Day three in the Ranked. No special goals this time around, beyond the obvious one: have fun.

Pre-match team changes:
11 Farash Toshana - New thrower

Having realised I can't get "1-2 more blitzers" since I'm already at the maximum of 2 (doh!), I decided to get another thrower and keep rest of the cash in reserve. I don't want to retire a second team due extreme loss of lives.

For the same reason I didn't retire my nigglers yet, although they'll be getting cut quite soon.



Games:
2 Gloryseekers - Nomuertidos 0
1 Gloryseekers - We Like the Green 2



The first game was againts Undead. They were a "bit" lower than I thought, and I received two penalties, virus which took my nigglers out for the game and some another that I can't remember. The ratings were along the lines of 129/110 for me and 10x/111 for him. I really need to re-read what each of those numbers mean, since based on what I've seen the penalties just aren't harsh enough.

After getting totally crushed by Khemri earlier, I decided to play a LOT more carefully and take any chance to get some of his players off the field. The last thing I wanted was having those mummies rip heads off from my players. This included my first try at fouling. Not too useful, stun I think the result was.

I managed to defend decently, partially due his bad luck with blocking (I think I never had more than 2 elves even prone!) and on turn 6 I got nice long pass off with a blitzer. His blitzer failed to knock the ball carrier down and after easy dodge I scored.

In second half I received the ball first. After some blocking I had a lineman free quite far behind his lines, and a long pass reached him easily. He was knocked out by a ghoul blitzer and the ball dropped behind the goal line, but I managed to bring nearly half my team around the ghoul and swiftly knocked it out. I had the perfect opportunity to stall, but decided to play it nice and scored. Sadly my opponent decided to concede on turn 6.



The second game was againts orcs. I did feel a bit uneasy going againts them seeing how one-sided the last time I played againts them was, but decided to go for it.

Well, the game started pretty much how I expected it to. I had to use apo early to save one of my throwers, and the orcs were slooooowly moving forwards. Then I started losing elves. The same thrower I saved earlier got decapitated, while nearly half of my remaining elves were knocked out. He finally scored at his last turn of the 1st half.

My 2nd half started strong. I got some good blocks off, and my dodging was good and as such I soon had blitzer near the goal line in the lower half of the pitch and a lineman equally near in the upper part. The blitzer was intercepted by a blorc, but with some help from his team mates the blitzer knocked the blorc out of the way and scored.

The kick-off couldn't have been much worse for me. The orcs received extra re-roll and the ball was given to a blorc in the front. I managed to stall again until the very end of the match, although not without a price. I lost Mashoran Ghist, my niggled lineman (he should've listened to his brother and quit before it was too late!). After some bad injuries and knockouts (and a blorc losing his eye to an elf-ear during tackle - those things are sharp!) he finally got through my defenses on last turn of the game. This was partially due my thrower stumbling on a goblin while making his blitz move to cut off a free run to the goal. He quickly capitalized and ended the game to touchdown.



After the games, I'm decently satisfied with the results. The victory I can't savor that much due difference between the teams, but my match vs. the orcs wasn't a total rout like last time - the match was close! Maybe next time I'll get a draw or even a win vs. orcs!

I can't decide what to think about fouling though. It's part of the game, all the while feeling a bit... Low. Guess I'll go back to only fouling when fouled myself.



Team developement:
Terra Carmine (blitzer): Double, learned Guard.
Phaed Phun (lineman): Dodge.
Diann Shuan: Dodge.

Well, I knew I was going to bang my head on a wall at some point over this - I finally realised Guard was Strength skill, not Agility like I thought it was. There goes the "mystery" of people telling me to not waste doubles.

Terra learning Guard took me some thinking, as all doubles do. Eventually I chose Guard simply because my blitzers are very good at staying up, and thanks to their Side Step they're usually getting to positions where they can avoid further blocks but can't help the linemen.



With that third day of Ranked is behind me, and I'm a bit surprised I still have a team left! With 200k gold in treasury (which is even bigger surprise, is it raining gold?), I even have some options on what to choose for next day: another thrower to the grinder? Perhaps a catcher or hell, two of them?

Edit: Feel free to comment the structure of the blog: Are game descriptions too long/short, anything you would add/remove and so on! Of course any advice is welcome too, I'm still quite a newbie!