“I hate pouring rain. It's not the rain itself, but somehow critical rolls seem to come up bad for me in the rain. Superstition? Sample error? Probably both. Whatever the case, this game felt like it was decided by some first-half dice. I did make a couple little mistakes, but I think I played this one about as well as I could have; once I got man-down, there was no coming back, but I still made him work for the second score, and in fact threatened (vaguely) to take it away from him.

I also wasn't mentally ready for 10x Guard. Crogthnakk, Horkadakk, and Jarromrolrg are all close to improving; this game makes me wonder if the safe route of Guard will yield more mileage than the specialist route of (Fend or Grab) for Crogthnakk, Frenzy for Horkadakk, and Pro for Jarromrolrg. I may do Guard, Guard and Pro, respectively; the J-man sometimes finds himself stuck in, but mostly he plays in space, and often makes 2+ rolls without a TRR, and 2d blocks with Mighty Blow. Perhaps Pro would have led to success on that 1-turn attempt: I got him in range, but he couldn't catch the ball. Crog sometimes won't have a chance to use Guard when setting the edge, but he does so much else, you know?

Aarkhag will be missed. He was a stud. I'm going to give Blargmarkh a little longer to prove himself: if he can get Block in the next two games or so, I'll hire another Thrower as a KOR target. Until then, I'll use Jarromrolrg and Blargmarkh as a retrieving duo.

I should be more careful. At the time I said the Apoth use was a misclick, but really it was more of a brain-fart. The previous game I was playing a Chaos team with a noobish coach and I induced a bunch of Apothecaries, and just Apothed every KO or Cas. Going into the next game, I forgot to turn off that mode. Oops.

Since Karkagragraghkkh has picked up Stand Firm, every knockdown against him has yielded Badly Hurt, resulting in a burned Apothecary on coaching error (perhaps killing Aarkhag) and failed a Regen roll. I hope I didn't just make another Garkherl-style jinx, where as soon as he got Side Step every other block on him got a Cas.

Yeah, I get superstitious after a bad loss. I get over it pretty fast, but I take pride in being hard to blow out. Hats off, KennethLumina!”