“Lahmia is next on our list (we narrowly avoided the GoldLords for this round), and should be possible to beat. The team is not a very strong one, but has a couple of good ghouls and an excellent mummy in Thamontut. The coach is strong, though, and lucky as well, and the team will have plenty of inducements. Should be winnable, but no match is easy in this division.

Despite home field, Lahmia has the fan advantage, but we win the coin toss and choose to receive. Lahmia has bought a wizard and a couple of surprises... Lahmia starts out with a spread LOS formation with zombies up front and mummies at the corners in the second line. Our offense immediatelt grinds to a halt as agile veteran skink Winner can't pick up the ball. The liners wrestle and block as best they can with no one getting an advantage until Booster fails in a block against a rookie zombie. This allows Lahmia a chance to do something. The coach calls for the wizard, who barely manages to fireball Winner, but misses Wiggler and Protector. Winner, who had by now finally managed to pick up the ball, promptly drop it again while rolling on the grass trying desperately to get rid of the flames caught in his team tunic. The loose ball is marked down by skeleton Bela, and zombie Hakrr blitzes Wiggler without much results. Still, the undeads now has three players close to the ball, a skeleton, a zombie and a ghoul, whereas the Scavengers are left with an emerging star saurus (Protector) and three skinks. The fourth skink, Breaker, struggles with Lahmia's rookie ghoul Reokh to prevent him from going towards the ball, but Reokh trips an attempted dodge from Breaker, and can suddenly run past the prone skink to help out around the ball. Zombie Moonshine Einar pushes Idler away, freeing up another two undeads to crowd around the ball, which is picked up by Wight Alfred Zorn. Half of the first half is finished and we have failed in almost everything we have tried to do, and now the undeads even has the ball! Protector does his best, but only manages to topple Hakkrrr without hurting him. As Wiggler tries to reposition himself, he is tripped by skeleton Bela, and seriously injured. The apo tries to treat him, but cannot do much, so Wiggler is out for this match and the next. Only good thing is that there is no permanent damage. Lahmia now rises to the occasion, and frees another zombie to add to their group around the ball. Zorn is now helped out by three zombies and the skeleton, while the two ghouls struggle to fend off my sidestepping skinks Warrior and Breaker. Desperate action is now needed as Zorn is now in a scoring position. Peeler pushes Mmmmm out of the way and frees up Brewer who runs off to help his friends by blitzing Sukla, one of the ghouls. Sukla is only toppled, but we now have three saurii at the site of action, together with two sidestepping skinks and our pass blocker, agile skink Winner. It will not be enough, however. The undeads puts up a chain to crowdsurf poor Winner, who is ripped apart by a number of undead trolls and Ogres on the fan section of the stands, never to be seen again... This means that Zorn has still not scored, however, and that we can get another shot at stopping their TD. Our sidestepping skionks does a heroic job, rolling with punches and sidestepping heavy blows, until late at the very end of the half, Zorn knocks himself out trying to dodge away from Protectors embrace. Protector also grabs the ball, but it is unfortunately not time enough for him to score. Instead we consoles ourselves with seriously injuring Hakkrrr (the necromancer-coach is a bit rusty and fails to regenerate the fractured arm) and knocking out Reokh, while the undeads retaliate by blatantly fouling Warrior, sending him off for the match.

Thus, at halftime the situation is rather grim. With my three best skinks out, we can field only 9 players in defense. Worse, without the skinks I have very Limited ball carrying capacity. And worts of all, With Winner killed and Wiggler seriously injured, I will be strongly limited in my next match as well. The undead got both their KO'd players back and are short one rookie zombie,and thus has no problems fielding 11 players with 3 reserves to spare. Granted, they have spent all their inducements, but they are still in a comfortable situation receiving with 11 vs 9 players. Seems like the best I can realistically hope for is to manage a good defense to reach a Draw. Even then, I will need to be lucky, as the undead will surely stall and try to knock out my remaining skinks any chance they got.

They come straight out of LOS squabbles trying to knock out Mobster, but this draws Zorn into our backfield, and Fraternizer knocks him out. Lahmia tries cto advance up their left flank with Tumm as their ball carrier and two skeletons and another ghoul as protectors. We got Booster and Fraternizer Down there, and the skinks canm be brought to bear, so we still have some hopes. As Brewer KO's Moonshine Einar III on the other flank, we have evened out the odds and are now 9 vs 9 players as well. Will it work out after all?

Lahmia advances round the flank With the ball, but are not yet in a scoriong position. Protector blitzes away his zombie opponent and advances next to Tumm, but Fraternizer can't Block Sukla, and is instead wrestled to the ground by the ghoul. This leaves the initiative with the undeads, and they use it well. Sukla is back on his feet and tumbles Mobster down, allowing Tumm to Dodge away from Protector and take a free run to the sideline. Hrakhh KO's Breaker and Thamontut sends Brewer off badly hurt. 7 vs 9 now, and the only one free to act is Claws, and he tries, but stumbles and trips while going for it. Tumm can run in the TD unhindered, and Lahmia is ahead 1-0.

With half of the half left, there is time, but Breaker doesn't Return from KO and we have only 7 players left, and only 1 of them is a skink, and that is Mobster, the only rookie skink I have. Zorn and Moonshine Einar III doesn't come back either, but Lahmia can dig into the reserves and still field 11 players. We will try our best, and manage to start off with killing Hrrakhhh (the necromancer can't get him back either), and sending Mmmmm off with a casualty (this time the necromancer actually suceeds in bringing him back into the reserves) while skeleton Maximus is KO'd by Peeler. Suddenly we are 7 vs 8, but in doing all this we had to expose our skink, and Tumm brings him down on a blitz and grabs the ball. Unfortunately he stumbles trying to go for it to advance the ball as far forward as possible. The ball is loose, but of course Mobster fails to pick it up, and that's the game.

Thus, we lost the game, and there was no doubt that the undeads were better than us this time. We didn't block very well, didn't hit hard enough when our blocks suceeded, failed to dodge when needed and couldn't pick up the ball in crucial situations. Their strategy of taking out the skinks suceeded well, and they were fielding the ball well, too. All in all, a poor performance from us and a good one from the undeads.

A loss is bad enough, but loosing my only agile skink is much worse. Wiggler is also out of the next game, which will likely be against the GoldLords. We will need to be extremely lucky in that game, and will need to hit even harder than normal for that to work out!



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