So, yesterday I traveled five and a half hours north to Norman, OK to participate in CritterBowl IV. CritterBowl is a charity/baby shower tournament held by the hosts of the Both Down podcast, for one of the guys in their league. It was a smaller tournament with a turnout of eight coaches. It was a great opportunity to meet a few new coaches and make some friends in a small, intimate environment.

Below are the results of my four games at CritterBowl. I originally posted these game results as separate posts, but I think it will work better as all one single post. I brought my trusty Orc team, though I did do a little roster tweaking from what I usually bring.

GAME 1!

My first game was against Sarge, the coach whose father-to-be status was the whole reason we were all there. Sarge brought Goblins with lots of secret weapons and lots of Bribes. It was a very good game, and very close. Surprisingly, I did not manage to cause a single against his goblins despite having Mighty Blow on two players. On the other hand, Sarge managed to get me down to four players on the pitch at one point. Ball and Chain with Mighty Blow is just sick…

Anyway, I scored first in the first half and despite my decreasing numbers, I managed to hold my own against him. I held him off until turn seven of the second half, where he managed a miraculous goblin tossing touchdown. The game ended in a 1-1 tie.

All in all, it was a fun game played against a really nice guy.

Game 2!

Game two was played against Steve of the Both Down podcast and his Chaos Dwarves of Death, Doom, and Poopie (my name for his team, not his). Again, I fought to a 1-1 tie, but this time I was the one who managed to get the last second TD. I was still out casualtied, but not by near as much. Ties are not as great as wins, but they are better than losses.

As with the last game, Steve is a very nice guy and a very good coach. It was a tight and competitive game all mthe way through. On a side note, his Chaos Dwarf minis looked fantastic. 🙂

At this point we took a quick break for lunch. We had some tasty pizza that, for some reason, was not actually cut into slices by the pizza place… WTF!?

Game 3!

Game 3 found me facing another Goblin team, but Nuffle finally favored me in this game. My opponent (I forget his name because I am terrible with names… Sorry, sir!), and his stunties put up a valiant effort, but the dice just did not treat him well. I kicked off at the start, but managed to get possession of the ball about half way through the half. I scored at the end of the half, and then received at the start of the second half. With his dwindling numbers, I managed to get close to the ends one quickly, but stalled for a couple more turns to cut down the chances of him scoring two quick Goblin tossing touchdowns. With only a few turns left, I kicked to him, but he was unable to get the ball. I managed to run in, grab the ball, and score a last turn, third touchdown. Won the game 3-0 and finally did more casualties than my opponent.

Game 4! 

Going into game 4, I only had one win, but I still did not have any losses, so I was feeling pretty decent. Game 4 was against Scott from Both Down, and his Dark Elves. Luckily for me, Scott only had one Witch Elf because Frenzy can be rough when your opponent is good at using it to push your players off the pitch… And Scott was. Game 4 was, again, a very competitive, and close game. As with every other game that day, I kicked off to start. Scott did a very good job holding me off and scoring late in the first half. He pushed several of my key players off the pitch, but luckily, none of them got hurt more than simple KOs. Starting the second half, most of my players came back, back and I believe Scott was down a couple by that point. I managed to muscle my way to the end-zone around turn three, and hoped that I could manage to get the ball back and actually win instead of ending the day with a third tie. Scott did his best to keep that from happening and turn 7 saw him 4 squares from the end-zone in possession of the ball. I outnumbered him by a little bit by this point, and Scott wanted to end the day with a win as much as I did. He attempted a leap to get to the end-zone, but unfortunately for Scott, he failed his landing and dropped the ball. In my previous turn, I had run a single blitzer back toward the other end-zone hoping that I could manage to get the ball back. On my final turn, I had a thrower close to where Scott’s player dropped the ball. I managed to get him to the ball, picked it up and had just enough movement to put my blitzer in Long Bomb passing range. In the luckiest rolling I have ever had in a game of Blood Bowl, I managed to successfully complete the pass, then run the blitzer into the end-zone for the win.

Scott was a very tough opponent, and it was really only his bad luck, combined with my good luck that allowed me to pull out the highlight reel win.

Final Results!

Even though I only won half of my games, thanks to the fact that I did not actually lose any games, I managed to end the day with a second place finish. I believe I ended up being the only coach without a loss.

To sum things up, I had a really good time, met some really nice people, shared a lot of laughs, and I look forward to going back for Orclahoma Bowl in March. The Oklahoma guys made me feel at home, and I recommend that everyone who is interested in Blood Bowl check out the Both Down podcast.

So, a couple of days ago, during lunch, I decided to stop into a used game shop in town. This place is mostly board games and old toys, but I thought I would look around and check things out. Man, am I glad I did…

In the very back corner, I noticed a few blisters of old looking minis beckoning to me. When I got close enough to see them clearly, I could not believe my eyes. Among a few very old Warhammer minis, this place actually had FOUR sealed blisters of second edition Blood Bowl minis. I immediately snapped them up and took them home.

There were two blisters of Dark Elves with five minis a piece (all with the feathers still attached to their heads!), one blister of Humans with six minis, and one Star Player blister with six minis. Twenty-two minis in total… Holy Crap!

I immediately traded the Dark Elves to a friend for a mint copy of the game Block Mania, with the Mega Mania expansion. I am going to keep one or two of the Star Players for my current teams, and the rest with probably go up for trade.

I am so glad that I walked into that store… 🙂

OK, so this may seem like absolutely no big deal to most of you, but to me, this is a very big deal. You see… I HATE painting minis. Like, I REALLY HATE painting minis. I enjoy making terrain, but painting minis is just flat out WORK for me. But after our most recent season of Blood Bowl… a season that took us about a full year to play 7 games, I have decided that it is time to give a team other than Orcs a shot.

I actually got this Undead team about six months ago with the intent to paint them, and play them in Austin’s ROT Tournament this past summer. Well, I primed them, and I applied a base coat or two to all of the minis, but I never managed to finish them. Not even close. Well, with the Thanksgiving holiday, I had a long weekend around the house, so I decided that it was time to give it another shot.

Knowing how much I dislike the process, I decided early on to make things as easy on myself as possible. I decided on a green and white paint scheme. Since my primer is a light gray, all white pieces were already base coated this way. I also did not go all out with details, and little painting slips that would have driven me nuts 10 years ago were left as is. As such, is this the best paint job I have ever done? Not even close. But I did NOT want to throw all my paints and brushes out the window when I was done. That is REAL progress for me. Anyway, with my only intent being a gaming table level of quality, I am quite pleased with how they turned out, and I am even going to prime another team I had sitting on the shelf to see if I can manage to do it again. I also still need to pick up a couple of extra minis to actually field the starting roster I want, but one step at a time.

Enjoy! And sorry for my (lack of) mini photography skills.

Quick and crappy update today because I am super busy at this tournament. Today is the R. O. T. Blood Bowl Tournament in Austin, TX. It is hosted by my friend, Matt. Fun day so far, we have 18 coaches turn out, which is really good for a Blood Bowl tournament these days.
It has been about 7 or 8 years since my last tournament, which shows in my playing, as I spent half the tournament on the bottom table. My first couple of games were rough, and I had some REALLY poor luck, combined with good opponents.
I decided to bring Orcs since it has been so long, and I have, by far, the most experience with them. Lost the first game, 1-3 against a dwarf team. I know, dwarves are never supposed to score 3 times, but quite a few things just REALLY went my opponents way.
My second game was against another Orc team, with a coach who was supremely talented at pushing players off the pitch. That combined with a complete lack of ability to successfully roll anything, except for the most ridiculous touch down I have ever made, allowed my opponent to pull out a last turn 2-1 win.
On my third game, I finally found my stride, and the dice quit hating me quite so much. Again, I faced another Orc team, but this time I was able to pull off a 3-0 win. Took long enough…
In my final game, I managed to pull out another win, but not really due to any particular skill on my part. It was due far more to the really unlucky rolling of my opponent. He played a Nurgle team… With NO RE-ROLLS… Now, due to the crazy rules of this particular tournament, each coach got one player with Foul Appearance for each game. Combine that with the fact that his roster gave him FIVE PLAYERS with Foul Appearance to begin with, by the time I played him, he had NINE PLAYERS… He also had four players with claw. Against those odds, he should have slaughtered me. Unfortunately for him, his dice completely hated him, and mine finally gave me a great game. He never caused a single casualty, and I managed two, as well as so many KOs that I lost track. It’s still a tough team to play against though, especially with Disturbing Presence. In the end, I managed a 2-1 win. Both of my TDs were in the second half with him receiving both kick offs.
All in all, it was a fun day, and a cool way to spend my birthday. I met some cool new coaches, saw a couple I haven’t seen in years, and won a couple of nice freebies.