Eucalyptus Bowl - Day 2

Ahh the timeless formula for tragedy, being built up to dizzying heights only to be eventually brought low, in this case by some fiendish poor luck and some very talented opponents.

Going in to the day I thought we had two games left to play, with Ian and I very close on first and second respectively and therefore destined to play each other first off. Little did I know that we actually had THREE games to go so rather than being more than half way through with everything to gain, I had three more matches against the top tier coaches left if I wanted to walk away with the prize.

My game against Ian was fun, as it always is playing against him. He took his Orcs, and handed me my ass. He started off strongly by grinding me down the pitch and scoring at the end of the first half. I received in the second half, and we were both getting bashed fairly heavily. I was looking all set for an equaliser thanks to a failed GFI with a reroll but a shocking quad-skulls put an end to that, and from there he was all set to bulldoze me into a 2 - nil win. We did equal casualties, so I did walk out of it with a few points, but that win put a massive dent in my chances and put Ian in prime position to take the tournament.

My second game was against Paul and his Norse. I met Paul for the first time at CanCon earlier in the year where I played his Humans in the last round. Back then, I gave him quite a thrashing so he was definitely keen to redeem his honor. He started poorly with a few players knocked out and a dead mino (apoth'd). By near the end of half time I was up two nil and looking set for another easy win. He managed to kill a wolf and score a TD in two turns, but things were still looking OK.

In the second half, we had a massive reversal which saw the end of my casualty count and his minotaur getting the ball on a touchback and walking it up the pitch with a series of blitzes. He had the option to stall and get a draw, but decided to go for a win. With four turns left, he was a man up on me and I only had one wolf left. In the first turn I managed to kill out two players, and suddenly things weren't looking that grim. I managed to grind my way up the pitch and watched him lose two blitz in a row thanks to his unreliable mino. He eventually had to throw a two dice my choice block on the ghoul with the ball, failed it and I walked in the third touch down.

That left me in second place behind Ian (who had scored yet another win and was practically guaranteed take it home). To win, I needed to get a full point win in the final round, while Ian would need to get 2 points or less (out of 36, so in other words get completely whupped). My final opponent was Brian, a skaven coach. I was thankful that I wasn't playing Ian's opponent (more dwarves), and hoping to break loads of that lovely av7. Sadly, it was not to be. I just had to sit back and watch as his invicible rats shrugged off all my efforts to hurt him (including almost constant claw/tackle combos on the gutter runners). Meanwhile his four gutter runners ran rings around me, and we ended up with a score of 3 - 1 against and only one casualty in the entire match, against me! Absolutely dreadful result, but he was a nice guy and overall I had a great time despite two frustrating games on day 2.

When the dust had settled, I ended up in third place behind Ian and Brian which I was still very happy with out of 32 coaches (does it make it any better if I say the only people who beat me were in first and second place??). I was a touch disappointed to find out that there was no prize for third place, but as luck would have it my name was randomly picked out of a hat and I won the second blood bowl novel (I took the first as my prize last year, and had been joking around with Ian that he would need to get the second one for when I won).

I had a really great time, and I am thrilled that I managed to make it this year (Suzy started grumbling about painting when I typed that in hehe). I am also looking forward to the NAF rankings being updated, even with my loss against Brian which will be pretty dire, I am still fairly confident of an increase in rankings as the other loss was against Ian who was at least 20 points ahead of me.