“A good fun game where the result was always in doubt. In the first half I wanted to be able to stall as much as possible due to starting with a two-player deficit, but my opponent defended well and forced me to score in turn 4. His attack eventually ground down my resistance to equalise at half-time, by which point I was down to two skinks.

The second half began with a slightly loose attack on his part. My skink nipped in and carried the ball half the length of the field, shielded by the kroxigor. With all the opponent's players out of blitzing distance, it seemed like the hard work had been done, but his players went for it to force my skink to dodge out of a tackle-zone. Had he been able to, he would have been free to run on and stall an extra turn, surely handing me the win. He fell over. The Orc thrower then picked up the ball but I tied him down with tackle-zones from the skink and a saurus who had broken upfield. The thrower laughed, dodged and threw a huge crossfield pass to the only unmarked orc, who ran in what looked like the winning TD.

Setting up with a single skink against ten orcs, a bad kick allowed me to start the ball with a saurus. Good defence forced him to hand-off to the last skink, who nipped around the back of the orc lines. A single blitzer was free to threaten him, but the Kroxigor could break tackle and cut off the blitzer. Well, he could if he didn't have bone-head. The blitzer took my skink down and KO'd him for good measure, leaving me with a loose ball and no ball handler. I blitzed the blitzer with my frenzy saurus, who then ran on to pick up the ball. the Kroxigor woke up and covered him from behind. Once again my opponent did well to GFI a couple of tackle-zones on the ball carrier. The final turn arrived and my saurus needed a frenzied block to carry him out of two TZs. I rolled my first double-POW of the game. A nightmare: it would leave him in a TZ without break tackle. I re-rolled my double-pow and finally got the result I needed, a push-back followed by a knock-down. The saurus ran in the levelling TD to end a really fun game.

It also marked the first time in 22 games that the Komodo Blacks had caused more casualties than their opponents. Hopefully that miserable record, and the recent 8-game niggling streak, will be a thing of the past.

Best of luck to my opponent in the future.”