There and back again

There was a major Blood Bowl tournament in Portland, the first of the year, so I drove down with three other coaches yesterday. I hadn’t quite grasped that this was going to be a three hour drive, nor that we’d get down to about 5% charge on the way and my car would complain and mean we had to make an emergency stop to charge at an outlet on the outskirts of Portland, only arriving five minutes before the first games were scheduled to play.
Since my relaxing Friday night where I was going to go to bed early was mostly spent at the ER, after Destroyer fell down the stairs and thought she’d bust her shoulder (thankfully all fine) I was already tired, perhaps not the best preparation for a tournament, and my first match was against somebody I dread playing. With half my team dead and 1-0 down at half time, I 2as ready to concede, but got it back to 1-1 and then almost managed to hold him to a draw, taking out the ball carrier with a turn to go, but leaving him enough room to score.

So, that could have been better, could have been worse. I raced through my second match, taking advantage of some weak defense to score twice early on, then hold on for a 2-1 win.

The third game was against a Necromantic coach I’d never played before, and it was a struggle; my plan was to make a big dent in him in the first half, but I failed to do so, and almost went down 1-0. In the second half he scored in four turns, then I got the ball back, got it three squares from the end zone and then he took my carrier down and fouled him. I had to do a 3+ dodge to get out, a 3+ to pick up, another 3+ dodge and then two 2+ rushes to score, did that, then held out for a 1-1 draw.

And then my last game I couldn’t do anything, with a whole series of terrible dice (1 after 1 after 1) while my opponent smashed me to bits, losing 2-0 in painful fashion.

However, I won the sportsmanship award so hopefully that means I’m not an awful person to play…

The drive back was tough, three hours of feeling exhausted but at least the automatic driving helped a lot. We returned with about 10% charge, which was better than the way out.

Things I’ve learned:

My team was very unreliable; usually I rack up huge volumes of casualties, but this time I did hardly anything. I don’t think I built it right: I had three players who each needed to blitz to make use of them, when I should have used one. I took a chainsaw and two bribes, and mostly the bribes were a waste and my chainsaw got banned anyway. And I kept forgetting the rules for bringing extra cheating snotlings onto the pitch whenever possible. Oh well. I also felt I don’t like the ruleset for the World Cup, but it’s hard to say why and it’s good that I’m not going.

Also, Portland seemed to be filled with terrible drivers, as I found on the two occasions I had to drive to charge the car, everyone driving a Prius at 10 mph and never using their indicators. But then you shouldn’t drive when stressed. Or going to a Blood Bowl tournament.

Finally, alcohol free Guinness is a thing. Who knew?