A quick review of day 1 while I sit and digest the awesome breakfast at the Orchard – if you ever needed another reason to come to the NAFC, this would be it.  A nice morning, in contrast to yesterday when I woke with a start at 5.50, having set my alarm very badly so that it didn’t go off.  Body clock to the rescue!  Piled my huge packing list into the car, and had a smooth trip to Nottingham, arriving as people started to register in the hall at about half eight.

First from the packing list was the mugs, which went down well again, though I do have a few to dispatch today – I have no use for leftover individualised NAF mugs, can’t see them making much on ebay.  I set the webcam up to test it, and catch the flavour of the hall, though turned the sound off (sorry Glow!) so that I wasn’t capturing individual conversations.  Unfortunately, the refs’ laptop wasn’t talking to the hotel wireless, so mine was soon commandeered to allow online posting of the draw, a great was of doing it to reduce crowding round the bits of paper.

On to the games! Game 1 v TheDoc’s Dark Elves started fairly badly, when I miscounted squares allowing my ball carrier to be hit – fortunately, I had 4 slann catchers so was able to rescue and cage up properly, then went through the half without leaping at all for an 8-turn drive.  I was numbers up in the second half, including managing to leap in early in the half and surf his only witch, then various turnovers on both sides led to it finishing 1-0.  Fun game to start the tournament, excellent opponent.

Game 2 brought more Dark Elves, but this time 2 witches, 1 reroll plus leader.  2 runners too, one of whom had nerves of steel, which if he was able to not roll a one would have been an excellent tactic!  Was not to be, sadly.  A Blitz result helped quite a lot, allowing the frogs to swarm early on, and the game finished 3-0.  Froggy armour held up well to quite a few hits, which was a recurring theme in the day, and the prehensile tongue of the Croaxigor made life annoying for his only blodge blitzer.  Always good to play ManticoreRich, who does a lot of the graphics work for the NAF, and also produces some nice figures!

Game 3 was HowlingGriffon’s Undead – we had been hoping to play each other having had quite a lot of Twitter chat, but the odds were against it with 150 coaches.  Froggy armour still mostly held up in this one, and an early blitz put me 1-0 up within a few turns.  Didn’t manage to hold him off in his second drive, so went in 1-1, only one frog down.  Then they started to leave the pitch, mostly to the KO box, and life got hard, culminating in a failed GFI into the corner for the touchdown.  The ball came half the way up the pitch, and I committed the cardinal sin of saying “well done, that’s your game”, which is the magic words to make your opponent fail the pickup and for all your stuff to work (but also make you look like an arse).

So, the krox passed bonehead, and rolled double both down.  Passed the loner, powed the zombie and went to stand next to the ghoul.  Catcher swept in, scooped up the ball, dodged out and punted the ball into space for the chase.  A ghoul got there first, but time was running out.  In my turn 16 I was debating whether to sack the ball carrier or take out the wight in scoring distance, when in contrast to my statement in the first half HG said “you could still win”.  I counted it out, and he was right!  Five rolls of six in a row, as well as a both down with wrestle, and the game finished 2-1 to me.  Excellent sportsmanship from Darren – thank you!

Finished the day on 3 wins then, and headed to the bar for many many beers and games of Zombie Dice, Zombie Fluxx, BB Team Manager and Perudo, then crashing out about half twelve.

Head not hurting too badly, but Brendan has just arrived looking a bit too fresh for my liking, given that he is my first opponent with his two Tackling Saurus.  Which is a bit like cheating.

My team:

• 4 catchers (2 x dodge day 1, guard and dauntless day 2)
• 6 lineman (wrestle day 1, block day 2)
• Croaxigor (unfeasibly long tongue)

Pics will follow later, as I’ve left my camera in my room.  Updates will come today on Twitter via @OfficialNAF or @sann0638, but if you don’t tweet you can see the OfficialNAF feed here: http://www.thenaf.net/the-naf/media/

Nonumber says hi to the internet!

Edit: Many photos now available!

2nd Edit: Check out Day 2!