“I would be perfectly justified in claiming that the dice let me down in this match. My blocking was mediocre at best, and my attempts to break the dark elves' armour were risible - apart from my very first armour break when the tree BH a journeyman. When I needed a bit of luck , there was none going spare, with at least two perfectly reasonable touchdown attempts thwarted by harsh dice.

But this would not be doing justice to Bazakastine, who would almost certainly have won even if the dice had been a little more even in their distribution. Basically, he was a better coach, and he had a better-built team. To be fair, most teams I play are better built than mine, because don't really build to win, I build to give me an almost infallible passing game. Also, the treeman eats up a huge amount of unnecessary TR and on days like today - where he spent much of the match taking root - it's TR wasted.

The Deities of Darkness Redux are a half-and-half team, with six excellent players (blitzes, a witch elf and a runner) to do the work and the rest of the team basically thee to get in the way of the opponent's big hitters. If I'd been able to take out a couple of the blitzers early on, then maybe I might have been able to control the play a bit, but they just didn't want to fail their armour rolls. And the difference between the dark elves' AV8 and the wood elves' AV7 soon began to tell.

Thankfully, Bazakastine was a fast player and he had no intention of stalling for a lazy win, so I was able to spend more time than usual on offence. It was sunny all game (for the second time in a row) but even so I was able to rack up some pleasing passing stats and indeed, my star thrower became a legend with his 6 for 47.

My rookie lineman lasted no more than a few turns before picking up a -AV for his trouble. I fired him afterwards, but then regretted it. I suddenly have the urge to try and get a full squad of 16 players, regardless of injuries. I realise this will send my TR through the roof, and most of the players will end up being walking adverts for the apothecary's skills, but I still want to do it. And it's not as though it's going to affect my win/loss ratio much anyway.

Thx for the game Bazakastine. Thx for not stalling. Maybe next time I might be able to give you more of a challenge!”