J-Reedy

[J-Reedy]

I created this sub-board for anyone wanting to write their personal NUL history / keep track of their teams used. I will (hopefully) start updating this personal thread of mine. For starters, here's my total team history.

Season 3 & 4: Cougar Kittens (Amazons)
Season 5: Gentlemen Wolf-Whistlers (Necromantic)
Season 6: Elvish Blues Bloods (High Elf)
Season 7: Gentlemen Wolf-Whistlers (Necromantic)
Season 8: Cougar Kittens (Amazons)
Season 9: Finned Marine Mammals (Dark Elf)
Season 10: break
Season 11: Cougar Kittens (Amazons)
Season 12: Binky and the Pain (Goblin)
Season 13: break
Season 14: Gentlemen Wolf-Whistlers (Necromantic)
Season 15 & 16 & 17: Fantasy Armor Inc (Norse)
Season 18 &19 & 20: Da Beatmores (Orc)
Season 21: break
Blood Bowl 2 Test season: Chi Bananarama Quitas! (Lizardmen)
Season 22: The Servers of Khorne (Khorne)
Season 23: Cougar Kittens (Amazon)
Season 24 (BB2): Nisayers (Bretonnian)
(Start of three season sets)
Season 25 & 26: En Traiders (Wood Elf)
Season 27: Sand Castles Supreme (Khemri)
Season 28 & 29 & 30: Capes are Cool (Vampire)
Season 31 : Dis Thing of Ours (Underworld)
Season 32 & 33: Too Stup...born to Die (Undead)
Season 34 & 35 & 36: Zero Effort Noisedoers (Dwarf)
Season 37 & 38 & 39: MPDG Fever (Amazon)
Season 40 & 41 & 42: Holmby Hills Ratty Pack (Skaven)
Season 43 & 44 & 45: Nomine Incognito (Kislev)
Season 46 & 47 & 48: s0 pRO MAD 53rFs (Chaos Dwarf)

[J-Reedy]

ANCIENT HISTORY
I started playing Blood Bowl in tabletop form soon after starting at the university in mid-90s in small side-campus of my chosen faculty. My first ever team was the Undead by the name of Undead Corpses of Old Ominous Legends Stand - or Undead COOLS. The players in the team were named mostly after dead movie stars. As this might tell, theming of my teams was very important to me from the very start. I won my first championship of our small campus league with a Lizardmen team Eumeces (latin name for some skink family).

After some years I moved from the side-campus to main-campus in the big Helsinki and took part in the bigger campus leagues where I learned there were players who took Blood Bowl way too seriously, playing the game to win by any means. As that was the time of "Frenzy as long as you have movement left" and "reroll injuries", things could get ugly soon as it did in my first ever game in the "big leagues" where my opponent injured out all of my team by turn 11. But I coped with that for few seasons, but didn't enjoy the game as much as before, and when I started work along my studies, I soon dropped out of Blood Bowl scene. I must've played my last tabletop game of my early Blood Bowling life sometime in the early 2000s.

THE RE-AWAKENING
Looking at the Steam records, I purchased Blood Bowl very soon after it was published in June of 2009, so I clearly had craved for a Blood Bowl fix despite not playing the tabletop version in almost a decade. I even got my real life friend Kezerk from my board-gaming group so interested in the game that we played some tabletop games. We also ran a small league in the PC client with players mostly from our board-game group. Then some day Kezerk informed me that he had also started playing in some weird Scandinavian league called Norsca Union League. Intrigued, I asked for more information...

NUL SEASONS 3 & 4 - COUGAR KITTENS
I registered into NUL forum on April 15th 2011. On that same date I made my first post and signed up for the season 3. On April 27th I announced that I would be playing Amazons. Don't remember for 100% sure if the Amazon were available when I started playing but my recollection was that they were not and were instead released soon after our tabletop league had started along with Lizardmen. So I can't say that Amazon were my first love of all the Blood Bowl teams but they have for sure grown to be my favourite team with their hidden bashiness and so adorable but frightening fragileness. I had played Amazon team in my little local league with Kezerk and other boardgaming buddies, so that was the team I was the most familiar with at the time, so I naturally decided to go into the "big leagues" with them.

On May 2nd I announced my team would be named "Cougar Kittens". My description of the team ran like this: "Before cougars become the dangerous man-eaters they are known to be they are cuddly and cute kittens. The agile cougar kittens should however not be considered neither helpless nor harmless, one cougar kitten can tear a full-grown man to parts in a second - both physically and mentally. Packs of cougar kittens are especially dangerous. Several cases have been reported where a pack of kittens has rendered a whole team of blood bowlers incapacited."

With cougars I was of course referring to the phenomenon of "cougar women" that had become a fad in the 200s by large part due to the TV series Desperate Housewifes and Cougar Town. My naming patter for the players had a simple logic. The Blitzers had first name of one of the 4 main actresses from the Desperate Housewifes and last or first name (which ever sounded better) of their character in that same show. So, initially my Blitzers started as Marcia Bree, Teri Mayer, Eva Gabrielle and Felicity Scavo if I recall correctly. Linewomen were first names of young actresses and Throwers and Catchers followed the naming pattern of Blitzers with younger actresses from some of my favourite TV shows at the time, with Kristin Kreuk with her Lana Lang role in Smallville playing double part. The naming logic was naturally that the more experienced actresses were the "real Cougars" and thus Blitzers, while the younger cougars-in-training-actresses were the more inexperienced "Kittens" in other roles. The plan was that if there would be deaths (good thing I had a plan) Blitzers would switch their first and last names between actress and character and linewomen and other positionals would just be replaced with other young actresses. On a side note, looking at the posts I did, first Amazonia Cougar Kitten to die was Thrower Joan Montana. She might the exception to my previously described naming rule, being a feminine version of Joe Montana, the most famous QB of my favourite NFL team San Francisco 49ers.

By a chance my first ever NUL match was against my friend Kezerk. Amazon vs Dwarfs is the nightmare match that every Amazon fears but luckily I was playing against very familiar opponent and managed to squeeze a 2-0 win. On my own standards I wrote a very short match report about that match but for my next match I had gathered enough courage for a lengthier report. I have always written those kinds of reports and stories ever since I started playing games that supported them. When we played Hero Quest campaign in College, I did hand-written "funny" summaries of our adventures. When I started 40K, I got notorious for over-lenghty stories about the exploits of my Guard grunts or Tau task force. But Blood Bowl reports were new to me, I had never done those. Mostly because I had never before played in a league with forum like NUL has. But writing those stories in my blood, so it became naturally as the strong theming of my BB team supported that. My match reported started with "party attitude" of my players making announcements to other teams, but pretty soon I just started writing with whatever team popped into my head.

Somehow, even being so distracted by writing reports, I made it to the playoffs in my first season in NUL, so I must've finished in top 4. I got whupped by krim_nielsen's more experienced Amazon team but my Cougar Kittens were already rearing to start NUL season 4.

Season 4 I wrote my first Blood Sports Spotlight - "The Weekly League News and Speculations" post. I had gathered momentum on the writing stuff during season 3 and it had become something I enjoyed. And as I had plenty of time back then, I somehow ended up doing a report of the matches of the league. The voice of Blood Sports Spotlight, "Gron Grumbundy" is of course parody of the Will Ferrell character Ron Burgundy from the film series Anchorman. Sometime during the season I was also handed administration rights to the forum from Mr. B and The_Golden_Arrow who had taken reigns after the original creator of NUL bodyschlopmf had bowed after after 1st season.

Gamewise, my strong start in the NUL continued with Cougar Kittens getting one step further and making it to the Final - where they were murdered my Mr. B's Undead. Two dead blitzers and third Blitzer with a stat minus. This meant that the NUL's to be decision to start season 5 with rookie teams suited me pretty well after suffering such a devastating loss. So, I started thinking of a new team...