“Wow, nailbiting game for me in the first round of Royal Rookie Rumble XCV. I knew skeloboy was a well experienced coach (having just advanced 2 rounds in the Fumbbl Cup in his 2 games previous to this match) and facing up against khemri is always a risky proposition.

The first half was predictable enough with solid blocking by the khemri though luckily not many of my team got injured. Some poor decisions on my part made it easier for them, but luckily their low speed meant they couldn't always take full advantage. Still, a steady advance up the side with a final turn score for the khemri left me receiving 1-0 at the start of the second half.

At this stage I had a small numbers advantage and the first few turns of the 2nd half quickly saw that grow as player after khemri player filled the KO box. Liberal fouling (the ref was clearly on my side, sending off only 2 hobgobs) meant every mummy was KO'd - hopefully I won't have to see them all in overtime! I strolled in the TD on my final turn but unfortunately Skeloboy had 1 turn left which meant 2 rolls for every player in the KO box (6 of them!) and ended up waking up all 4 mummies. uh oh!

Overtime: skeloboy tried to gain the upper hand with some bloody LOS smackdown on my chaos dwarf punching bags, but fortunately the little meatbags took it like troopers and stook back up for more. At this stage I still had the khemri outnumbered by 3-4 players so I made the most of it by charging a bull centaur right down to near his lone thro-ra with the ball near his own endzone while tying up most of his other players. This forced a fairly desperate pass attempt (with no rerolls) which left the ball on the ground in the midst of a good old-fashioned punchup. For the next few turns I desparately attempted to block a little space around the ball and repeatedly attempted to pick it up with a bull centaur (almost every time in a tackle zone so a 5+ roll). In the meantime skeloboy tried to knock my tenacious dwarves out of the way so his thro-ra could grab the ball without any luck, but always putting players around it. It looked like the game was going to go to a cointoss when Bronto finally managed to blitz onto the ball, pick it up right in front of one of the mummies and then dodge and sprint right over to the end zone - all without a reroll left! I decided not to GFI for the last square for the TD as sure feet had already been used and it looked like none of his players could get in range even with GFIs...

but the impossible was possible for experienced coach Skeloboy as he positioned everyone and engineered a forced push back on his thro-ra meaning he was just able to sprint to beside the ballcarrier..

Happily Bronto didn't mess up the blitz to score and secure the game for the Scroin Mercs!

nailbiting stuff!

thanks for a great game skeloboy and good luck in the FC”