Though a FUMBBL coach of minor note and even less reputation, I am not without experience of Blood Bowl in the world of lead and blood. Before going on FUMBBL, I never knew of the game warping mechanic known as fouling. The possibility of having one's opponent hurl projectiles in rage makes gratuitous fouling less appealing.

With all the discussion here about the use of fouling and cherry-picking I thought I might see how far I could take a team by accepting any fair match-up using a team that did not employ fouls. I thought Chaos would be a good choice for a team because the lack of starting skills and access to mutations would minimise the temptation to train a Dirty Player. So the Bovine Spongiforms were created, with the long game in mind: 11 beastmen and 4 re-rolls.

While I didn't advertise the fact that I was open to being cherry-picked, I did mention I wouldn't foul. Throughout the team's career, I basically stuck to this challenge. I only turned down opponents if I had already asked someone else for a game. When asking someone for a game, I tried to recreate the cherry-picking experience by letting them pick any team on their roster. Only those curious as to the result of this experiment should read on...

Overall the games were entertaining, I lost a fair few games, but surprisingly not more than I did with my Orc team (also non-foulers). I did win more with my Necromantic team (I think these guys threw a couple of fouls now and then, but no DP or anything), but I retired them because I wanted to play the team and was having trouble finding games. I got off to a really shaky start, with some MNG from the very start. This lead to being out-bashed by Halflings (not even the treemen) in one game. I started to gain some momentum with some more conservative game requests later on, though this wasn't a problem because many coaches didn't seem keen for their fledgling teams to face 3 claws. On my way up, surprisingly I was really only taken advantage of once, where I was entering the team with a undersized squad and my opponent spent money on an extra guy with which to foul me.

Trundling along with gay abandon, I got to around 185 TR/TS before I found it hard to find a game again. I was winning games however, and surprisingly my CR was going up. My final two games were against two of the more successful coaches: Emphasy and Orang. A combination of slightly bloated TR and inexperience playing Chaos, along with the some freaky luck meant that after these matches, the team was really in no position to recover while holding to the rules of the challenge. Maybe it was a combination of me playing games after 1am, my boredom playing an one-dimensional team or something else, but towards the end I was really egging on Orang to finish of the team. And by golly did he succeed: 4 BH, 4 SI and a death.

So anyway, thanks for everyone that was an unwitting participant in my little social experiment, I had a blast against most of you. I hope you didn't find my banter too annoying.

Fans of carnage shoould check out the Spongiforms last game. I gave up towards the end, but watch out for the troll pass intercepted by a black orc...