COSH Bowl IV & Chaos

This was my second outing to COSH Bowl (Clacton on Sea Hammerblow Bowl)... again hosted in at the well stocked & very friendly 4TK Gaming in Colchester presided over by scs.sam and Myrmedon running things. It was on the edge of my range really, about one and a half hours drive for me around the M25 then up the very bumpy A12 (shocking road!) - but as it was a one day tournament it meant Saturday night and Sunday were free for family time.

With the three (okay, unofficially four) tiers had 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 million gold to spend respectively (Khorne & Brettonians had 1 million only). With this you could buy 11 players, a star if you wanted to and your skills - 20k normal, 30k double, limited to 4 skills of each and no more than 3 skills stacked... so as Sam pointed out, no 16 snotling Ogre teams all with Mighty Blow and Block!

As previous readers of my blog know, I'm slowly working my way through buying/painting/playing the 24 standard Blood Bowl races I'm 13 races in, but have hit a bit of a bottleneck painting wise, so I was 'forced' to take a team I had already painted/played... To me it was a choice between Chaos Chosen, Chaos Pact or Goblin as these were all below 150 NAF ranking for me. I decided to offer my soul to Chaos (as I found Pact sooo frustrating, and with this ruleset Goblins were going to get murdered!) and went with 11 players, 1x reroll, 3x Chaos Warriors with Block/Claw/MB, 1x CW with Tentacles & Guard, 1x Beastman with Sure Hands & KickOffReturn, 1x Beastman with Block/Tackle/StripBall and 5x unskilled Beastmen.

There were some nice little spot prize events with players tallying up different things from game to game, such as skulls rolled, pick ups failed, GFI's failed and failed dodges. It was also quite nice to peruse 4TK's stock between games, nip to Tescos for lunch and to nibble on the various items very reasonably priced by 4TK (mmmm flapjacks!)

I bought some Contrast paints to try out... as well as a kindly reserved box of Pro-Elves... but more on that another post!

Game One vs Joe's (aka Legion_uk) Chaos Pact - Draw 1-1 (4-4)

No easy match-ups for me first round... this was a bash-fest between two teams laden with claw. Joe had an all Marauder line up (no big guys!) which meant he had plenty of money for rerolls and skills including guard, mighty blow and claw distributed amongst the team.

I got +Fame (I'll say this once here... I won & lost the fan roll-off throughout the day but, from memory, not once did it make a difference to anything!) and won the Kick Off roll (which was going to be important in a bash heavy environment). Using my brand-spanking-never-rolled-before-new Chaos Chosen dice my first LoS block resulted in a dead Marauder... followed one roll later by another one.

What a start! Hopes and dreams formed in my mind of a impending pitch clearance and an easily won match. Sadly, it didn't turn out like that... by the end of the first half there were 4x players in each of our respective dead/injured box. The half finished 0-0 with neither team getting very far.

Above was the state of things before the second half began. Fortunately enough players shook off their knock outs and came back to make a game of it in the second half. Joe scored first and then I managed to scramble an equaliser up the right wing, with the match having turned into something resembling a 'Sevens' match. A very bloody and enjoyably close game!

Game Two vs Oli's (aka Eldritchfox) Chaos - Loss 0-1 (1-3)
With my Europen buddies in attendance (Mr_Frodo and HowlingGriffon) both getting wins I was under banter pressure!

I won the kick off (woot!) but this is where my block dice had decided to go on an early summer holiday and basically rolled pushes for the rest of game (booo!). Athough same race match-ups can be dull affairs, our two teams were set up rather differently with Oli going for his 'killer' player in the form of a very angry beastman with Claw/MB/PilingOn* (*using the old-style rule - ie no reroll required to use it!)... he shredded a player every other turn while my team seemed to retreat into their shell.

Oli's Kick skill was countered a little by my KickOffReturn, but we were always under pressure, and in the end a combination of more players and better dice rolls secured Oli his deserved win.

Game Three vs Darren's (aka darrenlysenko) Orcs - Win 2-0 (0-1)
Sam announced the match ups for round 3, and lo & behold I was facing Besters!! This was not the coach I needed to face at 0/1/1... fortunately Sam had made an error and there was a redraw... and Besters went off to beat someone else! :)
This time I faced a beautifully painted Orc team coached by Darren who usually fielded Wood Elves!

This was the first game I lost the kick off roll and kicked to the opposition, however early pressure from me including making a number of knock outs meant I turned the greenskins over and scored.

However, the Chaos team had quite clearly forgotten to un-cork their claws before the game... they were out casualtied by the Orcs who, as Darren said "if you make enough blocks, statistically you'll break armour!)... he was right, and I soon had a dead Chaos Warrior prone in the injuries box.
The second half was simply a case of playing safe, shifting left and right a bit and then seizing an opportunity to make a break for it and score as Darren ended up with 5 knocked out Orcs. There was no way back for him, but he was delighted to out-hurt me! I was just pleased to get to 1/1/1

Game Four vs Darren's (aka Howlinggriffon) Necromantic - Win 2-0 (4-0)
To be completely frank, this game was a total dicing for Darren. He was already fed up with his Necro's continuing to under-perform in another tournament, combined with the very painful shoulder injury he had sustained...

and this game just rubbed salt into the wound. From the kick off my team set about mauling the undead and the claws/MB combination turned otherwise pitiful armour rolls into knock out and injuries. Darren even pointed out that he finally had a player regenerate... Of course this put a curse on any others working!

After scoring in the first half the Chaos soon overturned the ball and scored again and Darren's misery was complete. The Werewolves had a very off day but they didn't have much support to call upon in the end. I was apologetic as my dice were faultless and we quickly finished up and waited for the others to finish their games.

Results

Congratulations to maverick for pulling off a blinding performance with not just 17 casualties made but also 10 touch downs scored! Awesome!!
It was nice to see some familiar faces as well as be introduced to some new ones. And well done for another well run day by Sam and Courtney. Thanks guys.