“Wow, that was close... not the score, I mean the passing stats. But in the end I came out on top by 6 yards so yay for me! Actually, I need to have words with my thrower, who was less than stellar tonight. Yes, he threw some impressive long bombs, but he also double-fumbled a hand-off, double-fumbled a pick-up and even failed a pass!

I'm going to talk about this one in reverse, because the second half was fairly straightforward, with a score every two turns and then the ugly wood elf mess at the end. But to my mind the game was already over by the half and I have no one to blame for it but myself. Okay, so the final two turns came down to bad dice, but that would only have pulled me up to 3-4 anyway.

No, what lost it for me was an absolutely amazing play by the dark elves to get their first score, followed by a tiny miscalculation on my part which led to me giving up the ball and allowing a second dark elf TD instead of securing one for the woodies.

So after my first score, the dark elves ran into a bit of trouble on offence, not being able to get my side-steppers out of the way and then getting tangled up between the tree and the diving tackler. At one point it looked as if I was about to get the ball and run it in for my second score, but my blocking dice abandoned me when I needed them and I just couldn't knock over the ball carrier. I had the choice of blocking him with the tree, but if I failed to knock him over he would have side-stepped away from the DT, so I chose to use the tree to block him in instead.

So Gary_Gygax thought for a moment and then made his play - which started by running his sprinting blitzer into the endzone with 3 go for its. This did strike me as rather presumptuous, seeing as how the ball-carrier was still in the middle of wood elf central, but then he cleared a space, dodged away from my diving tackle, handed over to the star thrower and long-bombed it all the way down for the score. Honestly, it was amazing. Sure, it relied on the right numbers, but even to have thought of it in the first place was impressive, and pulling it off was just perfection.

After that it was my turn to score again, but being greedy for passing stats, I did my favourite tactic of throwing to a catcher just behind the LoS who can then run it back and hand over to the thrower, ready for the long bomb next turn. Well, I placed the two of them too close to the cunning dark elves by one square, and was lucky to escape the blitz with nothing more than a push-back. This meant I had to hand-off into two TZs, but what the heck, we're wood elves, and the thrower has nerves of steel... which counts for nothing when you can't roll anything higher than a 1. So there was the ball, on the ground, next to a dark elf blitzer and within strolling distance of my endzone. And sure enough, Gary_Gygax made sure he didn't mess up.

That's why I say the game was lost by the half. Instead of me being 2-1 up, I was 2-1 down, with the dark elves receiving to start the second half. No one of Gary_Gygax's calibre is going to let that sort of advantage slip through his fingers.

As losses go, it was a very easy one to swallow, however. No casualties suffered, three caused (including another for the tree who has quietly crept up above 1000 SPPs while no one - including me - was paying attention, no loss of fan factor, good winnings and two skills - including a double on a wardancer. The strip ball I was going to give him will have to wait. I thought about guard, as I don't have any apart from the tree, but it seemed like that would be more use on a linemen or catcher at some point. Instead, I went for another mighty blow, which now gives me three on the team. This is not ideal as it makes me look like a bashy team all of a sudden and means I can't really refuse other teams with a similar number of MBs. So it looks like I might have to play a few games against the kind of teams that like to keep the ball on the ground and win 2-1 after 15 turns of slow offence. Ho hum.

Still, on the plus side, I now have someone with kick, which has been on my wants list for a while, and not only have I finally managed to ditch the journeymen, I bought two linemen, so I actually have a reserve! Woo hoo!

So now what I have to do is play a few games against other coaches and then coma back and look for a match against Gary_Gygax's Elf Professionisti (his proper elfbowl team). Now THAT will be one with lots of passing!

Thanks G_G for a truly fun game with a touchdown play I will remember for a very long time. ”