“Lustrian Challenge X Group 2 Round 4:

Well, we entered the match knowing that we needed a win to advance to the Lustrian Challenge final four. One win away from the final four was to date our best appearance in a Fumbbl Major tournament.

Standing in our way? None other than the 2015 Warpstone Open X major tournament winning Nurgle Rotters, Uusiverikulho, and their legendary coach, Stonetroll, who was most recently crowed as the "2015 #1 Ranked Coach" on fumbbl (based on tournament achievements). Also note, in 2015, Uusiverikulho won the Warpstone, finished in the semi-finals of the Ulthuan Invitational, and lost in the finals of the Grotty Little Tournament (all major tournaments!).

We were not optimistic of our chances, as we were sporting a rookie Mummy, Babafemi, and rookie Wight, both of whom replaced star players of ours this tournament. We knew things would need to go heavily in our favour to have a chance. Well, they did.

We received the kick-off and our opponents Blitzed. We managed to recover well, with our rookie Mummy picking-up a turn one casualty. We picked up the ball and were able to keep it safe. Shortly thereafter Babafemi was blitzed by Legendary Pestigor Largo... Double skulls... Re-roll... Double skulls... Casualty! ... Regenerated.

What a stroke of luck. Suddenly, we had numbers and were able to march our way down the field. We tried to play it as safely as we could and received some very fortunate stuns, and a 1 BD (only push needed, but resulting in knock down), which allowed for us to stall long enough to force the Nurgle team into a 2-turn attempt.

Though they managed a 6+ pass (long bomb in the sun!) and a 6 on the catch in traffic, they failed to dodge away to tie it up.

We entered the second half, with full numbers, a wizard in our pocket, and up 1-0. Things had gone as good as we could have hoped for. We received a perfect defence and setup nicely to defend the short kick. Nurgle needed to pick-up the ball and pass it backwards to secure it, they succeeded. We managed to force them to attempt a shift across the pitch with the ball, leaving it under-defended.

Largo was the sole protector near the ball-carrier. Then, our wizard struck with lightning. It was a fairly early in the half lightning usage, but a knock down would enable us to get an easy 2BD ball carrier blitz, so we took it. To our surprise, the wizard knocked out Largo! The ball carrier was exposed and we were able to knock him down, but failed the ensuing ball pick-up.

Stonetroll recovered nicely, and suddenly there was some jarring for the ball. We had a RRed 4+ attempt at a pick-up but it failed and somewhat fortunate ball bounce allowed for the Nurgle team to clear an opening, scoop it with a Rotter and start to push into our end.

We had a chance for a 1 BD blitz (Block vs. no block) but instead opted for one extra dodge to get a 2 BD hit. This felt like the safer option because it left a player of ours in his TZ in case we failed. We missed our dodge and that left us exposed. The rotter was able to push on deeper.

We were able to peel back further and land a 2BD blitz on the rotter but were unable to bring him to the ground. At this point, Nurgle had little choice but to attempt a no RR 2+ hand-off and score with just 2 turns remaining, as they would have had no opportunity to stall, and were fortunate enough that the rotter maintained possession. They succeeded on the hand-off and scored to force a 1-1 tie.

We were unable to land a no-RR two-turn TD to get the win and were left with a hard fought draw. The draw was well-earned by Stonetroll, who played an excellent game. Going in, we were by far the underdogs, but after a few fortunate dice rollings, I must admit, I was pretty shocked we didn't come away with the win.

After the successful wizard and the ball-carrier sack, I was pretty confident we would come out on top. While the dice were in our favour for much of the game, we just did not get the few rolls we needed at key points in the second half to put it away.

In the end, the tie left us one point behind Uusiverikulho in our round robin, allowing them to advance to the final four, and leaving us watching on the sidelines. It was a devastating turn of events that led to the forced tie, as it seemed we had the game well-in-hand but just let it slip away.

That well-summarizes our tournament. Our only loss of the tournament game in a game where we were one pick-up away from a win, the fail led to what looked to be a clear tie, but a crazy elf-based ball bounce led to a "gift from the gods" game-winning TD for our opponent.

Overall, we finished the tournament (including qualifier) with a record of 4/2/1. Not bad given that our two ties came against the two players that advanced to the final four, Stonetroll and PurpleChest, both of whom are Legendary coaches with previous Major tournament wins.

Overall, we are very proud of our performance, and look to build on it in the future. While we did have quite a few bounces go our way throughout the tournament, we can't but feel like we were (quite literally) a dice roll here or there away from being in the final four of a Major tournament. Hopefully, we will make it there someday!

Best of luck to Stonetroll and PurpleChest going forward. At least if one of them wins, we can take pride in the fact that we played to hard-fought draws against the tournament champs.

Note: There will be an update after the tournament finishes.”