Blood Bowl: Ars Maximus League - Cup/Match Day #1

Match Date: 6-22-2011

Pestilence Storm vs. Jotun Titans Replay

My first match in the Ars Maximus League, and first time league match for that matter. Damn was I excited! So excited that I drastically under estimated my opponent, and my own team for that matter unfortunately.

I received the kickoff, and with that my team went into motion. The Nurgle Warrior, Lord Salvis Lornosis balled up his fist, and cracked the Norse Lineman Ketilsson square across the jaw, the punch was so strong that it snapped the neck of the Lineman killing him instantly. The match was starting out well for me, or so I thought!

Lord Salvis Lornosis kills Lineman Ketilsson

My entire team was on the line, I figured since I was playing a Norse team that was very bash orientated, I'd bash back! However that didn't turn out to be the case, most of the Norse team having the Block skill plagued me badly as I didn't quite get the rolls I was looking for. Not to mention I wasn't as experienced with the interface of the game as I should have been, and managed to misclick all over the damn place causing my team to wildly dodge attacks, over, and over. Somehow I was lucky enough though that none of my guys got hit to cause a turnover.

With the death of their teammate, the Titans seemed to have gotten pissed the fuck off, and came at me with a vengeance. They used their Block skill to great efficiency, however they didn't managed to gain any CAS on my team even though my team had so many Rotters. He did manage to crowd surf the fuck out my team, damn that Frenzy skill!

I tried to get my Pestigor up field to score, and seemed to be doing well at, but then the Titans busted through my line, and crowd surfed my Pestigor, causing the ball to go the opposite direction I wanted it to, which put the Titans in perfect position to score. While I didn't have the speed needed to stop the reversal, I still tried to. I managed to get four GFI's between my Beast, and a Nurgle Warrior successfully, but it was to little, to late. The Titan ball carrier made it over the line, bringing the score to 1-0.

The second half of the game started off really well for the Titans. Again, I'd choose an up in your face defense, and had everyone on the line except for my Pestigor. This was a bad move on my part, as it gave the Titans another opportunity to use their Block skill to great efficiency. The Titans knocked my entire team down, and ran the ball through my line preparing to hand the ball off. Lucky for me Disturbing Presence saved my ass, even a RR on the Titans part couldn't stop the fumble, and the ball landed right in front of my Beast. Here was my chance to hopefully make some sort of comeback!

 The Brawl For The Ball Begins

At this point the match turned into a brawl, as both teams viciously beat the fuck out of each other trying to get the ball that remained in the center of the field for the longest time. The Titans managed to crowd surf all of my Rotters, however I still had my Warriors, and Beast guarding the ball. Then the Titans finally managed to recover the ball, run it partially down the field, and hand it off to another player who just about ran in for the touchdown before running out of movement. My lone Pestigor ran up field to try to stop the Titan from scoring, but wasn't able to as the Titan player Blitzed him, and ran in for the touchdown bringing the score to 2-0.

It was my last turn, and I had no chance of scoring, so I decided to bash! One of my Rotters must have been pissed at loosing the match, because he punched the fuck out of another Norse Lineman, and killed him. This time however the Titans brought out the Apothecary, and saved him, he'd only miss the next game.

With that the game came to an end. My first league match, which in turn was also my first loss. I had a blast playing, and learned some new tactics, and strategies for future matches. Hopefully I'd do better in my next league match!

Did I recruit Ketilsson after killing him you ask? You betcha! How could I not? I know Rotters are not the best of players, but it was my first kill, in my first league match. He's like a trophy!

 Former Jotun Titan Lineman Ketilsson In His New Pestilence Storm Uniform

Blood Bowl

Let's start things off shall we?

One of my oldest, and latest gaming hobbies has been one the greatest games ever created, Blood Bowl!  Like many older (and wiser) gamers, I started playing the tabletop version of Blood Bowl back in the early 90's at my old gaming haunt, All Star Games. Assembling, and painting the miniatures, and finally being able to play with them on the pitch was an absolute blast. I loved it!

However, I eventually joined the Army, and as time went on, time ran out. I just couldn't find the time to play, let alone paint miniatures. It also didn't help that no one played at any of the duty stations I was assigned to either. 

Heck even when I finally found myself here in Huntsville, Alabama. I still couldn't find anyone that played. Which I found odd, because there were several stores at the time that sold Games Workshop products, such as Blood Bowl. Who knows, maybe I just didn't look hard enough? The point is, Blood Bowl was becoming a distant memory, which fucking sucked. Many years went by, and I never got to play tabletop Blood Bowl again unfortunately, however things would change for the better in the year of our lord 2008 I believe it was!

I was searching for the old Blood Bowl PC game to get my Blood Bowl fix that I'd been drastically missing in life. That day it was as if some angelic force guided my fingers during that Google search, as I happened upon a link for Chaos League! Some brilliant folks over at Cyanide had made an amazing looking game that played just like Blood Bowl, and just named it Chaos League.

Praise be to the baby Jesus, I'd finally found the Holy Grail that I'd been looking for all these years! Little did I know that Satan himself had already defiled all the cookies in the cookie jar long before I reached in to grab myself the fat chocolate chip cookie that was Chaos League!

Turns out Games Workshop wasn't to thrilled that Cyanide had created a game based on one of their most successful game titles. From what I understand, any differences between Games Workshop, and Cyanide were amicably settled for an undisclosed sum of phat cash, but as part of the settlement the Chaos League title was assigned to Games Workshop! 

What did that mean? It meant that no matter how hard I searched for a copy of Chaos League, I couldn't find one. Not on eBay, not on Amazon, NO FUCKING WHERE! Apparently Games Workshop had pulled ALL the copies of the game, and burned them in a huge lake of hot magma! However all was not lost, it also turned out that Games Workshop had given Cyanide a license to develop another computer game based on Blood Bowl that would soon be released in 2009!

When Blood Bowl was finally released in 2009, I didn't purchase it. Why you ask? Despite the fact that I'd gone through all that trouble, and my love for Blood Bowl, the game itself apparently sucked hardcore at the time from everything I'd read about it. It was riddled with bugs, and only released with eight of the famed teams, instead of the known twenty. Eventually Cyanide would release Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition that included all the teams, and tons of bug fixes. However I still didn't pick it up at the time, extra gaming funds were lacking, and I just couldn't afford it.

Then the glorious online gaming entity known as Steam had Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition on sale for $10 bucks earlier this year. Did I buy it you ask? You bet your sweet candy ass I did! And I've been loving it like the hottest piece of poontang to walk the face of the earth ever since! Can I get a witness? Jesus Christ Hallelujah Amen!

I had been playing the single player a lot, however I wanted to dive into a league. I couldn't wait to get into some that action as I'd heard it was a ton of fun. I've been a part of the great Ars Technica gaming community since 2007, and one of my long time friends there Squrf the Angry Albino Squirrel alerted me to the fact that a new  Blood Bowl season was starting up. So naturally I joined, and created my team, Nurgle of coarse, and called called Pestilence Storm, and entered the fray!

So from this point on I'll be documenting my Blood Bowl season games, and include some screenshots hopefully, along with the replays should anyone care to actually watch them!

Until next time kids, and remember Nurglites Unite!

Where to start?

So I've had this blog for several months now, and yet I've never written anything in it. I guess because I've really never felt that I had anything interesting to write about. However that has now changed, being an avid Gamer for many many moons now, I've decided to jump on the bandwagon, and write about my gaming experiences. Which I'm sure my wife will enjoy, since she just loves how dedicated I am to gaming!

I'm sure it'll be boring, as I'm probably the worlds worst writer, however I'm going to give it a go anyhow! Stay tuned for a not so exciting, horrible blog that you'll probably regret wasting your time reading!