“Thanks to Purdindas for a great match. Also, I thank him for putting up with me. This was the middle of the day my time, and I was trying to multitask, not very effectively. It's probably a fun match to spec, even if it was slightly one-sided. Play it on 2x speed, though....

I think four things killed me in this match. Two were controllable, and two were not.

1) I'm too aggressive, still. I'm not bad at risk analysis, and my spatial sense is getting better, but for instance, in the first turn I should have blitzed the ghoul on the LOS, rather than going after the cage, which was too deep and Dodge-intensive to hammer with a great expectation of success. Normally, elves are fairly forgiving of this kind of thing, but today, the dice went not my way and it was too much.

2) I still haven't gotten good at playing man-down. I think it's all those years of fouly Orcs coming back to haunt me. Part of it might have been a lack of focus, which isn't a characteristic problem for me, but crept up because I was trying to game in the middle of the workday.

3) In a game like BB, as in football, it's not how the luck goes overall, it's how it plays into your expectations, and how it's timed. The hard things all worked, but the easy things were a catastrophe. I made a lot of crazy rolls, but I failed a lot of easy rolls, which is usually a killer, especially if, as in my case, your TRRs mostly come up 1s. In fact, had the easy rolls worked, I wouldn't have tried the crazy ones. Similarly, my good luck mostly happened late, when I was in a bad position and it didn't mean much, or right at the beginning.

4) Not only is Purdindas a solid coach, but his blocking dice were very, very sharp. He took out four guys in the first three turns, and only once in the match did Dodge save one of my players on a block, despite my ability to consistently force him to block Dodge players. Statistically, it should have saved me on almost 25% of the blocks, but not this time.

So, all-in-all, I'd say I'm getting a better handle on my faults in the game, and this game really helped bring them out. I can't feel too bad about the loss: I held the margin to one score against a good opponent despite a credible-but-failed blitz, some woeful early luck and a couple positioning mistakes in the second half.

I didn't help myself after the match. I was supposed to cut Manny Festestinie, and hire a rookie, Homer the Brave. But I didn't, and I have an AG3 guy going into the next game. Manny, this is your turn to shine. Come home with the MVP, or you're an Assistant Coach!”