Here’s half of a recent match I played, with some thoughts…
Ball lands deep in our half; there’s a time out, so we have 7 turns to score.
A few blocks on the LOS lead to a KO’d lineman and not much else, and everyone bunched up. What I probably should have done is set up a screen first, then send the runner back to get the ball; things could have gone horribly wrong and left me without possession, and humans running amok in my half. But that was … ok?
Second turn. Probably good to move the ball forwards and establish a screen so that it can’t be hit, then get the blitzers away from that Mighty Blow guy on the human team, and free up the line elf down on the bottom row. So shift the niggled elf first to reinforce, then blitz with the open blitzer before dodging out with the rest.
Finally, put a foul in with the dirty player on that Blitzer, if we get him down.
Instead of which, the actual play ended up like this:
We ran two elves forward to support the lineelf stuck between kicker and blitzer, took a 2d block, then had to do a reroll with the elf on the LoS when he rolled a both down block, then moved the runner forward (so we weren’t playing safe), burned another reroll when we failed a 2+ dodge with a blitzer, and finally got round to a foul which didn’t depitch the blitzer. So not playing as safe as we should, and being quite lucky to get this far.
Now a bit of luck. Not sure why he went for a 1d blitz on my dirty player, but he skulled it, and burned a reroll into another skull. Time to move up and press the advantage.
2d block on the blitzer, then blitz the kicker, move the rest of the team up to screen the runner, and be in scoring distance, right?
Instead of which, we move the screen shorter than this, and keep players back to gum up only two of his players, but another foul from our dirty player does at least KO his kicker, although there’s less utility to removing him, given he’s kicked already…
Oh dear. A turn later and we have one of our blitzers KO’d. But there’s room to get out; we can blitz a gap through the niggled lineman, and run everyone north.
Well, no:
Instead, I do some early blocks to keep the blitzers at the back down, then mark a lineman, make that blitz and don’t screen as far north as I could, and although the dirty player does another foul that removes a player, not feeling too secure here. There’s very few humans left though, we should be able to maintain the advantage…
Oh great. Instead, we lose another player to a KO, but there’s still room to get out of here. Blitz the blitzer off the runner, move up to assist the dirty player, he blocks the niggled lineman out of the way, the runner moves past and we build a screen near the end zone, right?
Then our witch elf can jump up and cause some nonsense somewhere (maybe another block, why not?)
Instead of which, I go in the opposite direction, and my witch elf never gets to jump up, which leaves things dangerously open, before my blitzer fails a 2+ dodge to get out. Given the mess we made on the lower half of the pitch, probably would have been safer to go south, not north…
And then it all goes to crap, as a one dice blitz on the ball carrier puts him on the floor, and then I lose possession and it goes to hell 🙁