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ArthurWynne
Last seen 20 hours ago
Overall
Emerging Star
Overall
Record
6/4/6
Win Percentage
50%
Archive

2017

2017-02-28 01:09:06
rating 6
2017-02-24 01:53:20
rating 5
2017-02-22 22:30:37
rating 5.8
2017-02-22 17:44:01
rating 6
2017-01-05 23:45:57
rating 5.4
2017-02-24 01:53:20
2 votes, rating 5
Countdown to 200 - Game 2/20
Second game in my countdown to 200 Box games series, between my FC Yarnham and mad75's United RAT-Kingdom CO2 [B].

(Shorter entry tonight as it's late over here - but I hope it will still be worth reading.)

A mirror match this time, and again I felt fairly confident looking at the rosters - he has more Block, particularly on his gutters, but I have a decided Strength advantage despite being a man down. It doesn't hurt either that he wins the coin flip, but chooses to receive -I have a kicker while he has none, and only 11 men to his 12, so that's what I would have chosen as well.

My kick, however, which was 2 squares away from the LoS, is a touchback as a 6 is rolled and Kick is no help. My opponent takes the ball and screens deep on the left with it - no problem, this was always going to be a shootout. I go to meet him, intending more to hurry a score than to stop it - without Tackle I don't think I can reliably do the latter.

Again my defense has a central weak spot, and he blitzes down a gutter and runs to the middle of the pitch -but this leaves the ball carrier rather exposed, and I crowd him with two players.

He blocks them away however, and scores in turn 2/3, after even using a reroll on a random 1d block -nice and early, all according to plan. This feels like an unnecessarily quick score since he could easily have stalled for 1-2 more turns by running into the opposite corner, but I guess he had his heart set on a shootout as well.

On the next drive however, he gets his reroll back from Brilliant Coaching, and the kick is very shallow, right on the LoS. I burn a reroll on the first action of the turn, blocking a linerat away from adjacency with the ball - double skulls into double both down. Since it's hard to get a proper cage around the ball in that position, it is with a great deal of trepidation that I pick up the ball with a gutter runner and carry it to safety, but after that, things are looking good. I screen up and remove a linerat Badly Hurt, the first removal of the game.

However, I make the mistake of running my MA 10 blodge gutter runner ahead alone as a receiving threat - she is immediately blitzed and KOed, not ideal. Lesson learned, protect your gutters, especially when you only have 3. (I'm saving up for 4 but when one only has 11 men it doesn't seem right to run 4 guttters.)

Next turn I run up to the left flank and screen, but again too close to the sidelines. His Horns gutter makes a wild play, dodging into the cage and knocking the ball free -fortunately for me, it scatters to a linerat when he tries to pick it up.

On the next turn, I dedicate a lot of resources to surfing the Horns runner, but stop short of using my last reroll to do so -probably a mistake as he ends up on the sideline, felled by a Both Down, and the ball is dangerously exposed when I turn over on a block and have to use my Apothecary on my dodge linerat. I probably should have used my reroll this turn one way or the other.

On his next turn the ball carrier goes down, the ball goes out of bounds and scatters deep, deep into my half. Worse yet, the Horns gutter grabs it and runs almost out of reach. I blitz him, but fail to bring him down despite using my last reroll. He chooses to stall for a turn however, and I make the last-chance 4+ dodge and POW to bring him down. Stupidly I forget to stand up and regroup my players before doing it, and turn over when I fail the pickup, so he is able to bring his gutter runners deep and blitz me away from the ball. But by a stroke of luck he fumbles the pickup in turn 8 and the half ends 1-0, albeit with me 2 players down. I can come back from this...

Next half, however, I fumble the pickup in turn 1 despite burning a reroll on it (I pondered letting it go for too long, and thereby angered Nuffle I suspect) and was soon neck deep in Gutter Runners. My opponent could have easily stalled out and won the game right then and there, but chose to score, to my chagrin. 2-0 in turn 4/3 of the second half - Skaven can come back from this, but not easily.

Past this point a play-by-play becomes rather pointless. My rats continued to be KOed at a brisk pace, and could neither get removals of their own nor pick up the ball, while RAT-Kingdom could seemingly do no wrong, and scored again in turn 6 after an outnumbered FC Yarnham failed to protect the ball carrier.

In large part I must chalk this up to my opponent's superior coaching and my rapidly flagging morale, especially when the 3+/2+ dodge sequence for a consolation score in turn 7/8 failed and lead to the final score being 0-4, a resounding LOSS for FC Yarnham.

Rats are like that, both with them and against them you either win big or lose big in my experience, and I feel like this was a game that would have taken more coaching skill than I could throw at it to win. But I'm sure there are things I could have done to at least make it a little more close-fought. I don't really feel I have a handle on playing rats yet, particularly not in adversity.
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