“When the coin toss came down and I was receiving, I was actually pretty happy. I figured I'd try to force Holsbrink to score quickly and then plod forward with my wood elves and clear some of his men off the pitch. I had thought that I'd KO the two with av6 pretty quickly, then work on the others.

He scored quickly (making it seem like I wasn't even playing defense, by the way) and then I set up to plod towards a slow td. I plodded this way and that, hitting every av6 guy in sight on nearly every down...

... but the suckers wouldn't go out. Stunned plenty, but no KOs that mattered (and certainly not the wardancer, who had me holding my breath with each hit). I thought I had everything set up on turn 7 and went for the score. Handoff to my wardancer, dropped. Luckily bounced back to my lineman though, right in position to handoff again next turn.

But for all my blocking, I couldn't make it happen. I tried to crowd surf one guy three separate times, but couldn't manage more than SKULL, POW/SKULL on any of those blocks. Finally, my lineman had to make a break for it, but he fell to the turf.

Second half I scored, but I had a sinking feeling that I was going to be losing this match 2-1. He was receiving in turn five and had all catchers back on the pitch. Turn five, he failed a pickup and I was able to put a body on most of his players. Turn six, he rolled double skulls on a block and hit the turf, allowing me to blitz one of his linemen off the ball in turn seven and pick it up in the clear for the score.

We lined up for the final push, but his catcher couldn't manage to break through the line, suffering a niggling injury (apoth'ed) on a failed dodge.

All in all, this was a fun and tense match. I wish that every match could be like this: close to the very end, lots of winnings and no permanent injuries. Thanks again, Holsbrink.”