Oh, Criptfiend managed to pull it off, eh? I wonder, what would happen if that beastman didn't get lucky back then... No matter, congratulations. Unless if I'm reading this wrong and it was i2amroy who won Training league? I'm confused how can there be elven AND chaos victory. :S
As for me and i2amroy, we played our game on Saturday, yeah, with the final score 3 - 0 for wood elves.
In all honesty I didn't expect to win at all. In fact, my strategy was to try and cause as much damage as possible. Alas, I got sloppy before the match even started - wanted to buy a troll for maximum bashines, but not paying attention I clicked the big red "X" instead of "save" after I bought him (it?) and noticed that when the match was already under way. In addition, I bought a wizard, bloodwiser babes, 1x bribe and iirc one extra reroll. But again, being in a hurry, I forgot to pick cheering fans AND I didn't really know what to even buy. In hindsight, maybe one more bribe would be better than the babes... well anyways, The game started with the elves receiving. I however formed a decently strong line, managing to knock down some of them including one wardancer, stalling their drive a little bit. The tree taking roots and me throwing fireball at the ball helped to a degree, also. Despite that however, few turns in the game elves managed to get the ball behind my lines after a successful throw-and-catch. The ball-carrier run towards my TD line, with one more go-for-it roll needed to score... alas, failed. It was a nice action and I was actually cheering for him to score, but well, my orcs didn't bother anyways. So I've managed to pick a ball and form a semi-cage. It was even starting to look like I could score instead - after some initial weak throws, my luck turned and at one point all but bare two elves were left standing on the field with my orcs virtually untouched and the ball still in my hands. Alas, the elves that DID stand were right next to my barely functional cage. Which at that point was still just around 5-6 steps away from my TD. It didn't help that at one point I by mistake blitzed one elf with my loner lineman. The roll wasn't catastrophic, but still, one of the remaining elves was a wardancer with strip ball skill so while i2amroy's imminent roll was just double push, it was enough to let the ball change the owner. Thus the first TD was scored on a turn 8 for the elves.
The second drive started with me receiving, but I didn't have any concrete plan so I just proceeded to do some bashing. I did however pick up the ball. As it was the last turn of the first half, I've decided to try silly things and I did a +3 (+4?) throw to my closest orc... and much to my amazement succeeded! Felt good, brah. I've ended the turn with fouling the tree-man which I successfully knocked down before. Had to use my bribe lest my black orc be sent off the field and I got nothing in return. Oh well. Also as it turns out, this was the only foul in the whole game.
On 3rd drive elves sent ball in rather peculiar position. Deep behind my lines on my right side, with barely an orc in sight as I made a strong center line with weak flanks and back. Misjudging my position as advantageous, I proceeded to do some tree bashing. Forgetting the MA of the elves, a big amount of them rushed through my empty flanks and towards the ball I just picked. I tried to salvage situation as best as I could, but with majority of my orcs locked in mid-pitch brawl and lacking one orc who got hurt in last half, the elves eventually swarmed the ball-carrier and scored.
4th drive started identical, with i2amroy committing to his strategy of sending the ball deep in my territory and then outmaneuvering me. Learning from my mistakes, I moved more orcs towards the ball this time. Resistance from me was stiffer this time, but I did make some mistakes with how I positioned my black orc, allowing them to be dangerously surrounded and in the end two of them got even knocked out, for shame. Another TD followed eventually, on 14 elf turn or something. The rest of the match passed without major incidents, but I am proud to say that during the whole match I have managed to throw and succeed in catching the ball for the whole 3 times. I may have lost that one TD wise, but in my heart, my orcs will always be the winners. Because playing a passing ball with orcs is like a surfing on the edge of a nightmare - a sweet, sweet dreamy experience that may just turn unspeakably horrible.
All in all, I must say I am rather dumbfound by how this whole season turned out. I never expected to make it as far as semi-finals, let alone finish as 3rd (still not sure here, we aren't playing any matches to decide who gets to be 3rd or what). So that was interesting. And being my first proper Blood Bowl experience (ignoring hours I put in SP as there were less of them), I must say I'm decently satisfied with my performance. So here I lift a cup (skull?) to all players I unintentionally hurt or killed and to all foes I played against. It was tough, sometimes nerve-wrecking and sometimes at mercy of Nuffle to the point of being hilarious, but ultimately enjoyable. Thank you all.
I'll be definitely continue to play this. So sign me up!
Team Name: The Jolly Waaaaagh!abonds
Team Race: Orcs
League: Main League
I'll be playing in training league too, but haven't yet decided on race. Nurgle was tempting, but I concluded they are more tricky to pull off than I'd really be prepared to spend my time on. So currently I'm thinking either Amazons or Chaos Dwarfs... or doing something completely silly and picking Goblins. Other people feel free to take any of those teams though, I'm not calling dibs on them or anything.