“With two such potentially fast-scoring teams, this was a surprisingly low-scoring game with the rats concentrating more on trying to damage the wood elves than racking up the touchdowns.

Sensation received the opening kick and almost straight away the violence began, with one of my journeymen getting an outright kill against a shaven rookie lineman. (I would have considered keeping him after that, but he was himself killed in the second half). Anyway, Briskbreeze threw a long bomb on turn two and opened the scoring.

In reply, the rats made a quick break with the ball, while they also made a mess of the wood elf front line, concentrating on getting rid of the journeymen who were foolish enough to stray too close to the rat ogre. With the ball safely stalled outside the endzone, the bashing continued, but it was actually another rookie skaven lineman who became the next victim to be carted off in a coffin.

At this point the tree managed to knock himself over trying a cheeky double block, and with him on the deck and the journeymen starting to fill up the KO box, it was perhaps not surprising that Caiusyan wanted to delay for as long as he could. But there were no tacklers on the rats team, and my wardancer was able to continually avoid being knocked over, so that in the end I made it to the ball carrier, knocked him over and stole the ball. The rats then couldn't knock him over in reply and I was able to hand off to the thrower, long bomb downfield to a catcher and so prevent the turn 8 score.

Things continued pretty much the same at the top of the second half, with the rats getting the ball safely downfield and spending several turns blocking and fouling the wood elves as much as possible. They did get a revenge kill against the killer journeyman from the first half, but then had a player sent off for fouling. And they still had no answer for the wardancer, so at the end of turn 6 they ran in the score.

This gave me plenty of time to try and retake the lead, however, and I did so in the usual long-bomb way two turns later.

We now both had one turn left, and with one of the gutter runners being MA10, I was fully expecting to see a 1-turn attempt, requiring me to attempt the same on my own final turn. But Caiusyan chose not to try it and so my final turn was just a matter of stealing the ball in order to get it to the thrower for one final long bomb.

So in actual fact, although it was a disappointingly low-scoring affair, Briskbreeze came away with 5 for 51, which is his best showing for a while. Spiderplant continues his slow and steady march towards legendhood and a final skill, not by hitting things, but by being an MVP magnet. And the wardancer, who really had an outstanding game and should, if there was any justice in the world, have taken the MVP for himself, was rewarded instead with diving tackle.

So, onwards and upwards...”