Weagle Bowl 2018

Facebook is a handy tool! When you are friends with a number of people who have the same interests, it doesn't take long for word to spread about tournaments you might be interested in. So it was that word reached me of a one-day only Blood Bowl tournament in Ipswich - that's only a couple of hours by car.

Even better is that the long suffering wife liked the fact I'll be back on the Saturday night, and not off playing silly board games on Sunday. Fair enough I say.
Hosted by the White Eagles Wargames Club and set in a pretty well equipped scout hut (yes, I know, glamorous or what!), but with plenty of teas, coffees and snacks available, we awaited the announcement for our first match.

I had a Spartan team fresh from a crowdfunding backing on Indiegogo by Txarli Miniatures. The great thing about the team apart from the excellent sculpts which made painting them interesting is the fact that the 2 throwers, 2 wolfmen, 4 catchers, 4 blitzers and 4 lineman and big guy and stars allow you to coach them as Humans, Norse or Amazons.

The chainsaw star (although having a Spartan wielding chainsaw IS odd!) serves nicely as Helmut Wulf.

Having not fielded any of these races before on the tabletop I decided to go for Amazons. Admittedly, only having 4 linemen does limit the starting rosters I can choose for each race... I might have to source a few more!

My roster

Game One
Grimthorn (Halfling) 1 (0) v 2 (5) Wotfudboy (Amazon)
Bringing halflings to any tournament is brave. You need a huge dollop of skill and a mountain of luck to get through a tournament with your sanity intact. Grimthorn had decided to play at Weagle Bowl instead of organising it for a change. Imagine my thoughts when Grimthorn lined up 3 treemen, one of which (the star) casually lobbed a halfling up the field with the ball scoring early in the first half.
At this point I must point out that Grimthorn had brought his new £100+ custom pitch for the tournament, complete with castle dice tower. I have to say I really liked the dice tower... it kept the dice off the pitch without any miniatures being knocked over or dice cups spilling dice at velocity!

Anyway, back to the game. I managed to get an equaliser by the end of the 1st half, leaving a number of Halflings KO'd or hurt. Many of the Halflings failed to reappear for the second half, making it far easier to take a more leisurely walk up the pitch for 2-1, but my fear was the threat of a 2nd Throw Team Mate (TTM) chance. I made it my job to get as many short chaps off the pitch to limit the options for the ball to be picked up and thrown by a tree.

Fortunately for me this worked helped enormously by a deep kick! Unfortunately for Grimthorn, this was the story of his day, as he finished lifting the wooden spoon to friendly applause for being such a good sport.

Game Two
Wotfudboy (Amazon) 0 (2) v 2 (2) NippyLongskar (Dwarf)
I had heard about local lad Nippy and his Dwarves - a good player (155/77/97 and now 4 tournament wins under his belt) with plenty of hitting power surely spelt doom for my Amazons - they don't like Dwarven tackle after all.

In fact it was the Amazons that inflicted the first casualty which Nippy decided not to use his apothecary on.

The beardies made their way down the pitch very slowly. I had a very slim chance to pull off a wondrous stop... a 3+ 3+ dodge to mark the ball carriers mates and a 5+ 4+ 3+ 1 dice block to surf the ball carrier... OMG it worked... the ball shot off diagonally 10 , then came back the same way 9, then just 5 horizontally at the feet of the other dwarf runner who nonchalantly picked up the ball and ran in to score. Had the crowd thrown it anywhere else it would have ended 0-0 with the Dwarves under real pressure to score. Instead the Dwarves took their time and scored in relative comfort for a 0-2 win. As it happens I lost to the eventual tournament winner... Yes, the irony, having faced last place and 1st place in two games!

Game Three
Wotfudboy (Amazon) 3 (2) v 0 (0) PaulJones82 (Human)
Paul, compared to Nippy was a much less experienced coach. However, the scoreline didn't reflect so well on how solid a game he played - he didn't deserve the 3-0 beating... the last TD I scored involved some pretty poor dice on his part and some good ones on mine.

Game Four
Wotfudboy (Amazon) 3 (4) v 0 (1) scs.sam (Wood Elf)
I had played Sam (226/130/183) before and knew that this was going to be a tough one. He was not only defending his Weagle Bowl title, but was looking to make this his 3rd Weagle Bowl title in a row! However, his wood elves simply fell apart, failing armour, wardancers failing leap, rolling skulls... it was pretty bad but that's what you get if you insist on using your opponents dice!! I didn't have to do too much - I just took advantage of everything that went my way, and when I rolled the same dice I had nothing but good rolls. It was very much polar opposites in games. Sam's dice cup did get thrown to the floor in frustration at one point... he'd just come up against Nippy's Dwarves and then had to suffer this.

Result
In the end, as I said, Nippy won, but I came in as runner up with a 3/0/1 record and a bag full of bonus points (8TDs and 13 casualties).

I came away with a cool trophy and a KR card case containing 2 trays - very handy!

Thanks to all my opponents and to the organisers for such a well run tournament. Despite the long drive home in the rain I still managed to get home to have an evening with the Mrs. A good day out!