New Blood Bowl league season has been opened!
First three games of the regular season were fought simultaneously, but the focus on this recap is on the Necro vs. Wood Elf match. The two other games were Chaos vs. Orcs, and Dark Elfs vs. Chaos Pact. Here seen on the background: on the unforgiving Stone Pitch Greenskin Lovers (Orcs) meets BMC Body Hammers (Chaos). On the foreground is the foam-core pitch with team Necro on the right and Wood Elf on the left represented with unpainted red plastics from the second edition of Blood Bowl.
Team Necro miniatures are still work in progress: one Werewolf figure is a vintage Citadel animal handler (blue base with "2") with greenish skin tone to cheaply imitate his Necromantic quality... Still a long way to go with this posse. Wight figures with Block skill are old Lotr Uruk-hai ("5") and 3rd edition Human blitzer. Zombies and the Ghoul runner holding the ball are closer to the final look of the team. In this match the higher team value of Wood Elf team gave Necro newbies a star player Inducement: J Earlice is chosen for the task. This fast (8 MA) piece with ball handling skills and Dodge is good addition to match the elven speed.
Game starts with the first Kick-Off: Perfect Defense gives the Elf team time to reorganize their players before the undead start to move forward. This does not help the Elfs a lot: Wood Elf defence is not the easiest to thing to manage in Blood Bowl. First turns are really fast and the 4 min time limit is not enforced: Necro fails to pick up the ball, and on their first turn Elf coach rolls "1 re-roll 1" in an attempt to Dodge... Elf Catcher falls down and the fragile armor brakes: Badly Hurt guy with pointed ears is carried of the pitch when game had barely started. With the undermanned defense line the game is relatively fast 1-0 for the Necros. Wight number 6 scores the first touchdown on the 6th turn of the first period.
With only two turns left in the period Elfs try to make it to the end zone fast - no such luck: Werewolf pushes the Catcher out of the Pitch and angry undead fans beat the poor Elf to a pulp. Another Badly Hurt Elf and even less players to put in to the play on the second period.
Second period and third drive of the game starts when Necros kick the ball very close to the Line of Scrimmage.
In this new league we are still using the good old House Rule of two free Special Play Cards (50k decks, drawn randomly) for both teams. First card to see the action is "That Babe's Got Talent" played by the Elven team. "Ball Clone" by the Necros makes the Elven attack disorganized: they have to divide their forces to catch both of the balls. This proves to be ill-advised tactic, soon both balls have changed hands and its team Necro with two balls and Elfs are left with desperate defense.
Now there are only five Elven players left on the pitch: they call on the services of "Rogue Wizard". Fireball finds its target with deadly accuracy: J Earlice carrying the ball is hit! And soon the fire spreads and all supporting Necro players in the loose cage formation are hit to the ground also. Werewolf had already took the false Clone Ball to the Elven Endzone and this thing that J Earlice was holding is the real thing. Elfs have their small window of opportunity, but alas - "1 re-roll 1" again! The Elf coach rolled four of these killer "1 re-roll 1" things in the duration of the game... so with better luck they might have capitalized on this Fireball attack but now it only slowed down the Necro attack.
On the 16th and last turn of the game Werewolfs celebrate the second touchdown: J Earlice seems pretty happy too.
Post match procedures see the touchdown making Werewolf leveling up too: now both Wolfs have the Block skill.
Team standings on the regular season ("Runkosarja" in Finnish) after the first three games. Chaos team BMC Body Hammers managed to pull 2-0 victory on the Orcs, so they are sharing the first place with team Necro. Half of the 12 teams are still without any games, so its too early to say anything about the league in general. But good start for the new Necro team: two games done with 5 touchdowns made, looking forward to more challenges.
The other teams have developed too, there is now AG 4 Line Orc in the Greenskin Lovers team and Chaos Beastman with Side Step. To wrap up this recap - here's a list of the latest skill upgrade picks for the teams in the league.
