“Crown Of Sand VI Round 3 Final

So this was my first major ever, and obviously the first final too. I wasn't nervous, which surprised me, but I also wasn't on my game. I spent the whole week knowing what I wanted to spend my inducement money on and assuming I'd be defending in the 1st half. Pirigin dumped 250k into petty cash and suddenly I had to rethink my plan a bit. He also lost the coin toss because he meant to choose heads (as was his plan all week) but was marking players and accidentally chose tails. So here I am getting the ball, with 3 apothecaries instead of 2 but only 1 babe and an unexpected wizard. Plus we both got bribes on the opening kickoff! I only used 1 apo and there was at least one time I could have used 2 babes. The wizard was also pretty useless as I'll explain. My first 2 turns were pretty bad and I burned through 2 rerolls right away. The two die blocking was bad most of the game but the one die blocking was solid more often than not. But when it wasn't solid, it was skulls. I never really took a lot of damage, and most of it came in the second half when apos and babes don't matter as much. Right here is where I think I should have kicked first. I was set up well to absorb a lot of damage and even if I had given up the score I would have gotten 2 kickoffs. I lost the ball because my cage spread too far apart and I left the runner too close to the sideline. In one of the few 'bad luck' events, the ball went out of bounds and the throw-in was WAY back in my own territory. The wizard stopped his runner beastman, but didn't break armor. I was never able to recover and spent the rest of the half chasing him. The second half I got in front of the cage and slowed it down, which again tells me I should have kicked first. Pirigin kept the ballcarrier protected but did have to use the wizard in the last turn to break through and still had to make a gfi to score. He also started taking an equal amount of damage so as odd as it sounds, I was keeping pace in the attrition battle. And since I started with 13 to his 12, that really means I was winning. Alas, I lost where it mattered which is on the scoreboard. And finally, the other piece of 'bad luck' was my pitiful fouls. I don't think I ever scored more than a stun AND the bribe failed when Shovel fouled their ST4 cpomb beastman resulting in both my runners out of the game by T9.

Pirigin is a good coach and I learned a lot playing against him and against strong CPOMB builds. I think I'll be in better shape the next time I face a similar team. Grats on your first major victory, Pirigin. You definitely played better than I did today, but I'll get you next time.

Update: Oh yeah, one thing I forgot until discussing the game with a friend. We had two Riots that killed any chance I had of tying the game up - 1 on T7 of the first half which advanced the clock to T8, and the other at the start of the 2nd half which meant the chaos team only had to defend 7 turns (or 6 if I pressured him). I guess I would classify this as the third 'bad luck' event though only that throw-in was pivotal. But all of them combined had me playing from the back foot and making riskier and riskier plays to just try to get back into the game. Sometimes that's just how nuffle rolls.”