“B Minors TR129 - Round II

We're up against Odi's super-experienced rats with 157 blackbox games under their furry belts (and a 10/4/3 record against khemri), though there are only 10 of them after a round of firing to be trim enough to compete. Their fan factor of 16 vs ours of 4 is going to make kick off results dangerous.

And indeed as we set up to kick off a rock comes sailing in from the rat fans to knock out our +AGI thro-ra! We push forwards cautiously, careful to keep one blitz-ra back against a potential breakthrough, managing to KO one stormvermin with a mummy but then getting our DP sent off fouling the other one - not even breaking armour!

They counter with their own DP, getting a stun on a blitz-ra, then trying it again under the ref's lenient eye for a KO. They also manage to MNG a skelly, leaving us 7 on the pitch vs their 9.

They have been loitering with the ball by their endzone for a while, but on turn 5 make their break towards the halfway line with the ball. All we can do is put a lone skelly in the way of their blodge/dauntless runner (with a thrower as backup) - he goes for the assisted blitz... but dauntless fails and his 1d blitz comes up a skull twice! We pile in around the ball, making it all but impossible for them to recover, and even get a slight chance at a final turn touchdown when their blitz on the only skelly in range comes up as double skulls. But it's not to be as he drops the handoff.

We receive with 10 players vs 8 with a blitz-ra in the KO box vs their thrower + linerat, collecting a deep kick. They have their two GRs on either side and we have only one tackler on the pitch- and he can't injure his blitz target. We move the ball into the middle within a slight pile of players- but unfortunately we don't have enough and they are able to dodge around for a 2d blitz, knocking the ball into 'just' one tackle zone. Their other GR dodges away, through the tackle zone, seizes the ball, back through the tackle zone and to freedom. The turn is culminated with linerats dodging to mark our only tackler. We go for a max range blitz from a mummy, but can only make the GFIs with a reroll and unfortunately can't find a pow with our 3dice. The following turn the GR dodges away to the far corner, where the rats manage to stall out a single turn before scoring.

This leaves us just 3 turns to equalise. They kick deep into a corner again (gah!), while a thrown rock takes out our skelly Cranium, who lept in front of our thro-ra to take one for the team (what a hero). We rush the ball upfield, going for a pass to a blitz-ra on turn 7 before our opponent points out that we don't have any players in scoring range and only one turn to go. The pass is missthrown into the crowd, and the game is won for the rats. They do a little showboating, grabbing the ball and passing it upfield to score and make it 2-0 as the final whistle blows.

Well won odi!”