Silly brain woke me up at 4am local time, so getting my revenge by forcing it to write words!  This is the half time (of my visit) report of the 5th NAF World Cup currently happening in Alicante on the southern Spanish coast.  The WC happens every 4 years and has been growing kind of exponentially since 2007.  I helped organise 2015 in Italy, then was on a competitive team in 2019 in Austria, and this time was with a collection of local and not so local coaches looking to enjoy the atmosphere and have an awesome time (and get best Black Orc coach…)

L-R: Kismet from Little Git Painting, Doddsy (last minute stand-in, signed up on Sunday!), me and Dementor, and father-son team from Bromley MiniMorg and EyeballPaul.

I did some pre-tournament roster analysis, which was fun to build the hype, and it was great to see a load of people who appreciate the Tableau stuff.  Can be a bit like shouting into the void sometimes, but great conversations with people like Drakenspear were had, who was over from Canada.

There are just under 2300 people taking part, and on Thursday it seemed like every bar had a collection of BB coaches in as we wandered around the town centre in the hours leading up to the opening ceremony on the pier at 8pm.  Fantastic to have a central meeting point to meet people like Fumbbl’s Christer, NAF committee members  and the like, who I have lots of dealings with online but seldom see in person.  One of the big differences this time for me is travelling with Dementor, who since the last WC has built an online presence himself as part of AndyDavo’s streaming team and general roster and rules guru, so nice for him to see people in person too.

On Friday the buses to the venue ran from various points around the area, starting from 715, so a nice early start.  Everyone had QR codes, and the line moved pretty quickly to get everyone into the amazing venue, a central playing area surrounded by awesome vendors (Charlie Victor, Hungry Troll, Pedro Ramos etc).  The draw for Round 1 had already been done so game started gradually as people converged on their tables (186 tables of 6 coaches of 2 teams!), which meant there was plenty of time for round 1.  

All participants got a great goody bag with tokens and pitch, a felt one which can fold nicely and then go out smoothly, which is pretty much going to be my standard tournament pitch from now on.

Our first match up was against a Spanish team.  My first drive was absolutely golden, bullying dwarves until they lost the ball and I went in 1-0 up and very cheerful about life.  My dice then deserted me, and he scored on my drive. Tried not to get too grumpy, then pulled off a nonsense TTM to pull out a 2-1 win.  They all count!

Lunch was a massive paella, supplemented by the food vendors around the hall.

The queue was pretty massive, but the sun was shining, everyone was chatting, and there was lots of time for lunch, so very little grumbling that I saw.  I invested in the WC beaker at this stage, which allowed 400ml beers at 2 euro a time.  Happy days!

The start of round 2 is always a nervous one for a TO, as it’s the first time of drawing a new round in anger and getting it out on time with no mistakes, and there was a little delay while it got sorted with a few teething problems, but was soon underway.  I was against necro, and my dice issues continued a little, but he scored in turn 5 and I was able to score back when his sweeper ghoul failed to dodge out and sweep.  The second half was straightforward, so another 2-1 win, this time against a German squad, and our first squad win (and only squad win on day one).

The ranking is swiss within swiss, so I was a surprised (and pleased) to be playing a nurgle team on table 1 of our squad match up round 3 against another Spanish squad (who make up a 3rd of the field!). Nurgle is a great match up for black orcs, and I was out guarding him (he didn’t have any…) so with my seven strength  to his five he found life hard going.  It was sweltering heat as well, so his rotspawn missed one of his drives.  The only worrying part of the game was him coming too close to a two turn TD with no rerolls after I scored in my seven – I thought with Nurgle it was pretty safe, but dice happened!  When the penultimate rush failed and his beast felt the heat, I was pretty confident, and ended up with a 3-0 win, including a rare troll touchdown after he caught the ball!

The ball token is great, along with the rest of the swag, and I bought some adhesive magnetic bases for my team, which meant that as the goblins didn’t have any skills it stuck to them.  Very pleased with that.

Unfortunately my win was the only one for the squad in that round, so we finished 1-0-2 for the day.  Time to submarine!

The day finished pretty late, but the buses were there ready to take the troops back to town, and the squad headed straight to bed after a long few days.  I popped to the local Irish bar to watch the second half of New Zealand v France, then settled down myself for what turned out to be 4 hours of sleep.

The organisers have published the overnight standings, which put me around 100th individually, only black orc coach on 3 wins, and the squad just in the top 300.  We are playing a Spanish team in the morning, though led by caio, a coach from Uruguay, who again I have chatted to online through NAF work, and it will be great to play him and his chaos dwarves (another good match up for me, especially since minos don’t tend to have claws any more, and his doesn’t).

Time to see if I can grab some more sleep now, or if a mid-day power nap might be called for during the long lunch break (spanish omelette, yum!).  If you want to know how the napping turns out, follow me on Twitter for more updates (yes, it’s rubbish and evil now, but it’s where updates are…)

Semi-traditional mid tournament roundup from me, though with a twist as I spent yesterday streaming from the NAF Championship instead of playing.  This was an absolute blast, and will hope to do it again soon!

The kit was provided by the Tabletop Sports Network (tSN), who were also streaming live to Twitch and will be putting the videos up on their YouTube once the dust has settled.  These guys are proper tabletop streaming pros, and having a two-person production team made the whole thing an absolute dream.  We had two games on the streaming tables, with Scrivo sitting next to them and giving occasional factual updates, and Rob on the production desk controlling the stream and the movable cameras, while I and a guest commentator talked about the action – absolute pleasure to be joined by Sizzler, Deeferdan and Leipziger for the 3 rounds.

We chose the games for interest, featuring some top players, international players, interesting races and famous faces from around the BB world.  On Sunday as the tension builds we’ll feature one of the top tables from each round, and then the Grand Final at around 3.15 BST.

So what games are we likely to see?  After 3 games we are down to 19 players on 3 wins, so two of them will be in the final.  This is how round 4 is looking.

In the mix notable names include Team England players petew (current Captain), geggster and joemanji and Twitch streamers RickWreckless (on the stream for game 2 Saturday), purplechest and JBone.  The South West of England is well represented by ceetee, Jip and whitey (local derby on table 8!), as well as Loki who is both from the South West and a member of Team Scotland (hence the kilt). 

Sporran is also from Scotland (obviously), and along with freezingstar, iantheace, el_spoonio and Dragonborn are representing the “newer” contingent with fewer than 100 NAF games under their belts.  Scouseboy and Lyracian meanwhile could be ones to watch, both previous NAF tournament winners.

GrumpyMaestro has an interesting backstory, as he’s a Team Scotland member who has decided to retire from Blood Bowl and is selling off all his stuff – a NAF Championship win would be a great way to go out!

Finally an honourable mention for fatgandalf who has been rewarded for his record of two wins and a draw by being chucked in with the 100% crowd and a game against a double NAFC winner!

Hope you enjoyed the updates, it’s looking like another glorious day in Nottingham, so please do join the stream, or follow along on Twitter or Facebook.  There are also many photos available in this Google album (thanks Lunchmoney!).

Following on from part 1…

Game 4 was against the Swedish Whine Squad, and a bit of as pasting as a team with only Ronaldbeanio managing a win.  The critical moment of his match was his chaos dwarf opponent setting up with 12 players.  It took until turn 2 to notice, so the mino was promptly sent off!  After a check of the FAQ and a roll of a 6, luckily for him he went to reserves rather than off the for the rest of the game.

I was against orcs, and was a bit disappointed when my line of scrimmage all left the pitch, along with the blitz target, so 4 off the pitch in turn 1.  It was a struggle after that, with the only glimmer of hope being when a 2 dice blitz was left for my bloodspawn, who promptly rolled a useless double both down.  Bizarrely, my one turn score attempt was again marred by a freak kick off result as an officious ref took out a key cog in the machine.

In the second half he rolled a blitz on the kick off and killed my bloodspawn, so I was a little sad.  Made good progress up the pitch but an opportunity to surf two of his blitzers didn’t come off and I was left in a pickle.  The wheels quickly came off and the last 4 turns were a write-off.

As a team we then headed back to the lighter, airier and quieter second room and played the Fumblebrewskies, though one of them had to head home so Bron had a bye.  He was offered a NAF ranked game but decided there were better uses of his time.

My opponent’s skaven team mostly decided to leave the pitch, though a single lineman put up stiff resistance and scooped up an unhelpful scatter to score, meaning the pressure was on to score quickly in my half and then turn him over.  Luckily, he was out of rerolls, so a single dice skull finished his drive quickly.  Ronaldbeanio had a torrid time against a goblin bomber, but it was a comfortable team win and we were back in the darker, stuffier and louder top room.

Squad Tzeentech were part of the Squad Chaos collective, and were all playing greenskins – Orcs, Black Orcs, Underworld and Goblins.  I was against Throgg’s Underworld and his uncooperative Troll, who decided to start the game with a double skulls.  This led to a fair amount of pressure, but the gutter managed to sneak free and survive a blitz, only to fail a 3+ dodge on the next turn, so I was able to go in 1-0 at the half and in a comfortable position, only marred by my bloodspawn having been fouled to death.

The second half should have been straightforward, but was not to be, as a two dice uphill on my blockless ball carrier popped the ball free.  Luckily the scatter was favourable, and eventually ended up on one of my Bloodseekers, only for another two dice uphill to again work!  A goblin sneaked in to retrieve, and then survived a five dice blitz to head for the end zone, though couldn’t reach it.  He didn’t survive the next three dice, but by this stage the gutter runner was standing next to him, and was able to catch the bouncing ball then run in the 4+ 2+.

More about that gutter runner, however. Earlier in the drive he got stabbed to the KO box due to a Prayer to Nuffle, and like the nice person I am I reminded him a) that he had an apo and b) that he could change the KO into a Stun!  Won’t be making those mistakes again (kidding, of course I will).

Similarly, didn’t help Ronaldbeanio’s cause when I reminded his opponent that Goblin Trolls are now 3+, though that counteracted an earlier correction about a 6 on a Throw Team Mate not affecting the Scatter.  Probably brings up an interesting philosophical point about when it is OK and not OK when spectating to point out a rule misunderstanding.  I assume it’s usually for the best!

3 draws and a win for Barnacles meant a team win, and we finished on 312, which was certainly respectable.  Barnacles was Star of the Car on 402, Ronaldbeanio and I both on 231, so a positive result, and Bron on 213 or 113 depending on whether you include the bye…

All in all, a most excellent weekend.  Team tournaments are the best, as I’ve said before, and this was a good one with a good team!  I’ll definitely be using Khorne again at some point, as the mass Frenzy is much fun.  Obviously they need a couple of beer pigs to be a fully rounded team, but you can’t have everything…

These are the team building rules that were used for Super League Showdown, which were at the time of the event the draft Eurobowl rules for Malta 2022.

Tournament rules

Team value

The Tournament uses the Bloodbowl 2020 edition Exhibition play rules.

Each team has a total of 1,150,000gp to spend on roster creation and must hire a minimum of 11 players. Any gp unspent at roster creation is lost and all teams are considered to be of the same TV for the purpose of inducements.

This is a resurrection tournament, no SPP is gained, and injuries, casualties or deaths do not carry on from one game to the next.

Players added to a team roster mid game as a result of the Masters of Undeath or Plague Ridden special rule are removed from the roster at the end of the game and do not carry on to the next.

Inducements

Permitted inducements are:

• 0-1 Halfling Master Chef
• 0-2 Bloodwiser Kegs
• 0-3 Bribes
• 0-2 Wandering Apothecaries
• 0-2 Mortuary Assistant
• 0-1 Plague Doctor
• 0-1 Riotous Rookies (Riotous Rookies can never be hired post game)
• 0-1 Biased Referee
• Star Players – see tiers for rules permitting stars

All other inducements are not permitted.

Star players are limited in each squad, no named star may be taken twice.  In each squad of 6 players, Griff Oberwald for example, may only be taken by one of the coaches and no more.  Therefore, coaches will need to negotiate who will have which star.

Coaches must have 11 players on the team before hiring a star player.

In addition, if an opponent is fielding the same star as that coach then both may use him during that game.

Skills

Teams are separated into 1 of 7 Tiers and offered Tier specific skills packs. Each team is permitted to stack 2 Primary Skills on a maximum of 1 player.  However, the 2nd primary Skill added counts as a Secondary Skill. This can only be done once.

All skills must be chosen and cannot be random.

A player which is assigned a secondary skill may choose to take a primary skill instead.

Tiers

Tier 1

Wood Elf, Dark Elf, Lizardmen, Shambling Undead

Choose one of –

• 5 Primary Skills but no star players
• 2 Primary Skills and 0-2 star players

Tier 2

Skaven, Dwarf, Chaos Dwarf, Amazon, Orcs, Imperial Nobility

Choose one of –

• 6 Primary Skills but no star players
• 4 Primary Skills + 1 Secondary Skill but no star players
• 3 Primary Skills and 0-2 star players

Tier 3

Norse, Necromantic Horror, Nurgle, Human, Pro Elf

Choose one of –

• 7 Primary Skills but no star players
• 5 Primary Skills + 1 Secondary Skill but no star players
• 4 Primary Skills and 0-2 star players

Tier 4

Black Orc, Chaos Chosen, High Elf, Old World Alliance, Slann, Tomb Kings

Choose one of –

• 7 Primary Skills + 1 Secondary Skill but no star players
• 5 Primary Skills + 2 Secondary Skills but no star players
• 5 Primary Skills and 0-2 star players

Tier 5

Underworld Denizens, Chaos Renegades, Daemons of Khorne

Choose one of –

• 8 Primary Skills + 1 Secondary Skill but no star players
• 6 Primary Skills + 2 Secondary Skills but no star players
• 6 Primary Skills and 0-2 star players

Tier 6

Halfling, Ogre

Choose one of –

• 8 Primary Skills + 2 Secondary Skills but no star players
• 6 Primary Skills + 3 Secondary Skills but no star players
• 6 Primary Skills and 0-2 star players

Tier 7

Goblin, Snotling, Vampire

Choose one of –

• 8 Primary Skills + 2 Secondary Skills but no star players
• 6 Primary Skills + 3 Secondary Skills but no star players
• 8 Primary Skills and 0-2 star players

Scoring

Teams will get 2 points for a win and 1 point for a draw.  In order for a team to earn a win they must have more wins than losses across their 6 games.  If the wins and losses balance out it will be a draw.  If the losses outweigh the wins then they will of course have lost the round.

For individual coaches, there will also be 20 points for a win and 10 points for a draw, nothing for a loss.  In addition, there will be bonus points scored for touchdowns and casualties.  This will be one point per touchdown and one point per casualty, up to a maximum of 3 for each.

Individual scores will be used to decide rankings within the team and the individual standings at the end of the event.

Tie Breakers

The team tie breakers will be –

• Head to Head results
• Touchdown / Casualties difference for the team combined
• Strength of Schedule

Individual tie breakers will be –

• Bonus points
• Head to Head results
• Strength of Schedule
• Touchdown / Casualties difference combined

Having now used vampires in a tournament, thought I would stick some words down about them.  I went to the Super League Showdown, a squad tournament hosted by Wobert, one of the best Tournament Organisers around in terms of enthusiasm, swag and organisation.  6 teams of 6 from leagues near Cheltenham gathered at IncomGaming for 4 games using draft rules from Eurobowl 2022.

I took 5 vampires and 9 thralls.  One blodge vampire as ball carrier (stacked primary counts as secondary), 3 pro vampires and a leader (secondary).  2 block thralls, one tackle and one dirty player (I would have swapped the tackle for frenzy with hindsight, as you can get rid of the opponent’s dodge using hypnotic gaze instead).  We played that Pro could not be used while prone, which is (probably) the correct interpretation of the rule until GW say otherwise.

The two major elements of vampires are gaze and animal savagery (AS).  Gaze now works on a 2+ and removes (almost) all skills from the opponent, meaning for example I could gaze my opponent’s blodgestep blitzer and then blitz him with a block thrall, which felt very strange but is the way the rules work.  I also thought about surfing my opponent’s treemen as well, but there wasn’t actually a need (apart from the fun…).

AS means that if you are blitzing or blocking you roll a 2+ and if moving (and thus gazing) you roll a 4+.  If you fail you knock an adjacent team-mate down (thrall OR vampire) with the associated armour and injury roll.  If the armour is not broken then the knocked down player can then get up and move, if they have not already moved that turn.  Importantly, AS means that the vampire will always do the action that is required, so when my ball carrier was in scoring range and had someone next to them, there was no chance that they wouldn’t be able to walk it in, just that they might have punched their own player on the way (which didn’t matter in turn 16).

One thing I quite often did was keep my pro vampires isolated, if it didn’t matter if they moved or not (i.e. they were approximately in the right place) – it was then a 4+ to move, with a 3+ pro reroll, and so if they could be in a marginally better place that was good, but if they failed they didn’t actually attack anyone.  This is similar to the wild animal but with the lost tackle zone (which was usually irrelevant).

In terms of my games, there were 2 informative ones and 2 less so.  I started the day against a fairly new undead coach, who used guard well to protect the ball carrier but got worn down by the frequent attacks.  At this point I’d forgotten about removing blodge from the ball carrier, which would have made a bit of a difference!  He ended up getting the wooden spoon but it was a fun game.  One of my other games was against a starless halfling team with 6 rerolls and two frenzy trees, who managed to win two games in the day!

Of the other two games,  one was against Skaven with Glart and Hakflem, dropping 2 gutters and blitzer to fit them in.  I knocked Hakflem down a couple of times and put the DP boot in, but wasn’t able to remove him.  Glart probably blitzed 12 times in the game, doing a fair amount of damage, and the game could easily have been a loss, but finished 1-1.  The worst thing Glart did for his team was double pow on the one turn attempt!

The final game of the day was Elven Union with mass dodge, and this is where the Vampires’ box of tricks came into its own.  On my drive I had a S4 blodge carrier, and the elven column defence was fairly useless because it could just be gazed through.  Combined with the ability to remove skills and blitz, I can imagine it was fairly frustrating to play against!  On my defence it was very difficult for the elves to build an attack as they were short of players, making caging tricky, and if they threw catchers forward as receivers (hoping to make use of nerves of steel) then I could just gaze them, meaning they can’t catch the ball.

So, just a couple of very meaningful games, but the evidence is building that vampires at a lower tier are dangerous.  Fatboyslimming’s Thrud triumph was impressive (going 600 and 300 in sevens) and provides more evidence that multiple skills and stacking makes Vamps powerful.

The important thing about this tournament was that we were using draft Eurobowl rules, which had vampires in Tier 7 of 7, along with goblins and snotling, and below halflings and ogres!  If this does not change I would be amazed if all the Eurobowl teams didn’t have a Vampire team, which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, but it was certainly a very strange form of Blood Bowl.  A bit like playing against 14 players when facing Underworld or Snotlings, I guess.

The next lot of evidence will be interesting – how will they do in the first big NAF Fumbbl tournament, kicking off today (I’m using them, and would guess others are too), and then how will they fare in the big tournaments – Waterbowl, UKTC and NAFC I’m thinking primarily, though not sure if there are any at Chaos Cup this weekend.

Finally, were they fun to use?  For me it slightly reminded me of when I used a broken star to win Thrudball in 2016.  That star had been designed by an absolute madman to fit with a bonkers tournament that focuses on raising thousands for charity.  The new AS and Gaze has been designed by the core writers of the game.  I’m also not sure how much fun it was to face, apart from my sparkling personality of course!  I did come away with this shiny though, which is always nice.

Fun debate at 8am this morning with players who hadn’t had any sleep and were on their 10th game of the tournament!  Can Pro be used by a Vampire to reroll Animal Savagery if prone?  I posted to Twitter and you can see the thread here.

The relevant parts of the rulebook are:

• p44 a prone player can do nothing without first standing up.
• p74 a player that is prone cannot use any skill unless otherwise stated.
• the errata expands the list of skills that can be used when prone.  Pro is not mentioned.

Animal Savagery says “when this player is activated, even if they are prone, immediately after declaring the action they will perform, but before performing the action”.

So while it is clear that Pro cannot be used when prone, it could be argued that the player stands up then tests for Animal Savagery, and so is no longer prone when taking the AS test, so can use Pro.  If the AS test is failed and there is no one to attack, however, there is nothing to say that the player is left standing with no tackle zone, and it would be consistent with other negatraits that they are left prone.

I think those are the relevant facts, but will edit if I have missed something!