A few days ago I reached my first 1000 games on FUMBBL, a mark which took me a little over seven years to achieve. I guess Nuffle really takes these milestones seriously, as the last 30 or so games preceding the 1000 have been quite... interesting, one might say.

For the first 20 of those 30, my game seemed to be seriously off. Every game was a real struggle for me - at the heart of the problem probably being my norse who can't seem to get more than 11 players on the roster - but as one who seldom complains about dice, now I had some seriously bad dice from time to time :>. I would call this the worst downswing of my FUMBBL career: ventually I had only 4 wins in 17 games topped off with a 6 game losing streak before lo! the magic of the 1000 and my Men stepped in.

I created this team of humans called the Men They Couldn't Hang, named after a celtic punk band, but also referring to all the clawpomb hassle going on. These men won't cower in fear before any a mutated monster but will continue to fulfill the suicidal playstyle their head coach always enforces with humans ;). They will not retire, they won't be hanged.

The first game for the Men was a 0-2 loss against a nurgle team, which was a bit of a disappoint themewise, but after that i guess Nuffle saw me closing in on a 1000 and started smiling for me. My Men won the next ten games straight and went on unbeaten for 12, the last game (the 1000th) being a total dicing in my favour. That in itself ain't an unbelievable feat, streaks happen. But in those 12 games, no touchdowns were scored against the Men. Not a single one. I've never had or seen that long a streak of not getting scored against, and I wonder what are other FUMBBLer's personal records there.

Thing's have normalized now, however, and the 1001st match was a 1-2 defeat for the men.

The first 1000 being reached, I gave a thought to my time here and I have to say I've had a great time, though I have to say that a lot of that great time I had playing Faction.

I mean, Faction was the only division that sort of gave the feel of a real sports league. No real life league let's you cherrypick or even choose your own matches (Ranked), or randomly pair teams so that all the games are as fair and balanced as possible (Box). Of course no real league gives you ten matches which you can choose whether to play or not but... meh :P. Hope ye catch my drift.

There were some real underdogs and some teams that totally dominated the league at times (as in any real sport). There was something really fascinating for me in trying to get the gold medal with a sort of high TR underdog team like humans. I grew up in a city, which had a hockey team and a soccer team that were pretty much always at the bottom of the league, but nowadays they're doing much better, and dang, I could relate! That's what factions were about! The rise from nothing to glory over all those awesome high TR teams that kicked your behind before (not that I ever won the gold).

I've never again had matches like I had when Faction was still around. I miss faction, can't help it. Here's a thankyou for all the coaches who played and kept faction alive for so long during the hard times (even if it was only barely).

With the first 1000 in the pocket, i say bring on the second! I'm ready.