“A very hard-fought game on both sides. Dwarves and Chaos Dwarves are about the worst opponent a starting Amazon team can face; still, this wasn't a gimme by any stretch of the imagination. A couple of times the Beasts caught me napping, and it was basically some favorable die rolls that prevented disaster.

First possession was mine. I spent and wasted a reroll and turn just trying to pick the stupid ball up with a hobgoblin. My only redeeming grace was one of the amazons knocked herself out trying to dodge on the following turn, so I was up a player. After that it turned into a brawl at the line. I had a centaur-led cage surrounding the ball heading for the southern line of the field. The Beasts collapsed on the cage, and darn near got to the ball carrier. The ball carrier turned tail and fled North behind the tackler line, and the centaurs and dwarves were able to screen his run. Even with a wall of tacklers, the Beasts got within touching distance of the ball carrier; a shove-off blitz, and I'm up 1-0.

Rest of the half was a non-event; basically to two sides pushing each other.

That first amazon I knocked out never made it back into the game, and I managed to foul another one unconscious in the first turn of the 2nd half, so I'm up two players. The Beasts made a pretty good push into my backfield; there was some scrambling for the ball, but I've got to split my attention, dwarves, and centaurs between going after the ball and trying to prevent three amazons from running wild. Turn three one of my dwarves gets BH: my player advantage is down to one, and I just lost a tackler. Some bad luck with rolls on the Beasts' part gives me a chance to collapse on the ball. The amazons in my backfield are basically free, but there's enough pressure on the ball that the Beasts can't capitalize on it. On turn 4 the ball gets knocked loose, and a hobbo picks it up. On turn 5, the hobbo ball-carrier gets knocked out: I lose the ball, the Beasts pick it up, and the player count is back to even. Turn 5 ends with the amazon ball carrier getting tripped and dropping the ball. I get the ball back, survive one bonehead TN 6 dodge I didn't mean to take, get the hobbo behind some friendlies, and the chase is on. Turn 7 starts and ends ingloriously: an amazon attempts to block one of my dwarves, and basically bounces off of him and gets SI'd. The hobbo has a free lane to the end zone and runs like hell. On the Beasts last turn, they SI one of my dwarves as a send off. I score on turn 8, 2-0.

This game was basically a sumo wrestling match, with a lot of slapping and shoving. I got an early player lead, which the Beasts didn't make up until late in the 2nd half, and rode that for all it was worth. I wouldn't have wanted to play this match without the built-in tacklers: the amazons put up a hell of a fight, and if they could have taken full advantage of their dodge the score probably would have been reversed. Good game, and hats off to my opponent for making my life difficult. :-)”