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Virral |
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Post subject:
 Posted: Nov 13, 2006 - 07:28 PM
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Joined: Jan 15, 2006
Australia
Posts: 92
Location: Australia
Status: Offline
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Thought I should give a quick write up of the weekend, I had a great time at powerfist and although we didn't get a huge number of players I believe fun was had by all.
There were six players all up, Elan (Dwarves), Virral (Dwarves), Gregory_n_white (Humans), JoeKano (Undead), Twahn (Zons) and Tim (Zons). With 2 dwarf teams and two zons, it promised to be a fairly savage tournament, although I for one never really realised the kind of zon-destruction I was hoping for 
Game 1: Tim's Zons.
My first game was a tough one, Tim played really well and even though I managed 1-0 at half time, he hadn't suffered anything worse than a KO and overall hadn't had too much trouble with tackle. Thanks to his own bad luck, I managed to hold it to 1-0 at full time, although I really can't take a lot of credit for that. He did manage to kill a runner in the final turn, but thankfully I received 90k winnings so despite a poor start I was in a good position for round 2.
Round 2: JoeKano's Undead
JoeKano was pumped up after a savage win against Greg's humans (enough to call for a reset, with at least 2 dead and another SI human) along with doubles on the skill rolls for both ghouls (took Jump Up on both, an odd choice if you ask me but valid I suppose). We had a fairly grueling grind back and forth, with an eventual draw at the end, although I pipped him in Casualties (including a -av on a JumpUp ghoul, mwahhaa).
Round 3: Elan's Dwarves
Well I knew it was coming eventually, but I had hoped for another "soft" game before playing the other Dwarf team, to give me a chance to skill up a bit. At this stage I had mighty blow on a troll slayer and guard on a blitzer, Elan had a Guard Longbeard and MB Blitzer (but hadn't suffered any serious Cas while I had lost a runner first off so he started with a reserve while I did not). We also had pouring rain for the first half, although all players managed to ignore it (read: we totally forgot until we got a changing weather result on a Kick Off). There was also a bit of a hiccup when we discovered near the end of the game that Elan's Blitzer which had scored several early casualties against me was not in fact not the Blitzer with Mighty Blow, despite it being used a few times. To be honest that kind of soured the game for me, but I was at a loss as to how it could be fixed at that late stage and Elan didn't make any suggestions and as a result I had to swallow my first loss of the tournament.
Round 4: Greg's Humans
Well, with a 1/1/1 record at the end of day one I was still in with a shot (along with everyone except Tim). I believe at this stage JK was on 1/2/0, Greg was on 2/0/1, Elan was on 2/0/1, Tim was on 0/0/3 and Twahn was on 1/0/2. I hadn't skilled up anyone after the game against Elan, but I finally had both an Apoth plus a Reserve and had a nice spread of points amongst my Longbeards so with a Cas or MVP in the right place maybe I could skill up one or two of them.
Greg started the first turn well, setting up his catcher in a well defended spot for a round 2 TD. If he hadn't muffed the catch standing right next to the sideline, I doubt I could have done anything about it, and had already resolved to going for an equalizer at half time. Unfortunately for him, the ball went into the crowd and they kindly threw it into his half right near all my dwarves, with most of his team on the other side of the pitch. I then followed up with 5 av breaks in 6 blocks, 4 cas (1 death apothed) and 1 stun. It steadily went downhill from there, as Greg proceeded to receive one of the most reliable dice-rapes I've ever seen. Despite a steady loss of players (I believe the final Cas count was 8 or 9 to his 1) he did his best to pull things together but it was not to be and I won easily thanks to the best dice I'd been rolling all weekend. As the dust settled I realised that not only had I skilled up a Runner with two TD (+ag no less!), but FOUR LONGBEARDS thanks to a perfect placement of Casualties and MVPs. It was absolutely crazy, but I was hardly about to complain. I ended up with 3 guard and 1 stand firm, although in hindsight I should have taken Mighty Blow instead of the SF as it wasn't really that useful in a tournament style setting.
Round 5: Twahn's Zons (or as I like to call it, Nuffle's Revenge)
Twahn had won his game against JKs Undead, but received a fairly savage beating for it, so he was down to 11 barely developed players vs my freshly skilled up team. To add insult to injury, I decided to hire Grim Ironjaw to replace the runner who was missing a game, so I still had a reserve. Elan had secured a place in the final by this stage, however the second spot was still available, and whoever won between Twahn and myself would be taking that spot (and therefore the sword, as regardless of who won Elan had already said he wouldn't be taking it). This is when Nuffle decided I'd had it a little two easy in my last game, and decided to bend me over the table to see how I liked it!
The first half seemed to be going reasonably well, and while Twahn was pressing every advantage he found I was holding him back well enough, and managed a few crucial KO's and crowdsurfed his +str (handicap) Catcher with a loan troll slayer to prevent a touchdown. Unfortunately, Grim let me down trying to grab the ball late in the half, and the scatter left it in the endzone. Twahn was able to dodge a player out into the open and grab the ball despite Grim's tacklezone, leaving the result as 0-1 to him at half time.
In the second half, things went horribly wrong. I rolled no less than five separate sets of double skulls, and out of the eight turns played I only finished one without causing a turnover due to bad dice. This included failing to pick up the ball several times, allowing Twahn the chance to run his players back and nab it off me fairly easily, scoring again without much trouble. I had a last ditch effort to score as quickly as possible, but it was all in vein due to the dice and the dwarves couldn't stop punching themselves in the face while the Amazons looked on in amazement. Final score was 0-2 to Twahn, and I went on to play for 3rd place against Greg's Humans again. Just to add insult to injury my final winnings were a mere 30k, and I only had 10k in the bank. Of course, 40k is just enough to buy jack shit, so I hired four cheerleaders and then fired them again to pull down my TR by 4 points.
Final Round: Greg's Humans (the Revenge!)
Greg had watched his excellent effort in Day 1 go down the toilet on Day 2, first in my game and then against Tim's Zons. We were playing off for third place and after the sound thrashing I'd just given him he wasn't looking forward to our game.
Despite that, his guys rallied much better than in their previous game, and by halfway through the second half we were on 2-2 with him in a reasonably well guarded position to score with a blitzer. I managed some risky dodges and a one dice blitz and not only did I knock the player down but also knocked him off the pitch. I then managed to snag the ball and grind it up the pitch for a third touch down, winning 3rd place in the tournament as a result. Greg took it very well, and we both agreed it had been a much more enjoyable game than our first, as Nuffle left it more up to skill than sheer random badluck as to who walked away with the prize.
Final thoughts: I didn't get to see the game between Elan and Twahn, but I do know that despite his superior numbers and star players Elan wasn't giving Twahn quite as much of a stomping as he had hoped for. When we checked at half time in our game things seemed to be going Twahn's way, but I gather it feel apart in the second half of their game. So the final ranking was 1. Elan, 2. Twahn, 3. Virral, 4. Greg, 5. Tim and 6. JoeKano. We all had a great time and the prizes were great too. I scored free entry to both CanCon and EucBowl plus a $60 voucher for Milsims. Everyone got a few mini's or free entry to events, and I don't think anyone had a bad experience with sportsmanship etc that can unfortunately marr events like these. I have no idea how that works out financially, as they would have only received $60 at most in entry fees and gave out several hundred dollars worth of prizes (even given prize support from the NAF etc, even just the Milsims vouchers awarded added up to more than $200).
If I had one disappointment it would be the game against Elan, simply because a few mistakes during the game had a fairly serious impact on my game and there really was nothing in place to "fix" things beyond simply restarting the game, and we didn't really have time for that. It kind of reminded me about the game Doubleskulls played at EucBowl where he accidentally played a half with 12 players, I'm not trying to suggest it happened on purpose or anything like that, but mistakes like that can have a serious impact on a game and in a competitive setting like this I wish we had something in place to set things right again, some kind of penalty to balance out the advantage that the player has received. Elan did remove the SPP received by that player as a result of the casualties, at my suggestion, but that didn't really change the fact that I had spent most of the game down players as a result of the mistake. |
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OZjesting |
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Post subject:
Posted: Nov 14, 2006 - 05:42 PM
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Joined: Jul 14, 2003
Posts: 44
Status: Offline
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Excellent wrap up! I surely wish I could have been there.
On the subject of mistakes: While it is indeed unfortunate...I think some of the responsibility stays with the opponent. While I would like to think it would never be "on purpose" these over sights occur and BOTH players should be on the look out. I always count the other guys players at kick off and I always write a quick crib sheet on what extra skills any players may have. The first time he says "+1 for MB" I have a quick peek and can say "sorry mate..the OTHER one is the bruiser"
Be surprised how many times this has saved me in live games from the "one has it one doesn't but they look the same" syndrome  |
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Virral |
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Post subject:
Posted: Nov 14, 2006 - 10:31 PM
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Joined: Jan 15, 2006
Australia
Posts: 92
Location: Australia
Status: Offline
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| This is true, I like to think I'd notice if someone set up with 12 players, but I'm less likely to notice if someone uses the wrong blitzer with a skill, but I would know that one of the blitzers HAD mighty blow. I would tend to take the players word for it that they know which mini is which (one of the things I love about fumbbl is being able to see at a glance who has what skills without constantly asking the opponent). |
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Elan |
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Post subject:
Posted: Nov 16, 2006 - 03:12 AM
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Joined: Feb 12, 2003
Australia
Posts: 120
Location: Australia
Status: Offline
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Welp - gotta cop it sweet - I buggered up! I used the wrong blitzer consistently during the match as the Mighty Blow dude - I was very embarrassed and it took the edge of what had been an excellent game.
What to do about it? Restart being impossible, I decided to dock myself the SPP and CAS earnt by that player. I can't say it had a big impact at the end of the day, but I made sure to avoid the same mistake.
Tehre are two extremes to the debate, one would see me forfiet the match the other would see me say something like" welcome to blood bowl - you caught me, play on" and leave the responsibility on my opponent to check against cheating. Either way does not work well.
As it was, I left it up to Virral ... and here we are. This was the only unfortunate issue of an otherwise excellent competition. If anyone has a reasonable suggestion as to how this can be dealt with in future - please write it up. |
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Elan |
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Post subject:
Posted: Nov 16, 2006 - 03:15 AM
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Joined: Feb 12, 2003
Australia
Posts: 120
Location: Australia
Status: Offline
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| A full wrap up will be posted when the last player joins NAF, so I can report all games to Babs. I expect this to occur in a day or so. |
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Bevan |
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Post subject:
Posted: Nov 16, 2006 - 03:44 AM
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Joined: Feb 13, 2003
Posts: 194
Status: Offline
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Elan wrote: If anyone has a reasonable suggestion as to how this can be dealt with in future - please write it up.
If everyone used my system there wouldn't be any problems.  I bring a brush and some paint along to an event and repaint evey model that gains an upgrade to indicate what skills the player has. Then I know and I can explain the system to my opponent before we start so that he knows who has Block, Guard or whatever. I must admit it can be a bit tedious fitting this in between games, so I did appreciate Eucalyptus Bowl where we had the same skills throughout. 
I don't really expect everyone to do this, but I've noticed most of my opponents paint their players with enough differences so they can say "The one with the gold helmet has guard", etc. I usually write these on my sheet so I can keep track without asking every turn, "Now which one had guard?" |
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Virral |
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Post subject:
Posted: Nov 16, 2006 - 09:23 PM
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Joined: Jan 15, 2006
Australia
Posts: 92
Location: Australia
Status: Offline
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That's probably a bit drastic, but you can get little sticky dots in multiple colours which would do the same job stuck to the base. Blue for block, yellow for dodge etc.
Not that I would do this myself, I am more than happy to tell my opponent what skills are where whenever asked (and always go through them at the start of the game), and will indicate them in some other way when asked such as rotating guard sideways so they can be easily spotted, but they have to ask. I won't volunteer that information again unless it is relevant to whatever they happen to be doing, such as trying to push back someone with Stand Firm etc), my assumption being that they have been told at the start who has what and if they aren't sure they can ask.
In future I'll return to the habit of making a note for myself which number player has what, to prevent dirty cheaters like Elan scamming me! Haha just kidding of course, I know it was an honest mistake and at the end of the day we'll never know if it would have made any difference in the slightest to the game (after all, he did HAVE a blitzer with mighty blow, it just wasn't the one using the skill for most of the game!). If I had really thought it was in some way malicious or an actual attempt to cheat perhaps I would have kicked up a fuss, but as it stands the thing to do is chalk it up to experience and move on |
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Bevan |
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Post subject:
Posted: Nov 16, 2006 - 10:11 PM
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Joined: Feb 13, 2003
Posts: 194
Status: Offline
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Elan wrote: I used the wrong blitzer consistently during the match as the Mighty Blow dude - I was very embarrassed and it took the edge of what had been an excellent game.
The way you and Virral have described it, you used that Blitzer consistently because you both thought he was the one with Mighty Blow. So if either of you had checked the player numbers carefully you would just have swapped to the other Blitzer and used that the same way. This indicates that if you had sorted it out correctly it should have made no difference at all to the game. Just treat the situation as though the Blitzers were numbered incorrectly for that game.
The consistency of using the same one suggests that you shouldn't lose any (more) sleep over this issue. |
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Elan |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jan 24, 2007 - 07:14 AM
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Joined: Feb 12, 2003
Australia
Posts: 120
Location: Australia
Status: Offline
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Bevan, concur.
Virral, concur.
Ozjesting, you suck as you did not attend.
To everyone who did attend, I "lurve youse all" and you may have noticed your rankings have shifted {or you now have one} courtesy of Babs, who managed to drag himself away from damaging houses to finalise the results and memberships.
I think Virral has already done a wrap up, except - everyone had a ball, Twahn wandered off with the Sword. Everyone else ended up with some very nice free figures and/or MILSIMS cash vouchers and free entrys to some 2007 events. All up and excellent weekend and I look forward to Joekano running the Melbourne event ... be scared, be very scared!! |
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Virral |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jan 28, 2007 - 04:03 PM
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Joined: Jan 15, 2006
Australia
Posts: 92
Location: Australia
Status: Offline
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| I just spent my Milsims voucher at CanCon, since that way I could run my grubby little hands over all their merch rather than just ordering over the website. I picked up the World of Warcraft game and expansion, Marvel Heroes boardgame and the Dunwich Horror expansion to the Arkham Horror. Ok... so that was a LITTLE more than the 60$ voucher, but it was just enough to make me feel like I wasn't going completely over the top (which I totally was). |
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