“Angry Newscasters...you see them there on Gamefinder and it's like a magnet, drawing you in. Of course you don't want to play them, they're pure evil. But then you wonder what if...

I'm a coward and I'm not ashamed of saying so. I love my legend tree and I'm not going to put him on the same field as a single Newscaster for any reason. Ever. But thanks to a timely chainsaw in my previous match he decided to sit one out. And there they were, the Angry Newscasters, just waiting for a game. So I thought I may as well. If nothing else it would be a good opportunity to reduce my team rating to a more sensible level, and at least it would be something we could tell our grandchildren.

I picked up a spare tree and Willow from the inducements and then went for a spare apothecary as it seemed like the right thing to do. Also, having had a look at the team, I'd decided that although everyone else was expendable, the thrower was worth protecting and I may well need to heal him more than once.

Well, every single penny of my inducements was a waste of coin. The tree went down and out on the first turn, Willow on the second after spending a turn on the deck. And I never even used my own apo, let alone the spare.

As for the game itself, I had about three, maybe four turns of reasonable defence, but after that first-turn pounding I was never going to be in with much of a chance of salvaging the game - especially once the ST4 sure hands blitzer had hold of the ball. So I just threw my players into the middle of the bones and bandages and hoped for a miracle.

The miracle was that I still had four players left for my first offensive drive on turn 8 - which wasn't really enough for anything spectacular, but was at least enough for a nice long bomb.

The same four were there for the start of the second half, and I would have chucked the ball away on the first turn if my receiver hadn't tripped himself trying to get away from the mummies. And needless to say, he wasn't around on the following turn. But I did get in a second long bomb anyway.

After that, it was just a matter of waiting to see what injury the thrower would pick up when his time was up. He lasted another two turns before scuttling off to the BH box with a big relieved grin on his face, leaving the Newscasters pretty much all alone.

And actually all alone by the end of the game, as I was pleased to see that Carlo_Pellegatti went for the final turn foul rather than the third score and was rewarded with a pitch devoid of wood elves. This would probably have been more impressive if he hadn't already done the same thing in the first half!

So I survived the Angry Newscasters, kept my thrower, reduced my TR, kept hold of my fans, earned some reasonable gold and had an awful lot of fun along the way. And I would strongly recommend everyone has at least one go against the Newscasters at some point. If, like me, you're a chronic pixel-hugger, then perhaps wait until your best and brightest are taking the day off, but do give it a try anyway. Carlo is a great opponent, friendly and chatty...and plays really fast as well. And after all, what's the worst that could happen?

Do they give out badges for surviving the Newscasters? And does losing all your players still count as surviving?”