Europen at Eurobowl Wales 2018 - Team Redshirts away mission

When Howlinggriffon (Darren) and Mr_Frodo (Andrew) asked me to fill a gap in their Team Redshirts Europen squad I was both delighted an excited to join them in Cardiff, Wales on the weekend of 27th-28th October.

With families in tow, we took shelter at the Mercure Hotel, just a short Uber ride away from the Swalec stadium (conference centre). While the long-suffering wives went off and enjoyed the delights of Cardiff, the three of us enjoyed some quality nerding.

Why 'Team Redshirts'?
Well, these guys know their Star Trek, and I've watched my fair share of episodes & films too... so we thought it appropriate regarding our predicted success at the tournament... Yes, we're being sent in by the captain to get squished first! Our captain, Howlinggriffon had organised the shirts, badges and had a limited amount of special Star Trek dice to give away to our Day One opponents.

Howlinggriffon had brought Wood Elves including a Treeman, and Mr_Frodo had brought his Dwarves. I was coaching a Necromantic team - 2x Werewolves (1xMB, 1xBlock), 2x Golems (1xBlock, 1xGuard), 2x Wights (1x Guard, 1x Tackle), 1x Ghoul (Sure Hands), and 6 zombies (1x Dirty Player), 2x Rerolls and 1x Fan Factor.

Wulfyn (Dan) and the folks at The Tackle Zone produced this little Eurobowl Coverage teaser video.

What was going on?
There were two competitions going on: Eurobowl and Europen. The Eurobowl consisted of teams representing their respective country - each team had 8 players. England were defending champions and did very well to retain their trophy, only nudging ahead of Spain on tiebreaker points. Team Redshirts were among 70 other teams participating in the Europen... so we'll leave the Eurobowl alone for now.

Great Food, Venue and Attendance!
There were a number of stands at Eurobowl, with painted teams and other stuff for Blocksfam (The NAF's charity tournament support initiative), NoNumber's new Tabletop Republic store in High Wycombe, and Mr Frodo's 4th Quarter football game (if you like American Football, you'll like this!) as well as other delights.

The food (important for many of us!) was really good quality, and the catering staff rightly got a big round of applause for their efforts. With chicken curry, poppadoms and naan bread and mango chutney (Yum!) for Day One and Lasagne for Day Two, this went down very well. The venue really show-cased the best of Wales to the representatives from across Europe (of which there were many!), including the closing ceremony welsh choir, and plenty of beer!

Goodie bag & pitch
We were told that everyone was going to receive a pitch to take home (see below) as well as a goodie bag of some rather useful tokens and a metal dragon miniature (supplied unpainted!).
Tokens

Dragon

Pitch

The Organisers & Referees

Right, enough of this... On with the match reports!

Day One
Game One 1-2 (Loss!), 2 vs 3 casualties - Team Redshirts Win! 2/0/1
Our first game was in the smaller conference room away from all the bells, whistles, bellowing and Tom Jones music... We were up against 'Warriors Southern Chapter', formed up of gortexgunnerson, basmans_grob and my opponent and the stand in for Worgore - Mmcnaughton4 who has had plenty of online experience, but very limited table top tournament experience.
Warriors Southern Chapter

Mmcnaughton4 

Mark was coaching Lizardmen, and Darren had kindly loaned him his painted team to use. We rolled the usual weather and fans dice and I chose to receive. I managed to make two early casualties, but no raised zombies in this or any other game over the weekend! I scored first but couldn't stop the sneaky skinks equalising. I lost a guard Golem towards the end of the 1st half and he simply didn't come back until it was too late in the 2nd half. The all-block lizards just took me out and a desperate defence wasn't enough. Fortunately my loss was covered by my team mates who both won their games (Darren 3-0 and Andrew 1-0). Phew!

Game Two 1-0 (Win!), 5 vs 1 casualties - Team Redshirts Win! 2/0/1
Our second round was against the kilt-wearing Scottish lads from 'The Louping Loons' team.

I was up against Lizards again!, this time in the hands of Gwi1874, aka Colin.

Colin received. The game was back and forth, but I managed to steal the ball. I had managed to cover off everyone with tackle zones and the werewolf with the ball was making his way deep into the opposition half - To be safe from a blitz I had to make a gfi... 1... re-roll... 1. Aghhh! The half finished 0-0. I received 2nd half and managed to score, but it was a close one... but the lizard injuries were mounting up and that helped me defend against an equaliser, but it was close. The dice were eventually with me this game! Either way, 2 wins out of 2 for Team Redshirts, with Darren winning 1-0 and Andrew losing 1-2.

Game Three 1-2 (Lose!), 3 vs 1 casualties - Team Redshirts Draw! 1/1/1
Our final opponents of Day One were the guys from Denmark - Danelaw. My match was against Badpublicity and his Wood Elves.

After receiving I simply couldn't do any useful damage to the elves. But, the first half was really all about Jacob's really awful dice. He burned rerolls like an Orc burns trees... and infact Jacob's treeman double skulled, I rolled double 6 on his armour, but only stunned him. The half finished 1-0. The second half was a different matter altogether. The wood elves were footloose and made everything while the Necro's just stumbled around pathetically.  It didn't help that with the match poised at 1-1 with me receiving in the 2nd half that the ball scattered to the half way line AND Jacob willed a '10' to be rolled on kick off successfully. With the WE's having easy access to the ball it was pretty much all over! The match finished 1-2 with Jacob apologising this time. Still, a good match. I felt bad for falling apart in this game as it effectively cost us a 3rd win as Darren won his match 3-2 and Andrew drew 0-0.

End of Day One saw me on 1/0/2 but Team Redshirts on 2/1/0. Superb! What's more, Darren finished on 3/0/0 and was 2nd in the individual Europen rankings. Nice one skipper!

Day Two
Game Four 2-1 (Win!), 1 vs 0 casualties - Team Redshirts Draw! 1/1/1
Overnight we had seen that we had been drawn against the French guys from 'Pilous' - a not particularly pleasant team name but hey. These guys were very vocal throughout Day One, showing lots of 'passion'. After they had stopped high-fiving each other at the beginning of the round, Team Redshirts showed their class and quietly shook hands and in a very English way said "Good luck lads".

My opponent was Rippersly and his Dark Elves. I checked his Dark Elf rating on NAF the night before... he had a rating of 199+ with them. This was going to be tough!

I received, and the first block I did was a double skull - this wasn't going to be fun! I rerolled ok, but then later failed to pick up with Sure Hands. From there I went from attack to defence, but I did eventually manage to score, 1-0. In Rippersly's turn 16 he managed to cross the line for an equaliser after a lot of dice rolls. I couldn't stop him. The French high-fives and "Pilou" chants began. Darren had lost 1-2 and Andrew had drawn 1-1 - they knew that a draw would win them the round.
I set up for my turn 16. Somehow I had to get a one-turn touchdown. The kick off dice helped - Quick Snap! - So I moved the werewolf forward into the opposition half with a zombie behind him. I didn't take long to re-arrange everyone as still there was a very slim chance this was going to work. The ball was kicked and it shot forward from 'the spot' to land on the head of the zombie behind the werewolf... 6... he caught it! 2 chain pushes later saw the werewolf moved forward 2 squares more and free. The zombie ran round, handed the ball over... 2... reroll, success! All the werewolf had to do now was move 8, frenzy blitz 1 dice and GFI twice... SPLAT... OMG! I might do this... GFI, GFI SCORE!!!! 2-1. Team Redshirts had drawn the round, and team Pilou had never been so quiet! Andrew had walked away not bearing to see the fail but Darren's smile couldn't have been wider. We caught up with Andrew at his stand and he was of course delighted.
Here's the little furry hero... and his wolf :)

Game Five 0-1 (Loss!), 0 vs 1 casualties - Team Redshirts Lose! 0/1/2
Okay, we knew Team Redshirts were in massive nosebleed territory here. Wulfyn made an appearance from out of his Twitch feed cave and said "What are you doing [on these top-end tables]??"... he was right... we had no place sitting amongst all these high rated coaches. But we were enjoying the ride. Unfortunately, we came up against Men’s in Block who put us to the sword.

 My opponent Azzroag and his Wood Elves (and a sapling for a tree!).

Put simply, Julian's team rolled more consecutive 1's than I had seen all weekend (including me!) throughout the match. The first half ended 0-0, but the damage by the WE's had been done. I had knock outs that didn't return - Ghoul, Werwolf, Blitzer... and then turn 9 saw my other Werewolf taken out. That was effectively it. It was a miracle I managed to get a player in the TZ of the ball carrier in turn 16, but any hope was simply crushed. The match ended 0-1 and with Andrew also losing (0-2) and Darren getting a draw (2-2) we suffered our first team loss. Not disgraceful at all seeing as Men’s in Block finished 2nd overall!

Game Six 1-0 (Win!), 4 vs 3 casualties - Team Redshirts Win! 2/1/0
We had plenty of time to chat before the final round, and we all agreed that it would be good to face either another European team or friends of ours... and it turned out we would face Team Unicorn - Andrew and Darren's HEBBL (Hertfordshire & Essex) league mates... all dressed in their stand-out pink.

I was up against LittleSpoon and his Lizardmen... yes, that's 3x Lizardmen opponents, 2x Wood Elves and Dark Elves... a walk in the park this weekend, not!

Our final game was really knife-edged, with both sides breaking armour... the difference was I made all 3 regeneration rolls. Furthermore, LittleSpoon's Krox rolled 1 at least 5 times (lucky really as I kept forgetting he had Break Tackle). Despite all this, the first half finished 0-0. I eventually scored in the 2nd half, 1-0, but a Riot on LittleSpoon's kick meant he had two turns to score. Fortunately my wolf took out the ball carrier and my Ghoul secured the ball.
With Andrew winning 2-0 and Darren earning a tense 3-3 draw, the bragging rights went to Team Redshirts!

Final Standings
We finished 16th out of 70 teams! Wow!

Both Andrew and I improved our rankings for our respective races. Darren got his Wood Elves to a heady 190.63, and finished 32nd out of 210 coaches, with Andrew and I finishing in mid-table mediocrity 110th and 107th respectively.

Final thoughts
Overall a really good event and I would recommend it to anyone. The referees seemingly had everything under control, the event felt 'unique', and everyone seemed to have a good time. It helped that the clocks went back, but with Eurobowl and Europen games staggered, it did mean that we had late finishes both days, and a car journey with a tired 10 year old with school the next day wasn't the best... We had to miss the excellent closing ceremony which was a shame, but I had to put the family first.

Thanks to all my opponents, the organisers and referees, the vendors, streamers, catering and security staff, and especially to my team mates. It was a really good showing. Oh, and well done to Team Italy who won the Europen, and also well done to the England boys in the Eurobowl! Fantastic result!

That's your lot. Night all! - Let me know if I've got anything wrong or even if you enjoyed the blog post! :)