“It's hard to feel bad about a game like this, even though my very first attempt to score, and my final-turn dash, were denied to me through unlucky dice. In between were 14 turns of (mostly) battling defence against a tough team and a good coach.

So this is what happened...

The perfect start for the wood elves. I received the kick, and got a quick snap, allowing my thrower to place himself neatly underneath the kick, and my MA9 catcher to nip forward, so that he could make it all the way to the end zone in time to receive the long bomb. In the meantime, I also managed to injure one of really useful human blitzers, and even though it was only a BH, Thunder_Crack chose to use the app and keep him in the game.

So anyway, the long bomb was perfect, and the catch was fumbled. Twice.

There then followed eight turns of human offence, in which the wood elves lost pretty much one player every turn (one BH and 6 KO by the end of the half) and the tree took root. Very quickly I realised I wasn't going to get the ball back, so I used the journeymen to try and push nearby humans towards the tree in the hope of at least getting in the odd consolation block.

With almost a clear field, Thunder_Crack was in no danger of losing the ball so he took it easy and made sure of the turn 8 score.

And then he got the ball straight back and did it all again. Soon enough there were six back in the KO box, and having been rather gentle all game, Thunder_Crack decided to actually use his dirty player and went for the legendary thrower who was, to be honest, just lying there asking for it. Sadly for Thunder_Crack, the DP was sent off with nothing more than a stunned victim to show for his efforts.

And on the following turn the humans ran in their second score.

So finally, I got to be on offence again, and this time I did things in a slightly better order, so that all I had to do to score was catch the pass in a TZ, dodge out, and go for it three times at the end. Easy Peasy :-)

And that was pretty much it. I rolled perfect defence and set up my fast-movers down low, only to have the humans collect the ball and go high so that they were all but out of reach. A cheeky little wrestle blitz miraculously handed me the ball on my turn seven, but it was back in the hands of the humans for their final turn. With no chance for either team to score, Thunder_Crack just went for a couple of blocks and ended the turn with a failed dodge.

But wait!! I had a cheeky plan, and it all worked to perfection. One of the prone catchers got up and dodged into the ball-carrier's TZ to provide an assist, then the MA9 wardancer used all his skill (and luck) to leap free, go for it twice and blitz the ball-carrier, injuring him in the process and getting a lucky scatter which didn't go out of bounds. And then guess what? My other prone catcher had jump up! and he was exactly eleven squares from the endzone.... so up he gets, scoops up the ball, charges all the way downfield and trips up one square from what would have been a most amazing come-back.

Ah well.

But as I said at the start of this report, it's hard to feel bitter about the result. It was a great game that really made me have to think and plan. Sure, I would have preferred more passing, but when the result of 17 injury rolls (mostly with MB) was nothing more than a single BH, and the very first foul resulted in a sending off, I really can't complain.

Certainly Thunder_Crack deserved the win, but that final-turn score would have been so sweet.”