Crumb-Bowl - Saturday 27th July 2013

So, it was Crumb-bowl time again so I thought I would write a tournament report.

I'd decided to take Chaos this time because I've not used them yet and also they were painted up. I looked at the roster choices and 2 builds sprang to mind. Crumb is a 1.1 million tournament and allowed 6 skills (one of which could be a double choice). The tournament didn't allow more than 2 duplicate picks, so I had no worries about facing guard spamming dwarves or blodge spam amazon teams.

The initial thought was to have an 11 man team with a Minotaur, 4 Warriors and 6 Beastmen with 3 re-rolls. Block would be decent pick on the Mino for the double choice with Block, Guard, Mighty Blow and Claw on each of the Warriors and a Beast with Sure Hands.

Then... I remembered how cool the Schwing award looked at last years event.... Could I shoehorn Max Spleenripper into a useable roster? It would have to be Max, 4 Warriors and 7 Beastmen, to allow a reserve for the inevitable sending off of the Secret Weapon. I could only afford 2 re-rolls which didn't seem enough given the lack of skills on the squad, so a Beastman would need to take the double pick of Leader to bring me back to 3. It would be risky but entertaining!

The only other problem was that I didn't yet have a painted Max.... Never mind I had a couple of days before the tournament started so I painted one up especially!

Max Spleenripper! He's from Neomics

The day of the tournament arrived and I was still unsure what roster to use, even printing off copies of both, but finally decided to take the 'saw and embrace the carnage after seeing that it was clearly the biggest award available!

The Schwing is MUCH more impressive than the other awards...

The Glow-a-saur addresses the crowd

Waiting for him to finish talking....

The first game was against Bert, who was using Goblins and had a lot of secret weapons of his own - his team are converted super hero goblins which was a really cool theme. Bert won the toss and received so I decided to bench Max in case he scored early. The trolls and both the fanatics (one was a star) went on the line of scrimmage while a hail mary bomber was parked just outside the end zone.

Note the interesting dice rolling gesture! :-)

I rolled a blitz on the kickoff which enabled me to run a beast towards the bomber and generally interfere with Bert's game plan. The rest of the team either spread out or put goblins between themselves and the ball & chains.

Following a Blitz!

 Over the next couple of turns the Goblin cage ground to a halt and Bert launched a bomb onto his prone troll, hoping to break a hole in the Chaos defense. Unfortunately the ball scattered back into the cage, being caught on a 6 by a hapless goblin before exploding, knocking the ball carrier and 4 other players over and destroying the cage!

Boooooom!

I was able to collect the ball and push into the Goblin's half. I managed to block the fanatics, and KO them while a Chaos Warrior blitzed the bombardier in the backfield. I rolled a both down and a push, and decided to take the both down to ensure no bombs for a couple of turns, but the plucky bombardier injured the Chaos Warrior!

I am slightly ashamed to say I stalled on the goblins for the remainder of the half as I wanted to field Max for the the full 2nd half if possible and scored in turn 8.

Bert bribed both KO'd fanatics and one recovered to take the field. He then realised that the bombardier would probably have been a better bet for the bribe, but it was too late! For the first 3 turns Max ruled the field, injuring a goblin in each turn then KO'ing and stunning a few more!

Max starts chewing into the Goblins

I was a lot of players up by about turn 5 so I started fouling every turn too, taking out a troll before scoring in turn 8, finishing the game on a 2-0 win, 2-1 in regular casualties but more importantly a massive 4 Schwing casualties! All in all a hilarious first game and one I'll remember for a long time to come :-)

Not many goblins left at this point...

Game 2 was to be another local Derby - I was drawn against Dave and his Skaven!

Needs an imaginary pipe and smoking jacket...

I was happy, as it meant more armour 7 to feed to the chainsaw. Plus, the organiser Glowworm does love to wind Dave up as often as possible so there was a spot prize up for grabs - the first team to injure the Rat Ogre got a special casualty dice. If the Rat Ogre survived the tournament unscathed then Dave would collect the prize.
The Skaven won the toss and received, Max again was benched for the first half. I did my best to contain the offence but couldn't stop the score in turn 5, but I was able to equalise with a touchdown at the end of turn 8.

Chaos defense end of turn 3

Chaos Offence turn 6

Things got more interesting again in the 2nd half. Max marched onto the pitch and I received the kick. Dave threw everything he had at me, and succeeded in sacking the ball carrier not once but 3 times during the drive. Luckily for me every time the ball bounced it landed on another of my players who succesfully grabbed it before the rats could scurry off and score.

Chaos offence 2nd half - the Prone marker is the downed Rat Ogre before he frenzies into the cage

Max made a lot of chainsaw attacks, but only managed stuns, eventually KO'ing the Rat Ogre after it frenzied into my cage and went down. No spot dice prize for me! I managed to score in turn 8 to win 2-1 with 2-0 on casualties but depressingly no more Schwing points, despite my best efforts.

In my last game I drew DaPirahna's very welsh Lizardmen. He had 6 Saurus, and Star Player Hemlock on the roster. Again they received so Max was benched and the Lizards scored in a blistering 2 turns, partly thanks to a pitch invasion which stunned Hemlock and a backfield skink but also 2 players on my left wing.

Pitch invasion!

Unfortunately the lizards also KO'd a beastman in the process who didn't recover so Max was called on to the field. A perfect defense frustrated my plan of Clawing, Chainsawing and Mighty Blowing my way into the Saurus. My re-rolls went early on failed blocks and my leader beastman also got injured.

Max 'saws but just gets a knockdown

Max was ineffective and got knocked off his feet but his armour held, and he finally left the field after being spotted for a foul. I was players down and my cage got broken after some more poor blocking so I was 2-0 down by the time the half time whistle sounded.

Things went the same in the 2nd half, where another perfect defence cost me valuable chances at casualties. Hemlock stabbed the ball carrier which eventually resulted in another score for the Lizards. In the last drive I managed to handoff the ball and run upfield, but was swiftly sacked and lost another touchdown.

2nd Half final drive - the saurus to the left has break tackle and was just in range for a blitz

The final score was 4-0 to DaPirahna and a whole heap of casualty points. He played excellently throughout  and went on to take 2nd place in the end. I achieved no further Schwing casualties either, so I was fully expecting to be out of the running for any of the awards. Still, I had 3 very entertaining games against 3 lovely opponents. All the games had their moments of gold and the Crumb is a very friendly tournament so all in all it was a great day!

Amazingly only one other coach achieved 4 Schwing Casualties during the 3 games and I was absolutely delighted to find I had won the award as I had the highest total points from a single game! I finished in 13th position out of 40 which I was happy with too!

I'm looking forward to next year's event already!