Match Day 9 - Matches

[J-Reedy]

To all other: Sorry for this delay, but since this match might have a huge effect on the play-off seeding I hope you can wait for it a little...
/hakos

NP. Just to prove Hakos' point, here's how the playoffs will go depending on the Getingarna - Drop Dead Gorgeus matchup:

- DDG will play Chaotic Dudes whatever the result will be.

DDG wins:
- Material Ghouls vs The Partly Animals
- Sweet Sweet Decay vs Getingarna
- Cougar Kittens vs Elfy Way

Tie:
- Material Ghouls vs The Partly Animals
- SSD vs Elfy Way
- Cougar Kittens vs Getingarna

Getingarna wins:
- Getingarna vs The Partly Animals
- Material Ghouls vs Elfy Way
- SSD vs Cougar Kittens

[Barmution]

Wow, that's a real decider, then  ;D

Good luck to both of you, I'll be busy teaching my Wight to Tackle...

[hakos]

Hmm, I was planning to play for survival but now I see that I will need to play for not losing.

I do not want to meet the Nurgle in my quarter final. That is the team I fear the most, even more than the Khemri.

/hakos

[tags]

Hmm, I was planning to play for survival but now I see that I will need to play for not losing.

I do not want to meet the Nurgle in my quarter final. That is the team I fear the most, even more than the Khemri.

/hakos

So what you're saying is that you need to play for long-term survival rather than short-term survival  ;D

[The Golden Arrow]

We accept your fear and take full responsibility for anything that might happen in that hypothetical game :)

[Mr B]

Hakos, I think I can be home around 16:30 CET. ::)

[hakos]

Hakos, I think I can be home around 16:30 CET. ::)

Hi, just got home from work, ready to play whenever.

Are you sure you mean 16:30 CET? That would be 00:30 my time. I thought that previously we were discussing 16:30 sweden time (CET+1).

Anyway I will check here regularly from 16:00 Sweden Time (CET+1).

/Hakos

[The Golden Arrow]

Swedish time is cet now with no daylight saving time.

[Barmution]

CET = GMT+1 atm, if that helps to clarify anything.

[hakos]

Ok, thanks, then I understand.

/hakos

[Mr B]

Ok, thanks, then I understand.

/hakos

Ready and online.
/B

[hakos]

logging in now

[hakos]

Matchen spelad. Kan inte påstå att jag spelade bra, men ibland behövs inte det.

Vann med 2-0 mot Khemrisarna.

Misstänker att Mr B kommer att kommentera tärningarna en del, och med all rätt.

/Hakos

[Mr B]

Matchen spelad. Kan inte påstå att jag spelade bra, men ibland behövs inte det.

Vann med 2-0 mot Khemrisarna.

Misstänker att Mr B kommer att kommentera tärningarna en del, och med all rätt.

/Hakos

hehe, true.. the game was served on a plate, but you handled it good hakos.
And yet the BB-M shows that I was the lucky one.. haha, right.
4 double skulls and huge amount of both down.. it's not a good one.
I cannot recall seeing this before having ~10% turnovers with 2,02 och blocking dices.
But I'd guess I'm the lucky one anyway, having this game when it did not matter for my part.  8)

Day forwarded, the playoffs begins!
Good luck folks!
BR
/B

[J-Reedy]

Excerpt from Blood Bowl Gazette vol 534 issue 19, p. 14:

NUL match week 9 recap by Fagronkey Nagrumbundyme.

Results from the week 9:


Welcome to the recap of week 9 games of NUL! The final week of the regular is behind us and the playoffs are lurking ahead so we'll start with a quick recap of the games and then head onto playoff speculations. The final week started with the Cougar Kittens versus the Vinterlegionen game. This matchup was advertized as a friendly game for both male and female spectators which probably is true considering that both of the teams favor a bit lighter armor style (and of the teams also goes with a bit looser morals according to some rumors). In the game itself the norse surprisingly proved to quite a gentlemen, as they only knocked down 4 amazons. The amazons on the other hand proved to be the man-eaters that the tabloids claim them to be - the violent jungle-wenches downed a norse player 15 times, scoring 4 KOs and 2 injuries. So the norse were playing undermanned for most of the match but their thrower Gunnar showed some real talent making a last minute long bomb TD pass at the final minutes of the first half and then making a spectacular across the field pass on the second half just a second before he was taken down by 4 grazed amazons – a dream for so many a men but a nightmare for so many a Blood-Bowler. The Cougar Kittens however managed match both of the 2 Vinterlegionen touchdowns so the match finally ended in a draw.

The second match of the week was the Chaotic Dudes versus the Material Ghouls matchup. Both teams played a physical game but this week seemed to favor the teams with mostly woman players as the undead wenches won the injury race with 4 injuries against the 1 of the chaos side. This efficiency helped the Material Ghouls to a convincing 0-3 victory. The Ghouls' Sarah Jessica Paler also managed to make one of the injuries a pure kill. The victim was the Dudes' rookie chaos warrior. Curiously this was already a second fatality to a Dudes' chaos warrior as the chaos side lost a chaos warrior also in their matchup against the league's all-female team Cougar Kittens. These two female-heavy teams of the NUL really have shown that the women maybe the weaker sex but they make up for this with their first for blood as 5 of the 14 casualties this season were caused by these teams.

The third match of the week proved to be a whack-the-elf game. Unfortunately for The Partly Animals, they were the only elf team on the field, so they were doomed to play the role of the whackee while the Nurgle favorite Sweet Sweet Decay assumed the role of the whacker. The SSD scored 7 injuries, one of which proved to fatal to the veteran line-elf Tiger Woods. Line-elf Black Adger also suffered such injuries that he'll miss the wood-elf's first playoff game. This means that The Partly Animals currently have only 7 players able to take the field and as they only have enough money for one additional recruit, they'll be freebooting heavily and with freebooting I mean the practice of recruiting players from the closest pub before the game, not the popular fouling style developed by the legendary goblin line-bastard Groog "Big Boot" Perkinson. It's a really efficient fouling-method where you start the game with at least three steelboots on your right foot and then take off the outmost boot when you come in touch with a prone player and start whacking the poor sod with the freed boot. The secret to the efficiency of this method is the accuracy, as hitting with the boot in your hand is truly much more accurate than the clumsy kicking. Oh yes, the match between the wood-critters and stinkyrots ended 1-2 in favor of the Nurgle-side.

The fourth match of the week was a high-scoring all-elf affair where the playoffs bound pro-elf team Elfy Way were surprised by the high-elf team White Fire. The pro-elf players must've been already celebrating their playoff-spot heavily as they were knocked around, out and cold with ease by the high-elf players. The White Fire proved to a truly balanced team scoring both 3 touchdowns and 3 casualties. The Elfy Way didn't bother scoring any casualties and as they only managed 2 TDs, the White Fire scored their second win of the season. This win elevated the high-elfs to 7 points and above the Vinterlegionen whose final tally was 5 points. As to seriousness of the Elfy Way injuries, Popeye the sailorline-elf will miss the Elfy Way's first playoff match.

The final matchup of the week, the game between the Drop Dead Gorgeous and the Getingarna was delayed by a rubble-chicken carrying witch-dude, time warping and appearance of rain of buttecup labeled tee saucers from sausage portals above the Khemri lands. I must say that these pre-game festivals are really getting out of hand. But when the match was finally put into books, the regular season champs DDG proved to be chumps in the hands of the Getingarna as they suffered a 0-2 loss. The casualties were split 2 to 4 for the human side and one of the DDG's injuries was a permanent death of skeletal player Adjptah Tabshef. The Getingarna ogre Mar Skin-Tearer was also declared dead once during the game but on closer examination it was discovered that someone had given a piece of gum to Mar and as everybody knows, ogres aren't good at doing two things at ones, so while chewing the gum Mar forgot to breathe. He quickly recovered after the Getingarna apothecary bravely snatched the gum out of Mar's mouth. The win skyrocketed the Getingarna to the second place in the league. It is actually rumored that the spectacular play of the Getingarna was due to the Getingarna coach first showing the team the pictures of the rotting muscle-hulking Nurgle players that they would face in the playoffs if they lost and then the pictures of the hippy-shaky petite wood-elfs they would meet in case they won.

Final Regular season standings:


That's all from the regular season, now it's time to get to the real meaty games – the playoffs! As regular season champs the DDG will go against the 8th seed team the Chaotic Dudes. These are two physical teams but unfortunately the Chaotic Dudes are short of two chaos warriors due to reasons described earlier so their minotaur Krakrieg will have a lot on his shoulders – and probably lots of bony fellows and mummy-wrapping all-around himself. The DDG will have a clear strength advantage as most of the Khemri players are proving to be former members of a royal guard, although one of these guards, skeleton Sebhor Enmhat will be missing the match due to smashed knee (I really don't understand why the necromancers just don't go to the nearest cemetery, dig up a corpse with healthy kneecaps and rip one out for his own skeleton, must be something to do with the mumbo-jumbo side of the necromantics). One advantage for the Chaotic Dudes could be that they have more skilled players than the Khemri so with precision striking they could make the game hard for the agility-lacking DDG. Interesting fact with the playoffs is that each team has played against their opponent earlier in the season so both teams will have some idea on the style of their opponent. In their first matchup the DDG and Chaotic Dudes played a 1 all draw where the DDG dominated physically but didn't manage to injure the chaos players.

The 2nd seed Getingarna will face the 7th seed The Partly Animals. The Getingarna are true human team with no apparent weaknesses but no apparent strengths either. But they are good at guarding each other and as their thrower Gothard Rainer has managed to acquire some über-human agility (some say this is thanks to Gothard's girl-friend who happens to work as snake woman in a local circus and is also rumored to be member of aphrodisiacs anonymous, so Gothard presumably has had a lot of agility "training" lately). The Partly Animals on the other hand have no need to train their agility skills, they have more agility than they need but unfortunately only one strength player. The Partly Animals were also truly manhandled in their final game so they will certainly have to rely on the help of at least 3 freebooters. But as this is a wood-elf team, there's always hope as long as they have even one of their witch-elfs on the field. The duo of witches that The Animals have is truly fearsome, Amy "Stripper" Winemouse has earned her nick-name the hard-way, not dancing around a pole but stripping the ball away from the opposing ball-carriers. Phong "Tackle and blow mightily " Bird on the hand doesn't bother so much with the subtlety of stripping the spirit of the ball-carriers as she favors more physical methods of causing hurt. In their first matchup The Getingarna whupped the woodsy elfs 4-0 in TDs and 3-2 in casualties so the humans seem to have the wood-elfs number but one has to remember that playoffs are always playoffs.

The 3rd seeded team is the Material Ghouls who will play the pro-elf side Elfy Way. The undead team has a pair of unusually fast ghouls so they should be able to keep up with the quick elfs. As mentioned, the Elfy Way will be missing one of their line-players so they're short of one player. Elfs have enough money for a new line-elf but it could be that the team will be saving the money and trust that they'll find an adequate replacement on their way to the game. In the first matchup of these teams the Elfy Way got a 1-2 victory but as the game was played on week 1 the result probably won't have a lot of weight as both teams have lots of experience under their belts now. The coaches of these teams are also very familiar with each other, so this should be a tactically even match with only surprises coming from the Lady Luck.

The 4th seed team is the Sweet Sweet Decay and so they will host the 5th seed Cougar Kittens in the quarter-finals. The SSD has developed into a fearsomely physical blocking machine and now that their beast Josix the Unclean has finally realized that it can use its strength and tentacles to break away from the guarding players, the SSD have a truly mobile dodge-preventer in their ranks which may spell trouble for the dodgeability-reliant amazons. But as is usual with the Nurgle teams, the biggest advantage for the SSD will probably be their lack of hygiene, the scent of the Nurgle-rot has hampered numerous ball-handling feats so you shouldn't expect this match to be a high-scoring affair. As to the amazons, the Cougar Kittens have surprising number of player capable of guarding the ball-carrier and they also have arguably one of the best rushers in the game in their catcher Lana Kreuk. Lots will depend on the ability of the amazons to stay on the field and keep away from the strength players of the SSD. This could also prove to be surprisingly physical game as amazons teams are no strangers to art of hitting. In their first matchup the amazons upended the Nurglers 1 to 0.

As always the results of playoffs are hard to predict, if I was a betting man (which I'm not, I assure you, I wouldn't even dream of caching in all of my paychecks and betting heavily on these quarter-finals) I'd look into matchups very hard before making any bets and listen very carefully to any rumors about the teams and coaches. Remember that rumors are runes of unsure wisdom and deciphering them correctly could give one a nice edge in the betting game. So I'll leave you with some rumors about the playoffs teams that floating out there. But before I do that, I must remind you to pick your copy of Blood Bowl Gazette next week for the playoffs results!

- Trusted sources tell us that all of the custom made silver nose-clips that SSD's necromancer uses to block the scent of his players have been stolen.
- Getingarna players have been spotted visiting a close-by lumber mill where they were seen practicing hitting, biting and tackling large elder-wood logs.
- Rumor has it that the Chaos Dudes have spent their short vacation time on the beach where the members of the team have taken turns in crafting sand statues that their team-mates would then bash into pile of dust.
- According to sources close to The Partly Animals front office, the wood-elfs have come up with evidence that Mar Skin-Tearer of the Getingarna is of the Bloomington Skin-Tearers who were notoriously responsible for chopping down the elder-wood forest that the Animals' treeman Timber Wolf hails from. Mr. Wolf has been seen studying closely books on ogre anatomy.
- According to reliable sources DDG's coach was seen last week in Madam Poocher's Beauty Salon and Metal Shop purchasing two barrels anti-decaying crème.
- Well-informed sources have informed some trusted sources who are saying that the Elfy Way's rookie catcher Luiggis is actually the coach of the said team who has been forced to take the field due to injuries suffered by the team.
- Some members of the Cougar Kittens team have seen prancing around in the town with a surprisingly large number of silver jewelry on them, although some people claim that the silver peaces aren't actually jewelry but some kind of simple clips.
- It is rumored that the Material Ghouls' Sarah Jessica Paler isn't actually a human but the corpse of the favorite horse of a prince that was mummified and buried with the prince. I must confess that there might something to this rumor, I mean the face of miss Paler is cunningly long and she does usually block with her feet – or should I say hooves...