The replay of Natural Disaster vs. Jolly's Likedeeler
is here.
Match report:
The match started with Jolly keeping the ball in the back, and chasing my elves across the pitch. Since he left his ball carrier rather unprotected, I decided to play aggressively, attack the ball carrier, and tie Jolly's other players in the middle of the field. This nearly worked, as I did manage to sack the ball carrier, but I was never able to pick up the ball, or even prevent Jolly from picking it up himself again. The problem with "nearly worked" is that the results were pretty much identical to "complete failure": Jolly decimated my team (since I didn't evade the blocks), and I couldn't keep him from scoring either. On top of it, he scored on turn 8, leaving me no chance for a comeback in the first half.
In hindsight, going all aggressive against a full team of orcs, while my own team mostly didn't have block or dodge skills, and with only one inexperienced wardancer on the pitch since the other one missed the game, might not have been the smartest idea. It was definitely more fun that way though. ;)
In the second half I scored a quick equalizer. I needed a bit of luck since had put my half-cage in a vulnerable position. Jolly had a good chance to crowd-surf my ball carrier, but instead he just blocked him to the ground, and the ball went to one of my other players. I still had to succeed with two dodges and a pass afterwards, but Twiggy Branches scored the touchdown.
That left Jolly with 6 turns to score another touchdown. Considering that he had a full team of orcs (my armor/injury rolls were abysmal, all I managed in the entire match was to stun two orcs) against 9 wood elves without a ball stripper, I didn't have much hope. And the game indeed seemed to proceed as expected: Jolly's orcs were wiping the floor with my remaining woodies, and he still had enough spare players to keep his ball carrier in a well-protected cage, which slowly moved down the pitch to the (seemingly) inevitable touchdown.
And then came Twiggy Branches.
While most of my team was busy posing as punching balls for the orcs, she managed to:
- dodge into the cage
- attack the ball carrier with no assistance from any of my players (2 red dice block)
- send the ball carrier to the ground
- dodge right between two other orcs
- pick up the ball that had scattered between those orcs
- dodge away from the orcs
- withstand two blocks that Jolly throw at her in the next turn
- leap away from five orcs that had surrounded her, while holding onto the ball
- run deep into the opponent's half
- succeed with two GFI's so that no orc was able to reach and block her
- make a final dodge and score the winning touchdown in turn 16
That was probably one of the most spectacular plays one of my players has pulled off so far. I don't even want to know what the chances were to succeed with all these moves ... ;)
After the match, Twiggy dedicated the victory to former player Fanny Hill, stating that "her death enabled me to join this team". Fanny Hill had been killed in the most brutal gang foul in the league's history, in the match against the Sewer Snappers.
As a side note, the orcs did manage to kill my second thrower, but he had a permanent injury already, so it's no big loss.
