“I was extremely skeptical when that match was offered. Giving up 170TV to some fleet-footed, agile elves was not my idea of a great way to begin a match, but I enjoyed the thought that this would be a challenge for the team.

The elves did a great job of getting their catchers into scoring position, securing the ball in the hands of their thrower, and in general, being annoying. Come turn 4 they made a dash up the middle with their thrower and tossed the ball into the awaiting catcher in the endzone.

Not a big deal, as I still had 5 turns in which to grind my way into the endzone to even the score, and we had a slight number advantage. This was when the elves made a perfect kick and rolled “Blitz”, recovering the ball on the bounce, all but dashing the hopes of evening the match this half. The rest of the half was a combination of a scrum for the ball along the sideline, Amazonian incompetence at ball-handling, and a team-wide crusade to cripple every elf within reach. I didn’t necessarily mean for that to happen, but it just kind of turned out that way.

Second half, playing eleven on five, the idea was to get the ball into the endzone as quick as possible, kick to the elves, recover the ball, and bring in that second TD for the win. This is possibly the worst game plan against a team of elves, as it only takes two or three elves to score on you in a turn or two. To make matters worse, the number advantage had me making sloppy plays, and the elves were still in the way. After three turns and still without an equalizing TD I started to doubt my chances of winning this match, until fateful turn number four. Thanks to some successful blocks (and a great foul) there were only two elves left on the field. An idea occurred to me: a stupid, far-fetched, never-going-to-work, kind of idea. There were nine elves spread between the Badly Hurt, Seriously Injured, and Dead sections of the dugout. If I could add a few more... But they had purchased a Babe with the inducement money; this was never going to work. Oh well, why not give it a try.

The elves did not want to go through with the plan, as evident by the fact that they knocked the ball loose from us. But after another foul (Good eyes, Ref) and a failed GFI blitz, we had succeeded in clearing the pitch, and as fate would have it, the ball was in the hands of one of the team members. So turn six, with an empty field, we walked into the endzone, and immediately set our eyes on the two elves laying prone in the KO’d section of the dugout. Both elves failed to wake up. The elven team could field no players. The officials awarded us a touchdown, and moved the turn counter forward. Those elves managed to wake up and take the field just long enough to realize that they had lost the match as the whistle blew 2-1.

This was complete douche-baggetry on my behalf. What kind of jerk goes for the “can’t field players-TD” to win a match? As I told coach Denoan44, they beat me fair and square all match, and that they were the true winner no matter what the score was. Good game, and an interesting end to a fun match.”