“UI V Round One

After the great triumph of winning themselves the Jade Lantern the swashbucklers returned to the tri island area to swash some buckles and plunder some gold in preparation for their greatest adventure yet... The Ulthan Invitational!

Drawn against a tough looking wood elf team the humans decided to call on their old allies Count von Drakenborg and Griff Oberwald, who had served them so well so far. With the elves brining Jordell and a wizard along we too decided to bolster our attack and hire the wizard too.

The crowd cheered as the humans kicked to their elven foe to get this year's Ulthan Invitational underway.

As expected the elves secured the ball deep and looked to free some receivers deep. However in the humans first turn they spot a wardancer isolated from his teammates and with fury Haggis McMutton blitzed with a Mighty Blow and Badly Hurt the star elf. The elves managed to easily, and expectedly, switch the ball to a flank and get in scoring position. Haggis was still angry and turned his attentions toward Jordell and knock him clean out! And with griff and the count in a tag team sweeping role the elves dared not to stall and scored in t3.

The count took control of the humans drive carrying the ball to half way as they started their slow drive aiming for 1-1 at half time. As the ball moved into the elven half it was now that the sole remaining wardancer took his chance to pounce and managed to leap in to strip the ball from the count. The elves couldn't recover the scatter but managed some good pressure on the ball. The count was having none of this thought and cast a hypnotic gaze on the offending dancer, allowing Griff to take over ball carrying duties and advance down the pitch.

The wardancer wasn't finished yet though and shook off the gaze to leap over a human and again stripped the ball, this time from Griff. The ball scattered free and a catcher was able to scoop up the ball and retreat behind his team mates. The remaining elves rushed forward hoping to score a second touchdown before the half was over.

In the humans final turn of the half they needed a few pows to free up the ball and they duely got them. The count again cast his gaze to distract an elf from protecting the ball and Griff could again pick up the free ball and score to make it 1-1 at half time.

The Swashbucklers received the ball for the start of the 2nd half and just needed to keep things tight and slow drive to a 2-1 victory. However with a wizard and in form leaping stripper this wouldn't be easy! Fortunately Haggis was still on fire and promptly KO'd the wardancer who had wandered out of position and got trapped by a diving tackle catcher. With nothing to foul Stan noticed that the largely ineffective tree had fallen over under his own accord, so despite remembering some long lost rule about never fouling a tree the lure of the boot was too great and stan managed to kick the prone tree to Badly hurt.

With the leaping aerial threat gone the count could relax on the ball and the humans slowly advanced down the middle of the pitch. Turn 6 and they realised that they had only advanced 3-4 squares into the elven half and they should probably hurry up. So with this in mind the count handed off to his faster counterpart Griff. The elves were short on numbers but the Swashbucklers decided to make sure they broke through the last line of defense by calling on their wizard to bolt a gap down a flank. The count was now free to blitz the gap and griff rushed through. The brave Griswold Goodsoup volunteered to stand in the way and obstruct the wizard's lightning from hitting griff.

In response to this Hollaender instructed his wizard to throw down the fire and burn them all!! Despite griff's agility he failed to noticed the giant fireball bearing down on him and was duely struck. His human teammates managed to duck for cover and were still on hand to protect the ball from an elven recovery. The elves were therefore forced to try an ambitious 5+ dodge in an attempt to either recover or perhaps push the ball into the crowd. This failed and the crucial scatter fortunately landed in the grateful hands of Griswold. Who elatedly crossed the line to secure the humans progression to the 2nd round!”