Carrot Crunch 8 & 13x Teams in the Stunty Cup!

 

Carrot Crunch 8 - Group photo... Where's Wotfudboy? Quickest to spot him?

Carrot Crunch was a tournament I had heard lots of good things about, but I had never got around to attending. After being prodded by my fellow Redshirts, I signed up, but not before reading the tournament information. I also booked my hotel and chose my team. 

I hadn't coached Goblins since 2017, and I had only used my painted team Willy Miniatures Goblin team in one tournament. It was time to get them out again! 

I selected a roster that would allow me to take Varag Ghoul-chewer and Scrappa Sorehead. My aim was to let Varag do the blitzing, with the Looney's chainsaw helping out on the Blodge players, and the stacked Dirty Player / Sneaky Git Goblin taking out any opponent left prone. Scrappa would be my ball carrier, and with Right Stuff, he could, if desperate, be thrown should his MA7 & Sprint/SureFeet not be enough to score Touch Downs. It was really nice to get out my 3rd edition Varag model from 1995... still with the same awful paint job, although touched up a bit.

So, I sat down to watch the tournament Preview. To my complete shock, I discovered that of the 48 coaches attending, 13 of them were taking Stunty Teams!! What a Stunty Cup this would be! 

My team got a non-negative review which was pretty spot on by one of my eventual opponents! 

The prizes & awards were pretty cool too, with the winner to be presented with a bunch of carrots!! Not playing to the Ipswich stereo-types at all, although ironically, I was delayed getting to the site after being stuck behind a Tractor for way too long! However, as I am strongly linked to Watford FC, I had to keep quiet, surrounded as I was by Ipswich fans promoted to the Premiership this season! 

A bunch of carrots, an old boot and a wooden spoon - Prizes desperately wanted by all!

Prizes for 8th, 16th, 24th, 32nd, etc

I'm just going to give a general impression of the game in the notes below. We all used TourPlay - https://tourplay.net/en/blood-bowl/carrot-crunch-8 and you can check out the events in the game yourself! To be honest I've not really used TP much, but it was pretty comprehensive in recording events and showing standings and fixtures in a great way. Now I've used it, I really see the benefits for helping Tournament Organisers and participants alike.

Day One - Game 1 vs  Grumpy Gust's Tomb Kings

First up I was facing the bleached bones of the Tomb Kings. Despite having 2x Block Trolls and Varag, I was going to be out muscled by the 4x Tomb Guardians. However, Grumpy only had 1 Tackler, and he didn't have Mighty Blow, thankfully!

Grumpy Gust

This was a really good game, very tactical and my Goblins just about got the win with Scrappa scoring. For all the dice rolls, neither team inflicted any casualties, so not much to report on, but I was happy just to get the win, bearing in mind it was my first with Goblins ever. https://tourplay.net/en/blood-bowl/carrot-crunch-8/match/659160 - 1-0 (0-0) win.

Tomb Kings kick to the Goblins and get Perfect Defence

Game 2 vs RigRogRig's Goblins

After a very nice (and hot!) chippy-lunch from the local Fish'n'Chip shop, I was up against Simon, aka RigRogRig - he had also brought Goblins, but his roster had 2x Guard Trolls, as well as 2x different Star Players: Skitter Stab-Stab as well as the ball and chain menace - Kreek Rustgouger.

RigRogRig

Games like this don't happen like this to me at all! You've got to check out the events on TourPlay here: https://tourplay.net/en/blood-bowl/carrot-crunch-8/match/659253 

Simon took it like an absolute champ. I'm not sure many coaches would have watch their team dissolve before their very eyes in quite a cool and friendly manner. Kudos! 

RigRogRig inflicted the first casualty in turn 4 of the first half. However, we managed to score not one, but two touchdowns in the first half which put Simon on the back foot as he got more desperate. We defended hard and the casualties mounted up in the second half, and piled on the misery scoring 3 more TD's to end 5-0 (10-3) win with Scrappa notching up 4x touchdowns!

Goblin Trained Trolls go head to head as we receive the kick

Game 3 vs 03philpota's Humans

03philpota

This was a really tough game / match up for the Goblins. https://tourplay.net/en/blood-bowl/carrot-crunch-8/match/659409 

The Human Blitzers with Block/Tackle baked in to their skillset was tough enough, but give one Mighty Blow and I was going to be in trouble! They could also counter any speed that Scrappa had with 2x St3 Blodging Catchers. 

Humans vs Orcs on the astro-pitch on table 2!

We were forced to score earlier than we wanted (turn 6) and the Humans breezed through the Goblin defence to score in two turns. Despite making some casualties we couldn't hold out in the second half, but despite making Andrew sweat it a little, he was still comfortably on for the win... but not before Varag attempted to make a heroic effort to take down the well positioned ball carrier. He jumped up/blitzed, dodging away from a rerolled (including loner) 4+, then 3+, made the 1st GFI but rolled a 1 on the second to prevent the two-dice blitz attempt. Perhaps I should have save the reroll for the TTM turn 16 attempt which I failed to pick up. There was still a lot of dice to roll so, in many ways, I was happy to have tried the aggressive move even if saving the reroll for the TTM attempt was the more sensible play! 1-2 (5-2) loss.

Nose-bleed territory!! - Table 2 for the 3rd game of Day One! Not on camera though.

Not bad though, finishing the day 2/0/1. I wasn't in the lead though in the Stunty Cup as Unsullied was on 2/1/0 with his ball and chain wielding Goblins.

Quiz Night!

I went off to a rather aged Best Western hotel (next time I'm taking local recommendations!) checked in, freshened up and returned back to the venue (which was about 20 minutes away), popped into Tesco for the evening's sustenance, and then joined our Belgium friends in a quiz team, hosted by Ben Harwood.

We finished 3rd after doing pretty well in the "name the celebrities in some rather old photos" competition, and trying to answer questions on "what London landmark was discovered to be many feet (14?) shorter than it should have been when it was renovated in 2006... apparently it was Nelson's Column!

Goodie Bag

The tournament also had a really nice bag full of swag, including home made honey and marmalade, sweets (carrots of course!), dice, a sticker and a nice plastic pint glass:

Yum! Carrot Crunch swag bag

Day Two

I took a quick video of the higher table room.... there were two rooms, as well as tea & coffee (and cake) facilities too! Apologies for not getting a pic of the second room!:

Game 4 vs Joeseph's High Elves

Joeseph

Next up was former Carrot Crunch champion, Joeseph. https://tourplay.net/en/blood-bowl/carrot-crunch-8/match/659793 - With 2x Blodge Dragon Princes, and a Thrower that even the Yoink skill on Scrappa couldn't intercept, we found it difficult to get to the ball in the 1st half... so we tried to take everything else out. I was fortunate this match as the Goblin armour remained intact despite a number of blitzes and blocks on the little guys, but in turn we made 7 casualties to the 2 from the High Elves.

High Elves receiving and dancing around Goblins at will...

We couldn't stop Joeseph scoring in the first half, and we were without the Looney for the second half... I couldn't afford a bribe. With the majority of the High Elf KO'd coming back for the second half, and a deep kick, the High Elves swarmed the back line and put the Goblins on a deep defensive. Fortunately I still had both star players and managed to get our hands on the ball and it took a lot of dice to clear the High Elf attack. However, we were forced to try a desperate play and we had to try a TTM of Scrappa, even though he had already moved... but it was enough to get clear of the High Elves. Scrappa landed and ran in for an end of game draw. That's Goblins for you... it either fails catastrophically or works wonders. To secure a draw in this game felt very much like a win! 1-1 (7-2) draw. 

Game 5 vs mookstar10's Old World Alliance

mookstar10 - the man with the bell!

If I thought humans were a tough opponent, OWA were my worst. The Dwarves could tie up the Trolls and the Blitzers could do the damage and the Catcher could do all the scoring. This is how is played out: https://tourplay.net/en/blood-bowl/carrot-crunch-8/match/659906 

OWA stick it to the Goblins

After receiving, we played in a Blizzard! The ball went to my left wing. We managed to secure it on the second time of asking, and we even got a couple of fouls which resulted in casualties, but then game changed through my ignorance of the Pogo rules... I had a choice, dodge away with Scrappa (ball carrier) from the Dwarf Troll Slayer with Tackle, which would just get me one square away, or Leap 2 squares away alongside another Goblin in case he landed badly. Unfortunately Scrappa let me down here and he rolled a natural 1, followed by a 1 for Loner. I thought he would fall over where he lept to, but no, it was the square he was in, next to the Troll Slayer. Strangely enough, we conceded a TD.

We then went into the second half and the OWA went 0-2 up in 2 turns. The Goblins engineered a successful TTM to get a consolation score. 1-2.

But the OWA weren't done yet. They saw off my team and ran in for a 3rd, with the game ending 1-3 (2-3) loss.

Game 6 vs Unsullied's Goblins

Unsullied

Unsullied had been my closest rival for the Stunty Cup throughout the day, ending his day one with an impressive 2/1/0. However, his second day had two awful dice-rolling experiences, and Unsullied had become rather disillusioned. So much so, I was trying to convince him not to hang up his Blood Bowl boots. As it turned out, this match was the Stunty Cup Final!

Stunty Cup Final!

Unfortunately for me, despite me receiving and starting with a cas, everything Unsullied touched went off the pitch. It called for a desperate dodge out for Varag to get the ball and get a TD in turn 6. See here for the match details: https://tourplay.net/en/blood-bowl/carrot-crunch-8/match/659997

We fought hard to delay the opposition making progress, but they scored after pitch clearing us, having inflicted an overflowing injury box. The last two turns began with me returning just a Troll and Varag to the LoS... where of course, Pitch Invasion was rolled!! What transpired was a fair dose of luck. It was the Troll that ended up face down. With the ball landing near the centre square, Varag dodged back, failed, rerolled after a successful loner, dodged successfully, picked up the ball and made it back with 2x GFIs.

Varag went to one corner as Unsullied smelt victory. After using his last reroll, he then made all his other rushes but the eventual 2x dice Blitz resulted in both down / pushback... and the game ended 1-1 (1-8) draw.

As it turned out, I finished just ahead of Unsullied on Strength of Schedule as well as a better combined net TD and Cas total. It was a really hard game and I felt a lot like RigRogRig felt in my game 2 after all those casualties against me. I really hope Unsullied gets his mojo back and comes back stronger.

Final Standings and Winners

My 2025 rating went up by a dull 1.01, but my Regular NAF rating had a bit more of an improvement despite the 2/2/2 results:

The final coach standings are here, but find the winners below:

Carrot Crunch Winners

Winners photos! - Thanks to Darren Wadland for permission

Carrot Crunch 8 - Winner - Elysian83 - Carrots aloft!

Elysian83 - Winner - all calm!

2nd place - 03philpota

Most Touchdowns - Striple_pow

Most Fouls - Quack

Stunty Cup winner - Wotfudboy

Golden Goblin winner - the smallest trophy, but I was happy!

Best Painted - Sjapie

MJHumphrey - Best Local League Coach

Most Casualties - thebeardedhound

Wooden Spoon - snortingpug

Loot!

Yes, the patch is already on by CV case! ✌

Every one of my opponents were good sports and I think we had fun, if not memorable games! The question is, do I come back next year to defend the Stunty Cup. hmmm. We shall see! Lightning can't strike twice! A brilliant tournament, well organised and supported. Lots of people pitching in to help deserve great credit. Thanks for reading!