“Well, that was... unfair. And it wasn't me that was on the receiving end, it was extremegrazedknee, who looked to have a comfortable and commanding control of the game until my turn 3 in the second half, at which point his entire game was turned upside down and the thing was handed to me on a plate.

The first half was fairly balanced, with both of us turning the ball over on our opening offensive drives to make it 1-1. The Tree Huggers then survived some terrible dice, avoided yet another turnover, and ran in the score right at the end of the half, even picking up a cas along the way.

It was somewhere around this point that it started to rain and extremegrazedknee suggested that this looked like being a bad sign for him. However, I pointed out that another quick score, and perhaps another cas, would almost certainly put the game beyond me.

And what do you know? The Treehuggers made another quick score and picked up another cas along the way, putting the game fairly comfortably beyond me.

And that's when the curse of the unfair dice struck. First off there was a pitch invasion which took out half the Treehuggers and allowed me to get a catcher downfield, get the thrower to the ball for a long pass and get in a successful blitz with a wardancer. On extremegrazedknee's following turn half his team was still on the deck, of course, but just to make sure there was no chance of him getting in my way, he failed a 2+ dodge.

Score.

But it was still only 2-3. I still need to pull something special out of the bag...

Blitz. That helped. I couldn't reach the ball, but I could make it difficult for the Treehuggers to get to it, so I did what I could, realising as I finished my turn without the ball that all the blitz had really done was make me push my team forward so that extremegrazedknee's catchers would be in clear space once he got the ball to them. That was when he failed the 3+ pick up. All I had to do then was dodge into, and pickup in, two TZs, then pass from the same two TZs to the catcher waiting in the endzone.

Score.

Suddenly we were at 3-3. Unbelievable. But extremegrazedknee still had three turns left, he outnumbered me, and both my wardancers (and all my tackle) were off the field. And I'd used up every lucky trick the game had given me - the rain, a pitch invasion, a blitz, plenty of lucky dice...what more was there to subject extremegrazedknee to?

Oh, another blitz. Now if that isn't the ultimate in cruel, I don't know what is. The kick was shallow and I was able to run a catcher downfield and get my thrower into position to make the catch. Nice. But extremegrazedknee was having none of it, knocking over the thrower, getting the ball to one of his catchers and getting way downfield. I pulled back as many players as I could, but without any tackle, I was forced to blitz with the ST4 lineman - who had to dodge into 2 TZs to get there. POW. And there was even a spare catcher to collect the ball.

The Treehuggers blitzed him but only managed a pushback, even after a reroll, and this allowed me to dodge away, go for it to hand off to the thrower and get ready for whatever might happen in the final turn.

What did happen in the final turn was that the Treehugger blitz could only push back my thrower, and the game ended with me running a lineman into the endzone and throwing a long bomb - from a TZ - for the winning score.

It was, as extremegrazedknee pointed out afterwards, an epic game. But so, so, so unfair. From the moment he scored his third TD, not a single thing went right for him, and everything that could have gone my way did. A pitch invasion which downed half his team and then not one, but two blitzes? How can anyone deal with that?

So we handed the Treehuggers their first loss out of 15 games and picked up our first win in six games. That's certainly a relief. But more importantly, we finally managed a good passing game, with Chocolateorange picking up 5 for 48. It's been a while.

I should probably pop out right now and buy a lottery ticket while I'm still riding this wave of super luck, but I think I'll save my money and spend it on some celebratory chocolate instead.

Yum.”