've used Amazons, Halflings, Humans, Lizardmen, Necromantic and Skaven before. I'm currently using Chaos Dwarfs in the Bunker league so I didn't want to use them - and I unfortunately dropped my Chaos team and chipped some of the paint on them so they need some repairwork before using them against. So - Dwarfs were the team for me this time. I don't find Dwarfs a particularly exciting team to use though. Sure, they're tough but their playstyle is limiting so I tend to not play them in the usual way. I don't cage up with them and I also sometimes pass and dodge with them - which has cost me games with them but at least it's not boring.
My first game of the day was randomly drawn against Besters, one of the best BB coaches I've played against. He was using Norse so I was sure I would get trampled! It was a close game though and we ended on a 1-1 draw which I was pretty happy with as he is a far better coach than I am. Game two and I was facing against a HDSWBBL regular who was using Chaos Dwarfs. He kicked to me to start the game and he'd set up his bull centaurs forgetting that my troll slayers had the frenzy skill - so I'd knocked over one and pushed the other off the field in my first turn. He played a great recovery game though and stopped me from scoring that half. My problem was that I couldn't hurt his players - so he just outplayed me in the end. The game ended a 1-0 loss. My last game of the day saw me facing another HDWSBBL coach who had organised the hall hire for the club - he was using Orcs. I scored late in the first half leaving him just one turn to equalise - which he did spectacularly with a thrown goblin. I kept plugging away at him and I knocked out some of his players which gave me space to move and score again. In his last turn he had one more chance to throw a goblin - but the kick-off result was a blitz and I managed to swamp the troll with tackle zones so he failed his throw. 2-1 win to me.
Day two and I was feeling fairly happy with 1 win, 1 draw and 1 loss. All I wanted was a couple of wins from the weekend and I was nearly there already. My first game of the day was against another HDWSBBL coach with a Human team. He really struggled with my team having Guard but he was a canny enough coach to try moving his team around and hitting me from different angles. In the end though I managed to hurt/knock out enough of his players to get the win which was a 2-1 result. For game five I was drawn against Andrew who had travelled up with me - he was using Wood Elves. His "trick" was to give Hail Mary Pass skill to his thrower so he could lob the ball into the other end of the field and just send his wardancers and throwers at them. We had an absolutely cracking game which was end to end stuff. He could easily have won it had he managed to get off a Hail Mary Pass - but his thrower fumbled it and I managed to recover it to win 2-1. Best game of the weekend for sure! My last game was against my friend Sam who used to play at the Bunker - he was using Necromantics. Sam plays a lot of tournaments and really does know his tactics - so I was expecting to lose. If my players had managed to hurt his earlier into the game I might have put up more of a fight but it was well into the second half before my team started clearing the pitch. The game ended a 2-1 loss but I couldn't complain at that really.
So - three wins, one draw and two losses was a pretty good result for my weekend of Blood Bowl. I had a great time and I even got a trophy to take home - Best Sportsman!
