Kublacon Report: Day One

Promptly at 6:30 am, my daughter alerted me that it was time to get up and start packing for Kublacon. She thinks she wanted to be picked up and fed, but she was wrong. Six hours two days in a row meant two cups of coffee, but I'd done worse.

Right, so long story short: we hoped to get out the door at 2:00pm (after Jocelyn's nap) and we got out at quarter of three. Not Jocelyn's fault either, she was awake at 2:00. Mer and I hadn't showered and we hadn't finished packing away all our stuff.

Also, if I had a motto for this Kublacon it would be: "Aw crap, we forgot that." Minor stuff from utensils for sandwiches and yogurt, to fairly important stuff like the cart we use to lug around our terrain. If Dan hadn't spent a night in one of our rooms, we wouldn't have had a cart come Saturday when we had like 8 boxes of urban terrain.

Anyway, we get there, get checked in, and the porter arrives with our stuff in like 10 minutes instead of the 90 it took last year. Before we knew it, it was 6:00pm, and time for some Bloodbowl.

The BBCS (Blood Bowl Championship Series) is essentially a 3 round league with 12 wacky pitches, each with their own set of rules. This ranges from relatively minor (playing desert, so always hot and bonus armor because of the sand dunes), to somewhat weird (playing in Mordheim where people can bounce-pass off the walls and drink wyrdstone potions), to outright hilarity (playing on a mostly secure forcefield over a lava pit and having Tzeentch change the rules every drive to allow such things as: no rerolls, rerolling a reroll, two blitzes a turn, 3 GFIs a turn, 1 GFIs a turn, etc.).

Teams are 1.3 million GPs and start with 30 SPPs, but other than that it's a 3 round league. We had five people, would've been six but Scott had "issues" with registering (at one point we thought he'd been banned from the con and escorted off the property). We ended up picking up a person who basically played a demo game.

So we have 5 or 6, depending on how you counted it. This was half of the 12 we had last year. But then again, while we had 12 start the tournament we only had 4 play round 3. Most of them said it was because of the flea market, but there was a lot of grousing that the rules for the pitches were wacky and they thought they'd be playing straight up Bloodbowl. Read the F'ing event description, people.

This year, everyone who started finished and had a great time. Hopefully we'll have more next year. Right, so my team and my games:

The Ten-Sea Titans
6 Ogres
9 Snotlings
FF: 0
Rerolls: 3
Apothecary
1 Asst Coach
1 Cheerleader

Before the game, I spent my 30 SPPs to give 5 ogres an upgrade. I got 4 skill upgrades and a double. Three ogres got Guard, one got Break Tackle, and one got Block.

Round 1: Ogres vs Halflings
The pitch was the Norsca Bowl with snow drifts (+1 to armor but GFI fails on 1-2), rowdy crowd (+1 injury roll if pushed into the crowd), and a revised weather table with more cold effects.

So a word to the wise: play a game of something less than 3 months before you're gonna play in a tournament. Will make the learning curve a bit better. I was just getting used to the Bloodbowl rules and Manny scored. Stupid Halflings. But it was okay, I thought, because I'm Ogres. Ogres are all about ball control (stop snickering, it's a valid football term). I held the ball for like 6 turns, slowly plodding down the field while laying a beatdown. Sure I could throw just like the halflings but I figured I'd play for the second half.

Silly, silly me. Manny got the ball back and scored on his turn 7 or 8 of the first half. Then came the second half and he kicked to me. I didn't get the ball as quickly as I should and the halflings scooted into my half and grabbed it. Three to one.

From there I decided to play for the draw. I never thought it an especially sporting tactic to sit one or two squares from the touchdown and just thump the other guy, but I was told by multiple people that it's a valid tactic for running teams. Especially when facing quick scoring teams. So with an ogre holding the football and flanked by two ogres, I kept the ball two squares from a touchdown for like 5 turns, playing for the draw.

Yeah...anyone who's reading this and saying "hey wait, the score is 3-1 for the Halflings" can count better than me. Imagine my joy when Manny informed me of this fact. Oh well. Right, a loss, no advanacements, and only 10K gp (not even enough for a snotling) I shamefacedly moved onto my next opponent.


Round 2: Goblins vs Ogres
The pitch was the Sylvania Bowl with zombie crowds (can fight/dodge free if pushed into the crowd), a necromancer for each team (dead players can be resurrected as zombies), and a zombie themed kick off table (including being pelted with body parts and zombiefying the ref).

I don't remember this game too well, except for the fact that it went bad for Trent. In fact, it went so bad for him that the parts I remember are basically a highlight reel of his humiliation. It started with him flanking his chainsaw Looney by two trolls with Guard. No problem, I put my ogre with block flanked by two ogres with guard. Pop-squish, hurt Looney.

This'd be a theme. Despite putting half his team in the injury box, nobody was killed. It was usually just a badly hurt or a KO. Still, it went badly for him. 2 of the 4 snots that left the field did so for being caught fouling. His pogoer never got to do anything before being removed. His bombadier ate fried chicken before playing and had greasy fingers, dropping the bomb at his own feet twice I think. His ball & chain fanatic carved a path through my line...and then I surrounded him so I could roll 2 block dice. Off goes the fanatic.

The real coup d'hilarity was the clutch fails. At the end of the first half, a gobbo with the ball has to dodge free of my guys (or maybe GFI), and promptly trips. Half over.

Fast forward to the end of the second half. He's got a gobbo with the ball covered by a snotling. and has to make a blitz roll on a snotling with gobbo. Double skull. Game over.

(like I said I don't remember too clearly the events, so I may be mixing them up. Beer was involved.)

So I get +1 FF (yay) and 70K in gold. I almost bought a 10th snotling, but figured "really, is it going to come down to that last guy?" Instead, I opted for +4 coaches and +4 cheerleaders.

So we had a quick 'check out the friday flea market' pause wherein I bought some urban terrain including a platform. It'd be useful for the Rezolution event the next day. Then it was back to the tournament.


Round 3: Ogres vs Pro Elves
I apologize because I don't remember my opponent's name (Sean?). Anyway, we played the Karak Bowl. It has a low ceiling (-1 to pass), stone floors (-1 to armor), and Dwarves Refs with a 'let them play' attitude (players ejected for fouling and secret weapons only half the time). Also the kickoff had skulldugery such as a rogue deathrolla, disgruntled goblins bombing the pitch, and Bugman's Special Brew.

Anyway, this game was the most fun I had despite being an utter blowout. I think I lost 4-1. But due to inducements, I could hire Bomber Dribblesnot. I had so much fun with him and he attracted a lot of attention until he ran into the one honest Dwarf ref on the payroll.

Meanwhile, the pro Elves danced around me, scoring pretty much at whim. I realized after the 2nd turn of the first half (when I was down 3-0) that I didn't stand a chance. I decided to roll out Plan B. The "B" is for Beatdown.

It's amazing. I had better results when I didn't try to win. All this silly nonsense about putting the spiked ball across some line way over there. Naw, I'd rather just hit stuff.

My personal crowning moment was rolling a twelve. On the Injury Roll. Against Prince Morianon.

Oh that was nice.

At one point, the Elf team was down to 5 players. I had 1 casualty, a snotling. It was my first of the whole tournament. Then the two guys of his in the KO box woke up and brought the Elves back up to 7 guys, allowing him to score a fourth touchdown. I decided at that point I'd do something wacky and try to score. I tossed a snotling with a ball and he managed to land and then make both GFIs. Woohoo walk off TD!!!

(don't bother me with facts like "I lost" okay? It was a walk-off TD...the fact that 'walk-off' usually implies victory is just that: an implication. I scored a TD, and then we walked off the field.)

So we cleaned up, chatted for a bit (shocking!!), and then made our way upstairs by about 2:30 am. As I lay in bed, so amped up and overtired that it took me until 3:00am to fall asleep, I had this feeling that the next day was gonna suck and that this was going to be a pattern.

Game Count: 4.