Mythical Mayhem III - The Dragon's Draught - Tournament Report

Mythical Mayhem III - The Dragon's Draught

Intro

For those that don't know him, Alistair Pring loves his Blood Bowl. You only need to chat to him to find out that he loves to run or participate in some of the more unusual tournaments around. He is full of enthusiasm for the game, and is probably one of the nicest people in the hobby/Blood Bowl scene you could hope to meet. I think we had got chatting at a 7's tournament at Warhammer World one year, and I had promised to look out for his tournaments.

Venue

Cheltenham wasn't the closest of venues for me, being just shy of 2 hours away by car from me. However, I wanted to try and vary some of the tournaments I was attending, give the blog a bit more diverse coverage whilst also meeting some new people. Cheltenham seemed nice enough, a similar to Bath in housing styles. The venue was essentially a pub that with a split personality - by day it was a gaming den, complete with shop, and by night - aka "Incom Gaming", it was a pub - aka "2Pigs".

Mythical Mayhem III

So, what made this different from any other tournament? Well, firstly, you didn't need to bring a team or create a roster. Why? Well, this was a Team Draft tournament. The idea being the rosters were all pre-chosen by Alistair, to a value of 1 million gold. Things got underway with 2x coaches being called up at random. They would whisper their choice for that match and then, assuming they were different choices, would go away and select 2x skills (or not!) via the "Dragon's Draught" - more on that later.

The Race Board of Destiny...

Once you had selected a team (after much booing if the decision had taken too long) you picked up the relevant team-in-a-box and wandered off to find a table (yes, game boards were provided as well!). 

Alistair's Teams - in tupperware!

The next thing to do was grab your goody-bag, find the green and red dice, decide whether you were going to try and scupper your team for the next user (red) or go with some solid skill choices (green). There was more to it than that, but the picture below will fill you in on the detail:

Alistair had posted all the rosters to the Facebook Event page. After each round, the coach at the time would note the extra skills (unless they got "Nothing") on the sheet.

Once round one was completed, the coaches lowest in the table would then get to choose first, leaving the more successful coaches to chose from some less-than-optimal rosters/races.

Round One - Elven Union v's Icey-Bee's Old World Alliance

I think we were both a little surprised to still be able to select two decent races as a good number of coaches had already chosen before we got to choose. In hindsight I should have looked at the rosters before the day, particularly as Alistair had posted them on Facebook. Had I done so, I would have taken OWA over Elven Union.

We both had the same number of fans in perfect weather, and I won the kick off and opted to receive. I had chosen Block on a Catcher and (I think) Dodge on a Blitzer. I was there to have fun, and knew this was likely going to be a high scoring match. The Elves scored quickly by turn 2/1 and then the weather changed to Very Sunny, restricting passing play to -1. 

My notes go a bit vague at this point, but I have a feeling we saw out the first half, with the elves demonstrating some unusual robustness despite the OWA rolling splats and armour breaks aplenty.

The OWA came back strong in the second half, with the Treeman remaining remarkably mobile throughout the match. We did however managed to sack the ball carrier, get the ball and grab a second Touchdown. We even managed to out-bash our opponents, winning 2-0 (2-1).

Round Two - Tomb Kings vs Little P's Underworld Denizens

I looked at the Tomb Kings roster to find I only had one skill from the previous coach... Clearly they had either rolled "Nothing" or had forgotten to write it down. From memory I had a Stand Firm Tomb Guardian, and gave a Blitzer and another Tomb Guardian Mighty Blow each. 

Having rolled fans (more) and weather (PW) we managed to get Pitch Invasion on the kick off after opting to Receive, resulting of two of my LoS eating dirt, joining the Skaven Thrower. From there on, the game was pretty 'bleh' until later in the half when we made (2-1) casualties and scored in turn 7/6. However, the Denizens equalised in turn 8/8, but not before we inflicted a 3rd casualty. The half ended 1-1 (3-1).

The second half began badly as a Tomb Guardian was hurt (but regenerated). We got our own back by KOing the Rat Ogre. The Tomb Kings then systematically took out the Denizens. Winning was inevitable in the end as we got the ball back and inflicted no less than 8 casualties. The match ended with a 2-1 (8-2) win and Paul wondering what had happened to the dice.

Round Three - Vampires vs Chaos_John's Goblins

With 2 wins under my belt, race choice was pretty ropey. Alistair had reported that in the two rounds there had been very few draws, so lots of coaches still had their hats in the ring.

I ended up going for Vampires, and I was up against Goblins.

John admitted he wasn't very used to Goblins. We had more fans in Perfect Weather and we were receiving. My team had Block on the Thrower and Mighty Blow on a Runner and the Vargheist. I also had Kick on a Thrall as well as Taunt on a Blitzer.

Our approach was to take out the Special Weapons as soon as possible as the Goblins only had one Bribe. We started by taking out the Chainsaw, and went 1-0 (1-0) by turn 4/3. After seeing the Ball & Chain get sent off, we managed to sack the ball carrier and score again in turn 8/7. This was after seeing the Bomma Bombadier managed to cause chaos with bombs being intercepted and thrown around.

However, the Goblins pulled off a perfect Throw Team Mate despite me using 'Kick', and the half finished 2-1 (1-0). 

The second half was all about me hanging on to the ball and then looking for a good opportunity to score. However, the ball went deep and I had to use the old saying "the best form of defence is attack".

The ball was deep in my half and the Thrower managed to get to it. With the Goblins still looking threatening, we made a thrust up the left wing. By this stage, there were more and more spectators joining, and eventually we ended up being the final game to finish - this was purely from all the dice rolls involved in the Goblin game.

It was at this stage I didn't fully appreciate that the Throwing/Interception had changed. Despite marking a Goblin with 2x Vamp players, he rolled a natural 6, caught the ball, and then started to make his way down into my half.

Things were looking odds on for a 2-2 draw, with John enjoying the turn of events. We were running out of options. Through a desperate play we managed to prone the Goblin (who's armour stubbornly refused to break!!). I couldn't get to the ball. In theory, the Goblin only needed to stand up, dodge (with Dodge) ona 3+, pick up the ball 3+ and GFI x1 to score - all more than doable with a reroll...

...so I ran my Vampire Runner, without rerolling, back down the pitch, dodging twice, and then fouled the Goblin! However, the armour refused to break!!

The Goblin then got up, dodged successfully once, but failed the pick up, rerolled, picked up, successfully dodged and just needed a GFI... and 1'd. But the game wasn't over.

I managed to get the ball back up the field, and with some nifty dodging and handing off, managed to score a 3rd Touchdown, rolling all these dice in front of the entire tournament attendees! Match won 3-1 (3-2). Unlucky John, but was a good game!

Results

My results were as follows, which was fun as I hadn't played any of my races in the new ruleset. I was one of three coaches to finish on 3 wins!

<INSERT FINAL TABLE HERE>

The Necromantic Coaches had the best record of the day! 

Wooden Spoon! - TheKSLord

Most Casualties - Enderman

Most TD's - docminiature - Top photo-bombing!

3rd Place - Me!, Wotfudboy

Second Place - elplanet4

Winner - lord_chelmsford

Thanks to the Organisers for a well organised tourny!

Prizes

I got myself a nice GW BB mug. The Wooden Spooner got the Blood Bowl manual! And of course, the winner got a nice Dragon trophy.

Thanks to all the attendees, venue staff, organisers and of course my opponents for making it a fun day out!