“Well, it was a predictably brutal game and extremegrazedknee made his intensions clear right from the start by going after the tree with his claw/MB blitzer on turn 1 - and anyone else he could get his hands on at the same time. And the poor wood elves started dropping like flies. Clearly it was going to be a long game and with the way things were going, I was going to have to spend a fair bit of it making sure my tree had some level of protection against the claws (there were two of them).

So I did what I could to keep the tree covered, protected the rest of the team as best as possible, and hoped extremegrazedknee wasn't going to stall out the entire half. Which he didn't, allowing me to get in a couple of nice passes on my way to scoring a two-turn equaliser.

After the first turn, I decided to keep the tree off the line of scrimmage - a bit cowardly, but he is, after all, the whole point of the team, and while the claws were out for his blood (sap) it seemed like the sensible thing to do. He was still useful enough though, blitzing or blocking wherever possible and he made several multiple blocks (including going after the rat ogre at -2 dice a couple of times).

But I didn't really have the manpower to mount a successful defence and extremegrazedknee was able to control the play enough to make a comfortable score on his final turn.

And I was in no shape to try for the 1-turner, so I just threw a long bomb, knowing I was receiving at the top of the second half anyway.

And sure enough, I managed another two-turn score.

And then I was granted a perfect D, which at least allowed me to be annoying on the line and keep the tree out of danger, especially as the ST4 claw blitzer caught the ball and extremegrazedknee decided to make him a scorer rather than a blitzer - at least for a few turns.

I don't remember now why extremegrazedknee chose not to stall here - maybe I was putting up a good defence, but it's more likely he was in a strong enough position to risk giving me another chance. Also, he had a comfortable 1-turner of course, with his MA10 runner, so the win was never really in doubt...


I scored a quick equaliser yet again, and just when I thought that was it in terms of my offence, I rolled a blitz on the kick-off. Well, I took the opportunity to send the tree off towards his MA10 gutter runner and was rewarded with a KO. But more importantly, I was also rewarded with an opening in the defence which I ran a couple of catcher through. I couldn't get anywhere near the ball, but I could cause a bit of disruption to extremegrazedknee's plans.

Not much disruption, it has to be said. The rats still managed to make a quick pass and get the ball safely down to within scoring range for the following turn...

I say safely, but in actual fact my following turn was the play of the game - at least from my point of view. I made three 3+ dodges with my tackler to get to the ball carrier, knocked him over and then dodged a catcher out of trouble, collected the ball and hurled a 5+ long bomb all the way downfield (the thrower was SI by this stage) to a waiting catcher who ran in the score.

Suddenly I was in the lead for the first time. It was short-lived, of course, because extremegrazedknee just ran in a comfortable 1-turner on his final turn to make it a draw once again. I suppose he could have rolled a double-one on the gfi, but he didn't.

So there we are. a dead wardancer, a dead catcher and a MNG thrower. It could have been a lot worse, and I'm thankful the tree survived with nothing more than a stunned from that first block. I was going to bin a load of players and do another of my frequent rebuilds, but having dropped my TR down by 400 anyway, I thought I'd stick with what I've got for the time being. Also, next game is going to be dull anyway, what with no thrower, but to be honest, after racking up 6 for 66 here, he probably deserves the rest.

And fans.

And cash.

Not enough cash - not for a new wardancer anyway - but that can come next time.

Until then...

:-)”