“My goodness, that was fun. We were a little short on time, so we played fast and furious - especially in the second half - but that just made it all the more exciting.

bakadon got off to a terrible start when he was forced to use both his apothecaries in the first two turns - he saved the SI, and then the second apo failed and the poor patient died. And he lost the ball.

The terrible luck wasn't all one-way though as my thrower then fell over on his way to collect the ball, the dark elves got the ball back, and then continued on to notch up the first score.

The following drive was short and sweet, as the thrower once again messed up and fumbled the pick-up - sure hands indeed! Unsurprisingly, this led to another dark elf TD and suddenly that wonderful start on my part was looking like a distant memory.

Still, sticking with the plan, I finally got around to chucking the ball, and soon enough I had a score of my own. And with no one-turn attempt, that was the half.

As I said, the second half was fast and furious, and both teams played to their strengths on offence - mine involving long bombs to open receivers, bakadon's involving more careful passing and handing-off, with the ball always ending up inside a careful defence I just couldn't break through. And in that way we scored two apiece and I was left with two turns for some last-minute heroics...

But it was not to be, as the final two turns ended up being almost a mirror image of the first two. On my turn 7 I did the usual thing of getting half the team downfield, but bakadon replied by knocking down my AG5 catcher and blocking off all the others. I had a lineman who could score fairly easily with a go-for-it, but it required a journeyman to push a defender out of the way. And as is often the case with journeymen, he failed, knocked himself over, failed his armour roll and killed himself.

And then, just for good measure, a final turn block from bakadon killed one of the catchers and, for the second time in the game, the apo failed.

So yet again the hapless high elves failed to show any sign of their potential and remain very much a work in progress. After his hopeless start, the thrower did manage to put up some good numbers, so it wasn't a complete disaster, and of all the catchers, the one who died was probably the least useful to me, but it will be a couple of games before I can replace him, and after that I still need two linemen to make it back up to eleven players.

But anyway, I do love games like this. Lots of passing, lots of scoring, no messing about with cages, or stalling, or team destruction, just two coaches going all out to score as fast as possible for the entire game. I would take a loss like this over a slow and dull win any day of the week!”