Join me now as we assess the progress, or possibly regression would be a more appropriate word, of the world's least impressive stable of BB teams.

(It was this or another piece I've been considering entitled 'Seven Stages of Blood Bowl', where you start with stage 1 (pre-actual games; wild optimism and visions of your dwarves dancing round opposition players and throwing long bombs to each other), move on to stage 2 (first couple of games; rude awakening to the harsh realities of how the game actually plays), then stage 3 (continued beatings; existential trauma and self-doubt as you start to question the fundamentals of your life, abandonment of actual victory as a goal in favour of the aim of keeping your team as intact as possible, together with other personal objectives in each game), and then... well, I'll talk about stage 4 when I find out what it is.)

So anyway:

Drakwald Dominators - fate rather cruelly got the Dominators' hopes up when they won their second game, jammily. Since then it has been a steady downhill trajectory with clobberings by Orcs, Skaven, Goblins, and Amazons interspersed only with hard-fought (and somewhat lucky) draws against Slann and the Undead. Weirdly enough their most successful game was a 3-1 thumping by the Skaven, in which they caused enough damage to force their opponents to retire. Still would've preferred to draw.

Black Crag Berserkers - still recovering from a game in which the Orcs' dodging, passing, and catching powered them to a 1-0 win over a Nurgle team, and drove the opposing coach to a serious teddy-out-of-the-pram moment with various accusations of the Fumbbl RNG being fixed. Frankly, I can almost see his point. 2-0 and 4-0 maulings by Humans and Wood Elves are more representative of their standard performances.

Atalante Warlords - the first team of the stable to score on their debut performance... and then they got clobbered by the opposition and lost 2-1 after running out of bodies. Not entirely sure Ag4 makes up for only AV8 and hardly any Block in the team. Still, fun to play, and a great opportunity to figure out in detail how the journeyman system works.

Wichita Lyricals - currently the great white (or possibly puce) hope of the stable as the Lyricists are yet to lose a fixture. Yet to win one either, but trouble me not with these trivialities. Playing in the League of Linesmen, so composed entirely of (duh) linesmen. I tell you, folks, coaching Orcs without any of their power players is hairy stuff, and I suspect their lack of pace may come back to bite me in the future. Next match is against another chainsaw-packing Gobbo team, so we will probably get a chance to see what the apothecary is made of, talent-wise. As well as what the team is made of, internal organ-wise.

Overall it has been highly pleasant to meet and play a bunch of new and very friendly people, with one notable exception (but hey ho, you always get people like that). I was particularly touched to be pointed towards a website providing basic tactical advice for BB after one 2-1 beating. Frankly I think it's a couple of decades too late for that, seeing as I started playing this game in the 1980s, but I appreciated the sentiment.