Reminder to me. If either Box or Ranked represent more than 60% of the games which impact your CR -- that's the CR which will be displayed on your coaches page. (Correction for 2022 01 01: It is apparently if either Box or Ranked drops below 40%, it reports the other!)

After one year in Blood Bowl, I've played two tabletop league seasons (orcs then khemri)(winning the second), played in two online NAF tournaments, one tabletop NAF tournaments, and 369 (121/81/167) games on FUMBBL. Lets see, that's 154 games in League, 119 in Ranked, 91 in Blackbox, and 5 in Stunty Leeg. The five in Stunty were while I was still learning the basics of Blood Bowl... just ask the coach that was yelling at me for trying to pick up the ball with a NoHands Raptor. ;-) I've learned to lose gracefully; I've had lots of practice.

When I realized I was coming up on a year, my goal for the end of the year was to hit at least 365 games. That, I managed. I also had a quiet goal of having at least half as many draw games as losses. I've just reached that a couple times, but keep falling behind.

In the coming year, my goals shall be: (1) to attend at least one NAF tabletop tournament, (2) get to 650 games, (3) continue to contribute to the community in little ways, and (4) have fun. Not gonna have a win objective, 'cause it interferes with the fun. I would like to be able to add that coach badge for "100 games in the box" to my profile this year.

In my second year of Blood Bowl, I've played in one greatly abbreviated tabletop league (Chorfs), two tabletop NAF tournaments, and coordinated/ran a NAF tournament (Fowl Bowl:Flinger, Lich 'n Good - 8 June 2019). Folks seemed to have fun at the tournament, but it was disappointingly lightly attended. The Isle of Misfit Teams is still running okay, with thirty-two teams starting the most recent tournament, but a slow churn of participation and membership. I have the honor of managing the Old World Rookie Rumble which seems to attract enough teams to run once a month. I've tried to drive traffic to the FUMBBL site; in custom printed FUMBBL pencils I've been handing out to tabletop players, and cross-posting news from FUMBBL to the Facebook Blood Bowl Community.

I've reached 666 (233/143/290) total games on FUMBBL with 324 League games, 124 Ranked games, 214 games in the Black Box, and with five lonely games in Stunty Leeg as outliers. (So that's 297 new games this year, 170 of those in League, 123 in the Box, and five in Ranked.) My one year record is 112/62/123, which means my year one win rate was 43.8%, year two was 48.1%, overall 45.7%. I've had some highs and lows. I joined the Black Box Steel trophy, and have 94 games in there, but haven't been able to get games with the appropriate teams lately so have stalled out.

Over the next year, I'll be satisfied to reach 900 total games on the site. I haven't mastered the zen-like composure to not yell at the screen or complain about the dice, but I'm going to work on it. (I'm just continually grateful there isn't audio going out though... and as long as I don't get voice recognition software, I should be golden.) I'm planning to attend another NAF tournament in October, and hope to attend at least one additional tournament before my anniversary in 2020. Given how lightly the Fowl Bowl was attended, it doesn't seem likely that I'll try it again. I'd like to complete the one hundred and fifty games for the Box Trophy before October, but that doesn't feel possible... which may impact whether I play in the 2019-2020 round. I'm still not going to have a 'win goal'... but need to find some sort of 'fun goal' instead.

23 July 2020 :: Three year FUMBBL Anniversary!

In my third year playing Blood Bowl, I played one season of the local tabletop league as Ogres and three tabletop NAF tournaments coming away with a Stunty Cup win at the second Keystone Kup and a first place win at the Mini-Bash at the Con at Betacon (only three other coaches). The Isle of Misfit Teams is wrapping up season five, and the Secret Isle of Misfit Teams was started and is up to season two. The Old World Rookie Rumble starts a new tournament every three to four weeks, and the Old World Brawl has semi regular tournaments as well. I created the Razbot to take care of some game announcements on Discord, and it's currently up to version 0.3.3. It now automatically discovers new tournaments for groups it is following, effective this morning.

I reached a total of 899 (316/196/387) total games on FUMBBL, one short of my goal for the year. 491 total League games, 168 Ranked, 235 Blackbox, and those five lonely Stunty Leeg games. That's 233 games for the year; 167 in Leagues, 21 in Blackbox, 44 in Ranked... which means there's a lost game somewhere. So, my one year record is 83/53/97... giving me a one year win rate of 47.0%. I need to stop looking at the statistics. I did intentionally push to get more Ranked games so my overall rank would indicate I'm a FUMBBL coach, not a Box coach. (And I learned that the balance point is sixty-percent. If you fall outside of 60% of your games being of one type or the other, your ranking changes.)

I never completed the Box trophy last year... and lost the motivation to play in the box very early in it's third year. I'm trying hard to learn to take things well when I am losing. I've thrown my hat into a handful of B.A.R. Brawls, Royal Rookie Rumbles, and FUMBBL Minors which likely accounts for a fair number of the Box and Ranked games I played this year. I'm unlikely to increase my participation much in those arenas going forward.

I think this last year I painted my Ogre teams so that I could play with them. I still have my Necro team on my bench to paint, and have thrown into a Kickstarter for proper Vampire and Khemri teams. I started assembling tiles for a DungeonBowl set. I'm pretty sure I now remember either selling or giving away my OLD chaos team to Baron Fergus more than a decade ago... so am changing them from status 'lost'. ;-)

So, for the next year... given that the desire to play has been waning, I'm going to put a pin in 1100 total games... so 202 total games, at least twenty-five will be Blackbox. I want to have my Necromatic team painted, have the pieces I've already assembled for DungeonBowl painted, and have the rest of the tiles complete. I want to at least build a new tournament dugout, even if I don't have it painted by next year. Until there's a vaccine for Covid-19, I don't anticipate participating in any further tabletop tournaments or leagues. I want Razbot to at least announce tournament completion with winner(s), announce upcoming deadlines and call out the coaches who need to get their games played, and build a web front end to manage the whole lot.

(¯`·._.··¸.-~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.,-(_23 July 2021 :: Four year FUMBBL Anniversary!_)-,.-~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸··._.·´¯)

My fourth year of Blood Bowl, and it was the year dominated by Covid-19. No live games, although I did acquire a few new TT teams and the BB2020 Official Rules. The Isle of Misfit Teams is finishing up season seven, and the Secret Isle of Misfit Teams is in it's own season seven playoffs. Old World Rookie Rumbles and Old World Brawls were running regularly for a while, but participation has dropped significantly. Started Secret League Shields in months that lack other major Secret League tournaments, and we had the Second Annual Secret League Stunty Cup, which is still running now. Razbot was modified to identify the last game in a tournament which completes the tournament, and it sends me a pre-digested summary of the OWRR and OWB tournaments now. I just recently implemented the spoiler tag to the game completion announcement and I just want to say that Discord certainly made their implementation of the spoiler tag a lot more difficult than it needed to be.

I played as many games as I'd planned, passing the 1100 mark this year. A total of 1138 (423/243/472) games, or 239 (107/47/85) this year six more games than the previous year. I sit at 704 League, 248 Box, and 181 Ranked games; so 13 new Box, 13 new Ranked, and 213 League games this year. I didn't keep a tally, but I'm going to guess that more than half of my Ranked and Box games were actually Royal Rookie Rumble or B.A.R. Brawl games. That does give me a one year win rate of 54.6%, which is a little surprising... but then I've been playing less elf and stunty so that probably helps my tally.

I've won a few things this year. Most recently, the Bar Brawl CV - Lo... yep that lonely entry on this page for 'Won Tournaments'. At least I got one. My UTEP Party Minors in the NCBB won the Season 36: Waffle House Salty Tears Bowl. My Flamemasters of Zhurr in CIBBL came away with a toughly contested first in the CabalVision Morning Special in Y6 Summer. [SL] Akai Shimobe walked away with the trophy in [SL] Old World Brawl #80 (Developing) tournament, but does it really count if I'm also the commish?

I'd love to get Razbot to identify round deadlines and tag coaches who need to play. There are some technical hurtles though. Specifically, I don't have a programmatic way of identifying deadlines, and I'll need to find a way to map Discord IDs to FUMBBL IDs. I've learned a little more about generating graphics including simple animation. Of course, I want to learn more, and would like to generate stack-able graphics as trophies for the Secret League Open environment. If it works out, I might try my hand at updating the FUMBBL badges for BB2020 as well, since Kam disappeared. It hasn't been a high priority though.
I didn't paint as much as I would have liked. All the pieces I'd assembled last year have paint on them, although two of them still need final touches. My Undead/Necro Team(s) have eight zombies on the bench which are mostly painted... just needing highlights... then the whole team needs their bases finished and flocked.

I think Nurgle are my next team to be painted. I have a new airbrush and appropriate primer, so there isn't anything stopping me from starting when I get these zombies off the bench. I need to cut out more wood for the dungeon bowl tiles... I'd like to say I'll have at least all the tiles assembled this year, but between getting the bases planned out and the parts molded, I'm not certain I'll make it in a year.

I don't think I'll be playing more this year than last, so I'm going to put a pin in 1375 games by the this time next year. If I play more, great. I've got my eye on that "500 games won" badge, and I'm on track to earn it this year. Hopefully by next year we'll have a single competitive division, so I'm not going to make predictions of Box vs Ranked games. I've been playing roughly as many Box as Ranked, but both are and will continue to be a fraction of my total games.

Year five on FUMMBL. In BB2016 land -- IoMT just barely launched this season (season ten). SIoMT is in season six, and I'm not certain it'll see season seven. SLA for BB2016 is now suspended, and is effectively dead. Secret League Rumbles and Brawls in the 2016 environment are suspected. The Third Annual Stunty Cup is running now with just six teams. In BB2020, SLA20 is in season two... just barely... reaching just the absolute minimum number of new teams to be viable. Rumbles and Brawls are going, slowly... will likely need to push those again soon.

I didn't reach quite as many games as I thought I'd play, reaching a total of 1326 (495/295/536) just before my anniversary. That's 188 new games which was quite a lot fewer than I'd anticipated playing, for a whole lot of reasons... which might be a little clearer with the next statistics -- One box game, three ranked games, forty-four competitive division games, and a hundred and forty league games. Ranked and box died this year. At a guess, somewhere around half of my competitive divisions games have been Royal Rookie Rumble games. My win tally for the year is 72/52/64, for a new rate of 52.1% which is slightly less than last year... but I've played a few 'less than competitive' teams which probably pulled it down a little, but I've probably made more mistakes.

After a year of waiting and offering to help, I unilaterally took over maintenance of the FUMBBL Badges, and upgraded them for Blood Bowl 2020, and added a bunch of new badges... with a lot of suggestions from others. I'm marking the current list as 'Draft', because I'll likely continue to tweak it until BB2020 retires. The Grotty Little Newspaper is coming back, and I'll be trying to be a regular contributor there as well. At this time the first issue in a really long time is still anticipated. A few months ago I also started putting out a list of League News -- which will hopefully always be a current snapshot of the active leagues on FUMBBL... with a new edition coming out two or three times a month.

Finished painting my Necro/Undead team... that was a two year project. Since they came off my bench, I've painted a handful of larger, non-Blood Bowl, figures. I don't have much prospect of playing tabletop Blood Bowl anytime real soon, so there isn't a lot of push to paint anything... although I think my Khemri and Vampire teams arrived this year, and I still have Black Orcs on order from a Kickstart. I still have a fair number of Reaper Bones figures currently on my bench, so I don't know which team I'll get an itch to finally paint. In addition to the FUMBBL badges, this year, I made new trophy badges for the Old World Rookie Rumble and Old World Brawl, and had the first prize items printed up professionally as stickers which I've been sending out to the winners. I cut out wood for more Dungeon Bowl tiles; mostly small connector tiles. I haven't been motivated to put any tiles together this year.

I think Razbot added the ability to identify the end of tournaments, and report scheduled games this year. (I say, I think because I'm not certain when that ability was added.) I'd started working on a scheduler for Secret League using the bot, but haven't been back to it since the new Gamefinder was added to the site... and I believe Christer changed some of the APIs, which I'm hoping will simplify some of what I couldn't quite get to work.

I doubt I'll play many more games this year than last, so lets put a pin in 1500 games for next year. As I write this, I'm one game away from the 500 wins badge, so I certainly HOPE I earn it this year. Still looking forward to seasons being added to FUMBBL, but that's not a big concern for me... since I don't play enough games with any one team to take them thru to a second season. (Well, a few of my leagues use seasons... but we've been doing those manually... even without support from the site.)

Year six on FUMBBL. IoMT (S11) and SIoMT (S8) still hang on, but just barely. I don't expect them to survive the next year. IoMT:ng started up and is in season two using the BB2020 rules. Secret League America 2020 (SLA20) is in season four, with a veteran teams division for the first time, and that division has collapsed under the weight of coaches leaving or disappearing. In the Secret League Open world, Rookie Rumbles (OWRR) fire off very occasionally and Brawls (OWB) are completely dead, I still believe because most folks are playing in the competitive division. I was heads down in the 145 Club for a couple months, trying to get things active, but have since backed off while dentface and koadah injected it with their energy. I've writing where needed and providing graphics. In the competitive division, I've been given permission to run the equivalent brawls over there with some success. I don't personally play in any of those areas currently, with the exception of the occasional OWRR. I'm still hopeful that the implementation of seasons will shakes things up enough to breath some life into areas which are currently dead.

I was a few short of 1500 game milestone I thought I might hit this year, reaching a total of 1484 (552/338/594). That's 158 games played this year, 45 of those competitive, 114 league games. Currently at 89 competitive, 957 league. Record for the year is 57/43/58, right around 49.7% win rate. At the present time, I'm down to actively playing in the NCBB, NWBL, and Super League... occasionally tossing some teams into the black box, the occasional tournament, or fishing for the odd game in gamefinder. (I can't think of the last time I accepted a challenge in gamefinder though... and it's been years since I've issued one.) In the NWBL, my crazed Chaos Renegades actually won a thing at the end of season two. I doubt that'll be repeated.

I've kept up with League News, putting out two a month for the last year. I've tweaked it some, hopefully making it more useful to folks wondering where they can play more games on FUMBBL. I've written one script to track the census, but I'll need to automate a little more of the maintenance this year, I think.

I brought back E.L.F. as E.L.F. II back in August/September, mostly because I thought the format was interesting and Dalfort made a comment about missing it. I don't nearly have the energy pizzamogul put into E.L.F though, so the current group is just floundering along on inertia. I did add scoring for Secret League, but it's mostly continuing on its own. This also represented the biggest change for Razbot this year as well; adding the ability to track and score E.L.F.II games, and post scores and the end of season report.

I've continued to slow down on FUMBBL, playing fewer games each year. Lets put a pin in 1625 games by this time next year. I continue to pray for Seasons to be implemented, but mostly to simplify things for leagues because I still don't have a team in competitive which has reached fifteen games.

23 July 2024

23 July 2025