“What a nail-biter! It could, and should, have been in the bag by half-time.

With the captain Hakan Zukar having scored first, Gorath Barbaris managed to take down the Hobgoblin with the ball next to the sidelines - however, my choice of pushback square meant the ball ultimately ended up in the hands of another Hobgoblin, instead of into the crowd as I had hoped. The Chaos Dwarfs drove down the sidelines, leaving the Dark Elves a lot to do.

Up stepped Hakan Zukar, having just hospitalised Grog the Minotaur, defending a Blitz, to make a tricky dodge into three TZs (his Ag5 meant it was a 4+ roll, which his Dodge gave him two bites at), and followed that up with a -2 dice blitz on the Hobgoblin - with a reroll, the greenskin went surfing, and the ball landed in the worst possible place - next to my Endzone! Killith Slane dropped back and scooped it up, but the team was out of rerolls, so elected to hold on to the ball rather than risk a fumble punting it upfield. Biga the Bull Centaur dodged free, knocked down Slane, the ball duly scattered invitingly into the Endzone and he picked it up for a gift-wrapped equaliser - a scatter almost anywhere else, and he wouldn't have had the movement to score. It's one of the most fortunate TDs I've seen in a while, with two fortunate scatters and a crowd throw-in thwarting my defensive drive.

In the latter half of the 1st half, a lack of rerolls and a Perfect Defence thwarted my attempts to score. However, the start of the 2nd half made up for that...

A feature of valdar's game is to pack as many players as possible on the LoS in offence. He was punished when I finally got the kick-off result I wanted, as the 2nd half started - a Blitz! Ultimately, the Chaos Dwarfs ended up chasing back with nowhere to go, and Idrian Wyrmeye ran in his first TD.

The last drive of the match turned into a war of attrition right on the edge of the pitch - thanks to two KOs and a crowd-push, the Dark Elves gained superiority of numbers, and after several attempts to dislodge the ball, finally got it away. Nazaria Doom spoiled the final flourish by twice dropping passes from Idrien Wyrmeye in a butterfingered attempt to score a 3rd TD.

It was closer than it should have been - valdur tended to take all of the 2 dice blocks on offer before doing the important stuff, and even pursued further blocks, which left his ball-carrier uncovered on several occasions. I feel it was the main reason why I won in the end.

Nevertheless, it was an absorbing match which lasted over two hours, and was a worthy tournament effort by both coaches.

Good game, valdar.

P.S. This is the first game Extreme Prejudice have played in almost three years! ”