“Considering Emphasy retired his team after the game and the discussion spilled over to IRC, I'm going to give my view of the events here.

I asked Emphasy's humans or orcs for a game earlier this week and he refused by saying my +STs posed him too much of a problem. I naturally accepted this, as anyone has the right to refuse games and my orcs don't seem to be too popular anyway.

As far as I remember I only asked him the one time, but in any case had given up trying to get Emphasy to play my team. However, Emphasy contacted me and offered to play my orcs with his humans, a challenge I was ready to accept.

We had a nice chat when setting up, talking about building our teams for the FUMBBL Cup. Emphasy commented about me fielding my DP when I remembered that he didn't have any DPs and that I probably wouldn't need to foul in this game. I placed my DP on the LOS as a bunching bag and we started the game.

I got a blitz and ran two blitzers downfield, putting more of my players in contact with his line at the same time. Emphasy recovered well, blitzing one my blitzers and picking up the ball with his thrower. I responded by blitzing his lone catcher on my half and taking a series of blocks that resulted on a lucky KO on his ST 4 blitzer.

Emphasy then handed off to his star MA 10 AG 4 catcher and ran the ball downfield, getting good coverage and preventing me from an easy blitz. I started my turn with double skulls which meant that I didn't want to risk a difficult blitz, instead opting to put my ST 5 SF BOB in contact with his two catchers. My last action of the turn was blocking with my only tackler, and him rolling double skulls and getting stunned.

Emphasy then had a decision to make: score with his star catcher or try to skill up the AG 3 catcher next to him. He tried the 3+ dodge but failed it, leaving his ball carrier open.

I was now left with the question of how to get the ball loose. He had the ball on a blodger, while my only tackler was stunned. The best option was to push his catcher next to the sideline and block him out with my BOB. If I had gotten the catcher down on my first block I would happily have chosen a POW, but I didn't get one. Long story short, the catcher was pushed out of bounds netting a niggle, the ball was loose and Emphasy had had enough. He conceded next turn and retired the team.

I was quite surprised by Emphasy's reaction. Even in a game where both players are more interested in getting skills than kills, I would never expect my opponent not to crowd push a player in order to get the ball loose. While I commented to Emphasy when the game started that I wouldn't mind losing if I could get SPPs for my players, I certainly didn't mean that I wouldn't be trying to win. And not pushing the ball carrier out in a situation like that is not playing to win, in my opinion.

What started out a friendly game turned sour, seemingly because we didn't see eye to eye what's acceptable behaviour in a game like this. All I can say is that if the situation was reversed, I'd accept the loss of my player and move on. However, Emphasy is of course free to put me on his black list and ask me not to speak to him in IRC if he so chooses.”