Quick Snap! - December 2021 & Nurgle

Note - Wrote this the day after the tournament, but after watching the final F1 race of the season. My brain was scattered by the outcome and so this report may also be a bit meh! :)

Backstory

Papa Nurgle was pleased. His latest gift to the world had dominated for yet another year. Feeling untouchable, the Chaos God of decay, plague, despair and disease could sense the prayers of his coaching disciple - Wotfudboy... perhaps he should bless him? If he did, he knew that his bitter rivalry with Khorne, the Blood God, would simply escalate. But, what joy it might bring. The thought amused him. Perhaps just a little tinkering would be fun. A couple of suckers on the hands of a Pestigor might aid him picking up the ball. Also a little help for the Bloaters? What would be the harm? So tempting... too tempting. With a wide rotted-toothed grin on his face, Nurgle flicked a couple of digits and bestowed his blessing on the team representing him at Quick Snap!. He would watch on with interest...

Quick Snap! - December 2021 - Tabletop Republic

Two tournaments in two weeks - both using 2020 rules (as should any tournament I participate in going forward). The venue was Tabletop Republic which I've mentioned in a number of previous reports. Unfortunately, Covid & other viruses had reduced the attendance to just 16 coaches, down from 24 that signed up.

The Coaches & Races

Interestingly, COSH Bowl V had similar rules, with Stunty Teams allowed a Star Player... but only one coach chose to go the Stunty route. However, Quick Snap! allowed 8x Primary Skills OR 5x Primary Skills and 2x Secondary Skills, and I think this was just too tempting for non-Stunty teams. This meant then there was a good variation of races in the mix.

One thing of note, it was good to see everyone being sensible, including the host, wearing their masks, and being as considerate as possible of everyone's personal space.

Roster

I had a few teams painted that I hadn't coached on table top yet, and Nurgle were one of them. I had my Hungry Troll team which I blogged here. So another one ticked off the list.

The Nurgle Squad... some didn't make the starting 12

With 1,150,000 gold pieces to spend on players, I went with 12x players. 1x Rotspawn (Guard), 4x Bloaters (3x Block, 1x Guard), 2x Pestigors (1x Sure Hands & 1x Block/Tackle) and 5x Rotters. I also had 3 Rerolls and 1 Assistant Coach. I felt this gave them enough flexibility and staying power. I was expecting more Stunty teams, so the Block/Tackle was to counter them as well as the expected elves and gutter runners. What was painful was I couldn't add Mighty Blow as many teams were able to do for their Blitzers... and at times throughout the day I missed that extra hitting power to give me confidence my opponent wouldn't get back up so quickly and threaten the ball.

So, with all that done, Tom announced the round one random match ups.

Game One vs Inaspin's (aka Rick) Chaos Dwarves

Get in frame Rick! - Mask, tick, Dwarves, tick

Rick said from the outset that he was a lover not a fighter.... sorry, I mean a painter, not a player. He certainly had a really beautifully painted team which I wish I took a better photo of. But his Chaos Dwarf team was strong and he clearly knew what he was doing. And I was nervous, especially as as the game started in Pouring Rain, which affected catching and, most importantly for the receiving team, picking up. Despite that, when I won the kick off I decided to receive, as I felt I needed to get some hits in early and pray my Sure Hands Pestigor made his 50/50 attempts to pick up the ball!

Look at that Minotaur!... Deadly but beautiful!

Fortunately for me, he did. With the only Mighty Blow on the team being on the Really Stupid Rotspawn Big Guy, it was going to be a hard task to beat AV10+ on the Chaos Dwarves. As it turned out, it was seemingly just as hard to hurt the HobGoblins too! But, the armour dice were the only thing that let me down this game...

We've got the ball! We're gonna score!!

By Turn 3/2 I had crowd surfed a Bull Centaur (no crowd injury). Despite my ball carrier being 1 dice blitzed by a Wrestle player in turn 3/3, I still managed to recover the ball by turn 4/3. As you can see from the picture above my Pestigor managed to surge down the right flank. My Bloaters and Rotspawn covered his escape and we delayed enough to score in turn 8/7, but we just didn't do any damage. 1-0.

Before the second half started, we had to resolve the turn 8/8, and the rather scary Minotaur (Block/Mighty Blow/Claw [I think!]) injured a Rotter.

We both got Get the Ref for the second half, so the Pouring Rain remained. A Hobgoblin needed a second turn to pick up the ball, but they couldn't get through the Nurgle defence. We turned defence into attack as we managed to lay our diseased fists on the ball carrier, sacked him, and grabbed the ball back by turn 4/4. The game ended with a fist bump and 2-0 (0-2).

Game Two vs NoNumber's (aka Tom) Khorne

Pow Pow!

The rounds had been extended to allow people time to get used to the new rules, so we had a decent break between rounds. The next game was a clash of the Chaos Gods... Nurgle vs Khorne. Just as was foretold, Khorne was unhappy with the blessings Papa Nurgle had bestowed, so had given his own followers Block & Mighty Blow on his strength 4 Blood Seekers. Combined with Frenzy, and backed up by a Bloodspawn with his standard Frenzy, Claws & Mighty Blow.

Chaos Big Guys exchange insults from afar

Again I received after winning the kick off. Although we secured the ball without too much trouble, our attack faltered as by turn 3/3 the Block/Tackle Pestigor had been KO'd. Turn 4/3 turned to disaster as a Rotter block result of 2x both down led to a reroll of double skulls... I feel Khorne had a hand in that!

Double skulls! - D'Oh!!!!

With the ball carrier left open. The picture above shows the Bloodspawn moving into position... and, so by turn 4/4 the ball carrier had ben sacked and the ball spilt near the pitch edge. We did manage to KO the Bloodspawn in turn 6/5, which was a good start, but in turn 8/7 things were evened out as the Rotspawn swung a ham-fist, missed, and punched himself in the face and hurt himself, and promptly failed to regenerate. Things were grim. Even with the ball starting deep in the Khorne end, they had enough cover and movement to score in turn 8/8 (with casualties at 1-1 by this stage).

The Khorne just needed to play keep ball while they beat up their opposition. The Bloodspawn remained KO'd for the second half, meaning things were even on the lack of big guys... but the Khorne just had the hitting power, and the Frenzy & Mighty Blow took a toll on the bloated-rotting bodies of the Nurgle. The writing was on the wall, and my boys capitulated 0-2 (0-3).

Game Three vs Gooseknight's (aka Andrew) Lizardmen

It was interesting that for the 3rd game in a row I was up against more Str4 players... six of them in fact, all with Block and a couple with Guard as well... but these Lizardmen didn't have a big guy.

Cheesey thumbs - I approve!

Andrew won the kick off and received and proceeded to overload my left flank. The ball landed pretty near the middle of the pitch. 

Lizards plan to launch an attack down my left

The Chameleon's came with the On The Ball skill which allowed some post kick repositioning. We applied some pressure and in turn 1/1 had hurt a Skink. My notes are a bit patchy after this, but from memory we managed to KO some more lizards and scored in turn 6/6 after getting hold of the ball. The Lizards started with 10 players, and this wasn't enough to change the first half, finishing with me leading 1-0 (2-0) going into the second half.

The second half was a bash fest, which the Nurgle seemed to come off the better for. Again, if memory serves, my ball carrier got taken down in a desperate play, and a lizard picked up the ball late in the second half, and tried a Long Bomb... but this was inaccurate. After a ball bounced around in a mob of players, we managed to get the ball and score. The game finished 2-0 (3-1 on casualties).

Game Four vs GColeman's (aka Gavin) High Elves

So, we were on 2/0/1 going in to the final game, so the worst result we could end with was honours even. So, spirits were high. But now we faced tricky elves, with their 2+'s all over the pitch and Block/Dodge players. 

Thumbs up it's the last game!!

We received... Clearly the fans were excited at the prospect and a Riot ensued, pushing the half back by a turn. This stunned 2 elves in the process. We gathered the ball up. This was important as having my back line flooded by elves when I only had one Tackler on the pitch. Furthermore, (and I should have brought this up earlier) as others will discover, Tentacles is much weaker now. This proved to be a pain as elves seemed to get away more times than not from the slow moving Rotspawn.

The Nurgle push begins...

We pushed up the right hand side, trying to engage as many elves as possible and force their dice rolls. However, as I had feared, the thrust faltered, and as a crucial blitz by my Block/Tackle Pestigor in turn 4/3 led to a double both down 'bump' and failed to push them aside, the ball carrier was left exposed. And of course a Wrestle blitz sacked my ball carrier, ending near the edge of the pitch. However, we pushed on and scored in turn 8/7 (0-0 cas).

I thought we had made a good job of it. I just had to set up to try and limit the threat of a one-turn TD by the fast elves... but Nuffle had other ideas... and a Time Out occurred on kick off. The defence I put up didn't help when my Rotspawn was Really Stupid. We just couldn't effect enough tackle zones. The elves promptly scored in turn 8/8 using their 2 turns well. 1-1 (0-0).

With the elves receiving in the second half it was another game where my opponent just had to play keep ball, and score late.  And of course it started with a Riot, so I had less turns to get the ball and score... and Gavin had less turns to worry about my threat. To Gavin's credit he delayed as long as was sensible as I attacked him deep in my own half. He scored in turn 5/6. 1-2 (0-0 casualties).

The fact that Gavin still had all of his elves available, and this made the job of scoring quickly against him twice as hard. I have to say, what happened next was improbable. Purplegoo and Howlinggriffon had already finished their match, and with them loitering at a distance I could hear Phil transmitting the "you can do it" like he did back at Camdub. I started to break elven armour and made 3 casualties in as many turns... Bearing in mind the game had been devoid of injuries so far made this quite astonishing. It then took a rerolled block to chain push my Rotspawn to block clear the elf marking my ball carrier. He didn't roll a 1, and made a successful block. I then needed to blitz with the ball carrier, put the elf down, make a 4+ and 3+ dodge and GFI twice and scored the equaliser!! I was so expecting a fail, and couldn't believe it worked! Gavin was crestfallen, and I think regretted not risking one more turn of delay... but bearing in mind the first half equaliser I thought it was pretty fair. The game finished 2-2 (3-0 casualties).

Results

Here are the results from the tournament.

We made it to 5th place, which with Nurgle I was pretty impressed with. But more to the point, Howlinggriffon won his second tournament in as many weeks!

Howlinggriffon wins!

Loki finishes 2nd

Most casualties by tropicalremixed

GColeman76 scores the most TDs

13Silver's Snotlings were best painted & won the Stunty Cup

NOW GO HOME! :)