“Crown Of Sand II Qualifier VII: Round 3

The game started nicely for me as I won the coin toss and removed two players in the first turn. This gave me an advantage that I was able to utilize for the rest of the half, getting more blocks in and removing more of JigerJones' players. Particularly important was causing four casualties, as JigerJones had 2 babes, making KOs fairly insignificant. I certainly wasn't at my sharpest though, as very poor caging left my ball carrier open to be blitzed, but with so many players down, Wrecked Right couldn't really capitalize.

The second half was almost like a mirror image of the first. JigerJones sent two players out in the first turn, and I exacerbated the situation by getting the DP sent off on a foul. I pretty much gave up seriously defending against a TD being down so many players, and instead tried to protect my killers while trying to hit some of his key players. I managed this reasonably well, badly hurting one of his chaos warriors while only losing my AG 4 clawbomb legend to the KO box from my key players. On turn 6, I finally put some half-hearted pressure on the ball, sending my MA 7 beastman back to harass the ball carrier. JigerJones tried to blitz him but couldn't get him down. Trying to play it safe, he figured he couldn't adequately protect his ball carrier from a blitz, and scored on turn 7, leaving me 2 turns to score a TD.

In the end, these two turns proved to be enough, especially as I had 11 players against his 10, and got a quick snap as the kick off result. Although I didn't quite dare advance my MA 7 ball carrier as far as I hoped due to using a reroll earlier in the turn, I had 6 players in position to score the TD in the last turn. In turn 8, a dodge and two GFIs by Jeff was enough to secure the win.

However, I paid a heavy price for the win. Although my luck in the tournament games has otherwise been good, the casualty rolls have not. 8 casualties against in the tournament so far, and none of them has been a badly hurt (one kill apothed to BH only)! This game saw one kill against me in the first turn of the second half, and another two kills on JigerJones' final turn against the sacrificial lambs sent to mark his key players. The apoth wasn't quite awake but did manage to turn the first of these kills into a MNG. Nevertheless, I'm happy to have gotten away with a win and enough cash to buy one spare beastman. 13 players will have to be enough in the next game, where I will face either necros or darkies.

Thanks for the good game JigerJones! The game was very close to going to overtime, in which case whoever won the toss would have had a very strong position to come away with the win.”