Had my first match up today, really enjoyed it. I'm feeling that just that one game was probably all I needed to get the interface under control which is extremely awesome. I HAD worried it would be a bit archaic and I'd struggle to understand what was going on. Far from it, I found it very intuitive tbh.

Helped of course by my friendly opponent! His tag indicated that he was extremely experienced and that's how he came across in chat, and also, on the pitch! I was very much outmatched, he really constricted my movements, surfed plenty of my players and never really looked like doing anything but winning tbh! In the first half, he was clearly gutted for himself that he'd left me a 2+ dodge, 2 GFI's and a 1d block on his werewolf stalling one square from touchdown. I rolled push, rerolled to pow, then did an unlikely set of dodges to pick up and throw it clear, only to find that you have to declare passes even before you complete dodges etc! Not something the tabletop world is very hot on. Anyway, just as well as throwing it clear and running into the night would have been a 6 and would have been a travesty :p

I then suicide dodged to the corner instead and threw it to the crowd lol and they tossed it midfield to ruin his drive! Hooray, survived by the skin of my teeeth :D

ON my offence, I caged up, ran to the sideline and learned that's not how you do it! lol He roadblocked my advance with a golem thing and standfirm really got in the way of my plan to blitz through it! Lesson learned! He then set up chainpush surfs, ditched a pair of players and the ball went central from the crowd. I scrapped ineffectually to put tackle zones on his wolves with the ball, but he calmly used his overlap of players remaining to block his way clear and stick a score on the board. I again caged up and I realised after my drive failed (no score) that I was being too much of a scaredy cat, caging up with all my blitzers! That meant my only receiving options were linos with only mv6 and no block. So they were easy to put down and didn't have the reach to threaten a score!

Realistically a cage works because of it's shape and the overlapping tackle zones, elven cages aren't designed to block their way clear, but smoothly reform etc. I should have caged with basic linos, and blitzed paths for blitzer receivers instead with much better threat range and potential to cause turnovers when being tackled etc.

ANyway, it was awesome, he/she was a top guy, and I'm looking forward to the next game. Suffered no injuries, only lost 1 nil and have 20K twowards apothecary, before picking up maybe another thrower/first witch elf!

Bring on round 2!