“FC IX – First round

Handicaps: Knuckledusters (Eyvindr), Iron Man (Loki), Virus, Morley's Revenge

This was always going to be a game that we ”couldn't” win, but right of the bat we got some great handis, if not the best we could ever have hoped for. With four guys with the virus (including two of his catchers, one with MA10 and one with dauntless) and three (another MA10 catcher, a WD and a ST4 blodge guard lino) potentially spending most of their time in the loo I felt we might have a fighting chance.

The elves won the toss and opted to start on offence, and again Nuffle favoured us and gave us a perfect defence which allowed me to put my Iron Man next to the tree. This payed of as the tree started the drive with smashing him with what would otherwise have been a BH. Nuffle must have felt that he had helped me enough though because just a few seconds later my guard lineman Ulv got SI'ed, apo'ed and foul-killed.

I knew that I would be hard pressed to contain the elves and despite some efforts one catchers was soon free with the ball. The only chance I saw was to focus on taking out as many elves as possible to make sure that I would be able to do some scoring in the second half, but by turn 5 the elves had SI a blitzer, KO'ed one lino and surfed another two while the norsemen had got little besides pushbacks. I had some luck with the tree rooting early on, but we just couldn't break their AV7 armour, though we managed a surf and a KO-foul, though the ref spotted my catcher (I had no DP on the field at this point) despite having his eyes on the other team. 1-0 was a fact. In turn 8 I tried breaking the bark of the tree with a boot but got noting more than a stun and another whistle from the ref.

Second half started with all the Morley-men fit for the field which meant that we was outnumbered 10 to 9. We managed to KO a lino and BH the tree on a DP-foul (now the ref didn't seem to care) so I still had some hope. We escaped the wood elves wizard with only two knock downs, but then the elves started breaking armour again, and despite having both tackle and MB we got mostly pushes, and together with SS this made a mess of our formations and the woodies could steal the ball. By applying some boot (apo fixed the SI'ed catcher) we could at least get them to score and in the end we managed to score and save a little bit of honour.

All in all I couldn't have hoped for more. We got a slim chance with the handi's going our way, but between my skill and the poorish block dice it wasn't going to happen. Still a blast, of course! :-D

Good luck with the rest of the tournament Nestoroide!

/Gran”