Star Spanners (chaos) v The Grey Haven Guard (high elf, me)
My opponent won the toss and elected to receive.
I set up with a flat formation - 3 on the LOS tight in the centre and the rest of the team to protect thw widezones and make it hard to run AG4 beastment around the side. He put all four horrible warriors on the LOS and the kickoff came up with a perfect defence, immediately allowing me to pull away from his killer. Kevatononel was knocked out, but this was the only damage on the first turn (result!). The kick was short and central and the chaos player formed a loose cage around his ball carrying beastman.
My first turn went very well. Firstly my oppnent had blitzed Glorfindel with his killer but only got a push. Glorfindel elected to stay in contact and then on my turn he knocked over the warrior, stunning him. Meanwhile Gil-Galad dashed around the end of the chaos line into one of the cage corners, knocking out the unfortunate beastman. He and Tananmyr marked the carrier. Suddenly, and very quickly, the position began to look bad for the chaos coach - having pushed most of his high strength players into contact the previous turn, and with the killer on the floor, it was hard to make the ball safe. Tananmyr was blitzed over by the ST6 monster warrior, but that left Gil-Galad free and next to the ball carrier. The beastman dodged left to get away from trouble, but the chaos team couldn't keep him safe from the marauding elves.
Alawe put an assist on the ball carrier using his guard, and Vanval dodged through the centre of the chaos line and knocked down the ball carrier. The ball came loose and Vanval looked to dodge away and pick it up but rolled double 1s for the dodge, stunning himself in the process! I winced when this came up - because I had taken this critical action first, half my team was in contact and although the ball was relatively hard for the chaos team to make safe it was going to be a critical turn.
The chaos coach began with an odd move - using his killer blitzer to take a whack at Glorfindel. Yes it was a good opportunity, but Glorfindel was in the centre - miles from the ball. The chaos team then basically took a swing at any elf within reach, hitting a couple but not doing worse than a stun. The ball carrier got to his feet, picked up the ball and went to put an assist on Alawe to allow on of the star beastmen to get a single dice block. Alawe was taking no prisoners however, and punched the AG4 wrestle stand firm beastman into the casualty box!
This left the ball carrier next to Alawe. I thought hard about what to do - I had an easy chance of a 2D block by moving in Cirdan for an assist, but without tackle (Vanval was stunned) or wrestle nearby, my odds of a knockdown were not great. So I decided to use the wizard to make sure, but clearly the useless bugger had blown a fuse somewhere as the lightning bolt fizzled out! Bollocks. So I took the block with Alawe instead who made a mockery of my misgivings by popping the ball loose at the first attempt. I couldn't quite get the ball safe, however, and although Gil-Galad was covering, the killer warrior was able to dodge past the screen and knock him over. The agile beastman then got up once again, dodged away from trouble, picked the ball up and launched a soaring diagonal pass to the ST6 warrior in the centre of the pitch, who promptly dropped the catch!
Phew!
It was then the work of a moment for Kiendan to dodge away from his marker and clear the marker away from Tananmyr. Felagund then dodge clear, picked the ball up from under the nose of the chaos team captain and hand it off to Tanamyr who ran in the touchdown! 1-0 to the Guard!
We lined up identically, although in my case since Kivatononel was still unconscious Lord Celeborn made his dainty AV7 way onto the field to the LOS. Hungry for more points the elves blitzed from the kick off. Again, the lack of a kicker was painful as the ball landed centrally. I was able to get Felagund under the ball, and he caught it, but the chaos team quickly recovered it and some passing between their AG4 beastmen allowed them to screen the ball off again on the left hand side near the LOS.
Gil-Galad knocked a hole through the screen and Glorfindel marked the ball carrier, while the rest of the high elves remade their defensive line, and in response the chaos team blitzed Glorfindel down. The beastman with the ball cut right and handed the ball off to their ST6 warrior, who lumbered into the right hand wide zone. The bloke was huge, but clearly my opponent was expecting me to be unable to knock him down, Undaunted by the horrific beast however I managed to cobble together four assists for a blitz by a wrestle lineman to make a 2D block, only to see double push rerolled to double push! I pushed him next to the sideline though.
The chaos team responded as they know best, by concentrating on hurting my players - Gil-Galad suffered a fractured leg and had to be carried off. The ST6 warrior bashed his way clear of the sideline though, and supporting beastmen arrived.
Not really expecting much, I get a 2D against block on the ST6 warrior and only pushed him back against the sideline, but suddenly I saw a chance to surf him. I 1D blocked a beastman behind him and then blitzed in with Felagund for a second 2D against block and pushed the huge warrior into the crowd! Enraged fans swarmed all over the massive armoured form, killing him outright!
The chaos team apothecary hurried forward, and offered to save the life of the warrior at the cost of a smashed collar bone. Despite the fact that this warrior would still be one of the most powerful players in the league, the coach decided that carrying such an injury, being a shadow of what he once was, would be too much, and let him die!
After the shock of killing perhaps the rarest and most valuable player I have ever met in my time in the game, what happened to the ball seemed almost secondary. Nevertheless it was thrown back in near the chaos end zone. Legolas dodged away from his marker and set off after it. He was punched by the killer warrior but stayed upright, then dodged away again, pushed a chaos safety away from the ball in a 1D block, picked it up and made 2 GFIs to score. 2-0 to the Guard at half time!
At this point my plan was not to do anything clever - 1 more TD for me would result in a win, so I decided to score a 2 turner at the start of the second half. It was pretty straightforward - I bashed a hole with Vanval, ran several players through it, my opponent made the mistake of trying to put pressure on Cirdan who just stepped around the threat, ran up the left sideline and fired in a pass to Legolas. Vanval again smashed a hole in the makeshift screen to let Legolas jog home on turn 10 to make the score 3-0.
And frankly, there isn't much else to say. My opponent received again and I didn't do much to try to stop him scoring. I concentrated on keeping my players safe and tried to prevent easy hits. He started to be very aggressive with his killer, piling on all over the place. I fouled him a few times but couldn't break armour and soon the chaos coach had 3 KOs and had badly hurt Legolas. That was as bad as it got though - the chaos team scored on turn 14, which gave me the chance for an identical 2 turner, which I took, scoring with Vanval to end the game 4-1 winners!
No comments:
Post a Comment