I got beat

I played my Blood Bowl semi final match last week against Umbra's orc team and I lost 1-0.  This wasn't surprising as I didn't particularly like my odds, but some things changed before the match that really swung it against me.  Umbra fired his goblin and thrower so his team had absolute maximum armour and minimum ball moving.  This was a good move against me, I think, as it trimmed his team value down and made him as tough as possible.  He was left with just 11 orcs on the team, but I decided to keep an extra dwarf around and run with 12 players.

The way the game played out was I received and then we both took out a couple of each other's players in the first half, and I found myself with a good scoring opportunity.  I screwed up though because I forgot that it was a blizzard so when I did a double go for it with my ball carrier to get in prime scoring position I slipped on the ice, fell down, and got stunned, and that was the end of the first half.  I had a reroll back but it turns out it wasn't enough.  The half ended 0-0 and we both fielded full teams for the second half of the game.  I had other plays that were superior if the weather wasn't a blizzard and this was definitely a screw up on my part.  Even still it was likely to work... but that is dice rolling for you.

In the second half Umbra got lucky and injured a bunch of my players out quickly.  He made a terrible misplay by running his ball carrier right up next to my dudes for an assist (forgetting where the ball was...) and while I knocked the ball carrier down I did not get lucky in doing so and he easily recovered the ball.  I kept making more and more desperate plays as I was down a lot in numbers but eventually he locked me out and scored to secure a 1-0 victory.

I say that Umbra got lucky but I don't want to imply I deserved the victory or anything.  His team building against me was strong and he played well.  I do think he got better luck on the injury dice in particular than I did, but since nobody in the league had inflicted an injury on me the entire season thus far I can't complain about my luck overall.  I suppose I can complain that my bad injury luck all concentrated in my semi final game, but I lost to a good player in a tough matchup and that is just how Blood Bowl goes.

I have been thinking about what I might do to change the odds in my favour, in the event of a theoretical rematch.  There are some ways I can trim team value off of my team and that might well have been enough to give me a real shot at victory.  I recently levelled up a dwarf to get Leader which grants a bonus reroll and I think I should get rid of one of my regular rerolls.  This would have dropped me by 50k team value and put me below Umbra's team which is a big advantage.  Secondly I could fire my extra dwarf on the bench to free up another 70k of room.  If I did this I would have 90k of inducement money to work with and I could have easily thrown another 60k of cash at it to get a wizard.  That would definitely be enough to swing the game my way, at least potentially.

My real problem though was that my team didn't have enough gas in the tank in terms of raw power.  Rather than a wizard I think what I would really want is 4 or 5 extra skills on my players to make up that 90k difference.  If I take my current team and add 2 copies of Guard and 2.5 copies of Mighty Blow to make up that 90k I am much more likely to be able to just outbrawl Umbra.  I still don't think it is a great matchup but at that point I have better ball handlers than him, vastly more Guard, Mighty Blow and Block.  He has strength, certainly, but the game looks a lot more even.

So what I need to do this season is level up like crazy, getting good skills on all the players that need them, and be prepared to trim down my team as necessary.  I need to make sure that every point of team value is absolutely maximized, and I do that by getting more Guard and Mighty Blow and cutting back in the two ways I can cut back.

In terms of play during the game I clearly need to pay attention to the weather.  My play was a strong one under normal circumstances, but I made a mistake.  Still, with 2 minute turns stuff like that is going to happen.  There was one thing I did that generated some discussion though, which was to run a dwarf around to Umbra's backfield to pressure the ball carrier.  Both Umbra and Ziggyny thought this was a terrible plan because dwarves need to be in a pile to use all their Guard and win the fight.

In general I agree with that.  The Guard should be in the pile.  However, one of the dwarves I sent to the backfield to harass Umbra's ball carrier was my runner.  My runners don't have Guard or Mighty Blow so I don't get much from having them in the pile, and the runner caused a high strength orc to dash off to pin him down and I think that is actually good for me.  I can't win the pile if all the orcs are there because I only have two more copies of Guard than Umbra does and I have way less strength.  Using the runner to get rid of a powerful orc seemed good to me, or at least as good as anything else that runner was doing.

However, I also sent a blitzer to the backfield once, and that blitzer had both Guard and Mighty Blow.  He did draw off two orcs, which is great, and honestly if I can consistently get two orcs to run off after a single dwarf I should do that every time!  However, I could have probably found a stupid lineman to accomplish the same goal and not wasted the blitzer on it.  I think it is a fine plan to send a dwarf to the back field to make protecting the ball hard, but I should have made sure the dwarf doing it was always someone who is has little else to offer.

I can't complain about my season.  I got a third/fourth place result in a group of sixteen players, and I lost only two games in the entire season - one due to not being able to show up, and one to the eventual champion, Umbra.  I learned a bit about how to handle that particular matchup, and I will be more ready next season to crunch the necks of whoever gets in my way.

Time for more Blood Bowl!