“Middenheim Challenge 8/07 - round 1
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This turned out to be as bloody as I feared and not so much because of excessive fouling but rather because every single casualty ended up being a cripple or a RIP.

The halflings got the kickoff and made a little break on the right flank while my sauruses was caught up bashing the LOS flings and keeping the treemen at bay.
I got a bad start despite a perfect defense. My dp Inziloq was taken out very early by a treeman blitz and a foolish mistake lead to my kroxigor causing a turnover when he dodged away from a treeman that I thought was prone, but was only rooted.

I cursed my stupidity while McMagnus ran in an early TD. I had plenty of turns to tie the match up again though, which would give me a big edge in the 2nd half, but the dices failed me and time ran out. One of many failed dodges on my behalf screwed me over on what could have been an 8th turn hand over TD. Somewhere along the line Quet-tza was killed when a couple of halflings ganged up on him which left me with few remaining skinks.

In the 2nd half the halflings kicked badly and to my delight I could put the ball in the hands of a saurus with block. I had an excellent position to stall myself to a tie leaving just one turn for a TTM for the flings. I bashed as good as I could but had a very hard time hitting the little ones despite 3d blocks and when I did it very rarely caused casualties. It was instead McMagnus that hurt himself by having some moments of failed GFI's and dodges which left a couple of his players KO'd or worse.

I scored in turn 16 as planned and McMagnus sneakily went for a gangfoul and niggled one of my sauruses instead of going for the TTM.

At this point I was fed up with having bad luck and naturally I also lost the coin toss for the kickoff in OT. Somehow I managed to blitz the ball carrier, dodge a skink next to the ball, pick it up and then run for the end zone line though...surprising both me and my opponents. The following turn he managed a clean block with his halfling pursuers, but I managed to tie the ball up and grind down his LOS players to free up a saurus and my kroxigor to block the ball further. After some horrible close calls, where my skinks managed to pick up the ball but was tripped by dive tacklers, I could finally just brush the halflings aside with my big guys and run in the sudden death TD.

A lucky finish for me, but on the whole I think the luck evened out.

Thanks for the match, McMagnus. It really could have gone either way in OT and considering you only had an 11 man halfling team you did an impressive job holding my sauruses at bay for so long.

In round 2 the Geckos, who are now severly crippled, faces a real horror in Ganfral's Boys. The team is boosted strictly to cause injuries and while a full squad of lizardmen and skinks could prove a difficult challenge for a team that lacks tackle or playmaking skills the reduced Geckos will likely be easy prey...”