By Phil78, Scottish Blood Bowl Committee, Online Lead
When discussions have come up for the best way for everyone to get their regular fix of skulls and snaked dodges the majority always agree there is nothing like staring into your opponents cold dead eyes across an actual physical board as they foul your star players into oblivion. However there are definitely times when the speed and ease of playing online trumps the effort of actually leaving the house.
So with this in mind, and also following discussions around using online resources to help get a better feel for the rules for the upcoming 2024 Eurobowl in Greece, the idea of running a Scottish BB community Fumbbl tournament was raised.
Based on the Eurobowl ruleset, but giving players free rein of the available blessings, a 4 round NAF style resurrection tournament was created , The High Road to Athens, running over January and February
22 coaches signed up, with 15 different races making an appearance. The most popular races were those well known powerhouses Lizardmen, Skaven, and Khorne (?!) with 3 representatives each. High Elves were the only other race with multiple entrants so a good sign that the rule set is giving the Eurobowl captains some headaches and sleepless nights deciding on the best route to follow for their squad picks.
Heading into round one the eye could only be drawn to the Team Scotland coaches facing off against each other with captain Purdindas’s Underworld facing Mournival’s Chaos Dwarfs , and Loki’s Lizards facing MarkyMarc’s High Elves. In these matches the Chaos Dwarves and High Elves came out triumphant, both taking advantage of their stunty like opponents to rack up the casualties and head to the top of the table early on.
Of course that just resulted in them meeting in round 2 thanks to the wonder that is Swiss pairing. What could have been a close and tense match between 2 coaches who have faced each other multiple times sadly turned into a bit of a blow out with the elves refusing to fall down and die. A 3-0 win leaving Marc in 1st place for now. Unexpectedly coming up behind him were the Vampires coached by Datom, making good use of the tiering to build a team capable of running in 6 touchdowns in round 2 to give his tie breakers a healthy boost.
At this point five teams had won both matches and were well in the running for the trophy.
So the top table in round 3 was the High Elves vs Vampires in a back and forth match punctuated by several snakes, mostly for the elves as is traditional, with the vampires sneaking out a 2-1 win. Of the other teams previously on 2 wins only the Black Orcs came out victorious, while at the other end of the table ThommeK completed his Suttonbowl run by playing his third member of clan Sutton.
So going into the final round it would be Vampires vs Black Orcs for the title, amid complaints of the group admins using the famed Fumbbl admin client to smooth their progress thus far, while at the bottom an elf off of WooTeck’s Elven Union took on ThommeK’s Wood Elves or the wooden spoon.
While the elves produced an exciting match with touchdowns galore, sharing 8 touchdowns between them the top table match all went a bit wrong for the Black Orcs as Gork forsook them and the Vampires ran out with a mighty 4-0 win to take the title in some style.
Indeed over the four rounds Datom managed an impressive 15 touchdowns. Clearly Vampires need moved up a tier or two prior to Athens, but it will definitely be interesting to see if anyone else can use them to similar effect elsewhere.
Behind Datom LordGarlack made a strong run into 2nd place having always been a step behind following a draw in round 2, and the dramatic 4-4 draw in round 4 wasn’t enough for WooTeck to drag his Elves off the foot of the table but at least ThommeK got to play someone not related to Valen!
Thanks to everyone who took part, from an administrative point of view the tournament ran super smoothly with only a couple of forfeits in round 4 when some super competitive people had lost hope of winning or were recovering from a Superbowl weekend in Amsterdam. Hopefully it was enjoyed all round, and will encourage people to participate in future events.
Next up is the Scottish Online Bloodbowl League (SOBBL), again on Fumbbl but this time a more traditional league format with proper team progression. A massive 32 coaches have signed up leading to four divisions with playoffs due in June.
Longer-term the committee are looking at plans for a further NAF style tournament, or even an official NAF ranked event. Similarly there are always hopes of running similar events on other platforms such as BB3.
Comments