April 04, 2026

COSH Team Tournament V & Dwarves

COSH Team Tournament V

This tournament was postponed from it's usual December 2025 slot to a little later in March 2026. This was so that people could accommodate the new rules/releases of the "new" 2025 version of Blood Bowl. I really enjoyed the 2024 tournament, so was looking forward to this one.

Tournament Rules

As usual, the TO's mixed things up a bit with the ability to 'borrow' linemen from your team mate, as well as the following spending cap and tiering. You can find the rest of the rules here. :

Tier allowances:

1 – 110,0000 GP & 4 Skills
2 – 112,0000 GP & 5 Skills
3 – 115,0000 GP & 6 Skills
4 – 117,0000 GP & 7 Skills (including 1 optional secondary)
5 – 120,0000 GP & 8 Skills (including 2 optional secondaries)

Team Tiering:

Tier 1: Amazon, Old World Alliance, Wood Elf, Necromantic Horror
Tier 2: Shambling Undead, Vampire
Tier 3: Bretonian, Dark Elf, Elf Union, High Elf, Humans, Imperial Nobility, Lizardmen, Norse, Nurgle, Orcs, Slann, Skaven, Tomb Kings, UnderWorld Denizens
Tier 4: Black Orc, Chaos Chosen, Chaos Dwarf, Chaos Renegade, Dwarf, Khorne, Snotling
Tier 5: Goblin, Gnome, Halfling, Ogre

I was going to leave Dwarves firmly in the cupboard, particularly given the roster changes (mainly losing a agility on the Blitzers!) but the fact that I had the Dwarf half of an OWA box still sat on spru, and that the choices above looked favourable to the Dwarves, I thought I would give them one last hurrah! Perhaps I should have left them in the box...

Roster

Things didn't get off to a great start when I ran out of time to finish of the other half of the team... so don't look to closely at the above picture. If you squint, they're good enough for table top. As for my skill selection, I think the skill bands tell you everything you need to know. I did also have 3x Rerolls, a Cheerleader and Assistant Coach.

I was chatting to the only other Dwarf coach on the day, and he took a Deathroller without a Bribe. Let's just say he had a better day than me!

My team mate from Team Redshirts was VultureSquadron who decided to take Orcs. In hindsight, one of us should have gone non-bash... as there wasn't much tradeoff in swapping a Dwarf Lineman or Orc Lineboy between the two of us!

Game One

First up were Ben's Black Orcs from Team Touchdown. In the other match, Jack was taking on some Nurgle with his Orcs.

All smiles before the tournament got underway

Blog? What's that all about then?

I had less fans watching the match in Perfect Weather, and the Black Orcs decided to Receive.

As I had taken my own pitch, I was on home ground! Would that count for anything? Quick Snap was rolled and not long afterwards the Black Orcs used up their bribe after a double was rolled on a prone Dwarf Lineman by a lone fouler. The Dwarves then tore the flesh apart of a hapless Goblin (1-0) but soon after we suffered our own injury as a Linedwarf also fell to a wicked blow.

I then watched aghast in turn 3/4 as the Trained Troll (who doesn't need Loner to use rerolls) made a series of rolls for a successful Throw Team Mate. 0-1 (1-1).

This angered the Dwarves as they KO'd a Black Orc and proned the Troll... but we had used all our Rerolls in some luckless dice rolls.

With a hard push up the pitch we equalised in our last turn without either side taking any more punishment. 1-1 (1-1).

With the Dwarves receiving in the 2nd half, it was all about keeping the ball safe, and hoping to take out as many Goblins as possible to stop a last turn equalising TTM attempt by the Black Orcs. However, we only managed to hurt one more Goblin, but had KO'd some too.

We won the match, but it felt like only just! 2-1 (2-1).

Game Two

Of course, next up was Sam's Skaven, facing Team COSH.

In Jack's match, his Orcs were up against some leaping Slann...

Happy to be facing slow Dwarves!

I knew from the Kent Team Championships that Sam was pretty handy with the revised Skaven and I was in for a tough time. I lost the kick off roll again in Perfect Weather, again with less fans in attendance.

By turn 3/4 the rats and KO'd 2x Dwarves, and my armour rolls kept producing 3's and 4's... No amount of Mighty Blow was going to help those rolls. And it wasn't like the Skaven were dodging away all the time as we landed plenty of hits.

We had a chance to take down the Skaven ball carrier around turn 6/6 but 3 sets of two-block-dice later the furry rat-mutant remained on his paws, much to the chagrin of the Dwarf coach. We went 0-1 (0-0) down in turn 6/7, and then they rolled Perfect Defence to prevent me getting any cheap shots in at the end of the half.

Turn 1 of the second half started more brightly as we hurt a linerat (1-0), but we just couldn't get through to score as the rats armour remained intact all the way through to turn 7/6 when we belatedly hurt a Skaven Blitzer (2-0). My dice needed burning. Of course, just in the last turn the rats hurt a Dwarf to rub the proverbial salt into the wound and skittered off with a 0-1 (2-1) win.

Game Three

Next up was Skragg and his Orcs who were looking for some revenge on our mirror match at the "In the Beginning, Season 3" tournament.

Thumbs up!

Again, we had less fans and played in Perfect Weather, but this time I won the kick off roll and chose to receive.

The Orcs had plenty of bodies on the bench and decided to go hard or go home on the fouling, but saw a lineorc sent off in turn 2/2. They then had their Troll KO'd in turn 4/3, but got some revenge as they hurt a Linedwarf in turn 5/5 (0-1), followed by a hurt Troll Slayer in turn 7/7 (0-2).

The Dwarves just could not make their numbers count and failed to score in the first half, as the drive ended 0-0 (0-2).

The second half wasn't much better as a Dodgy Snack saw a Dwarf Blitzer off the pitch! By turn 3/3 all our rerolls had been used on some truly shocking blocking dice, and the green tide prepared to swamp us. It was no surprise we conceded in turn 5/6 0-1 (0-2) and our misery didn't end there as another Dwarf fell to a hard knock (0-3).

Apparently Skraggy faced me on the back of a mauling from the other Dwarf coach and his Deathroller. Clearly, my team's efforts were pathetic in comparison!

Game Four

Oh good... Wood Elves! This was either going to be very 'crunchy' or we were going to get a final humiliation of the day from some dancing pointy-eared freaks!

Brian and I rolled off and I had the holy trinity... more fans in Perfect Weather and I got to receive after winning the kick off.

The first half went well as we didn't rush to push up field and land as many blows as we could against the less-than-tough Wood Elf armour.

However, I don't know what I had done to upset Nuffle, but despite making a good number of KO's, we just couldn't make anything stick on the elves that they couldn't shake off. We did start the drive off with a lineman casualty, but by the end of the game we had made three paltry casualties.

The Dwarves thought they had seen of some of the Wardancer threat with a KO of one of them in turn 2/1, but the other Wardancer decided in turn 2/2 to make a 2x Rush blitz, a natural 6 leap (needing a 6+ to land!) and a 2x dice uphill hit, which he double skulled, rerolled into double-stumbles! Wow!

Despite this, we retrieved the ball, hurt the Wardancer for his efforts (2-0) and scored in turn 8/7 1-0 (2-0).

However, the game wasn't over as the Wood Elves borrowed some HobGoblins from their Chaos Dwarf team mate (who was clearly doing well enough to do so against Jack's Orcs!). The Wood Elves surged down the left flank and it took a great many rushes and careful positioning to prevent any more elven trickery, but it was a very close thing.

With one more late casualty inflicted on the elves, the match finished 1-0 (3-0), and a sigh of relief from this Dwarf coach!

Final Standings

Both Jack and I reflected on a day of struggling. We hadn't done well at all but it had been a good event with plenty of friendly opponents. It was a long way to come for those dice though!