Boudica Bowl 6 (2018)

Boudica Bowl 6, held in Godmanchester (Cambridgeshire), brought a new take on the 'standard' 2-day Blood Bowl tournament... well, for me at least. Instead of bringing one team along, the idea was that you brought two teams instead, with a bit of fun at the start of each pairing with each coach deciding in secret which team to field. Each coach revealed their choice simultaneously in Blood Bowl's answer to rock, paper scissors :) It made it interesting, both seeing how each coach chose their teams, and also to see some tasty matches.

I looked at the few carry cases I had. Frankly I didn't want to be worried about taking too many miniatures along with the board, dugouts, dice, range-ruler, team-sheets* (*I can't recommend http://www.littlearmybuilder.com/ for team rosters highly enough!). Soooo, also bearing in mind I only have a limited number of painted teams I decided to take my Necromantic and Undead - swapping in/out mummies and golems, ghouls and werewolves as appropriate. One small issue was that I was lacking enough zombies, so had to compromise by using one or two unpainted skeletons who sat in the reserve box.

Travelling to Huntingdon was 'interesting'. We woke up to a snow-covered scene as all the forecasters had been scaring the nation about - The Beast from the East II. Fortunately, once I was out of my village all the main roads were pretty clear of both snow and vehicles. With the heated seats on and the heaters on, and an overnight bag in the boot, I set off and arrived in perfectly good time.

It was great to see a couple of faces from the Welywn Wargamers club I go to (Wilf & BillyDee) - but unfortunately Dan/Wulfyn couldn't make it. Furthermore I saw a number of familiar faces from various tournaments I had attended, so I didn't feel a stranger in a crowd.

I began the tournament with a 36/16/24 record; 3/1/2 with Undead and 8/5/5 with the Necromantic.

Day One - Game One; 

We both secretly picked our teams and it turned out my Undead would be squaring up to wolimorb's rats. Looking up on NAF now, he doesn't have a great ranking (5/5/22) but it didn't come across in the game as the game hung on a couple of dice for both of us. It did help to see off his Rat Ogre fairly early on though so my mummies didn't have to worry too much. 1-0 got me my first win, and a sigh of relief. It hadn't played Undead since 2015, so I was beyond rusty. Very nice chap though and an enjoyable game. In fact, saying this now, every coach I faced made the games both challenging and enjoyable - obviously some in different ratios depending on how the dice were rolling!) and were forgiving of my rustiness and lack of memory of kick off and weather tables!

Game Two;

I had faced Sam only once back in 2012 at STABB II - we had come away with a 1-1 draw. Again, looking at Sam's record now I can see he has a record of 193/115/165 - plenty of wins and experience under his belt. As Sam had come laden with Elves - Dark and Wood - he just asked me to pick a hand, while saying he wanted to avoid any meta-gaming, but by doing so meta-gamed me by essentially saying " I can beat your with either Elves!" :) I don't remember too much about the game other than I was rolling a lot of high armour-breaking dice and really trimmed down the Dark Elves. It finished 2-1 to me, but I felt my dice had been awesome, much to Sam's disaffection. We played on the bigger GW Dwarf pitch - although I don't like the bigger pitches with older/smaller models (mainly because it seems to leave a lot of space that isn't really there) - the square markings are far more visible than the Skaven pitch for instance.

Game Three;

I had a difficult choice to make when choosing what 'dead' race would fare best against either slann or khemri. Looking at Andrew's rosters I could see he didn't have much in the way of the tackle skill, so I opted to field my blodging Ghouls in the Undead team. I haven't worked out how to properly stop Slann so I was actually glad when Andrew/Mr_Frodo (58/52/90) chose his Khemri (Greebo's Ancient Lords team). In the end the Khemri took a pasting from my Undead, with Tomb Guardians disappearing off the pitch at a fair rate of knots. The undead even managed to squeeze in a salt-in-the-wound 3rd touchdown for a 3-0 win and a lot of casualties. Fortunately this was all played out in a very friendly way - especially as Andrew and I will be teaming up in Cardiff for EuroBowl teams with Darren/HowlingGriffon - could have been awkward! My dice had been great all day. However, dice have a habit of biting back... more on that later.

I finished Day One on 3/0/0 and looked to be up at the top. However, I knew how this would go for day two - I would be facing everyone else that had played well/knew their teams, and if I thought today was tough, tomorrow was going to be a whole different matter!

Day Two - Game Four;
Overnight, James/Sandwich did a draw (followed by a redraw as neither Andrew or Darren could beat the snow/ice), which, as predicted threw me up against the big-league players, starting with Phil/Purplegoo who has an awesome reputation combined with a superb record of 416/191/143.

Here's Phil giving it some extra cheese for the camera as I requested;

I felt I needed my Necro's speed to counter his DE's or the claw to hurt his Orcs. Phil went with the DE's. I've faced Phil at Boudica Bowl 5 (2017) where he gave me a flawless lesson in how to coach Vampires, and humbled my Dwarves 1-2. However, this year was a different matter. Despite the DE's kicking to my end zone and rolling a Blitz! on kick off in the first half (and scoring), I managed an unlikely series of rolls to equalise. The second half went continued the good fortune, seeing two successive Witch Elves disappear - I even successfully gang-fouled one! Mentioning out loud that I still had yet to raise a Zombie probably didn't help matters. I don't think Phil has rolled that many ones in a long time, and in the end I was comfortably able to stall for a 2-1 win. Credit to Phil for staying sane, despite the crowd cheering/banter from Paul Gegg/geggster which might have compounded matters.

Game Five;

So I went into game five with a 4/0/0 form and full of optimism. First rule of Blood Bowl... don't be optimistic! I thought that with being top of the table now (possibly) my tier advantage might come into play should I end level with the others high who were also on the table. 

This is where my luck left me. Firstly, I was facing Jim/besters (381/176/166). Secondly, he had to field Dwarves (as he had fielded Chaos Dwarves three times already) - I decided to field my Undead. Thirdly, I proceeded to roll more double skulls than I have seen in a very long time - I burned rerolls stupidly quickly. I don't think things were helped by kicking first - I lost a zombie to Jim's first block, and it didn't get any better from there. After Jim scored in turn 8, I had a chance to hit Dwarves for a turn... I lined up everyone on the LoS.... first block with mummy, skull, skull, both down... End half... Gah!

The second half was a real up-hill struggle. However despite the poor blocking dice, by turn 16 I had managed to fashion a slim chance of equalising, all without a reroll, after Jim failed a GFI to sandwich my Ghoul ball-carrier between two dwarves. I managed to dodge (3+), GFI (2x2+) and hand off to an awaiting Wight (in a tacklezone) on a 4+. I just needed a 3+ to dodge out and score. I rolled without a breath passing my lips... 2. Fail.

Jim was apologetic throughout, but I could only sit there and take it as well as possible. My day one luck had turned.

Game Six;

Joy. Dwarves again. This time against Paul/geggster (520/227/200). On day two, including Paul, I would have faced coaches with the a combined record of 1317/594/509.

Again, the dwarves received, but this time the LoS zombies just laid down on the pitch - not off it. An indication of how the game was to go presented itself when my golem's arm fell off (some pinning to do Wotfudboy!). It was a game where I died from a 1000 cuts. The golems left the pitch successively - with my guard golem failing to return from a KO for the second half, and the other RIP'd - but regenerated. Unfortunately by the second half, succeeding regenerating didn't help as they were still off the pitch. Paul called the non-returning Guard golem as game-changing, and it was. I was outplayed, out blocked, out diced and ultimately received a sound 0-2 beating - And all of that with indignity of Paul using my dice throughout the match and doing far better with them than I was. That being said, I lost to a deserved tournament champion.

I think overall I finished 4th (which I'll post once Sandwich has the table up), had managed to get to Huntingdon and back in the snow&ice without a problem AND had a fun time doing it.

EDIT - FINAL TABLE;

Credit to the tournament organiser Sandwich for organising and administrating, and for making it an interesting format. Some nice dice prizes handed out (along with the cups). Sadly no cup for me today, but overall I can't complain with how it went... but I can wistfully think how it could have been if my luck had held one game longer!

Thanks to all my opponents! If you have any comments to make, feel free to post - if you have kept awake this long! :)