Blood Bowl Basics: Formations

A lot happens in a Blood Bowl drive. Spines are shattered, curses are shouted, riots are incited, and occasionally somebody even picks up the ball. It's easy to get caught up in all the action and not notice the shaping effects that cause the scrum to occur in these squares and not those squares (or even those other squares over there). Some of that shaping comes from the coaches working hard, action by action, to drive the ball into the place best for them, but a surprisingly large part of it comes from the formations in which the players set up at the beginning of the drive.

Setting Up For Victory
There are a lot of things to consider when setting up. I'm going to show you some example formations, but always think about the relative speed and strength of the teams in your game before using any of these. Some formations work best against strong, slow lineups, while others are best for containing elf plays. The best lineup will change from play to play as well, depending on the number of turns left in the half, the number and composition of each team's injuries, and what you predict your opponent's strategy might be. Keep your eyes open and your brain working!

One common defense is known as the column defense or the 3-4-4, so called because it places three defenders on the front line, 4 defenders on a second line, and 4 defenders on a third line. A "collapsed" 3-4-4 might look like this (shown using Norse in blue):

Obvious strengths of the 3-4-4 are that it creates a strong band of tackle zones across the field and that it's resistant to enemy blitzes. There's no spot where a single blitz can open up a TZ-free path for a ball carrier. It's not impregnable, of course; any knockdown attained on the line of scrimmage can be accompanied with a push in the opposite direction to start forming a hole, like this:

It only takes one knockdown at the LoS for this to happen. Any more than that makes a more open and defensible path for the offense. Obviously, this is less of a concern if you can prevent the enemy players from having strong blocks at the line, either through skills (lots of Guard, perhaps) or a significant ST advantage. You can defend against this to some degree by running a staggered 3-4-4 that looks like this:

This reduces the opponent's ability to run up the middle by adding some tackle zones to the middle three squares at the cost of opening up the sidelines to blitzes a little. This defense is a little worse against a frenzy blitz (as assists from the end linemen in the back 4 can be denied easily, making the second frenzy block safer) but stronger against stunties and high AG dodgers who will potentially have to make an extra dodge to get through the formation. As you can see, there are a lot of ways to adjust any formation to make little tradeoffs like this. As always, keep your head in the game and figure out the variation that works best for your situation.

A defensive option that might be slightly more effective against dodgy teams (especially stunty dodgers) is the 5-5-1 (also known more verbosely as 3-2-3-2-1), shown here in both flattened and spread variants:

This formation has an obvious weakness to a block on a corner lineman followed by a blitz on the player behind him, so I really only recommend this if you're playing against a team where you have a significant ST advantage, which fortunately will usually be the case against many stunty teams. If the enemy team is ST-disadvantaged, they'll have to spend enough players performing the initial hit and blitz that they probably won't also be able to form a defense for their ball carrier. This formation includes a significant backfield presence, which can be useful against fast teams trying to sneak through.

Offensive setups are often a little more complex, because the offense has a lot more information to work with. When you set up your offense, you need to take note of both the general shape of the enemy formation and the position of important defensive players (unusually high-ST players, guys with Strip Ball, etc.). Unfortunately, the information you don't have is where the ball will land, so you need to keep a couple of guys in the backfield no matter your formation (and against fast defenses, you need to make sure to protect them!). You can easily line up symmetrical formations and position assists to enjoy your first turn advantage without any help from me, so let's talk about some more interesting strategies.

A strong side offense like this allows you to concentrate your offensive power on fighting a smaller portion of the enemy team for a couple of turns while the weak side players try to catch up to the action. This is a particularly useful strategy if your opponent has a few well-developed players grouped up on one side, as you can avoid them for a few turns (or more, if you can get them marked before they get to the fight). It's also great for capitalizing on injuries that leave the opposing defense uneven. Your battle plan might look something like this:

If you score any knockdowns at all with your blocks, this puts you in a pretty strong position for next turn with a number of enemy players hard-pressed to contribute at all (and probably your guys on your weak side will contribute by marking them or something). This is pretty optimistic, though. If the ball falls on the weak side, you might be in some trouble if you can't reliably make a lateral pass. For this reason, I'd be pretty leery of using this kind of offense against a team with Kick. A strong side offense also loses some utility against fast players who can contribute to defense anywhere on the field quickly and can really punish a weak side kick.

Who's On The Line?

One other important thing to consider is who goes on the line of scrimmage. Three players are required to stand right in the opponent's face, and it's important to know what that means. Against some teams the line will be a killing zone festooned with ST 4 claw-wielding psychopaths, while other teams might just put up three lackluster dead guys. (The kicking team may have to do some guessing here, unfortunately.) Think carefully about what you want your line to do. If you can't fight the enemy line (or if fighting it would take up too much of your bashing ability) it might be wise to place disposable linemen (or zombies or beastmen or whatever) there just to tie up the enemy fighters as long as possible while placing your own fighters where they can contribute to moving or stealing the ball. Each team has a limited amount of murdering power, so mete it out carefully; only use as much as is actually helpful on the line and get the rest of it out there intimidating the enemy playmakers.

Blood Bowl Basics: Team Management

At the end of the player development post, I mentioned that player improvements bloat your Team Value, which can lead to your opponents entering the game with more cheaty wizards and chefs and star players. "That sounds dangerous!" I hear you cry. Well, good eye. That stuff will kill you. But it's okay, I'm here to teach you how to develop a devastating team without getting devastated in return.

Too Big To Succeed?
First, let's tackle the elephant in the room: Is it always good to improve a player? It's true that improving a player improves your game overall, which is to say that yes, it is always good to improve a player. But that's not really the question; the question is whether a given improvement helps your team more than it helps the opposing team.
Everything that helps your team, from rerolls to Fan Factor to the players themselves, has a Value. The Value of a team element is based on its initial cost and then, in the case of players, augmented by any improvements they may have. The Value of all of your team elements combined is your Team Value. At the beginning of each game, your Team Value will be compared to your opponent's Team Value, and the team with the lower Value will receive money equal to 1,000 times the difference with which to buy inducements (things like extra rerolls or the wizard I keep mentioning). The point here is that every time you increase your Team Value, you increase the the inducement money your opponents will receive (or decrease the money you will receive, if you're the lower team). This means that you want every improvement to your team to be better for you than the Value it adds is for your opponent. Let's talk about the non-player elements that inflate Team Value.

• Team Rerolls increase your Team Value by a thousandth of their initial cost. This Value varies by team between 40 and 70 inclusive. The cost of Team Rerolls doubles after team creation, but their Value doesn't double. Team Rerolls are extremely powerful and are nearly always worth their Value increase. (For comparison, the inducement cost of an extra reroll is 100,000 gold, meaning a TV difference of 100.)
• Fan Factor increases your Team Value by 10 per point. You have a chance to gain Fan Factor every time you win a match and a chance to lose some every time you lose a match. You can also purchase Fan Factor for 10,000 gold per point, but Fan Factor improves your team by such a small amount that this is not a worthwhile purchase. Your Fan Factor is going to vary up and down almost in spite of you and it's really not even worth thinking about.
• An Apothecary increases your Team Value by 50. The Apothecary is invaluable and you obviously want one, but the cost and the TV increase may make it worth playing your first few games without one. You should get one as soon as you start developing valuable players, however.
• Cheerleaders increase your Team Value by 10 each. One kickoff event (with a ~14% chance of occurring) uses each team's number of cheerleaders along with a couple of random factors to determine which of the teams will receive an extra team reroll. This is not worth the TV increase in my opinion, but I suppose if you bought enough of them you could secure the reroll every time that kickoff event comes up.
• Assistant coaches are exactly the same as cheerleaders, except for a different kickoff event which also has a ~14% occurrence rate and functions exactly the same as the cheerleader event.

From looking at these values, you can see that the vast majority (generally greater than 80%) of your Team Value comes from your players. Team Value from players is calculated by dividing their initial cost by 1,000 and then adding the following values for improvements:

• 20 Value for each skill the player has gained from one of his Normal categories.
• 30 Value for each skill the player has gained from one of his Double categories.
• 30 Value for each point of MA or AV the player has gained.
• 40 Value for each point of AG the player has gained.
• 50 Value for each point of ST the player has gained.

The first conclusion to draw here is that players who don't contribute enough to the team are actually making your team worse by inflating your TV. You don't want to have many players sitting on the bench, and anybody carrying an injury that significantly impairs their ability to do their job is too injured to be on the payroll (note that injuries do not reduce the Value of a player, although a player that's injured enough to miss a game won't contribute his Value to your Team Value during that game). The second conclusion is that each time a player improves, his new improvement needs to be useful enough to offset the Team Value bloat that it causes. Very small marginal improvements can actually be slightly damaging to your team!

Managing the Bloat
Your TV is going to go up as your team improves. There's not a lot that can be done about it, and frankly most improvements are more than worth their TV cost. You want your team to get better, and that means a slow TV climb. There are things you can do, however, to maximize your increase in game-winning ability per point of TV.
First of all, pay attention to your injuries and fire players who are injured in a way that interferes with their job. -AG is a career-ending injury on a thrower or catcher, for example, while it means nothing to a minotaur or troll. Firing critically injured players serves your team development in another way as well: it prevents them from claiming the MVP from the bench and robbing your useful players of SPP. The value of keeping your roster trim is significant.
In the same vein (and as mentioned above), don't employ a half-dozen extra players who don't spend time on the field. If they're not out on the pitch shedding blood for you, they're only helping the opponent. It may be worthwhile to keep an extra man or two in reserve if you have an important strategic use for them, however. Examples include a backup player on a low-AV team as a replacement for KOs/injured players, replacement players for your Secret Weapon guys so that you're not playing short-handed after the first drive, and a second-stringer to replace called-out players if you like to rely on fouls (but make sure you know the math before you try this).
Finally, think hard about the climbing costs of your non-vital players. If a player like a skink or a zombie lineman gets a third or fourth skill without getting any extraordinary rolls, they may just not be worth the TV they're adding anymore. This obviously is a complex issue that there's no hard and fast rule for, but carefully consider whether a developed player on your team is worth the 60-100 TV they're costing you. Is that goblin worth an extra team reroll every game? Would you rather have a Bloodweiser babe than that lineman?

Travelling the Old World On 1000 TV A Day
Remember that the important thing is the difference between your TV and that of your opponent. A TV of 1400 has a very different meaning in a league that averages 1800 than it does in a league that averages 1100. Keep your eyes on the TVs around you and be prepared for the inducements that you'll have to face (or that you'll get to wield).

Match Report: Goatman's Revenge vs THE DUNK SQUAD (Week 2)

THE DUNK SQUAD had both a lot of successes and a lot of failures on the block dice against Goatman's Revenge's low-skull high-pow composition.

The Chaos team saw quite a bit of luck on the d6, but nobody from either team made a successful dodge at any point. It was a slow, foot-slogging game.

Goatman's Revenge 0 - 1 THE DUNK SQUAD

We've already seen a few brutal games this season, but the violence in this battle between furry animal men and dwarves who are somehow even hairier was characterized by a certain cruelty uncommon to the field of competition. Most Blood Bowlers kill because they love to kill, but one had the sense that these players were killing because they actually wanted their opponents to die.
This game started much more calmly than THE DUNK SQUAD's last outing; this time it wasn't until turn 2 that Hagan Drek-Troll mangled someone so badly that they had to be rolled off the pitch in a wheelbarrow. The dwarves received and attempted to run the ball up the sideline but found their progress halted by one group of beastmen while another, led by the minotaur Atrophinius, tussled with the dwarf offensive line. As previously noted, Hagan Drek-Troll drew first blood by sending goatfellow Mashlow Tail to the uncontrollable hemorrhaging tent while his teammate Kazain collapsed the helmet of lone Chaos warrior Dhaos Fangepile. The Chaos team's equipment manager would spend most of the match with a mallet trying to creatively remangle the helm enough for Dhaos to be able to see out of it again. Beastman Thishgy Antler struck back immediately, managing to ram Drok Dreng-Troll off the pitch and into the waiting arms of the fans. The violence on the field may have just started, but the spectators had been rioting for hours and were working at a fevered pitch of bloodlust. (THE DUNK SQUAD's apothecaries managed to fish most of Drok out of the crowd during halftime.) Enraged by the loss of his kin, Hagan Drek-Troll led the dwarven line on a rampage, headbutting Atrophinius in his massive cowgroin and then stomping on his head when he collapsed. The foul was called, but when Hagan turned his baleful crazyeyes on the ref the official pretended that the call was about something else and sent Thor off instead. Hagan turned his attention back to the business at hand and spent the rest of the half alternately knocking down and being knocked down by the minotaur. Brashfy Claw took an opportunity during the struggle to put a hoof to Hagan while he was down and, seeing the look still in Hagan's eyes, the referee pulled the goatman out of the game for his own protection. The ball, meanwhile, was knocked free of dwarven hands when the beastman Cra-tigor hurled himself into a flying cross body block to bowl over dwarf runner Duerrim. Neither Dunker nor Revenger made any headway with it before the half was called.
The second half started much the same but running in the other direction. The Chaos line went man-to-man, surprising and briefly scattering the dwarven line with their ferocity. Hagan Drek-Troll was unfazed and continued to bust heads, seemingly stunning a different Chaos player each turn. Beastman Thishgy Antler recovered the kickoff and attempted to find a hole in the melee by running up the same sideline against which the ball had been trapped in the first half with much the same result. After a few turns of back-and-forth struggling over the fallen ball, dwarf blocker Kazain saw an opening and went for it, only to bobble the pickup and knock the ball into the fans. After a brief scuffle, the ball was hurled back onto the field significantly closer to the dwarven scoring zone. Unfortunately, the churning of the midfield carnage left most of the Revengers in very poor position to attempt a recovery. Goatbro Cry-mulgors got control of the ball for a moment but was completely isolated from his team, and the dwarves predictably carried the ball into the endzone with pieces of him still clinging to it. The touchdown seemed to improve Hagan Drek-Troll's mood a bit, although his celebratory headbutt hospitalized Chaos lineman Slouk-mulgor.
The final drive began on turn 15, leaving Goatman's Revenge with very little chance of an answering point. The dwarven kick flew out of bounds, however, and the Chaos coach took the risky move of giving the touchback to unprotected lineman Tralow Tail. Tralow's teammates cleared him a path, however, and he made a wild dash for the endzone, landing a brutal hornbutt on the only dwarven defender in the backfield. Hagan Drek-Troll, lynchpin of the dwarven defense (and, indeed, entire team), gave desperate chase, but failed for the first time in the game to inflict any violence at all as the goatman eluded his grasp. Dhaos Fangepile, now sighted thanks to the intervention of a crowbar and a can opener but still quite wobbly, trundled after in an attempt to rescue his teammate, but he succeeded only in tripping, falling on his face, and distracting Tralow with his shouts. Unfortunately, the goatman's momentary hesitation saw the clock run out before he could make it to the endzone.
Hagan Drek-Troll threw one last gut shot in the final moment to punish Thishgy Antler for touching and thereby besmirching the ball, which he described as "a relic of dwarven history, you hooved arsehole". The beastman lay unconscious on the field until long after the dwarven team had been dispatched to the now-empty stands to look for the rest of Drok Dreng-Troll's arm.

Blood Bowl Basics: Player Development

There's more to winning a league or tournament than just winning a game. While in the early games play skill (and Nuffle's blessing) may be enough to pick up wins, later on when opponents are making passing plays with AG 5 catchers and everybody has Block and Dodge you'll get stomped if your players aren't similarly impressive. So how does one get from this

to this?

Players improve by gaining levels, and players gain levels by gaining Star Player Points. There are five ways that a player can pick up SPPs:

• 1 SPP for throwing a completed accurate pass
• 2 SPP for an intercepting a pass
• 2 SPP for inflicting a casualty in a block
• 3 SPP for scoring a touchdown
• 5 SPP for winning the MVP award (more on this in a moment)

After each game, players who have reached certain SPP thresholds can gain a level, which generally means gaining a skill. The player makes an improvement roll on 2d6, and then selects a new skill from a category based on his position and the result of the roll.

Underworld throwers can take a skill from the Passing, Mutation, or General categories on any roll, or from the Strength or Agility categories if they roll double on the improvement roll.

Treemen, meanwhile, can only take Strength skills on a normal roll, but have access to most others on doubles. However, they can never get a skill from the Mutation category.

In addition, if the roll is 10 or higher, the player can forgo taking a skill entirely to gain a stat point instead. On a 10 the player can take a point of AV or MA, on an 11 he can take a point of AG, and on a 12 he can take a point of ST. Obviously, it's almost always correct to take a stat over a skill if you have the option because of how powerful the stats are, but there are exceptions when the stat isn't useful (such as +AG on a 1 AG big guy, for example).

Building the Perfect Murderer
Playing for the win is important in any game, but it's also important to think long-term. Part of this is funneling SPP to players that desperately need improvements and protecting valuable improved players. The latter is self-explanatory, but let's talk about the former a bit.
One of the most common sources of SPP is inflicting casualties. A player receives these points when involved in a block that injures an opponent, regardless of whether he was the attacker or defender. Unfortunately you don't have a huge amount of control over this due to the randomness of the armor and injury rolls, but there are still ways to increase the likelihood of scoring a casualty (see the "Fighters" section below).
Another common (and far more controllable) method of getting SPP is scoring touchdowns. It's difficult to get a big guy like a troll or ogre to pick up the ball and run with it, but it's not unreasonable with most other players, meaning that touchdowns are a reliable way of directing SPP to the players that need them (contingent on your ability to score, obviously).
The other big source of SPP is the MVP award. Every game, a random player on your team will receive 5 SPP for being the MVP. This could be any player that was on your team during the game, even one who died or a temporary one like a mercenary or star player. The MVP award can be a big boost if it lands on a player who normally has trouble gaining SPP (like the aforementioned troll or ogre).
Finally, while passing is risky for most teams, high-AG teams like elves can use easy short passes as a constant drip of controllable SPP to level up their important players. Of course, the penalty for failing a pass is pretty severe, so it's important to be careful with this strategy.

Playing to Your ST
So what do you do with all the SPP once you have it? There's no simple answer. The best skill choice for a player depends on his position and role on the team, the rest of the team's makeup, and your plans for the team's future. That said, here are some common choices for improving your positionals:

Fighters
Many players on your team contribute primarily by knocking opponents over. As previously discussed, Block is a very powerful skill for this sort of player, boosting their knockdown odds and reducing their odds of getting knocked down in return. Big guys want this more than anyone since their obvious fighting role on the team is hampered by Loner often preventing block dice rerolls, but unfortunately they usually only have access to it on doubles. If you roll doubles on a big guy, Block is almost certainly the right pick.
Another big concern on bashy players is SPP generation. These players often make good cage corners and ball carrier defenders, meaning that they don't get to score a lot of touchdowns themselves. Fortunately, there are a few skills you can take to improve your chances of inflicting a casualty. Mighty Blow is one of the best of these, allowing you to add a +1 to either the armor break roll or the injury roll. Let's take a brief look at how that affects the injury math that we did in a previous post:

The Claw skill also significantly increases a player's lethality. Claw causes armor break results of 8 or higher to be treated as a success, meaning that even your toughest opponents effectively have AV 7 during your blocks. Obviously, it combines favorably with Mighty Blow: every time a player with Mighty Blow and Claw knocks an opponent down, he has at least a ~14.35% chance to inflict a casualty and, in doing so, gain 2 SPP.
If you find your fighters frequently going up against enemies with Dodge, Tackle can be invaluable. A player being blocked by an opponent with Tackle cannot use the Dodge skill to turn Defender Stumbles into Defender Pushed. As a nice side effect, a player with Tackle prevents adjacent enemies from using their Dodge skill to get a free reroll on dodge rolls. In short, Tackle is as effective as Block for increasing your knockdown chances against Dodgers, but it comes with an extra little bit to make their lives even harder.
The Jump Up skill can also be quite valuable. Jump Up allows the player to stand up without losing movement and, more importantly, stand up and throw a block with a single action by passing an AG roll with a +2 bonus. If the player has AG 3 or higher, he passes this check on a 2+. Jump Up is in the Agility category, though, so most bashy players will only be able to take it on doubles.


Cagebreakers
Some players specialize in knocking the ball loose from opposing cages. The most obvious example of this is the Wood Elf Wardancer, but many teams can reasonably construct one.
Leap is a classic cagebreaking skill as it allows the player to leap into a space adjacent to a ball carrier without having to make any difficult dodges. Of course, once you've leapt into the cage, you're generally looking at a single die block against the ball carrier. To make this block as effective as possible, cagebreakers usually get Strip Ball, which knocks the ball out of the carrier's hands if you hit him with a Push or a Stumble, and either Block or Wrestle to down him on Both Down. This makes for an ~83% chance of knocking the ball free on the single die.
Cagebreaking is a dangerous job, and Block/Wrestle and Dodge are very useful on a cagebreaker to help him survive the enemy turn.


Ball Handlers
Players who intend to handle the ball have a lot of great skill choices. Dodge and Block are great for keeping you standing if you intend to hold the ball in enemy territory and reroll skills (Sure Hands, Pass, Catch, etc.) contribute tremendously to your chance of success at their related tasks.
Accurate adds 1 to all pass rolls, which is the same as having an extra point of AG for throwing purposes. If you remember the math from our passing post, that's a pretty nice boost to completion %.
The Strong Arm skill allows a player to add 1 to any pass roll they make outside of Quick Pass range, making it almost as good as Accurate. The interesting thing about Strong Arm is that it's in the Strength category, which many passers can only access on doubles. This skill is a valuable pick if you want to run a passing game on a team with lots of Strength access.
The value of Diving Catch and Hail Mary Pass is discussed here.
Nerves of Steel is a great skill for players who often find themselves attempting to pass or catch while surrounded by enemies, as it negates all the tackle zone penalties for those actions.
Foul Appearance is an interesting skill. When a player wants to block an opponent with Foul Appearance, he must first roll 2+ on a d6; if he fails, his action is still used up but he doesn't throw the block. This skill has some obvious utility on ball carriers, although it's a Mutation skill so most teams won't have access to it.

Linemen and Weak Offense
A large portion of your team (at least at first) is going to be composed of a lineman-type position. These players will usually be involved in a lot of violence without being particularly well-equipped for it (average ST, no Block, etc.). There are a few skills that these players may find very useful.
Wrestle occupies an interesting space. Wrestle modifies the Both Down event so that it brings both attacker and defender down without causing any armor rolls and without ending the current turn (unless the ball carrier initiated the block). This works even if the one or both players have Block. While this result is obviously less fun than Both Downing a guy who doesn't have Block and watching him crack in half, it's also more reliable because an opponent with Block doesn't deny it. There's significant value in disabling tackle zones, especially at the line of scrimmage or in a cage. Wrestle also protects you against Block and makes opposing Blockers less eager to attack you (since you'll get up from a Both Down on the opponent's turn before they will).
Guard is also quite strong on linemen, for a lot of same reasons. In all the places where Wrestle is good because it lets you turn off opposing tackle zones, Guard is good because it lets you provide assists despite those tackle zones. Linemen spend a lot of time either struggling on the line of scrimmage or making paths for more specialized players, and Guard is extremely useful for both. It's a Strength skill, though, so many linemen can't get it on normals.

Too Much Of A Good Thing
There's more to team improvement than just getting as many levels as possible. Every time one of your players levels up, your Team Value bloats a little bit, and if you get enough of that going on you'll find your enemies coming into games with ringers and wizards and extra rerolls and all kinds of unfair things. Next time, we'll talk about managing your Team Value to provide the maximum awesome to you and the minimum to your opponent.

Match Report: The Lustful Lizards vs. THE DUNK SQUAD (Week 1)

The Lustful Lizards 0 - 2 THE DUNK SQUAD

The game opened with a picture perfect dwarven defense, a strategy known by many other teams as "offense". The dwarves were in motion as soon as the ball was in the air, and dwarf enforcer Hagan Drek-Troll cracked the first skink skull of the game before it hit the ground. The dwarves maintained the assault, decimating the Lizards' line and sending a second skink off the field during the first turn (although the Lustful apothecary managed to hold him together well enough to play). The dwarf Turil prevented the Lizards from approaching the ball with a well-timed tackle and proceeded to run it in himself to put the Dunk Squad up 1-0 on only the second turn of the game.
The aggression continued with the Saurus lineman Tualtutah reducing Tebar the longbeard to a loose sack of bone shards and organs during the kickoff, but the dwarves repaid the debt double on the following turn by sending two skinks to the casualty box with snapped necks and mangled limbs. Skink runner Iztwaq was so distracted by the sounds of his kin being splattered that he failed to notice the dwarven tackle zones ahead. His flattening came as a surprise to no one but him. The fevered pitch of violence broke for a moment as the dwarves scrambled to recover the ball, but in the confusion Hagan Drek-Troll was able to blindside and KO the Saurus Goquitz. The dwarves managed to emerge with the ball but lost it immediately during a handoff attempt as Hagan proved that his impressive offensive abilities do not extend to actually playing Blood Bowl. A few more fumbled attempts at ball handling (including a desperate two-TZ pickup attempt by Iztwaq) closed out the half.
The Lustful Lizards set up for the second half with only 8 healthy players to the Dunk Squad's 10. The teams continued to display nearly superhuman animosity, but the violence of the preceding half made the rest of the game look like a polite and well-organized tea party. The dwarves ran an uneventful four-turn touchdown drive highlighted by Iztwaq being punished for making foolish negative two-die blocks and Hagan Drek-Troll laying out the Saurus Goquitz once again, this time for the rest of the game.
The final drive of the game opened with little Iztwaq spitefouling the dwarven runner Dinaz to no effect. A brief struggle over the ball ended with the Dunk Squad's Thor clumsily tripping over it, sending it rolling into a thick huddle of dwarven defenders. Iztwaq dove after it and, true to his idiom, found himself sprawled out on the ground in a daze. It looked for a moment as though the dwarves might score a third unanswered point when the Lizard defense suddenly came together, flattening the dwarven runner and allowing skink rookie Gor of Itza to make an impressive series of dodges and GFIs to regain possession. He charged through a hole in the Dunk Squad's line and reluctantly handed off the ball to perpetual failure Iztwaq. Seeing his moment at last, Iztwaq sprinted all-out toward the dwarven end zone in the final seconds... only to trip over his own damn feet as he crossed the goal line, somehow tumbling head over heels into his own spine and nearly tearing himself in half.
Hagan Drek-Troll received hard-earned MVP points for his role in the slaughter. Meanwhile, in a final grand act of betrayal, Iztwaq took the Lizards' MVP award with him to the grave. Lustful Lizards coaching staff was heard to remark "The little bastard died exactly as he lived: spitefully."

Match Report: Transexual Transylvania vs. Bone Again (Week 1)

Transexual Transylvania 1 - 1 Bone Again

That summary doesn't tell the story quite as well as this one, though:

Unfortunately, the Necromantic players were still pretty fresh from the ground and hadn't quite worked the kinks out of their muscles. The Transylvanian elf Kordar managed to nearly kick a poorly-assembled flesh golem in half during the opening seconds of the game, which proved a fitting opening to a half dominated by a massive riot in the center of the field. Zombie tackler Kevin of Glendalough suffered a similar fate a short time later, but he dragged his shattered spine off the field and spent the rest of the half putting himself back together with wood nails and duct tape. What a trooper!
The mute werewolf player Growl managed to break free of the scrum with ball in claw, but a group of Dark Elves followed close behind. The wight known only as John the Baptist attempted to slow their pursuit, but the elf enforcer Magenta hit him so hard that the echoes were felt up in the announcer's booth. John hit the ground crying out about a pinched nerve and refused to change his story even when the Necromantic coach pointed out that he doesn't have any nerves in the first place. (John is currently recovering in the "Big Whiny Crybaby" ward.) At almost the same time, the elven player Rynnear attempted to break free and assist his teammates only to have his pelvis shattered by a well-placed shamble from veteran dead guy Maximus of Turin. The elves surrounded Growl and knocked him to the ground, but he scooped up the ball as he got up and managed to break free and run it in during the closing seconds of the half.
Entering the second half tremendously weakened, the Necromantic team found themselves unable stop the elven offense from punching through. It looked like the luck of the undead might be turning around when wight Juan Diego cornered the Dark Elf ball carrier Brad Majors at the ten yard line with an assist from Growl. Diego quickly showed his true colors, though, failing a series of block attempts that ended with Majors tossing the ball aside and flattening him single-handedly. Growl managed to incapacitate himself attempting to fend off Majors' reinforcements, and the Dark Elf team was able to casually walk the tying point in over the unconscious Necromantic defenders.

It was a back-breaking season opener for Bone Again, who will limp into their next game without two of their important defensive playmakers. The Transylvanians fared significantly better, but still were only able to manage a tie. Both teams will just have to hope that this game wasn't an omen presaging a season full of fumbled passes, failed dodges, and shattered armor.

League Update!

The league has officially started! Hooray!

The league format is a round robin regular season followed by a four-team playoff for the cup. The window for each round is a week, but I can advance the round manually as soon as everybody wraps up their games. The league is mostly for bragging rights, but there are also gold prizes: the winning team receives 100,000 gold and the runner-up gets 60,000. Also, maybe I'll make a little paper trophy or something.

The first game has already been played (congratulations Keglugadins!) so get out there and spill some blood!

FAKE EDIT: If you have any topics that you'd like to see covered in strategy articles, drop a line in the comments here or in the Skype chat and I'll see what I can do.

ACTUAL EDIT: Also, if you want to write up a match report for one of your games, talk to me and we'll figure out how to get it up here!