“Woodelves vs. dwarves, old vs. new, low TV vs medium TV, UI V semifinalist vs, WO winner. The bets were on the Tiny Steel Hammers.
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Looking at the Hammers rooster:
lots of pomb, TENTACLES on St4 blocker, a 6448 blodge runner, 2 time diving tackle, no dp
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Looking at sithis revenge rooster:
2 decent dancers
1 ag5 lino
440k inducements
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How to spend the money?
Morg? with one claw player I didnt like the idea to put all the money on one player, and I have no real experience with him.
So wizard -> down to 290k.
Now the choices elendril + babes, Zara or Jordell I didnt like. Too high risk of running out of players soon. So I went for 2 apo + babes, wasting 40k.
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The game started with the Hammers securing the fame advantage (14FF vs 14FF) and got to choose. Hammers chose kicking first as Sithis Revenge would have chosen. The first lineup had Jiriki on the Los, ready to spill some dwarven blood, but perfect defense spoiled that for good. That pesky tentacle dwarf tangled Jiriki. Things were looking bad already before the first turn was played.
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Senditu picked up the ball and retreated to the back field. In the following turns I tried to surf some dwarves, but knocked the players over instead. Meanwhile the Hammers took 2 players out on their second turn, one on the third 2 on the fourth and another 2 on his 5th turn, but my missclick on an apo for a ko meant only 1 player left the pitch and all my 3 apoth gone already. With my attempts to free Jiriki spoiled, things looked really dim by mid of first half.
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But things changed :).
On my sixth turn Senditu started his desperate run to the endzone, with no protection but 1 gfi for a 2db or 2 gfi for a 3db, still in the middle of my own half. Hammers went for the 3db and lost a rr on the way. Nuffle was kind and showed no pows on the 3 dice. But still Senditu was trapped in the middle of some dwarves. I chainpushed him into a 3+, 2+ position and kept on running with Senditu. Leaving him open to a 2d frenzy 1(2) gfi block with tackle, 6 squares from the endzone. I thought about taking the wiz to take out the only dwarf in reach, but decided against it, knowing it would be almost impossible to extract the ball from that pesky 6448 blodge runner without the wiz in second half.
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Senditu was knocked down but the armour was not broken, despite piling on. The ball out of reach for the dwarves, let me score on turn 8. Phew.
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Suddenly things were looking better again. With my wiz still active and 10 players for second half.
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Second half started with angry Hammer gettings the full 4 players out in the first turn. 6 woodelves and a wiz vs 11 dwarves. Pickup succeeded as well. My gangfoul on the tent monster resulted in a stun, damn that thick dwarven skulls.
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Seeing my chances vanish again, being seriously outmanned that early, I seized the opportunity in turn 2 to try my luck on the wiz with all my players reasonably free to move. The bolt freed the ball, My ag5 lino picked the ball out of the tacklezone and passed to Jiriki. the line of protection was closed by a lino doding out of diving tackle (with rr). Jiriki jumped behind the dwarven lines next turn only in reach of the runner. No pow by the runner meant, 2:0 on turn 4 of second half.
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A tight match with lots of downs and ups and the lucky end for me secured my third UI main event participation (the only ranked major I qualified for so far).
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Thanks for the game.”