“Tactical Takeaways-

1. Star Players: Goat Man, Ogre and Buddy
The Goat Riding Star Player completely seems to change how Halflings can play. Knowing that they have a S4 Jug Block Blitzer at any time is wild. Combine this with their other stars and it starts to feel very strong. They have the trees that can make things very difficult. The Ogre is a legitimate S5 Mv 5 running around and he comes with a Sure Hands buddy. This team has a lot going for it in the Star player realm, which was really interesting being that I think I've played against Halflings one other time, and I've almost never played against Star Players.

2. Tree Management

Not sure if we played this right, but it's tricky because I normally will play a very compact style, and with the trees that is very risky because they could potentially tie up 3 or more players just by basing. First half it felt like we managed them alright, and the second half we just got lucky that both rooted. Normally my plan would be to put the troll on one and try to run away from the other. The problem with the troll though is that since he needs someone to be near him to stand up, you run the risk of the tree actually tying up two players because of the extra player.

3. Removals

We were lucky to get many removals out of the halflings, very few casualties, but we consistently had the number advantage. As his halflings were crumbling our goblins stuck around much more, and I know we have better stats to stick around, but it felt like we were exceptionally resilient.

4. End of First Half

We were able to two dice on the ball to force a triple rush if he was to score. There also was a good deal of muck to try and sort through on top of that. Unfortunately for us he was able to get the rolls. I had the option to follow up with the goblin that blitzed him and I chose not to and I'm not entirely sure why. Watching the replay, I believe I was worried about giving him a free hit on the blitzing goblin. Looking closer, that hit would've required 2 assists to make it a 1 D. That could've been the main error. Even so what he had to do to score was also quite unlikely. I think we played decently strong throughout, but not meant to be. ”