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Leaving in a rush

On Friday, my manager wished me safe travels, hoping I wouldn’t miss my flight because I was too busy playing Blood Bowl.

Obviously, the first thing I did on waking this morning was to carefully pack and prepare for my flight this evening.

In some parallel universe.

I got up, went out and got breakfast (a coffee, a muffin and a cookie) from the Fat Hen, then started playing Blood Bowl.

I got a game fairly quickly; my less than beloved 12 Very Angry Men were matched with an undead team where I had an unexpected, but very enjoyable draw. 2-2 was a good start.

Now, to complete the Trophy I still have 29 games left, with just over 4 months to do that in. It’s pretty impossible to find opponents in the evenings in Seattle, and likewise daytime when my children are in residence will also be hard, so I have to try to maximise my playing before then. So obviously I immediately started a second match.

This was with the Buena Vista Anti-Social Club, my motley collection of mutant goblins, rats and The Professor, an enormous and terrifying troll. They were matched against a mob of Chaos Renegades: a minotaur, an ogre, a troll and a bunch of evil humans, a rat and an elf.

Goblins are small and easily hurt, and minotaurs, ogres and trolls are hard hitting, so the first three blocks of the game sent three of my poor goblins off the pitch with injuries. I had 14 players to begin with, so there were some reserves, but not at this rate of attrition.

Fortunately, as well as hitting very hard, they are also quite stupid, and for most of the rest of the game they failed their stupidity rolls and stood around being gormless, while The Professor reliably smashed up their team.

I couldn’t stop them scoring in the first half, but The Professor sent the minotaur off with a fractured skull. You can employ an apothecary once per game for an injured player and reroll the injury, but this didn’t really help, as the choice was between a fractured skull and being dead.

The second half started, and we were both bashed up; he was down to 10 players and I had nine. By the end of the match I think I had five left, Charisma Bypass, my two-headed, four-armed rat thrower having had his ankle smashed. (and my apothecary gave me the choice of a smashed ankle… or a smashed ankle. Thanks, doc.) When one of my rats finally scored to equalise at the end of the second half, The Professor had just been knocked out, but he woke back up to return to the pitch.

A bit more rough-housing ensued without anyone being badly hurt, and then the game was over. We could both celebrate (well, I could, broken goblins being much cheaper to replace than minotaurs) and I could go pack.

Except I didn’t. I had the offer for a test game with my Canadian Blood Bowl 7s team, the Halifax Bluenosers, a gang of actors, musicians and other people who’ve been in Nova Scotia at some time or other. So I played half a match with them, a debacle where they injured themselves (but did manage to foul an unlucky elf to death), after which I realised I had to concede as I had about three hours before my flight departed, and there was torrential rain outside.

I packed in a frenzy. The plan had been to bring more suitcases back to Singapore, by packing one inside another, but that proved impossible without breaking at least either the inner or the outer suitcase, so I jammed stuff in any which way, then hailed an Uber, which arrived a few minutes later and parked on the other side of the street, because obviously that was more convenient than parking so I didn’t have to run across the road with two suitcases in the rain. That’ll be 5 stars then.

The good news was that I was packed and tidied away in 25 minutes, and at the airport by 3:30. The flight wasn’t until 5:30, and TSA Pre Check means I go through security like a knife through butter (both of which, ironically, you can’t take through security) so I almost had time to log on and play another game of Blood Bowl before take off, but I figured it was better to save that for San Francisco.

And so, with a short detour for a burger and to buy more Beanie Babies for my daughters, I managed to successfully board my flight, and now I’m en route again. How much closer can I cut it?

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