“Note to self: vampires are tough hombres. Sure, they fail quite a few blood lust rolls, but all that Pro, and all those rerolls, mean that they're going to stick around much longer than you would like them to. And when they hit, they really hurt - especially the ones with tackle and MB.

In return I had a massive tree and a strip-baller, so I wasn't exactly weaponless, but mostly I was relying on my four catchers and their ability to run half the length of the pitch in one turn and try to disrupt the vampire offence before it got going. Sadly, the blizzard put paid to that. And no passing either. Having said that, my thrower was killed last time out and I couldn't afford a replacement, so of all the games to pick up a blizzard, this was probably the best.

The first drive was a bit of a grind, with neither side really doing too much damage to the other. The vampires were doing a lot of hitting, but the wood elf armour was holding out, and elmwe was in no mood to delay things, scoring as soon as his ball-carrier was in range.

My following drive was somewhat messy as I was having issues with the passing game, and the ball spent a lot of time on the floor beside the tree before I was finally able to co-ordinate a pick-up and hand-off in the same turn. And all that messing about left us with just one turn each. elmwe didn't go for the one-turn score, but hit some elves instead, and I hit some stuff in return until I failed a block.

The elves came out firing in the second half, with the tree finally getting to hit stuff and clear the centre. I even made a completion (for 2 yards), before making sure my ball-carrier was safely out of reach of everyone, allowing him to score on the following turn.

And then came the perfect drive for the wood elves. I began with a really deep kick, and then followed it up with a perfect defence. Les ailes noires were already low on vampires thanks to one of the big hitters refusing to come back from a KO, and they only had one back to deal with the kick, so when I saw my opportunity I zapped him with the wizard and turned him into a very solitary toad. I couldn't quite reach the ball myself, but I could get enough players down there to mean I was set up for the following turn. And sure enough, one the following turn I scooped up the ball and scored - after also badly hurting the toad along the way.

So that was basically that. Les ailes noires would have needed a supreme amount of luck to come back at that point, and it wasn't there when elmwe needed it. Although his blocking was still having a significant effect on my numbers, I was still able to get a couple of my fast movers around the ball carrier, knock him over and steal another score.

And then finally the weather cleared, so we at least got to finish out the game with some going-for-it, but no more scoring.

So a painful game, but I came away lightly in the end, finally choosing to apo the early death of my star catcher after a bit of um-ing and ah-ing, and suffering only two nigglers later on. So a somewhat reduced roster for the next game, but at least I won plenty of gold, so I have added the next in a long line of throwers the team - and hopefully this one will last a little bit longer than the previous one.

Great game though. A bit one-sided luck-wise, especially with the perfect defence and toad zap drive, and with some good armour saves early on, but I really struggled for most of the game and the score really doesn't do justice to elmwe's determination and tough play.”