“I'm considering doing a piece on good uses of dirty trick cards. This box game might be a contender, so I'll add a little report on this.

Team wise this was overall a pretty fair match-up. Dwarves with the potential to cause a lot of carnage vs a race that can easily outspeed them even on low player count.

Coaching skill wise this would be in theory a slam dunk for me but it is also one of those matches where you know there is only so and so much you can do with a base position speed of 4 and ag2 against players with a base position speed of 7 and some even faster pieces you go up against with no tackle.

still if you get heavily outnumbered there is little you can do either, so in a way this was a classic bash vs agile team match-up with both sides having a chance for the game to shift heavily in their favor.

The inducement:
Pre game I had 90k accessible. Dwarves get a decent st4 dwarf with Secret Weapon for 90k so that was kind of an option, but I felt the extra strength wouldn't help me that much against dodgy elves and likely just get banned early. Salts didn't seem too feasible against a race that didn't come with MB, so dirty tricks it was.

The card I did draw was Blatant Foul. Blatant Foul allows skipping the armor roll on a foul and to go straight for injury roll.

Pre-Game-Considerations:
I had drawn this card a couple of times and seen it being drawn by others. A theme I had constantly seen with this card repeated, was somebody activating the card to set up for a foul, only to fail the block that could lead up to the foul, removing the targeted player from pitch alltogether BEFORE the foul could be executed or even suffer an early turnover from a failed action.
So pre-game my set course was to make sure that I would be using this card not in a hypothetical situation but to make sure to use it in a situation where somebody was already on the ground and that it was somebody I really wanted to at least stun or better remove.
There was also the consideration to refrain from using the card on grounds that I only had 11 players discounting MNG, but one of the most important aspects of it that probably shouldn't be overlooked is that with no armor roll the ban chance was also almost halved.
Since assists only are required for breaking armor this foul would also not require support players and therefore wouldn't require for me to make huge concessions in the positional game.
All these were heavy arguments in favor of utilizing that foul and to make use of it in a good situation.



The game:
I started receiving. Two elves were in front row with a tree. 4 more in second row.
Ratsalat, a coach who originally made his entry with Skaven, once reminded me how much more he preferred when slow teams set their players on the line and that only fielding players far back usually caused huge problems for Skaven.
On the other hand moving my players far back would mean not to have them involved in the action early. I knew i had to put a couple of players on the line to utilize on a Quick Snap and with a little luck I'd be able to take six players out before the game had even started.
Contrary to Skaven, Woodies were also a team where the linemen pretty much matterd. In the end it was kind of a toss up, play it save or go risk.
The Woodies did come with Two Strip Ballers which in theory weren't much of a threat to my Runner but in practice he was brand new, my last one (ag4 block) had died on a GFI in the previous game.
With no skills he was vulnerable to any -2d block. So I considered my stalling abilities seriously impaired. Getting some early cas could turn out to be very critical and I decided to go for a pathblocking first row line consisting of 9 players and only one long beard a little bit behind for carrier support.

The kick-off result turned out to be Blitz! and the ball was designated to land in the end-zone, the opponent did create a small opening at the side and then proceeded to get his dancers into my half by jumping over Longbeards.
The situation started out pretty bleak, the carrier got tagged, the supporter too and I'd have been barely able to get rid of the zone, running back to the end-zone and holding on to the ball after that would have been close to impossible. (I really should have not set up my players that forward.) I got ready to fall 1 TD behind early and just do the best from there.

Anyways, my first turn started, the ball bounced to touchback. The problem was my carrier was still in a tight spot but none of the others had Sure Hands to deal with Strip. I went over the other players, enjoying the thought of putting the ball on a low ag type, but frenzy was too much of a risk for quick escape plays and I settled for a semi-free Blitzer. The goal was to set up a tight cage around him, to at least make the WDs work for a shot and make it ideally a -2d one. All my players were more or less tied up so it wouldn't be really easy.
I figured best was to free up the players in the middle on the line of scrimmage but that required me to bring a tree down with 4+ dauntless rolls (otherwise 1d).
Since there was not really any other play, I went for it and actually ended up powing the tree and amazingly he left pitch right away and for good. He was done.

The now freed up space was the perfect place to protect my carrier and I just clustered my other players around him. The two WDs now had poor position to even blitz the carrier when leaping.

My opponent started a full fledged grind on me, surrounded my players from all sides and tried to create an opening. In theory that could have been a good thing for me if the ball hadn't been so damn insecure with me being every turn at risk to lose it.
I decided to make the best of it and to get some cas in expecting some heavy losses. Few pows happened, and when they happened just weren't lethal. I managed to preserve a -2d leap situation on the carrier but against strip it was still pretty hopeless. The grind went on until almost the end of the half.
Cas just didn't happen, instead a longbeard got actually KOed.
It was only in turn 7 that I finally managed to make some space and remove some opponent players. However, it was already too late to build a proper cage in scoring range after being tied up around the line all half.

I knew I had to have 2 players in range to score and did my best to tie up and be able to intercept any Woodelf who would try to counter-score. It looked decent enough but the Blitzer failed on his GFI and didn't make range. The runner next to him coincidentally caught the ball. The woodies knocked him over easily but managed to get only range with 1 dancer, which in turn was knocked down easy and the half ended on a tie.

During the scrum I had considered a couple of times to use the Blatant Foul card on a dancer but most of the time I was just really busy blocking people the dancers were either not down or no immanent threat and i didn't have anyone to spare or even lose on a foul. So I tried the best to pace myself ever wondering if I would be able to make use of that card.

Second half started 10 vs 7, the blocks mainly in turn 7 and 8 had finally taken effect and I started with healthy numerical superiority. The woodies charged forward against a field covering screen but didn't manage to quite break through.
The dwarves charged towards them to tie everybody up. Only the carrier dancer did hang back a little and out of range. I tried my best to tighten the operational field and to move forward with the dwarves.
At the same time I made sure that a Longbeard did cover the other side of the pitch to blitz the dancer if he tried to press through.

The Wardancer responded by hanging back further and I had to stretch and thin out my team into his half while still covering everyone else.

I didn't like it much and ended up accidentally moving the longbeard i had previously used for a covering the lower flank a little too close to other side. The Wardancer had Sidestep and did try to outflank me by seeking cover on the sideline just next to the crowd. My runner was still in range and the Longbeard in assist reach but no Tackle was taking serious chances.

i tried to create an opening for a chain-push on the Longbeard but it would have required a pow and i didn't get it.
Then I installed some support players in my own half (no tackle) and proceeded to use the Longbeard as an assist. Snakes on the second GFI and the dancer was almost home free. However, my opponent had run out of RR. It was pretty much the dancer vs my team at this point and most of his other players were just lying around, waiting it out.

The dancer went further, I got a 2d shot on him but didn't pow. He tried to outrun me by moving towards the middle end-zone on my side. The half was almost over and he had good chances to stall out a win. Time was barely enough to score back.
However, without RR left he ended up failing a GFI and landed on the ground.
On the other hand, none of my players was near.

He just needed to get up and would be able to score. There was another player of him on the ground, just out of range of the ball.

My carrier was in pickup range aswell as a second player. But both actions would require GFI to complete.

I realized that against the dancer even just picking up the ball was an incredible gamble. Also time was too low at this point to make it with my runner all over the pitch and to score before the game was over.

Instead I moved a Blitzer into line of scrimmage direction ready to passed to or handed off to, with a second Blitzer in the other half of the pitch.

In this critical moment usually the best play would have been to go for the pick up first. Because if that failed I'd have been screwed either way.

However, this was the moment were the card saved me. The Wardancer was the only player in range for the ball. I knew that I'd manage at least a stun on him with a foul, I knew that i didn't need any support players to execute it and that the foul would likely not result in a ban.

So instead of doing the obvious play and going for the pick up first and potentially dropping the ball and losing the game in the process, i went for the foul first with my support player, cas'd the dancer and was home free to hand off to the Blitzer in the next turn to score.

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