I finally played my 1000th game on FUMBBL yesterday. It's quite a milestone for me, to see that fourth digit tick over. The game was against my best mate, Jalapeno5, and in fact, I used it to introduce him to Secret League, as he hadn't tried it yet. We both played rookie teams - I took Khainite Assassins and he took Ka-Sabar. It was a close one that ended in a 0-0 draw. My assassin's daggers weren't really the best tool for hacking at skellies. I managed to prevent him from scoring in the first half, but only had 6 elves left for the second, and somehow managed to keep the ball long enough to nick a draw. Still, it was good to share the honors with my buddy :)

Some thoughts from me on my 1000th game:

Well, I started on FUMBBL back in 2009, which seems like a long time ago. Back then, the site was using LRB4; games had to be 'negotiated' through IRC; and the Blackbox was a new division that had only just started. I spent a lot of those early days playing in Ranked; trying to learn the game and get better; and routinely getting my ass kicked. One of the main reasons that it's taken me so long to get to this point is that I left the site for several years. Partly, I was just getting too busy in RL and had other pressures on my time, but another big factor was my dislike of the changes to the game that came with CRP and ClawPOMB. At that point, I just wasn't having fun with it anymore.

I came back 2-3 years ago, after a couple of my mates got me into playing Blood Bowl 2. I wasn't a big fan of the form-over-function interface and I ended up coming to the conclusion that, if I'm going to play Blood Bowl, I might as well play on FUMBBL, as the site and community are so much better. Since then, I've been playing more in BlackBox and I've discovered the joy of [L] division. During the time in between my two stints, I had actually moved from the UK to the US, and I have to admit I was disappointed to see how much smaller the player pool is here in the NA timezone (probably the one thing I would change, if I had a FUMBBL genie wish).

The lack of players in the open divisions is one of the things that pushed me to investigate [L] and I'm very glad that I did. Secret League, in particular, is amazing and a ton of fun and last year I started up Secret League Americas for the NA timezone. So far, it seems to have been quite popular - we're now into our 6th season and have 24 coaches playing across 3 divisions.

Things I'm hoping to do over the next year are:

- keep SLA going strong (and try to actually win something for a change!)
- try to complete the Black Box Trophy (not so easy in the NA timezone, but I think it can be done)
- see if I can finally develop a Legend player (something I still haven't managed to achieve - my closest was this guy, who got RIPed on 166 spps)

If I'm going to give some advice to newer FUMBBLers, I'd say that the NA timezone in particular is a tough place to cut your teeth. You have to expect that it will take a while to get up to a standard where you can compete with some of the big boys. But, there are people who will be willing to help and give advice, and if you work at it and give it some time, you will improve and grow some fun teams. Also, especially for the NA timezone, [L]eague division is really where it's at. Join 2-3 NA-based leagues and that will give you some guaranteed games every week and you will get to know a bunch of coaches and start to feel more like you are part of the community, which will make everything a lot more fun. Also, spectate games - spectate games that are playing now and spectate games of high-level coaches that play teams you like. Also, review your own games to see what you could improve on. Doing those will help you improve a lot faster.

Anyway, before this becomes too epic, I'd like to thank Christer for creating and maintaining this awesome site. The work and care you put into FUMBBL is truly astounding. I also want to thank the FUMBBL admins, who deserve more praise than they get, especially the NA timezone admins who help keep things running - Bazakastine, Morehouse, Lorebass. I also want to thank everyone who has played and is currently playing in SLA (you know Sloss-ti loves ya!). Also, thanks to everyone I've met and played games with on here, especially to my good buddy Jalapeno5, who beat me up in my 1000th game :)

So, here's to another 1000 (don't tell my wife I said that). Perhaps by then I will actually manage to get good at this game! ;)