“FUMBBL Minors 125 Round 1 and we're facing a nightmare opponent for our tackle-less Khemri. SillySod's pro elves with 2 blodgers, 2 further dodgers and 2 DPs. Here's hoping we manage a lot of early casualties!

The elves win the toss but opt to kick. Good strategy since they have 13 players and should be fine for numbers by the second half. We start well when a quick snap lets us move block mummies into range of both blodge blitzers - we manage to knock one over and then foul him into the KO box AND manage a BH on a dodging lineman with a rookie skeleton on our first turn; here's hoping every (khemri) turn is as profitable!

Our strategy (barring us losing the ball) is to try and make the elves burn their rerolls dodging away from mummies (we are carefully not going to let them gang-block any of them with the DPs eyeing them up with greed) - and hopefully to score late on in the half.

Well the RR burning works, slowly, though we do lose the ball several times to excellent blitzing from the elfies. Fortunately they can't get the ball to drop anywhere useful for them and we pile in the mummies to start punching things. When a ball dislodged from their blitzer bounces into rookie skelly Knuckles surprised hands we are given the chance to run him through to practical safety and the elves decide to spend a turn lying on the ground (wriggling like worms) in fear of our mummies. We score on turn 8, leaving the elves a single turn before half time. After deep prayers to a certain Falesh they set up in a big muddle by our LOS skeletons - what's this? They are going for the one turn touchdown! They get pretty far- eventually forced to knock over a skeleton they needed to push two more times to get their blitzer within range of the endzone (though he still faced a few dodges and 2x GFIs). Would have been one for the scrapbook!

With the KO box a little unforgiving for the elves we set up 11 to kickoff vs just 10. The elves are looking for bones- my thro-ra's bones in particular! But they slip up and can't setup the gang foul they were drooling about which means we get to foul first! A boned foot comes stomping down on the deliciously prone blodger but he's merely stunned :( The elves return the favour with a +5 DP foul on a knocked-down block-mummy but they can't break through his armour (or is it they couldn't find anything to hurt inside those bandages?). They then break through with their blitzer and pass the ball up straight into his blodging hands.. uh oh

We engineer a three dice blitz (after double GFI) and manage the pow! Not only that but the blitzer is seriously injured and the elven apothecary fails! Huzzah! A mass of elves forms around the ball in their next turn however and we need to blitz down one of their DP elves to make sure they can't score - and once again Hatshepsut II blitzes the ball carrier and makes him a casualty! At this stage the elves have had their best chances dashed by our blitzing power and are forced into desperate attempts to knock over our thro-ra (since recovered the ball). Nothing comes of it and to rub salt into the wound our thro-ra and skeleton sprint downfield and make the pass (and catch!) to secure a 2nd touchdown.

Good game SillySod; I think we both did everything tactically right but pretty much everything worked for me and things went wrong for you when you needed them most in the 2nd half.”