“Lustrian Challenge VIII Qualifier V - Round 1

6th time's the charm as I break my Major duck against happygrue, but he'll have regrets.

The 1st half started badly for me, but it was a blessing in disguise. The pitch invasion that floored half my team drew in the dark elves who got bashed as a reward. There was possibly an opportunity for Hicks to strike at Landlady, ball in hand, but a snaked dodge put paid to it.

The dark elves tried but were unable to stop 1-0 but with Hicks the one turn score was on. I learned from past lessons, marshalling a successful defense but there was an error in the attempt which was a bit unlike happygrue.

I was optimistic at this point - a couple of hurt elves, no apothecary, and a whole half to go without worrying too much about them scoring. It was however the elves turn to do damage and I left a surf on which smashed Bone and was never close to stealing the ball, certainly not close enough to have used the wizard. Apprehensive of it, happygrue scored a turn early.

Prior to the equalizer, I'd rolled a double skull then the next turn failed a go for it prior to hitting another double skull. With 2 turns to attempt a winner, I was dismayed to hit a quad skull. I was starting to get that familiar feeling of struggling against happygrue's tight play and hitting a wall of Nuffle. This was quickly forgotten when I won the overtime toss but overtime began with the elves as strong as they'd started the 2nd half. Receiving was key.

Soon however the feeling was back as a zombie failed a rerolled both downs block, leaving Landlady exposed. It was - a misclicked blitz aside - the low point of the match for me as I could have covered it. However the dark elves could not steal the ball as 1s were striking and the hand off was dropped. It fell into 4 tackle zones and, with 6 elves hittable, a fireball rained down. It only took down 2 but crucially stunned both.

I chanced the scatter and got lucky, the ball falling into the hands of a zombie and a pow on the clumsy 1D frenzy follow up. Whilst happygrue could hit the zombie, he couldn't get near the ball; Landlady grabbed the ball and dashed down the line. A host of go for its came off and happygrue made an huge error by miscounting the distance - allowing Landlady to score the winner.

I'm glad to have won however the satisfaction was not totally there because I felt happygrue was not on his A-game here.”