“This was a really crappy game, but its crappiness has nothing to do with Ansgar, who was a great opponent.

I literally had the perfect start handed to me on a plate when the kick dropped short, into open space two squares ahead of the line, and I rolled blitz on the kick-off. By the time Ansgar got to take his turn, I had the ball in the hands of my legend thrower, in a solid cage of ST4 linemen and a tree. I even had a catcher downfield ready for the following turn.

And that was the last good thing that happened to me all half.

Ansgar blitzed by leaping into the cage and 1-dicing the thrower. It was a POW and the ball bounced right out into clear space. He picked it up, threw it to a wardancer who was ready to go for it to get as far downfield as possible, and suddenly my perfect start had been turned completely on its head.

Well, I could just reach him with my own wardancer, and I even had 2 dice on him, but I rolled a double 1 on the gfi and that was that, aDelight scored. Well, fair enough, it was their offence drive after all.

But then they scored again, thanks to a rubbish double mis-throw from the legend and then to cap the half off nicely, he fumbled the token pass on turn 8. How he ever made it to legend is beyond me. Anyway, that was that, and it was 0-2 at the half.

He atoned for his sins slightly on my next drive. I was getting nowhere against a strong defence, so I risked running the wardancer into the endzone and long-bombing it to him. A miss would certainly have seen the wardancer blitzed into the crowd, but finally Easypeasy threw something on target and I was off the mark.

Satisfied with his day's work, Easypeasy then slinged off to the BH box.

I don't even remember what happened after that, except that aDelight scored again and then, once the game was well and truly out of my reach, I began to get all the good dice I would have loved during the first half. The tree finally took care of the loner he'd been after all game, notching up his first skill in the process, Ansgar started failing stuff and I started playing like someone who actually wanted to score, not just throw passes.

There was even an outside chance I could have made it 3-3. Okay, so far outside I couldn't even see it from where I'm sitting, but you know, it gave me something to think about for the last couple of turns. But no, I was wrong. It was aDelight who scored again, of course.

One slight silver lining to the huge black storm cloud was that the tree rolled a double for his skill, so even though I would dearly love some guard on the front line, that's going to have to wait. However, now he has block, maybe the cas will start to come a bit quicker.

Well done Ansgar. I don't really think it was anything like as close as you thought during that first half, but it was nice of you to make me feel like I was at least taking part :-) Yes, a rematch any time, but maybe I should get a bit better first!”