Winning despite myself

I played the final regular season match of Blood Bowl with my Chaos team today.  I really like Chaos - lots of bashing but since everybody has decent Agility I can actually make all kinds of interesting football plays when desperation time arrives.  I was already guaranteed in the playoffs but my opponent, Ziggyny, playing Khorne was not in yet so for him it was a must win situation.  I set up my team on the first turn in a particularly idiotic way and that allowed him to knock two of my dudes off of the field on the first turn which left me facing him at a 9-11 disadvantage right off the bat.

That disastrous start was bad enough but I continued to play in a very mediocre fashion.  Elli was constantly wandering in and out as she is home sick today so I was trying to focus on my game while rushing around fetching things and reassuring her.  Despite those distractions causing me to play poorly I smashed Ziggyny down, killing one of his dudes and winning the game 2-1.  I took a pair of long term casualties myself so my team is in pretty terrible shape going into the playoffs but I get to go to the playoffs so it is pretty hard to complain.

Unfortunately I don't think anyone is especially happy with this result.  I feel kind of terrible walking away from a game where I played badly and won anyway - roll high and win isn't normally a strategy that makes me feel proud.  Ziggyny obviously isn't going to be too impressed with the result either.  Obviously he had fun punishing my mistakes by knocking my dudes out of the game but it is hard to feel great about playing well when you don't get to win anyway.  I guess that is just Blood Bowl - you roll some dice and see who wins.  Superior strategy wins very regularly (I have played at least 50 matches against the computer and only lost once) but there is a lot of randomness left, especially because I didn't play like a complete tool.

I wish I could find the best of both worlds, PVE and PVP.  I like playing against humans who make interesting decisions and force me to be much smarter.  On the other hand I love playing against an opponent that plays rapidly and never runs down their turn timer and good human players tend to use all of the time available to them.  I have a choice between rapid, less challenging play or slower, more challenging play.  Tricky choice, that.