Half Time CH6: Fat Chance

By Rutskarn Posted Tuesday Nov 3, 2015

Filed under: Lets Play 34 comments

The fix is in. I’ve finished playing a raw, unrehearsed, honest, no-save-scumming league, and the results are…interesting. The next two posts will share my results in the usual grim detail. But for now, an interlude:

What I’m ending on this manky barstool is a moderate type #45 Bad Night, with deep foundations of rotten karma, shades of last Winter when I’d gotten a molar yanked out by an indignant bookie, and a sassy garnish of migraine. All that’s drizzled with a rich sauce of humiliation and despair I’ve only begun to catalog since becoming manager of this team. I beg my sommelier to recommend a wine pairing.

“Dwarf moonshine,” says the barman.

Excellent choice.

Now that I’ve had one–let me set the scene for you. No full recap is necessary, no blow-by-blow. Elves have been ruining my life for so long it’s become its own genre, and the story I’m about to tell you is replete with cliché.

Flash back to a day ago. I was flush withâ€"let’s not call it victory. Let’s say I was flushed with the heady absence of defeat after my early-season draw with the Wood Elf team. So flush, in fact, that when I discovered I’d be up against them again for day two I was cautiously optimistic. “I have put my faith in the smallest and humblest of creatures,” I thought. “Because they desire neither power nor glory, but only superlethal doses of mayonnaise, they are truly the wisest among us and will ultimately prevail.” I would describe my state of mind as “stunned.” It couldn’t last.

How had I missed all the strokes of luck that had brought me level last time? How I noticed that, as much (clogged and knackered) heart as my boys had, they were only scoring goals by the pork skins on their teeth? How had it failed to catch my attention that everything had gone right and nothing had gone wrong and I had tied?

Why was I surprised when it didn’t happen again?

Relax, my assistant coaches had told me as I shooed the cat food butcher away from the pile of bruised-but-alive halfling remnants. I’d done good, they told me as I dug a cleat out of Polo’s inner ear. The final score had been 3-4 and that was perfectly respectable, they informed me as I asked the goblin coach next door if I could borrow his chainsaw. I should really calm down, they advised me from the boughs of the tree outside the locker room.

It was a bad day. It had brought to light just how much of my game relied on blind luckâ€"that rat bastard elf coach had gotten a goal through just about every time his players had performed to reasonable expectations. The pattern was: I’d kick the ball, he’d scoop it up with his catcher and race it out of my halflings’ short reach, he’d shift one or two good players out of my clumsy and unreliable tacklers’ ranges and from there it was a simple matter of shipping that ball down the elven pain train straight into my end zone. How could I compete with that? How was it physically possible for us to compete with that? And he had a goddamn treeman on top of it! How was that fair?

A polite cough stirs me from my self-indulgent moping. I look up into three-quarters of a face and upgrade my pity party to a fear fiesta. It’s Dickie the Landshark, and he has got a clipboard.

“Evening,” he says. “So we don’t usually do this, but we all formed a huddle on this one, and I’ve been put in charge of prosecuting the case on our joint behalf.”

“You mean making me pay my gambling debts before you break every bone in my body.”

He flips back a page on his clipboard. “That is our mission statement, yes.”

“Look, I get a payout from McMurty if we win at least one game. I know it’s a longshot, but…”

“We’ve seen that contract. Listenâ€"we’re going to sum this up for you. With interest, we’ve determined what it will take for this debt to actually be made whole. The absolute minimum amount. Would you like to hear it?”

“Sure.”

“You have to win the cup.”

“So where we going to do this? Can I call my apothecary first? He’s getting drunk too, but I’ll take my chances.”

“It’s possible for you to win,” he says, “and therefore we will wait to see if you win. You’ll need to win the next match to make it to the playoffs; win every game then, and you can take home the cup. It’s not impossible.”

“Nothing’s impossible!” I say cheerfully. “But if I gave up now, could I get a discount? Maybe I get to keep one kneecap? Just as a good faith thing.”

“Good luck tomorrow. I heard the team is highly rated.”

“I bet my team wishes they were finely grated! Parmesan! Over some pasta! Seriously, I’m really drunk, this is as good a time as any. I mean that. I mean, I’ll probably be drunk any other time too, but…”

He’s gone.

I stumble back to the locker roomâ€"my current place of residence–giggling furiously. All my troubles today had been from losing my wafer-thin allowance of hope. Being rid of that was actually a huge relief. There was no chance of winning tomorrow’s match against a decent-rated team, let alone making it to the finals. This whole thing was easier when it was a foregone conclusion, and it didn’t get more foregone than a team of bumbling meatballs gamboling fecklessly up and down the pitch going up against a respected crack team of, of…

“Hey,” I say to an assistant coach sleeping in one of the lockers. “Who are we up against tomorrow?”

“Pinkfoot Panthers.”

“Huh? What are they?”

He tells me. I’m pretty sure I’m misunderstanding him, so I ask him to say it five different ways and in six extra languages, none of which I actually speak. But finally I get the idea.

“So we’re a team of halflings,” I say, “going up against a team…of halflings?”

“Yes,” he says.

“So…they’re just like us?”

“Except for their skill, training, fans, budget, and success at the sport, yes. They’re exactly like us.”

Sickening hope bubbles in my gut. “Okay,” I say. “I can work with that.”

NEXT WEEK: TWO HALFS MAKE A HOLE

 


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34 thoughts on “Half Time CH6: Fat Chance

  1. Jack V says:

    I said this already, but I absolutely love this series!

  2. Galad says:

    “Except for their skill, training, fans, budget, and success at the sport, yes. They're exactly like us.”

    Giggity. Love the writing as usual. So Ruts is not playing optimally? I don’t know anything beyond small blurbs of info about that game.

    1. Valthek says:

      He’s playing halflings. That’s the definition of not playing optimally. I don’t think there’s a single redeeming factor about the halflings in Blood Bowl, they’re essentially a joke team. But unlike the other joke team (Goblins), halflings don’t get crazy illegal weapons to compensate.

      1. RCN says:

        Supposedly halflings are compensated with stealing re-rolls and having one of the best strength creatures in the game (the Treefolk), without a very bad offset like “really stupid” or “always hungry” that usually gives lots of chances for a team member-throwing play involving, say, a troll, to fail miserably (and cost a player).

        Thing is just that the halflings themselves are really, really bad, which makes their extra re-rolls redundant, while the treefolk are so slow that they’re easily avoidable in the field by just taking a few steps away (which is easy since the game doesn’t penalize diagonal movement). So the halflings are stuck with the task of first actually getting the ball and then taking the ball to the treefolk, which is a very unreliable plan.

      2. Grudgeal says:

        One thing halflings has going for them is that they’re not random. They’re consistent. They’re consistently *bad*, of course, but the two other ‘joke teams’, Ogres and Goblins, are pulled down by being really dependent on random factors — for Ogres, it’s their team’s tendency to stand around glassy-eyed each time an ogre rolls a 1 and the fact that ogres *need* a skill they have a 17% chance of getting each time they level up (Block for those wondering), and for Goblins it’s that their cheats tend to backfire with horrible/hilarious results each time one of them rolls a 1.

        Halflings just fail stuff like normal, which makes them (marginally) safer to play, consumes less re-rolls, and makes planning a strategy more predictable. In high-level play, as much as ‘high-level’ and ‘halfling’, ‘ogre’ and ‘goblin’ can be said to belong in the same sentence, halfling teams do better than Ogre and Goblin ones.

        I mean, that means they place 18th out of 21 different teams on the win:loss ratio, but still.

        1. Abnaxis says:

          I mean, that means they place 18th out of 21 different teams on the win:loss ratio, but still.

          Wait, there are three team worse? Who’s the third?

          1. Soylent Dave says:

            Underworld; a mixed team of Goblins and Skaven, with no goblin special weapons, really expensive team re-rolls, only one big guy (a troll, the worst kind of big guy (he’s ‘Really Stupid’, which means he does nothing 50% of the time, and ‘Always Hungry’, so if you do manage to get him to throw a goblin downfield (a la the Halfling Throw), he might decide to eat him instead)) and none of the Skaven elite players.

            (no Skaven Blitzers do not count as elite players; that’s Gutter Runners you’re thinking of, and they can’t have any of those).

            I really like Underworld teams, because they have lots of character, but they are truly terrible.

            1. RCN says:

              Wasn’t their only saving grace the fact that they could get mutations? Or I’m misremembering?

              1. guy says:

                They do get that, but it doesn’t really make up for having bad stat lines.

                1. RCN says:

                  Well, a troll with mutations do get hilarious at one point.

                  1. Soylent Dave says:

                    The mutations are definitely fun.

                    But what I wouldn’t give for a Gutter Runner…

                    (or another Troll. Or a Chainsaw.)

                    1. Galad says:

                      As someone who’s been playing almost exclusively Vermintide these last few days this comment is somewhat confusing :V

            2. Spammy says:

              I don’t know if we’ve been playing the same Blood Bowl, because Underworld is actually an incredible if squishy team, all coming down to their easy Mutation access.

              Your Skaven Blitzers can become precision murder machines because you can give them the full Claw+Mighty blow. Heck you can even give them Horns if you want and let them tear around on their own.

              The Troll might be the worst kind of Big Guy, but a Troll with Mutations can get Claw and then Tentacles and then Prehensile Tail.

              Unlike every other Stunty team, it’s actually not bad for the Stunty players to level up. Goblins with Mutation access can start taking Two Heads (+1 to dodge), Big Hand (no penalties to pickups), and Horns (+1 ST when blitzing). Combine that with their natural Dodge and Stunty and unless a team has natural Tackle it’s almost impossible to stop Underworld Goblins from going where they want. And if a Goblin gets +1 ST or rolls doubles, you can give him Horns and Two Heads and have an amazing unit for dodging into a cage to take down a ball carrier.

              Underworld’s low AV and the Goblins having Stunty are what make them balanced, not awful. Underworld is an incredible team, not a joke team.

          2. Grudgeal says:

            Could have sworn that was a nine. Halflings are the third worst team, there are not three teams worse than Halflings.

            And for the interested, Underworld are probably either the fourth or fifth worst team (they do better than Vampires at low TV values when their cheap mutants pay off, but much worse at high TV when the Vampire coach can field 4 elite vamps with 3-4 skills each while the Underworld coach has a lot of useless bloat). But there’s a huge drop-off in quality between Underworld/Vampires and Halflings.

        2. Dirigible says:

          My first experience with Goblins, first game, Fanatic goes forth. Triple death. Reroll. Triple death. Apothecary, double 1, reroll, double 1. I quit.

          1. RCN says:

            The goblins do seem to attract some uncanny bad luck to their players.

            The one who got the worst of it was Total Biscuit when he used the goblins at one of his tournaments. Every bomb missed right into the middle of his team. Every troll grab leading directly into an unhappy meal. Every pogo jump being knocked on its head. A sad sight to behold.

            1. Don’t suppose you have a link? That sounds like fun to watch/read!

                1. Sorry I didn’t come back and thank you earlier, but that entire TB series was insanely entertaining. Man, the Lady was hating on him. Plus his Basics video was quite useful as well, since I’ve never played Blood Bowl (and have only the vagest handle on football being somehow like Super Mario but I forget how).

                  1. Grudgeal says:

                    In Blood Bowl terms, it’s not The Lady but Nuffle, Great God of Dice, who cursed TB.

                    Neither praise nor curse Nuffle. You are surely screwed either way.

                  2. RCN says:

                    I’m Brazilian and, like all non-Americans, football rules and moonspeak of moonlogic are one and the same. (Though “actual” football is also mysterious to me in several ways, so take from that sentence what you will).

                    But Bloodbowl is like taking all that nonsense and putting it into game board terms. Actually, scratch that “like”, it is EXACTLY that. Plus slightly more violence, from what I understand.

                    And Grudgeal is right. While the Warhammer universe is not quite as sadistic as the disc, when in the Empire, praise Nurgle. (In secret among your cultist fellows, you don’t want to burn from the bullet of a witch-hunter).

                    1. RCN says:

                      Though, to be fair, Total Biscuit did several basic mistakes with the goblins. He fielded all his secret weapons at the same time (it is better to use them sparingly and only when you have a good opportunity to cause damage), he allowed his trolls to be isolated from his teammates (decreasing their chance of acting from roughly 83% to 50%), he forgot he could launch a goblin at an opponent close to scoring as a last-ditch effort (it is unlikely to hit, but a 6 is still a 6, and it is all he needs… after not getting a 1 twice), he misused his team re-rolls and he misplaced his Pogoer (literally and hilariously the better and most professional of the Goblin players).

                      But all in all, his opponent was much, much less experienced than him in that match and did tons of more mistakes, usually failing to use most of his team in most of his turns… and still won.

    2. RCN says:

      Not really. It is just that each team also have a fan-rating (which is only relevant at the kick-off and to give you a chance of getting another re-roll), and, also, individual players earn experience (well, “star player points”) and can learn new skills with each level.

      On the other hand, with each level a player also gets more expensive and you have to keep the budget kosher (that’s about the only rule that’s always kept meticulously kosher). So a more experienced Halfling team might have halflings with special skills, like a halfling that can choose to which adjacent square it is knocked into when he is tackled, or one that might actually have a better than 50% chance of picking up the ball by gaining a re-roll, or, if really lucky, increase the strength of a Halfling to the same strength of a normal elf. The possibilities are endless.

      Speaking of, shouldn’t one of Ruts players have leveled, at least? From what he said, no-one died, and every match there’s a 5 Star Player Point bonus to the MVP of the team, which is picked randomly, and is enough for the first level up at any rate.

      1. Grudgeal says:

        First level is 6 SPP. So it’s quite possible 3 different players got the MVP and none of them have scored or passed yet. The treemen haven’t killed enough elves for a level-up yet either.

        1. RCN says:

          Hmmm… yeah. Just checked on the rulebook, you’re right.

          But Pervince Potatoe did score at least twice, he should’ve gained a rank, at the very least.

          1. Rutskarn says:

            That is correct. Pervince, and a few other players, have gained ranks. I haven’t brought it up since none of them are, story-wise, earthshattering.

            1. RCN says:

              I dunno. It would be hilarious to see the coach’s reaction when Pervince is tackled and, to his disbelief, the Halfling blocks the tackle and knocks his assaultee to the ground.

              Provided he learned something as hilarious, that is. But even a sure-hands is probably enough source for a commentary. In the veins that the player probably mistakes the ball for a sandwich as it tries to slip his fingers.

              1. Xapi says:

                Problem is: Most tacklers in regular teams already know how to block, so they wouldn’t go own.

                The fact that Pervince stays on his two short legs would be a surprise, though.

              2. Syal says:

                Might be best to mention stat changes in exactly that way; during the game, if it comes up.

                How else would the coach know, anyway? It’s not like the team has practices or anything.

  3. Grudgeal says:

    MIDGET FIIIIIIIGHT!

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      LET THE BLUBBER FLYYY!!!!

  4. Christopher says:

    Goooood morning bloodbowl fans! I’m Bob Bifford

    And I’m Jim Johnson

    And we’re coming to you live with today’s games!

    And some juicy industry news of course

    This afternoon we’ll be seeing the Reikland Reavers going up against the Dirty Rats.

    Oh, no love lost there Bob

    Definitely Jim, though the Reavers have had a tough season this year. Could be a real mark on the books when the Reavers start losing.

    Well rumors abound about JJ Griswell Junior’s unfortunate ability to spend more money then he can make on the team

    Heh, well that’s how team management goes Jim. You either make money or you lose your kneecaps.

    As the Dirty Rats know well, right Bob

    Oh yeah Jim, though in their case it’s less them getting kneecapped and more you getting a chainsaw to the face.

    Have you heard about this though Bob?

    Uh..you kinda have to tell me what Jim.

    Oh. Right. Well. You know the Skeeters?

    Of course! And you can watch their replay LIVE via CabalVision HD! I love seeing Elves faces whenever halflings score…

    Now with zoom in features! But anyway, Bob, rumor has it that the new head coach for the team was brought in by the owners as some sort of ringer. They say he’s so confident in his teams ability that he refused a wager from the head coach of the Green Glades, since he knew it would never match his teams performance

    Are we sure they didn’t just grab him from an asylum or sanitarium Jim?

    Well Bob, I have to admit that’s possible to. Well ladies and gentlemen, what do you -you- think of the Skeeters? Rumors of the Reavers downward slope beginning? Send in your thoughts via Twerper @BobandJimShow and on the official anti-social network of Bloodbowl, FaceTome.

    If we like what you say, or dislike it enough, we’ll read it on the air. And if we really dislike it I’ll personally find you and pummel you.

    To right Bob. Now, coming up we have a display of…goblin..cheerleaders

    Uh…Maybe you should change channels people

    Bob we can’t tell people to change channels that breaks out contr-

    1. Nelly says:

      This series is great, and these commentaries are top.

  5. This is amazing stuff, really like the characterization that Ruts packed into something like Blood Bowl. Makes me wonder what him doing a one of these for CK2 would look like…

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