The night before the game there was a chill in the air once again. Some thought this was due to the presence of vampires in town. This turned out not to be the case and it actually was found that a thrall had left the pub door open when bringing Count Marek of Slyvinia's bags in. Several of the Dwarf players were feeling a little uneasy about facing such creatures and even the coach bobrek was seen to be drinking more and saying less.
This was at first a concern as the players warmed up for the match (they are normally already warm enough from the pre-match fight they missed due to the extra drinking the night before) however the Vampires won the toss and decided to kick the ball. This pleased all the Dwarf players immensely as they realised they could set the pace. Even by dwarf standards due to the amount of alcohol consumed they made a slow start. This was rumoured to be down to coaching uncertainties regarding the skill and abilities of the Vampires as a complete unknown. This is of course absurd, although bobrek was seen at the start of the match evidently terrified by the mere sight of the Vampire coach. He was over heard after the game claiming it was all a tactic.
The dwarf coach was very relieved having received the kick off as it allowed the dwarves to set up shop and bash the Vampires a little. On the second turn it appeared to be going badly for the dwarves. A troll slayer was hit hard by a vampire who was immediately claimed to be dead. At first bobrek was seen to be very shaken up as one of his big hitters was lying dead on the floor and called for a proper dwarf doctor to confirm (an apothecary I had no idea I had
). The other doctor pushed the useless goblin ref to one side and proclaimed that not only was the slayer not dead he had in fact only suffered a torn ACL and would suffer little long term effect.
Needless to say the dwarves were shaken at seeing one of their own fall however the also wanted revenge and set about on a pre-game strategy of bash the thrall. Some unlucky bloodlust rolls and some bashy dwarf play led to quite a few thralls and even a vampire sitting on the sideline looking a little worse for wear. This led to a slow methodic stomp down the pitch which allowed the dwarves to dispatch the majority of the vampire team. Butrekson again went huge carrying picking up the ball and finding the creases to score an 8 turn TD.
The second half started with the dwarves kicking with 10 players on the pitch however due to the dwarf possesion in the first half the Vampire were severely lacking numbers. This meant providing there were no major cock ups on the part of the dwarves it would have been impossible for D to score. The Vampires attempted to be as aggressive as possible with their weakened team. Count Marek of Slyvinia made a serious effort breaking a few tackles before getting caught in the tackles zones of 3 dwarf blockers before the remaining slayer demoing how it should be done knocked the ball clean out of the Counts hand and Butrekson once again collected the fumble. The remainder of the game had butrekson storming down the side for another TD as the vampires attempted to get out of the dwarf cages.
Final score 2-0 to the bast4rds. D did very little wrong and I feel his only real mistake was kicking off against a very slow bashy team having won the toss allowing me to take things slowly and work my way into the game. I felt as well that although the Vampires themselves have a decent skill set the lack of skills and general MEHness of the thralls makes them a bit of a one trick pony. If everything goes to plan it may be an awesome pony but it can go wrong fast. The thralls seem to me to be basically either a meat shield or a food source that is fairly easy to remove. D played tactically pretty well however with no players with block and getting a lot of both down results he was fairly screwed by the time he was able to get the ball.
tl;dr D played well but was let down by letting me have the ball and the fact that thralls are a bit crap. He was a great sport and kept trying even to the end when he had only his vampires left. I'm starting to feel I'm too nice for bloodbowl as I honestly feel bad every time I injury an opposition player
.
