Women of Wrath (Amazon) v Angband Wolves (Orc, me)
No match report this week. It’s all too depressing.
So I lined up against the Amazon team and was feeling pretty good – yes, they have dodge, but with 3 black orcs (1 was out injured) and the troll, plus my 4 blitzers, I felt sure that I had a sufficient strength and armour advantage to win the blocking war.
That’s not what happened at all. My tackle blitzer (the key player in my team) spent almost the whole game in the KO box, to start with, and even when blocking with my other blitzers I kept rolling “defender stumbles”, which was of course negated by their dodge.
Meanwhile my opponent rolled block dice the like of which I have never seen. At least once every turn he rolled a 1D block, often early in the turn, and he never ever failed. Even with unskilled linewomen against my skilled blitzers. I don’t think he used more than one reroll in the whole game. He rolled one double skulls in the game, even though most of the time he was blocking with unskilled players and so the odds of failure are 1/9. I was laughing by the end at his block dice - they never let him down at all.
In addition when I could knock the Amazons down (and I guess my block dice were about average) I could not break armour. For the second game in a row I was outhit by an armour 7 team – even my troll only managed to break armour once.
Ah the troll.
Second half, I’m massively outnumbered and hanging on for a draw. I am desperately trying to make space around the ball carrier, so I blitz with the troll against an unskilled linewoman. Both down (1/9). I try to reroll and fail due to loner (1/2). I fail the armour roll (1/6). Injury roll comes up casualty (1/9). Casualty roll comes up dead (1/6). I use the apothecary – dead again (1/6). I fail the regenerate roll (1/2). Odds of that result? A whopping 1/69984. Sigh.
I was fine at half time – despite the beating I held off the Amazon drive and only lost 2 players to non-permanent injuries. I lined up with the ball and a 2 man disadvantage, but the amazing run of blocking dice and the death of the troll meant that it just got crazy in the second half. I held out as long as I could, losing another black orc killed, but with only 4 players on the pitch at the end I needed a very unlikely last ditch play to prevent the touchdown and failed. The Amazons scored in the last turn to make it 1-0.
So, basically my team has been gutted by the loss of 190,000gp worth of players. The troll is particularly galling as he’d just levelled up. A troll with guard is an excellent player and could have been key in the remaining games.
Still – positives:
1) No other permanent injuries (or even MNG), meaning that if I roll a 5+ for my winnings I can buy back the black orc and have a reasonably full roster for the rest of the season.
2) One of my black orcs levelled up, so I have 3 experienced players now. I’ll give him block I think.
And what should I have done differently? I should probably have fouled when I had the chance. I’m wary of early game fouling, but against AV7 it could have tipped the scale for me. I’m really bloody cross about all the deaths, and the urge to hurt the opposition is currently very strong. Whoever I play next is getting a kicking.
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