Eucalyptus Bowl - Day 1

Well, as you may or may not know last year I had a surprise win at the first Eucalyptus Bowl (a Blood Bowl tournament). I had only been playing the game for a few months, and basically had a two day string of bizarre luck which led me to taking home first place.

Last year it was held in September, but this time around they decided to move it forward to July to better fit in with the other Aussie comps and also avoid Fathers day which fell on the Sunday last year. Considering it is held in an RSL, I am sure you can imagine how busy the place was on Fathers day, so they weren't really prepared for a 40+ person event being held at the same time.

So this year it is a smaller event, I think somewhere over 20 people, and many familiar faces (and names) from CanCon, last years Euc Bowl and online via fumbbl. I went into it expecting to get thrashed this year to make up for my freak luck, but much to my own surprise I ended up winning all three of my games, although none of them were easy. And keeping to form, I have taken my Necromantic team for the third tournament in a row. Assuming I do well with them, I will definitely be taking a different team next time around, probably Skaven.

The first game was against a human team (Nils from Canberra). He started strongly, with a score early on. We also rolled sweltering heat which took out one of my wolves and one of his blitzers. I managed to equalise on turn 8 of the last half and went into the second half with a 3 man numbers advantage thanks to the heat, one cas and 2 KO (I was also down a few players, including a golem). In the second half, his team basically fell apart with a bunch of casualties and KOs. By the end of the game, his entire team was off the pitch, and this was after several turns of doing nothing but unstunning his team. The final score was 2 - 1, with 5 - 1 casualties.

After this win, I was feeling pretty good but this changed quickly when I found out who my next opponent was. Brendon and his dwarves! He had been sitting at the same table as me during game one, and I had just watched him demolish another necro team. Plus as a general rule I hate dwarves, so I was not happy at all! But it turns out I shouldn't have worried, as my luck kicked in to give me a hand. After Brendon failed a GFI and left the ball wide open early on, I managed to keep him on the run and generally avoided any damage thanks to his failing to break armour. While I only got one casualty, it was a death with a failed apoth, so that is always nice :) Final score was 2 - 0, with 1 - 2 casualties.

Ok, now around this time last year when I had inexplicably won two games, I was feeling really stoked but also I was well aware that I had been very lucky and it probably wouldn't last. And last year, it turned out the third game was also the hardest... and there was no changes this year! My final game of the day was against a new face, John, and his Khemri (dum dum duuuummmm!) It is always scary facing khemri, especially when all four mummies have block (along with two block thro-ra, which in my opinion was a poor choice, he should have taken some Dirty Player to really crush the other teams).

He kicked off (his choice) and I started off very strongly with a crowd surf and four zombies keeping his four mummies pinned down. I scored reasonably quickly (I probably could have dragged it out for the entire half, but it didn't seem very sporting). In the second half he got the ball and managed to form up a cage with his team. It took me a few turns to crack it open, but he did his bit to help me by not moving up when he had a chance, leaving tacklezones on the corner of the cage plus also throwing one dice blocks with the ball carrier (which leaves the ball in one place, rather than moving it up the pitch). Ultimately he ended up with a mummy in my half with the ball, but using Strip Ball I managed to take it off him and end any chance he had to make it a draw. I followed up with a 5+ pick up and a bunch of dodges to pull off a pass to a wolf, and managed to move the ball more than three quarters of the way across the board deep into his half in a single turn. So the end result was 2 - 0, 3 - 1 casualties.

So at the end of day one I had won all three games, with only Ian Williams matching that and everyone else having at least one draw or loss. So tomorrow I will probably face Ian, and if I can pull off one more win against him... who knows?