“Fate, a mere toss of a gold coin, had determined that between Mirkwood Maulers and ourselves that it would be we that contested for the Ring of Fire, and face off against our foes in Mordor, the Corsairs of Umbar… we anticipated a close game.

The Corsairs won the coin toss and elected to receive. Our LOS fell easily and they pushed through a single catcher deep into our half, but by the way they caged the ball carrier, we knew this lone catcher was an empty threat, a decoy to spread us out… they intended to make this a slow score. A final foul on one of our numbers resulted in a serious injury.

We marked the catcher with one of our Lion Warriors and moved everyone else in, a couple moving to the flank, whilst Tarius and a small troop concentrated on the Human ranks, seriously injuring a Catcher only to see their apothecary work wonders on his shattered skull.

The game progressed for a while longer with both sides blocking one another in what looked to be a game of attrition, as we suspected the pass to the deep catcher was never attempted. Finally we managed to flank with enough players to scare the thrower who attempted to run to the other flank... then stopped, realising that he couldn’t safely hide he tried to back peddle to relative safety, sprinting and losing his balance he fell… the ball spilling amongst both teams.

Things now got messy despite as a glorious move by us to pass the ball, failing only on the seemingly simplest of dodges, leaving both teams to simply scrum about the ball. In the dying moments of the half, our sure handed thrower, who we had worked earlier to release from several players grasps, picked the ball up and threw it to a waiting lineman who failed to catch the ball. The ball however was out of the reach of the Corsairs, which meant all we had to do was pick the ball up… a meagre feat on any other day, but not today. Thankfully however, we made it and ended the half 1 – 0.

The plan for the second half was to make a quick score, and we lined up with that in mind. However, a thrown rock stunning our sure handed thrower and a totally bumbled blitz by our Team Captain, who even after quickly regaining composure for a second strike still failed even to push back the blitzer, meant that we had to fall back to guard the ball in case of a third haphazard in the opening moments of our drive.

For the humans though, the temptation to knock our team captain, Tarius, down and gang foul him was too great, and pretty much all but 3 of their players committed to the move… merely stunning him. We had been blessed with a second opportunity for a quick score and quickly ran down the flank whilst others aimed to cover any blitz that may be forthcoming… unfortunately though, another easy dodge, even despite regaining his legs for a second attempt, failed… but the cover was still good… for this day of ineptitude at least.

The Humans however made an awe inspiring move that involved two dodges, sprints, and a block… whilst they made it, the block could not take us off our feet. Rather than risk a dodge our players formulated a plan to block the two markers away… but another easy assisted blitz ended in disaster and the blitzer on his back. Our catcher was knocked to the ground and the spilt ball was scooped up by an Ogre. We regrouped, marking all of the humans, and putting two on the Ogre. Their deeply positioned thrower broke free of his marker and awaited the pass. The Ogre handed off to a lineman and he threw it down field to the thrower who caught the ball.

An equal strengthed blitz could have been had by us, but today we opted to blitz another player and allow us two markers on the thrower… This all but secured it for us, and when the thrower inevitably fell we were there to scoop up the ball with our thrower and pass it to our catcher to make the game 2 – 0!

Less than glorious victory, but finally… the Ring of Fire is ours… our precious!

----
A very ugly game really, with the players that are normally capable of doing great things, failing to do the simplest… Azure and I quickly burnt through our RRs, mine going on double skulls and dodging snakes, and left us scared to roll a 1d6… I even stopped dodging with my dodging players!
Azure’s catchers were useless and quickly found their way to the CAS boxes.

GG though… and now the Pirates of the Rings has one ring to take to the Two Towers!
”