“Round 7: Beards Slow Grind Elven Tree Friends

A blizzard set the scene for the round 7 match of the Box Elder Beards and the Elven Tree Friends. The Tree Friends were coming in down men heavily from their previous contest, fielding only a lone Catcher, Wardancer and Treeman as their positonals. The Wardancer, Lifty, is easily one of the most skilled players in the division, and his presence alone would keep the Beards on their toes. The Elves received to start with the dwarves playing a patient defense, hoping to start to get a lead on player-count that they could leverage to their advantage. The Tree friends catcher caught the kick and the scrum ensued with the Beards marking up while trying to avoid the threatening limbs of Lumpy the treeman. The Beards' combat prowess began to take its toll as the elves began to leave the field. Sniffles started toward one edge then attempted to reverse the field, but the dwarf pursuit was too strong, and they sacked the catcher. Lifty recovered the ball, but the pressure was too strong and he was ejected into the sidelines with the fans throwing a very elf-friendly toss toward their endzone directly in-range of a journeymen Tree Friend to score. A single Dwarf blitzer stood guard over the ball, and as the elves attempted to clear him off the ball, they failed going into half 0-0.

The Beards received for the 2nd half and Belli was able to recover the ball and set to work pressing the Dwarven wall into the thinned elven ranks. The elves attempted some surgical blitzes and screening, but were never able to make headway, and eventually the wall was able to overpower the defense after Sniffles became trapped on the ground left behind to shore up the line. Belli made the decision to hand off the ball to blitzer Aliyah Fafnin near the endzone, to give the blitzer a rare shot at a score. Lifty wasn’t quite done though and he pressed on two final heroic efforts to get to the ball, but was unable to lodge it loose. Aliyah jogged into the endzone turn 8 for the 1-0 victory.

Coach Buck Comments:

“This was a very solid performance by the guys. They did what they needed to do and didn’t make many mistakes throughout the match. Our defense especially I am pleased with. It sure got a bit tense towards the end of that half though, they easily could’ve gone into the half 1-0, and I’m grateful we had a guy to cover that crowd toss. Our offensive drive was also very effective. Nothing fancy there, and it was nice to have Aliyah to get a chance at a score. My only complaint was it would’ve been nice to do some real damage on this one, but dang you have to give it up to the resilience of the Tree Friends to keep coming back. Lifty did the things we thought he’d do, and we really lucked out that Shifty wasn’t around to make it worse. We caught them at a moment where we had a clear advantage before the ball was snapped, but sometimes that’s how it goes.”

Tactical Takeaways-

1. Aggressive Defense Alignment vs. Tree

I did not remember they had a tree, so I put my guard piece in the center of our KO-LOS, and that was foolish. I also had tight wings to the LOS to take away assists on the edges. I thought I was going to ensure 0 hits, and possibly just 1 blitz, but the tree could easily move out the Guard and then he would’ve had 2D blocks on the edges. The other thing was that it forced the guard piece to be on the tree the majority of the 1st half which isn’t what we want at all.

2. Surfing the Wardancer with the Loner in Scoring Range

I don’t think this was the wrong idea, but I should’ve taken more steps to account for the scoring threat. The throw-in was basically going to be a 50/50 shot as to whether they would be able to recover it and get it to that scoring threat. Got lucky they failed the rush.

3. Stacked Cage Incorrect

At the very end of the game I put a stacked cage in place with the carrier in the back assuming that if I had a regular cage he was somehow going to be able to leap into it. This was a terrible idea. The stack wasn’t necessary and I could’ve just had a cage with 3 corners to the sideline side. If I were to stack I should’ve at least had the carrier in the front to force it into being -2D.
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