Blood Bowl ITP III: Where You Either Win or Blame Nuffle... Sometimes Both

[LCP]

Ruinous Rampagers 0 - 1 Blackhearse Boneheads.

I can barely bring myself to comment on the game. It's been a while since I last played so I felt a little rusty, but after successfully stalling out the Bonehead's first-half drive, my decisions ceased to matter. One by one my star players went down to career-ending injuries, while my specialised face-breaking team managed to hospitalise a single skeleton and my Ag4 beastmen decided that 1s were their favourite numbers. The star beastman I spent the apoth on (to avoid a -MA that would have directly cancelled his key skillup) died to a fireball and took the MVP points with him. Khorak the minotaur Wild Animaled twice on a fairly guaranteed crowdsurf at the start of my drive, then when he finally deigned to throw a block, double skulled it and knocked himself down to AV7. One of my star warriors is also out with a gouged eye, leaving only two non-rookie warriors (and no mino) on the roster for the next game.

Usually I take my casualties in stride but when you lose that many highly-developed players to Nuffle it's a fairly terrible feeling. I'm going to go do something else until I stop wanting to uninstall the game.

[Unpronounceable]

Boneheads 1-0 Rampagers

That game took a sharp turn towards carnage early in the second half with several of the Rampager's key pieces going off injured allowing the Boneheads to steal the ball away for a turn 16 defensive touch down.

Commiserations to LCP who lost both his Minotaur and a star Beastman .

[Thufir]

Last couple of matches validated. Only one left for this week.

And, returning to the subject of the Knockout tournament, based on that little informal poll I did a couple of pages back, it looks to me like the way to go is a free-for-all with ~1300>TV (I know Silfir suggested 1200, I just thought I'd go a little higher - but it'll be a hard limit, so you should probably stop in the 1200-1300 range to avoid level-ups pushing you into being ineligible or needing to fire players). Want to get it started soon, so people should start thinking about what teams they want to enter, and if relevant, maybe playing some open league matches to get their TV up (though if you don't mind about that, starting teams will obviously be just as welcome).

tl;dr - KO tourney soon, 1300 TV limit, pick teams and take your chance to level them up a bit as you feel necessary.

[LCP]

*checks*

The Rampagers' TV has dropped by 520.

[Silfir]

Just to confirm - that's a hard limit of 1300 including journeymen (for teams with less than eleven players)? I'd certainly say so :)

Obviously the TV has to be below 1300 at the time of the kickoff of the first round, so no hiring players after your team has been accepted, either!

Not sure what to do about teams beyond the second round - I guess it doesn't matter that much, but I would adopt a serious look and wag my finger at any team that starts the tournament with a 500k treasury, keeps the TV tanked at 1280 for match one, then buys three positionals and a reroll to get to 1600 TV for the second round match. Lacking any actual authority, I'd encourage everyone to start with a team that's in the 1200-1300 range as a result of natural development, and keep the Open League superstar teams on the backburner for now.

That's about all the ways coaches of a lesser moral fiber than that on universal display in the Playground could screw this system that I can think of. Shutting up now!

[Brother Oni]

The deadline for the main league has passed and we still have one game outstanding. I know Wraith has messaged about getting it played a couple of days ago - any further news, or should we get a Commissioner to advance the day?

[Qwaz]

The deadline for the main league has passed and we still have one game outstanding. I know Wraith has messaged about getting it played a couple of days ago - any further news, or should we get a Commissioner to advance the day?

Im for advancing. It's a hard limit for a reason and 2 weeks is plenty of time to arrange and get a game played. The first thing I do when the week ticks over is message my opponent and if we're having troubles getting a time it can be raised a lot sooner than when the deadline has hit.

Result...shrug. Both have managed to play all their other games right? I'd support a 0-0 draw usually but Wraith's post makes it sound like he's been trying to arrange the game and getting no joy for a while now. If this is the right of it a 2-0 Win to Wraith seems fair?

Spoiler: Wraith's post

Show

SaruSama, I've left you a message or two about when is a good time for our Main League match, but I haven't seen you online for a while. Get in touch please, and then I can start going to bed at a reasonable hour

EDIT - I will add that If the game has been arranged for tonight then it should have been mentioned in thread already as that is outside the agreed window. A very small extension request is something i would rather grant than have a game result assigned, we should otherwise stick to the deadline.

[Unpronounceable]

Hey Ivelius, I've just checked that the deadline for our game is this Monday, and I'm likely to be busy apart from Sunday and Monday if either of those are any good for you?

[Wraith]

I finally received a reply from SaruSama early this morning, when I got in from work. The earliest that we'll be able to play is last thing Thursday night (somewhere around ~11:30pm GMT), which we have tentatively agreed upon, though we didn't do this until what was literally the 22nd of July, the day after the deadline.

I also appreciate that several times I have been the last game to play, usually in advance of the deadline but still keeping the rest of the Playground waiting on my imminent slaughter. While I would like to play against the Sun's Children, it could be as late as last thing Friday night if one or both of us are delayed.
As such, I am quite content to leave the decision to the commissioners to decide whether or not everyone should be kept waiting another (possibly as much as) 3 days, as well as the outcome if necessary. And further apologies for not keeping everyone updated; frankly the deadline came and went without my notice either.

[LeSwordfish]

I'm going to be away from my laptop or reliable internet for a while, possibly as much as a few weeks. My game with Manticoran should thus be a forfeit, and possibly so should my next game too. My apologies to any opponents robbed of a greater-than-two-nil victory by this!

[Manticoran]

Unfortunate. :( Best of luck with whatever is keeping you from your computer.

[SaruSama]

Putting my two cents in yeah im sorry for holding everybody up. Im in all three leagues and i gotta admit ive completely lost track of all of the schedules. Anyway, I'd like to play the game but understand if people want to advance the day.

[LCP]

All apologies to Wraith and SaruSama but I don't know why we're discussing this - the point of the 2 week rule is that it's a rule. We should advance the week.

[Wraith]

All apologies to Wraith and SaruSama but I don't know why we're discussing this.

Because Brother Oni asked if an exception was being made for a last minute game. The presiding opinion is "No", followed by SaruSama and I saying "Fair enough". That's all.

I'm still going to be online at some point tonight to play Blood Bowl, and while I am not asking for any specific favours I will try to sneak that game in, deadline or not, if the commissioners don't get around to advancing the day first.... With Open League challenges to anyone else if that doesn't come to pass

[Silfir]

All apologies to Wraith and SaruSama but I don't know why we're discussing this - the point of the 2 week rule is that it's a rule. We should advance the week.

As long as the players involved actually show up in the thread to communicate what the hell is going on, I don't see why there shouldn't be some room for exceptions to be made. Our leagues may be Serious Business, but not that serious.

The people who actually post in the thread and are honest about their scheduling goofs and real life obstructions are not the problem. It's people who never post and don't react to messages that are the scheduling nightmares, and who don't deserve to have exceptions made for.

Until and unless two players who have their match scheduled for next match day come forward to state that they need the match day advanced right now or they can't get their match done at all for the next two weeks, I'd say there's absolutely no harm in allowing Wraith and SaruSama to play their match properly.

[Manticoran]

I agree with Silfir here. There's no reason not to wait a day, or twelve hours, or whatever, so they can get their game in, if they're actually communicating about it.

[Neon Knight]

I agree with Silfir. Let them play.

[LCP]

If it's tonight, no problem. I don't agree though that we should give indefinite extensions provided people talk about it in the thread. As Silfir says, the league isn't serious business - so people shouldn't object to being given 0-0 scores when the time limit's up, to let the league move on and let the majority get on with playing.

[Manticoran]

I also agree with that. Reasonably extensions are fine, extensions for more than a day, MAYBE two, are stretching it.

[Qwaz]

If it's tonight, no problem. I don't agree though that we should give indefinite extensions provided people talk about it in the thread. As Silfir says, the league isn't serious business - so people shouldn't object to being given 0-0 scores when the time limit's up, to let the league move on and let the majority get on with playing.

Seems fair as we are already 2 days past due. If an extension has been asked for and granted then it's reasonable that the match should be made a priority and played at the first opportunity. If the 2330 GMT tonight game doesnt happen: 0-0, let's get on with it.

[SaruSama]

The long awaited game has just completed. Suns Children Versus Hammersjurg Destroyers 1-0. It was a good old fashioned brawl with The suns children scoring around turn 5 in the first half and than just stalling for the rest of the match. At the end the attrition really hit the norse with most of their players off the field. Despite this they really played well and had some serious chances to tie it up at the end their if nuffle had just cooperated. On that note I want to call out the Suns Children MVP Nuffle. He really went out there and played the best game he could for us.

[Wraith]

It was good fun. I wasn't 'diced', but I always seemed to be put into the position that they worked perfectly fine AFTER they had betrayed me and I needed to do something crazy to get back in the game.

The Norse MVP went to my Thrower, getting him a level up and putting him back on the road to greatness that was vacated with the death of Sveinn, but it SHOULD have gone to my Runners, who may very well be Elves in disguise.

Thank you, everyone else, for your patience.

==============

[EDIT]Super-fast next game! bringing with it the definition of a Phyrric victory: Beating the Hammersjurg Destroyers 1-0, but ending up with probably-career-ending stat-busts on 3 of your good players by the end of it.

That'll learn you for killing my insignificant, easily replaceable Linesman! Thank you for the game Qwaz, it was fun.

[Thufir]

OK, so I've just dismissed all the teams from the old aborted Stunties League and turned it into the venue for our knockout cups - name is now KOitP, password is 'Eliminated'. As mentioned previously, for this first one it'll just be open to all-comers but with a TV limit of 1300. I'd like to get it going within the next week or two, so if people want to play some Open League games to level their teams a bit closer to that 1300 limit before entering them, now is the time. Personally, I think I'm probably going to put in one of my Open League teams, but I haven't decided which one (and the selection includes the Underworld team I was originally going to play in the Stunty league, which I've applied to put into the Open League now so I can level it a bit if I choose that one). So, I may well be up for Open League matches on those grounds, as I imagine others may be. Probably not tonight though.

And in the main league, Unpronounceable, when would be good for us to play?

[Brother Oni]

SaruSama, when would be a good time to play our main league match? I'm available all day Saturday, then evenings GMT for the next week.

OK, so I've just dismissed all the teams from the old aborted Stunties League and turned it into the venue for our knockout cups - name is now KOitP, password is 'Eliminated'. As mentioned previously, for this first one it'll just be open to all-comers but with a TV limit of 1300. I'd like to get it going within the next week or two, so if people want to play some Open League games to level their teams a bit closer to that 1300 limit before entering them, now is the time. Personally, I think I'm probably going to put in one of my Open League teams, but I haven't decided which one (and the selection includes the Underworld team I was originally going to play in the Stunty league, which I've applied to put into the Open League now so I can level it a bit if I choose that one). So, I may well be up for Open League matches on those grounds, as I imagine others may be. Probably not tonight though.

Main post has been updated with the details. I've tentatively named this tournament 'The Semi-Pro Cup' for clarity - I'm happy to change it if people have another suggestion.

[Devmaar]

I'm going on holiday for just over a week from Wednesday, my main league game against LCP will hopefully be played before then and I'll be back in plenty of time to play my next Rookie league game before the deadline but I might not be particularly contactable for a few days after the Rookie league rolls over, just a heads up.



Oh, and Careem Soda, just added you on steam while I remember

[careem soda]

1 - 0 for a Communist Party vs Throwaways and Throwers. The game started off with a blizzard, weakening the structural integrity of my zombies and golems due to cold, allowing the ogres to cause immense damage to my undead, and that was without using mighty blow to break my armor. Luckily, the remaining zombies tied up the ogres long enough for Red (Party) Velvet Cake to make a break for the endzone, and score on turn 8. On defense, we were down 2 zombies and a golem, causing a lot of hit and run on the snotlings trying to get through our lines. A critical pick up by the ogre caused some concerns, as strength 5 is very scary. Luckily on turn 14, we manged to make a 2 die against to knock down the ball carrier, and get the ball away from scoring distance, to end the game.

GG, Well played to Shishnarfne. Was a scary as hell game.

[Wraith]

Your game has been validated, and with LeSwordfish's previous post in mind I have enacted his forfeit and set the score accordingly. Thanks to all.

That just leaves Unpronounceable versus Ivellius, the former I've seen around repeatedly and from the latter have heard nothing. Unless I hear otherwise, that game is on course to be a forfeit in favour of the Wymbildon Warpstoners when the day is advanced on Monday, but if you guys need another few hours to get a last-second game in then please just say so and I'll wait until the evening instead.

Sound good? Yes? Excellent.

[Unpronounceable]

OK, so I've just dismissed all the teams from the old aborted Stunties League and turned it into the venue for our knockout cups - name is now KOitP, password is 'Eliminated'. As mentioned previously, for this first one it'll just be open to all-comers but with a TV limit of 1300. I'd like to get it going within the next week or two, so if people want to play some Open League games to level their teams a bit closer to that 1300 limit before entering them, now is the time. Personally, I think I'm probably going to put in one of my Open League teams, but I haven't decided which one (and the selection includes the Underworld team I was originally going to play in the Stunty league, which I've applied to put into the Open League now so I can level it a bit if I choose that one). So, I may well be up for Open League matches on those grounds, as I imagine others may be. Probably not tonight though.

And in the main league, Unpronounceable, when would be good for us to play?

Anytime really, I'll be on nearly every evening in the week, busy at the weekend though. Could do tomorrow, planning to be online all day?

Also applied to tourney with my dwarf team.

[Tasroth]

A couple of things:

1. The Legacy League final will be kicking off shortly, if anyone is interested.

2. I've applied to the Open League with a new Skaven team, as I want to use them in the upcoming cup, and would like to improve the team slightly (read: I want to have a Rat Ogre and need more money).

[Silfir]

Heads-up to anyone looking to get some workout done before the KO cup - don't hesitate to hit me up via Steam!