...and may Nuffle have mercy on my soul!

TL;DR: BBT8 has been a blast!

As much as loved the old "200 games of death" format, the Black Box Trophy 8 seems a format that has been refined into a delightful mix of competitive and fun that is approachable to a wide range of coaching styles and interests.

Hoping to get two runs this season I was tempted first to try the full zero-point squad of Khorne, Goblins, Vampires and Halflings. A true band of scrappy... somethings. I laughed, I loved, I cried, I lost. Many lessons were learned. While I've played box stunties before, I haven't in this ruleset so my personal goal for the squad was twofold: learn some things, and finish in the top 10. While technically I was able to complete both goals, my squad score of 46 points with a record of 24/16/20 won't last.

They Might Be Goblins 8/4/3 (currently the top Goblin score!)

A mix of games from before and after the epic Goblin FAQ Nerf, but more importantly: these little folks were fantastically lucky! While MercutioT reminded me that we can't expect champaign and caviar all the time, there were some notable standout dicings against high caliber folks such as Malmir and gdaynick where a draw or even a loss would have been more fair and our little cheating friends stole the win anyway. Nevertheless, these games were great fun for our heroes, and the game against Malmir garnered enough spectator interest to spawn a meme that went viral and appeared to shut down the internet for several hours:


What would I do differently? I wanted the trolls to be better than they were (loner 3+ after all!), so I tried to lean on them and focus skills there, thinking to save for Block. But along the way started feeling like Block was too far away and perhaps not as useful on a player so slow and sometimes stranded. I started trying random strength skills - and overall I would prioritize Troll spp less. I think a better path would be to try to focus on early Goblin stats. I did this on the pogo and +ma is indeed excellent, but I think trying for stats on 2-3 goblins (after stuffing git on the 'Ooligan of course) in the hopes of a +ag somewhere would be my focus. I end up running lower bench and while starting with a fanatic eventually ditched it. Chainsaw and possibly bomber (but possibly not) feel like where I ended up, as with latest rules fouling and bench seems as useful and more flexible than secret weapons. I think I'd start the roster next time with just one weapon.

It's Khorne! 5/6/4

A big disappointment, this team. After solid success with Khorne in BBT6, I thought I had a good idea how to handle this roster. I thought it would easily return the best score on the squad but I was wrong! Khorne have a lot of potential but in my experience they are fickle glass cannons that can stumble over their own feet and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory easily. Once in the rough, it can be hard to get back out. I enjoy starting with the Bloodspawn and leaning into high-strength (also high risk) beefy blocking early, hoping for early block and guard and then leveraging the blocking game against other teams for the rest of the run.

What would I do differently? I wouldn't suggest starting with the Bloodspawn is necessarily the best roster, but I do like it and I think it can work. I would be tempted to try it again but also to try without it to compare. Overall though, my start was fine for the first half (5/2/1) but then everything fell apart despite the team development going well. I think what sunk the second half of this run was a pair of back-to-back losses to spelledaren and then Elyod. In both of these games, I felt great about the match going into it, feeling I had the better team in each case (rare overall for the zero point squad games) but got too sucked into the blocking game and sacrificed some position each time, allowing a bold end-run around me in each case that I wasn't expecting. By committing too fully to the blocking game, I couldn't counter scoring threats. Basically: I was not allowing in my head for coaches to try scoring plays that "I might not try" because there is risk of things going badly on the sideline and getting trapped. But the reality was: sometimes risking some GFI along the sideline to setup a scoring threat works really well, even against Khorne. So by leaning on "I'm Khorne so they won't try that sideline play or they might get 3 players surfed if they fail something", I committed more players to blocks to get 2d blocking, when really better positional play and then a 1d with block would have really shut down the score that sank me, and if my player falls over with 1d blocking, so be it. I started noticing myself doing this in other games too, so I'd say it would be the core lesson of this Khorne run. Keeping that sweeper handy, or just not getting two frenzy players tied up in service to the ever-tempting 2d block is hard, but it's what I hope I remember next time!

Halfling: 6/4/5

Ah, halflings. I have a soft spot for fling shenanigans. The regular "Good Blood Bowl" things fail, and we're left to fling our hands into the air and yell "Nuffle take the wheel" before trying something desperate...



There were many such silly moments with this fling team, but this run saved the best for last: game 15 was quite a time! It looked like coach Chingis had things nicely wrapped up until near the end of this game. If you like fling magic (YOU know who you are), check out the last 4 turns of pure delight! Truly, the most amusing end to any BBT run I could ever expect to have.

What would I do differently? I think tree skills are where it's at for halflings, but I didn't realize until deep into this run how effective throwing flings can be for skilling trees. I didn't bother saving for +ma to start because I didn't think I'd get it in time to use effectively, so I went with other things. If I had it to do over again, I'd be focusing on throwing halflings around quite a lot more right from the start and focusing on getting both trees to +ma ASAP. With a bit of luck, this seems possible for both trees by game 10, with one getting there somewhat before that if there is some cooperation from MVP or CAS luck. The key bit I didn't realize: any time you throw a fling AND have a superb through (with strong arm that's 5+ if unmarked) it will ALSO improve the landing roll to 3+. And throwing superbly and landing successfully (without a RR!) might happen 1 once a game on average (giving the tree +1 spp) if you attempt several throws, even without really going out of your way to do so. More if you try harder at this. There were many times when I didn't bother to do this early in my run, so my flings didn't have the kind of focused drive to two +ma trees that I think would be possible. Instead I did end up with 1 +ma tree late in the run. But I learned what to try for next time!

Last and definitely least are the Banjoing Vampires 5/2/8

My league mates and alleged "friends" Dutchlife and wintergreen13 convinced me that playing vampires would be "fun". How young and foolish I was, back then! While I was able to hold my own against their vampires time and again, now I see clearly that this was but a clever ploy to tank my squad so they could sail on to one glorious vampire run after another. Meanwhile, how did my vampires do? It's the single worst record I've ever had from any team on FUMBBL! Ever! In all my years and teams, I've never had a team perform this poorly. They were singularly terrible. I started with 5 Vampires and I don't know if it works or not. I don't know if what I was doing stood a chance or not, because game after game felt winnable but I didn't win them! Some games I felt I was playing too aggressively, others too passively. Is the blocking game working or should I dodge away and only go for the ball? In a vain attempt to roll my way out of the spiral I started taking random skills on vamps with predictable results. The old vampire roster was my second favorite team but I struggle with how to play this new 2020 version. There is so much left to learn! Thankfully, I did at least pick up three lessons.

What would I do differently?
1) Roll better.
2) Choose friends better.
3) Not play Vampires.

See you on the pitch!