COSH Bowl 2018

Hot on the heels of CamDub was my last tournament of 2018 - COSH Bowl (Clacton on Sea Hammerblow Bowl)... this time, hosted in Colchester at 4TK Gaming. With scs.sam and Myrmedon co-hosting, things ran pretty smoothly. It was particularly pleasing that the 2 hour drive there and back was easy going and uneventful! With this being a one-day tournamanet the games were scheduled to get underway by 9.30am and we expected to wrap up before 7pm - and everyone stayed on schedule, which is always good.

4TK is a gaming shop on a trading estate, with a good sized shop downstairs and a gaming area upstairs. Between rounds we could browse the shelves of goodies or wander up to the local Tesco for a snack if the coffee and doughnuts laid on free of charge weren't enough for you.

COSH was different again to many other tournaments throughout the year. It still had tiered races, and a budget allocated for each race, but unlike other tournaments you could buy whatever skills you wanted and stack them as you felt like. I had a play around with the rosters of a number of teams I both own and have painted ready... and none of them felt right. Then I tried the Underworld roster and it felt good...

...and with a week to go, I decided to paint up 5 rats and then draft in the Troll and Goblins from my Willy Miniatures team. In retrospect I shouldn't have had so many skills on the Troll, but it was a fun choice.

The rats were from a genuine Underworld team via a Goblin Guild "Green Ratz" crowdfunder. I painted them as quickly as I could, making the Blitzers and Linerats and Thrower bases distinct from each other as the NAF suggest, as well as making the Linerats have brown fur and the Blitzers having a typical Stormvermin look to them. They're not especially fantastic, and weren't going to win any prizes but they didn't look embarrassing to field.

Game One - vs Ogres - Chewit666 (aka Tom) - Win! 2-0 TDs, 4-1 Cas.

Tom brought Ogres to the party, complete with top hats and monocles - it's always nice to face a well painted and unusual team! I haven't faced Ogres very much at all... they aren't known for being competitive, but Tom was in it for the 'Stunty Cup'. Underworld, despite having over half a roster of stunties don't qualify as a stunty team unfortunately!

I had to quickly get up to speed on the 'titchy' trait that the Snotlings possessed. They exerted a tackle zone but didn't have enough strength in them to give a -1 to an opponent dodging past them. However, they did have sidestep, and although only having armour 5 they were quite annoying at times. In fact, my 'killer' blitzers struggled too many times to knock them over AND hurt them. The game was going ok for the receiving Ogres until two Ogres in the middle boneheaded and stood there like idiots while I got a blitz on the ball carrier who spilled it between the dumb Ogres, allowing my team to waltz through the middle, pick up and run off into the distance. The second half was just a matter of keeping the ball, thinning numbers and sneaking a score for a 2-0 win... although only 4 casualties inflicted which was underwhelming. (30pts + 2 + 3 bonuses = 35pts).
One thing to note was the special prize for each round. In round 1 we tallied the number of skull results, with extra points for rerolled skulls too. This was a nice little spot prize idea that could be decided at the end of the round and announced with the next round fixtures. Great idea guys! Other rounds included failed GFIs and failed dodges etc. I didn't make a note of these for future games so apologies!

Game Two - vs Chaos Pact- Eldritchfox (aka Oli) - Draw! 1-1 TDs, 3-4 Cas.

Oli could obviously coach Chaos Pact far better than I could. The trick was only bringing 2 Big Guys, but unusually he left the Minotaur at home, thinking that 3 marauders were of better value than one accident prone big guy. Like in the Ogre game I failed to do much in the way of casualties early on and this almost cost me the game. There were just too many double-pushbacks and double 1's on armour if I did manage to knock someone over, which is especially frustrating when you have three lots of claw/mighty blow on your team. However, Oli wasn't without a good amount of tackle, mighty blow and claw himself, with one player having Piling On (using older rules to re-roll either armour or injury but leaving the attacking player prone).

In the end it was only a snaked go for it that cost eldritchfox the win after some tough defending on my part. A draw felt very much like a win to me. 1-1 draw with 3-4 casualties (15 + 1 + 3 = 19pts).

Game Three - vs High Elves - hissa-lives (aka Pete) - Draw! 2-2 TDs, 6-1 Cas.

There's always a game that you walk away from feeling you should have won, and this was it. With just 11 High Elves on the roster without any Mighty Blow or Guard I should (and was) be superior on the 'bashy' side of things. However, on the ball handling side the High Elves had the edge. Sure, they failed most times to dodge into a cage and successfully sack my blodger ball carrier. Sure I put 6 of the pointy-eared freaks into the casualty box. However, there's not much you can do when the MVP award quite obviously goes to a HE thrower with Pass, Safe Throw and Strong Arm - the guy could do no wrong, and more than that, anyone he threw to, no matter how many people marking him he had, caught the ball and scored! Seeing this as an obvious threat, and twice going behind to his antics I threw the kitchen sink at him and got more than a handful of hits on this pain of an elf. But try as I might, no amount of three dice hits and mighty blow could make him join his 6 team mates.

With the game poised on 2-2 I had a really good chance of sealing a win, but I think 3 re-roll-less POW blocks in a row leaving my ball carrier prone and the ball back in HE hands left me a lot of work to do. The HE thrower got the ball and launched it deep into my half. I needed to move 9 to pick up the ball with my much-less-agile thrower and pass it on a 5+ to a rat to catch on a 3+ and run away to hand off for a 3+ to score... obviously I failed the rerolled pass attempt. Gutted. Had I won that match I think in retrospect I could have been in with a shot of a first tournament win. Ho-hum! That said, it was a very good and enjoyable game and Hissa did ever so well with the few resources he had. A 2-2 draw with 6-1 casualties (15+2+3 = 19pts).

Game Four (final match) vs Chaos Chosen - Hawk (aka Andrew) - Win! 2-1 TDs, 1-2 Cas.

Andrew was borrowing an unpainted Chaos team from Sam to field at COSH. However, Andrew was feeling rather aggrieved that an admin decision in his last match had cost him not only the game but a chance of winning the tournament. Unfortunately for Andrew his team just failed too many times in our game, and an oversight on square counting allowed me to crowd-surf his ball carrier at one point. I think that was the point Andrew sunk to a new low of dejection. I managed to knock out both Tackle Beastmen quite early on, and they failed to come back later on too. That being said, I couldn't do much in the way of casualties, only knock outs despite a good number of blocks on the Chaos boys. Andrews 2x extra arms beastmen made good use of them, neatly completing and catching, but I was able to counter and get a sneaky win with a burst up the right flank. 2-1 win, with 1-2 casualties (30+2+1 = 33pts).

Results

I managed to snatch second place (I think on strength of schedule) and got this nice little trophy below. 

[WARNING - EXTREME CHEESEY SMILES AHEAD!]
I also managed to grab some photos of other winners, firstly;
the tournament winner Yogi;

The wooden spoon, kendawg:

Most Casualties, Unsullied:

Most Touchdowns, hissa-lives:

 And finally, the much-loved Stunty Cup, bigashw:

Thanks to the admins/organisers Sam and Courtney, and all my opponents for a fun day, and always nice to see some familiar faces too.