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lemmy |
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Post subject: Uruguay, Blood Bowl and Soccer
 Posted: Mar 14, 2016 - 06:46 AM
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Joined: Dec 22, 2015
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Status: Offline
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Hi, I am Lembocha, a Uruguayan Blood Bowl Player. Some of you may know me from this subreddit, others from the BATTL Circuit (GOBBLN, USAB, RMBBL or BBT), and a few from the backstage of the ongoing World Cup. With the help of coaches Fito and Cfarbes / Caio, I run the Latin American League called ABBLE (Asociación de Blood Bowl de Lustria y Estalia). We started as the online heir of the Uruguayan scene of tabletop, and now we've grown to reach all Spanish speaking coaches in the world.
People often ask me how come Uruguay, being such a small country, has so many Blood Bowl players, so I decided to write this small article to let you all know a bit more about the history of our beloved e-sport in my country.
Uruguay is a small country located east from Argentina and south from Brazil. It's population is less than 4M, but still we have a history in sports achievements, being the hosts of the first Football (soccer) World Cup in history, and having won it twice, as well as winning the Olympics twice too, back when the World Cup didn't exist (which is the reason why we say we actually have 4 world championships hehe). We also have 15 South American Cups, which no other country can boast. Some of the best football clubs have Uruguayan players among their ranks (you have all probably heard about Luis Suarez, the Bloodthirsty). This is why people are sometimes amused by how Uruguay reaches out so well in the world football-wise, having such a small population. How does this relate to Blood Bowl? You join the dots.
It all started when Grim Goblin, the only RPG / MtG club in our capital city, Montevideo, got a core box of the game in 2003. I was 14 years old back then, and I played TCGs but was walking my first baby steps into de RPG universe too (as so many of us did I guess). I'll always remember the day my best friend and I asked the owners of the store to try Blood Bowl. We used some not-so-well-balanced die, and our Orcs vs Chaos match ended up in bloodshed.
Miniatures were hard to come by back then. We had to order them from Argentina, so most of the time we were using proxy plastic toy soldiers as Sauri, Black Orcs and other positionals. Our league grew really fast, since the game is attractive to all kinds of "hardware gamers", and we got to the astonishing number of 32 participants in the height of our brief history. Sadly, with globalization came internet purchases, and the store had to close because it was not selling as well as it used to.
That was when Blood Bowl 1 was released for PC, and my mate Cfarbes who we call The Ogre because of his massive size (or was it that the little one was me?), decided to gather some of the old coaches into a new online league, which he named LUBBA (Liga Uruguaya de Blood Bowl Asociado). That lasted for a couple of years, and it did so good that we even got a ticket for the first Online Blood Bowl World Cup. Since Cfarbes had earned one in another league, the runner up grabbed it and we soon could boast of having two Uruguayans in the global competition.
Some time after that, Cfarbes decided to take a break, and so did some others, so our numbers dwindled a bit. Trying to revamp the league, I decided, with the help of Fito, to broaden our horizons and go regional instead of national. That didn't go too well because BB:CE was not doing too good either.
Luckily for us, BB2 was released last year, and that brought some of our old coaches (such as Cfarbes) back, as well as some other Latin American guys who were looking for a nice place to play organized scheduled cups.
We're now more than 24 people, starting the third season of our league, and we got a ticket to the World Cup again, so we're also running a Qualifier. Things are going great, we are doing well, we have a nice League with fancy graphics and videos (thanks to Fito's magic skills), and people join us every new season.
I hope I have entertained you a bit with this brief story about the Blood Bowl World version of The Shire, and contact us if you'd like to join the experience! |
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Gaixo |
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Post subject: RE: Uruguay, Blood Bowl and Soccer
Posted: Mar 14, 2016 - 09:19 AM
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Former President
Joined: May 08, 2009
United States of America
Posts: 811
Location: United States of America
Status: Offline
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Very interesting.
About 18 months ago I had come discussions with Sebastian ("lizardriz") about getting some sanctioned tabletop tournaments underway in Uruguay. If there's still any interest in that, please get in touch with me. |
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National Tournament Organizer, USA
(NAF Tournament Director, 2014-2018; NAF President, 2018-2024)
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Kilowoggy |
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Post subject: RE: Uruguay, Blood Bowl and Soccer
Posted: Mar 14, 2016 - 05:40 PM
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Joined: Dec 09, 2007
Undisclosed
Posts: 363
Location: Undisclosed
Status: Offline
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Good to hear.
It always seems like South America and Latin America tend to be left out of the spotlight for the game. Glad to know there's players and hopefully fluff lovers out there.
May Nuffle bless all your dice. |
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Co-Host of BOTH DOWN:The #1 Blood Bowl Podcast... that you can find at Both Down!
Or on Twitter @BothDown
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lemmy |
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Post subject: Re: RE: Uruguay, Blood Bowl and Soccer
Posted: Mar 14, 2016 - 06:17 PM
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Joined: Dec 22, 2015
Posts: 2
Status: Offline
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Gaixo wrote: Very interesting.
About 18 months ago I had come discussions with Sebastian ("lizardriz") about getting some sanctioned tabletop tournaments underway in Uruguay. If there's still any interest in that, please get in touch with me.
Oh don't even get me started on him. He's one of the reasons the BB community is fractured in Uruguay, since he banned all veteran players from the RPG Club he runs his little league in. He charged us money for belonging to the league, made a tourney with supposed prizes and then never gave them out after losing the final with his uber-farmed lizzie team against a seasoned woodie player.
Do you guys sanction BB2 leagues too? Right now it's all we veterans are playing, though we're undusting our miniatures now and then and we might get something tabletopish going in parallel from "lizardriz". At the moment only cfarbes / caio and I are paid users of The NAF, but who knows in the future. Adulthood comes with better wages for us all  |
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