“Fumbbl Cup XV: round 1:

The Silver Unicorns faced an interesting-looking Chaos Team in the first round of 2016's Fumbbl Cup. A ma8 ball carrier and another ma7 beastman definitely added some speed to the roster. Facing only one tackler, without any other nasty skills besides block on top of it, things looked good for the blodgy Unicorns, at least on paper.

Furor Descendit surprised me by not inducing a wizard, but rather Max Spleenripper and a bribe! Coach Critical_Code was clearly looking to reduce the numbers of the opposing elves as soon and as fast as possible. Chaos won the coin toss and decided to receive in the first half. The game started with a riot in anticipation of the bloodbath soon to follow. Then the chainsaw massacre started on turn two, by injuring a lineman on the line of scrimmage. Another one was ko'd, reducing the elves to 9 before they had even moved a single player.

In all his frenzied madness, Max Spleenripper remained standing at the end of the line of chaos warriors, provoking a 2d blitz on the elves' first active turn. The madman went down, receiving his chainsaw in his own face, immediately knocking him out of the game. He would never return on the pitch. That was a good opening turn for the elves as well! Facing three chaos warriors with guard strategically placed on the corners of the cage, a decent shot on the ball never presented itself. Therefore we opted for a double defensive line, trying to stall the advance of the Chaos team.

This worked reasonably well, but in the end they managed to score in the last turn of the first half, albeit with two GFI's. One failed, but was successfully re-rolled and the second one worked fine too. The Unicorns were hoping for a quick snap or even better, another riot, in order to have a shot to still equalize before half-time. Neither opportunity presented itself. Having only 9 players at our disposal and rolling too many pows when you don't need them rendered the one-turner effort quite impossible.

So the goal for the second half was as clear as it was challenging. Stall for 7 turns and score the equalizer in turn 8, aiming at overtime and winning the coin-toss for the last kick-off. We were lucky that the Chaos team didn't apply too much pressure, being happy to close off all passages as best as possible. By turn 4 I had to chose a flank and start the advance. Next turn I managed to oust two opposing beastmen, due to some luck (the block) and some negligence of my opponent, allowing me to surf one of his players. This made it relatively easy to squeeze through and still more or less protect the ball. Meanwhile one of my throwers got killed for the first time, but was rescued by the apothecary only to be killed a second time later in the game. The stall was successful, leading the match to overtime.

The Unicorns lost the coin-toss and started kicking. Things didn't look too well, but could have been worse with 8 elves facing 8 remaining chaos players. Blood had been flowing steadily on both sides, with a special mention for superstar catcher Lamean, inflicting no less than 3 casualties and knocking out Max Spleenripper on top of it. Later numbers would reduce further to 6 vs 6. Nevertheless, the ball-carrier was still quite well protected and the grind moved on, slowly but steadily advancing towards the end-zone for the winning touchdown. Time to go all in and I decided to blitz one of the corners of the cage and mark everything with all I had left. The game had been very tight until then and it still was. Apparently my opponent's nerves broke and he decided to finally make his decisive move. His ma8 ball-carrier managed to squeeze out, burning a reroll, but then a blodge beastman failed a crucial dodge being next to my tackler, causing a turnover with the team reroll already gone for the turn. This offered me at least 1d on the ball, but I decided to go all in once more and dodged out with two gfi's for a 2d blitz on the ball. This resulted in a double pow, obviously taking down the ball-carrier. The blitzing catcher managed to pick up the ball as well and Nuffle was kind next turn when 4d (without tackle on a blodger) were not enough to kick the ball loose again. Still, by the end of that turn my ball-carrier was in the center of an enemy cage. A 3+ and a 2+ dodge, followed by a 2+ hand-off and a last 2+ dodge combined with a 2d blitz were enough to break through and run into safety. The game was played.

This was a hard-fought win in an exciting and interesting game. With three RIP's (the same player actually died twice in the same game!), two additional perms and two ordinary MNG to top it off, next round will be another challenge for sure!

Thanks to coach Critical_Code for the nice game! ”