“Well that was tedious. Sixteen turns of playing pathetic defence so that the dark elves could win 2-1, in a game which showed so much promise beforehand.

It's been a while since I've played with these boys, and I was looking forward to a bit of long-bombing. Sadly, neilwat had other ideas and he played for the guaranteed win through the old combo of bashing the opponents until you outnumber them enough to bash them even more successfully, while keeping the ball nicely secure just outside the endzone.

I received at the start, and had the pleasure of having my first offensive drive taken away from me with a blitz. On my first turn I freed-up the ball, however, and managed to make the only impressive play of the entire game when my thrower dodged in to pick up the ball, dodged into another TZ to get in range of the downfield catcher and then threw a long bomb from the same TZ. The catcher then survived the following turn's blitz, and I ran in the first score.

And that was that. The dark elves slow-drived their way through the rest of the first half and although I did what I could to get at the ball, the dark elves had a ST4, sure hands blitzer who was never really in danger of exposing himself to my stuttering defence until the very last turn, when I managed a 1-dice blitz against him. That just resulted in me knocking myself over however.

The second half was more of the same, except that now I was down to a six-man squad, the three KOs deciding to sit it out. The dark elves kept the ball way back while they blocked and fouled their way through the wood elves.

After clearing some space for my catcher, I ran him down and put the ball-carrier in a TZ, forcing him to blitz his way free and run upfield and into the open. I then set up a potential 2-dice blitz on him, covering the dump-off targets and everything, but that was the moment my wardancer decided to roll snakes on his leap.

And after that I was never given another opportunity to come anywhere near the ball.

Both catchers stayed in the KO box for my final turn, so I decided not to bother with trying for a 1-turner. Instead I hit some things and then threw a long bomb so that my passing stats ended up looking vaguely respectable.

But what a wasted opportunity. It would have been so great to spend my morning throwing and catching and dodging - all those things you expect in an elf vs elf game - but sadly it was not to be. Well, it's lunchtime now, so I'm off to stuff myself full of coffee and Marmite and too many biscuits. And then hopefully this afternoon I'll get to play the sort of game I enjoy.”