“This was a really fun game, but the ending frustrated me so I wanted to take a bit of time before I commented. This is mainly going to be a rant against myself, as my opponent made some bold moves and they paid off. I congratulated him on the tie during the match, and I do it again here. Well played MxFr, and I would be happy to play against you any time.

My first mistake - MxFr's only TD occured with an AG 4 ghoul that started the turn on the ground. I had knocked the ball loose on my turn and covered it with a Chaos Dwarf blocker. I had a hobgoblin nearby covering a stunned ghoul (the previous ballcarrier), and the ball was sitting in my endzone. As my last action, I 1-die blocked his AG 4 ghoul and got 'Both-down'. I had a reroll, but I was happy with both down. This meant that the only player on his team that could reach the ball now needed 2 gfis (2+), 1 dodge (3+ but no dodge skill), and a pickup (3+). I think MxFr still had a reroll he could use any one of these rolls but my Tackle skill meant his Dodge skill was negated. In hindsight, I feel what I should have done was dodge my hobgoblin away from the ghoul (3+), attempt a pickup (3+) and either try 2 gfis followed by a hand off (2+, 2+, 3+) or a quick pass to the other hobgoblin (3+, 3+). The worst roll to fail would have been the dodge, as anything else would have put the ball somewhere not in the endzone and most likely still covered by 1 or more TZs. Not a terrible decision on my part, but I may have been too cautious here giving an AG 4 player a chance to score with 4 die rolls all 3+ or less.

My second mistake - 15th turn of the game, I used a gfi on my sure hands hobgoblin to move him within scoring distance on the last turn. He was being semi-protected by one of my bulls, but I positioned him poorly, and since I had used a reroll on the first GFI I didn't attempt a 2nd one. I should have moved him as close to the sideline as possible on the first GFI. By placing him where I did, 1 space away from the sideline, it allowed MxFr to dodge a wight away to take away the bull's assist (with 2 gfis, so 3+, 2+, 2+), then dodge a ghoul away to put an assist on the hobgoblin also with 2 gfis (3+, 2+, 2+) and then to unexpectedly dodge a zombie away to blitz with 1 gfi (4+, 2+, 2 die blitz). The zombie got a POW and the ball bounced out of bounds while the hobgoblin was stunned. Even though this was an improbable series of rolls, I could have positioned the hobgoblin in such a way that neither the wight nor the ghoul could have reached him from the direction they came without greater risk. It would have forced both the wight and the ghoul to make more dodges (of the 4+ variety) no matter which direction they went, and may have still included the 2 GFIs. But once again, I was overly cautious by not putting the ballcarrier on the sideline because I was concerned about a crowd push.

Next time I'm in a similar situation, I hope that I am more willing to take some risks to put the game away instead of putting the dice in my opponent's hand and trusting the odds.”