Friday, September 25, 2015

Innsmouth Eagles Fail to Soar





We had the opening week of the local Blood Bowl League and my Slann team did not come out very well.  I had never played Slann before and while I have a ton of miniatures I am not a great coach so it was a 2-1 loss.  One of the better coaches(Came in Second at Zlurpee with Slann) was watching over my shoulder and I am pretty sure laughing to himself about what I was doing.



I think it was a pretty tough match up with a mid level Norse team and I was just trying to survive without to much damage.  That failed when like on the second turn of the game he mighty blow/piled on one of my very expensive blitzers to a movement bust that Traveling Apothecaried to a movement bust.  So he will hopefully not pick up any SPP in the near future and I can drop him and pick up someone else later in the season.  If he gets an MVP or something I will probably have to hold on to him until he gets hurt again.  I am also out a lineman for my next game so 2 Journeymen will be filling in for me.

The thing about Slann is that they start with no core skills (Block, Dodge, Sure Hands, Pass, or Catch).  While there are other teams that start with no Core Skills, every other one of those teams start with access to multiple high Str players to help out at least on the block part of the game.  The Norse ofcourse start with all Block with the low armor as the draw back which did not help me as I could not get anyone down pretty much all game.  Opening drive on defense he took the ball down for an easy score.  I did get I think 2 1D blocks on the ball carrier but against a Block possing player those have the same likelyhood of knocking me over as the ball carrier.

On my opening drive, I missed where I need to move a guy to start getting some 2D blocks and later missed the path to take involving a dodge to allow a clear pass.  My pass was then intercepted and then taken back for another easy score.

The second half opened with a weather change to pouring rain which is ofcourse not what you want when you are already down 2 scores on a reroll eating team anyway.  I got the ball then got turned over then he got the ball but he left his ball carrier next to the side line so I leaped into the cage and 1D crowd pushed him.  That launched the ball across the pitch to a pretty open area where I had a catcher nearby who darted in to pick up the ball and failed.  There was a made scrample for the wet ball that might have last 2 or 3 turns.  At that point there were to many tackle zones on the ball so I tried to pop it out by pushing his guy onto it but since I failed to knock him over he managed to finally pick it up.  On his next turn though he proceeded to drop a hand off which I was able to scoop up and dart off.  Not far enough as his Yeti tracked me down and get me down.  But again he fails in an attempt to pick up the ball.

It is now my turn 8.  I have 2 catchers pretty much in the clear (might need to blitz off 1 marker) but the ball is in 2 tackle zones in the rain sort of far away.  But my downed catcher is near by so he gets up leaps onto the ball, picks it up, dodges out and gets to a quick pass to another catcher and completes the pass allowing for a little bit of dignity.  About halfway through the second half I declared that this looked like a no earned SPP game which is pretty much the worst outcome as I need skills bad but did get that little something at the end.  It was pretty much a play that most starting teams would not be able to pull off.  Swapping gutter runners for the catchers would probably have given the standing up guy enough move to go around the guys so he did not have to dodge into two tackle zones to get the ball.

I have seen what they can do and it is amazing now I just need to figure out how to play them during the times when I just want normal stalling and such.  Next time it is a Pro Elf team who will only have one game so a more even match up.  Probably another loss but I am learning on the leap here.

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