“Tactical Takeaways -

1. Solid 2-1 Set Up

We were able to put on good pressure early and force an early score with enough time to counter score.

2. Touchback Ball to Slayer

Perhaps a bit of of glory hunger here. He was in good position to already get in the cage, plus I wanted him to start getting SPP. The issue to me though I haven't really considered with the Slayer is if he gets marked at all the options of dodging him even with a re-roll are very bad. I think that in the future giving the ball the a blitzer is fine in that situation, but I should leave giving the ball to a slayer to games where we're clearly in control.

3. Scrummed Up and Essentially Lost the Fight Against Elves

He had 43 successful blocks in this game, but only managed to break their armor 12 times from hits, and 2 times from failed dodges. Works out to 25% armor breaks from blocking. Against AV 9+ we should be around 42%, so we were about half as effective as we should've been in the fight. To contrast our opponent was 5/15, making for 1/3 against AV 10+, should be about 15%. I don't feel I was wrong in the way I played the scrum, but just that we got pretty unlucky on the armor breaks this time around.

4. Play for the draw or go for the win?

At the point we were at in the game: the opponent had all his players on the field, and several back in a screen. The chance of my side cage working was slim to none. I should've had the foresight to know that that was the likely outcome and transitioned to playing for the draw. The counter score was extremely unlikely, but it was a possibility that if I took the unlikely shot and failed, he'd have a circus shot to score back, and did. Should've played for the draw.

5. Progressing the cage through fallen bodies

Tricky here and something I may want to ask around about. When you've knowcked down players and they are stunned or down how do we treat them considering the placement of the cage? I think if you have an unskilled played on the ground and you have guard players in contact, a carrier with block, you're probably alright to allow him to mark the carrier if you have to. Not sure what the statistics are, but this was something I struggled with throughout this game: finding the solid cage in the muck of bodies. ”