Half Time CH8: Elf Esteem

By Rutskarn Posted Tuesday Nov 17, 2015

Filed under: Lets Play 50 comments

Nobody could possibly predict how humiliating this match was going to become. Not even me.
Nobody could possibly predict how humiliating this match was going to become. Not even me.

Next to my beside table, a dozen fresh red rosesâ€"broken at the base of the stems. Thinking of you. Love, the guys. Beneath that is the name of every loan shark on the seaboard and the card of a local apothecary.

Just when you start to think no-one cares.

My trousers are only half-on when my hand, operating on its own sound judgment and muscle memory, finds a bottleneck. But my brain cell is still in charge–and it votes to leave the liquor be and go up there to face this incredibly unfortunate day sober. After all, my team is counting on me. I haven’t been able to fix that yet.

It’s a long climb up the stairs to the locker room, where my team has been having a last-minute pregame clambake. Wide, moist eyes look up from an improvised and building-code-violating ersatz coalpit. Did I have a speech prepared? I did? Well, screw that. This was not a morning for last night’s speeches. If I was going to face this sober, so were they.

“Remember when I told you this team had a destiny?” I said.

They all nodded.

“I lied. The other team has a destiny. They’ve also got money, fans, equipment, the right people, performance-enhancing potions, and a sponsor contract I’d kill for. But do you know what we’ve got?” I hold up my satchel. “Performance-enhancing potions. Pervince, catch…actually, how about I hand it to you very carefully. Both strapsâ€"there you go. Good…handoff, we just did.”

“You mean this potion’s a performance enhancer? Gosh. What’ll this little thing do?”

“The theory is, it’ll make you more agile. Or maybe it’s some sugar water. Maybe the real agility was inside your stubby little legs all along.”

“Uh…”

“No, seriously, I think I might have gotten burned. Let me know after. But you know what my point is?” Did I know what my point was? Suddenly, I thought I did. Okay. Here was the last speech I’d ever give on intact legs.

“You know something, boys…you’re pathetic. Everyone knows it. You’re fat little runts who can’t run for shit or catch a cold. No matter how hard any of you train, or try, you will never, ever be able to dance the ball through the eye of the storm like those elves can. Ever.” I shake my head. They’re all waiting for the “but” to come. And then–I give it to them.

“But you can run anyway.” I look each one of them in the eye. “You will never be able to break a man in half like an orc, none of you. But you can charge just as recklessly and brutally and mercilessly. You can’t bite like a lizardman, but you’ve got jaws and you’ve got the taste of blood and I don’t think that referee’s had his prescriptions checked lately. You’ll never have the versatile gamesmanship of a human, but you can throw yourself into whatever lunatic melee crops up on that pitch and you can bash your head against the wall until it breaks or you do. You might not win like Blood Bowl champs, but dammit, you stupid suicidal little bastards, you can play like them. They’re gonna take the cup? Make them earn it. Make them pay for their cheap win in teeth and sweat. Shame them with what you could do if you had their perfect fucking elf body.

And exactly on that note, I run to the bathroom and throw up. And that’s my pregame ritual taken care of.

“Call it,” says the ref some trackless minutes later.

“Heads,” I say.

“Heads it is.”

I’m delighted to find myself standing alone with the elf coach while the gobbo goes off to inform the sportswriters that I’ll be receiving first kickoff. A sly look comes over what I had assumed was his sly look. I’m going to hate this conversation.

“How much are you in the hole with your sharks?” he says.

“In the…oh, this is embarrassing. You’re referring to my identical twin brother. He’s exactly like me, but drunk, dead, and unreachable by post.”

“I trust you joke to make light of a very painful situation. Well, if you’d like to turn your fortunes around, there’s always the possibility of a friendly wager. I bet a hundred thousand gold…”

“Nope.”

“…that you win.”

His smile hasn’t lost a drop of that all-natural elven warmthâ€"the kind that makes you feel like you’re slathering sun-soaked honey all over your naked chest. But now there was something more to it, like the feeling you get when you look down during a honey bath and realize, wait, this is gross.

“You heard me, I’m sure,” he says. “If you win, you pay me a hundred thousand gold. If I win…I pay you a hundred thousand gold. You might call this an exceptionally friendly wager.”

I look at my mob of fat little chickens, gamboling fresh out of the locker room with greasy fingers and steely eyes. Not one person in the stands is applauding, or even paying attention. Not one.

“I may not win games like a Blood Bowl coach,” I said. “But I can play like a Blood Bowl coach.”

“That’s a…yes?”

“Not for me it’s not.”

The elves kick off. It lands in the center of my half of the field–Fosco Forkson races up from his postings and takes the hit, namely, picking up the ball.

From up here, they ALL look tiny! Except for the elves and treemen.
From up here, they ALL look tiny! Except for the elves and treemen.

Elf blitzers rip out like clockwork to feyhandle him, but by the time they’re ready to really ruin his day he’s already handed the ball off to Halfred Tallfellow, and he is now traveling at about sixty thousand times the speed evolution designed halflings for towards the end zone. Halfred lands, tumbles into a sprint, and falls–no, nearly falls–and crosses the goal line.

That’s one. That’s the one point we needed to come out of this with a teaspoon of dignity. That’s what I think right up until my boys try to kick off and I revise my invoice considerably. The misused ball wobbles mutionously off-side from my kicker’s shortlegged punt; he has the privilege of handing it right to his thrower. Exactly where the ball shouldn’t go.

Perhaps I should have mentioned that he has a treeman and a wardancer who’s killed more people in this league than my sponsor’s chicken salad sandwiches. Assuming their paychecks are bucketfulls of halfling blood and spit, they are currently collecting their paychecks–the Big Book of Elven Bullshit demands a clear channel for the elven pain train, and they are delivering with unguised enthusiasm. My whole right flank bites the pitch, and his catchers pour through the cracks in my line like rats boarding a really stable ship…

And that’s when a beautiful plan goes all wrong. First his catcher on the opposite side is running at last into his position; then, his position becomes fetal as one of my boys scythes his skinny legs out from under him. His pals are so startled they don’t close the gap behind themselves, and this is a bad time for him to leave his shipping lanes open.

The same hole on the right side of the field that his catchers poured out of–that’s where my halflings pour in, right toward his poxy thrower. His big mean wardancer plants her heels as my boys tumble headlong into her kicks–under her kicks–and suddenly my lads are splashing all over the thrower like relish on a rancid chicken salad sandwich. He bucks clear and makes eye contact with a catcher who has a wide-open run to my end zone, and with his eye on the prize, he lobs…

Milo Cotton roars in his face and snatches the ball right out of the air.

Every spectator’s neck twinges at the same time as they’re forced to arrest their gazes, which had been traveling down the length of the pitch, at one inconvenient halfling. It takes everyone–I’d like to say even Milo–a few eventful, character-building moments to realize what has happened. The spell is broken by a treeman, who seizes the opportunity to cheerfully concuss the nearest elf to the newly-stripped ball.

Milo ducks under his blocking wardancer’s sudden hook and bolts the absurd distance towards the end zone. There’s nobody out there to stop him…except himself. Something–anything–everything in his halfling knees gives way midway through the suicide charge, and he’s just deep enough out there that there’s a bunch of elves waiting to pick up the pieces and zero halflings. Nobody had gotten out in time to help or cover Milo, and the elf thrower takes next dibs at the pigskin, takes aim at the by now impatient pain train, and fires a ball that is intercepted by Sancho Greenbottle.

The stands squawk like a pilloried duck. Down on the field, Sancho has no time to be smug or even surprised by his sudden attack of playing Blood Bowl. His man Perv Broccoli slugs the nearest startled elf, and wasting none of this distraction, Sancho roughs it to the shelter of the treemen. Right up until an elf kick to the back of his head sends the ball rumbling, tumbling, into the hands of its rightful owner.

Pervince Potatoe.

Pervince is surrounded by elves in an instant. And then the elves are surrounding an empty patch of grass, and Pervince is rocketing through the air toward Terror Firma. He lands it. I don’t just mean he hits the ground, which was inevitable–I mean he lands it. It’s graceful.

So…seriously. Was that the potion, or…? But the point is academic. That’s a technical term for “we just scored a second touchdown.”

The first half of the game is not over yet–not even close–and it’s my kick again. This time the punt lands exactly where I instructed my players to put it, which is to say, near enough for my line-halflings to cough on. Like clockwork his thrower snatches up the ball and watches for the catchers to penetrate my lines. Maybe he should have been watching the three halflings who, it turns out, are just within tackling range of his bony underfed specialist ass. The ball squirts away from his tumbling bleeding sprawl–an elf lineman saves it, readies a pass, and pounds the ball through my line to his pain train, who carry it tenderly over the end zone. Well, that figured.

Hang on. I actually stopped paying attention when he threw the pass–why haven’t any of his players moved? Why did the halftime whistle blow early?

Oh. My treeman intercepted.

?

“This is a weird fucking dream,” I mutter.

My players assemble to hear the usual speech. I’d sort of figured out a rhythm for these so that I could perform them while having a deep existential (or at least continued-existential) panic attack. There was no good reason for it to be failing me now.

“Yeah, but we’ll probably lose next half,” I say.

I mean, think.

No. Shit. I did say it.

“Or to put it another way…we will probably not lose next half,” I add, and if my sagacity and zen grasp of sports philosophy was not already legendary among my doe-eyed players, then, uh, they probably aren’t going to buy that. But it was all I had time for before the whistle blew again and the panic started to come back. Hope, just get in or get out already.

Our turn to kick again, and we knock out a punt right to his wardancer. Directly behind the ball’s arc are four, count ’em, four screaming halflings, and I can see the look on his wardancer’s gorgeous bloodspattered face: don’t we have people for this sort of thing? She slips the tackles and puts the ball in the hands of the thrower, and like a nightmare you haven’t had for so long it’s almost become nostalgia, the fix is in: the ball zips around the field on wings of elf horseshit and he’s scored his very first touchdown of the game.

Now he kicks the ball, and where should it land but near the innocent hands of that gentlest of souls, Pervince Potatoe. He’s on that shit with an enthusiasm his ancestors religiously reserved for cheesey bacon spuds. And then he’s running. He’s running well.

You know…if you didn’t know better, you’d think my opening speeches weren’t total bullshit.

Now my lunchbox is closed by the treemen and his wardancer’s punching the ball-carrier-menacing tunnel. Now, this is a big problem–the halfling fling is a breathtakingly stupid tactic under the most clement of circumstances, and nothing involving wardancers, from their hairstyle to their preferred form of pop gnomish vocalist, could be described as clement. Normally I had only two solutions for an entrenched wardancer tackler: treat it the same way I treated every problem in Blood Bowl, which was to throw a lot of halflings at it and hope for the best, or treat it like I treated every non-Blood Bowl problem, which was to ignore it and hope for the best.

But I’d been making some tweaks to the lunchbox and my strategy that their team didn’t know about yet. When the wardancer saw some of the halflings juking out of position, she probably assumed the worst of their morale and discipline. And while she might not have been far off, she was still about to get hit with a mind-opening experience.

Ever see a tree remove a splinter?

The treeman blitz eradicates my wardancer problem, another treeman lobs Pervince safely, and…touchdown? I mean, it’s not weird that it worked.

No, it’s weird.

We kick off again. His thrower is on the ball, and like a man on a sinking lifeboat–still paddling at the oars–he sends his catchers past my lines right as I send my halflings past his. I don’t know what it’s like to be attacked by three halflings, but I do know what it sounds like, and it sounds like a terrible way to spend such a lovely afternoon.

Blood Bowl injuries are great for picking up ladies. Not this one.
Blood Bowl injuries are great for picking up ladies. Not this one.

The ball flips up into an elf lineman’s hands and then flips right back out of them, and this is the point where I wonder if I’ve made some kind of fundamental alteration to the low-level mechanics of the universe.

It’s like some beautiful elven illusion has been abandoned by a sickened halfling-hating god. It’s getting worse. Indignity of indignities, my boys are running the ball up the field.

It’s literally unbelievable. He manages to tackle a self-sacrificing halfling but the prize, clutched in Perv Broccoli’s eager hands, crosses that line for the fourth time. Fourth.

There wasn’t enough time for it to all go wrong anymore. And it didn’t.

We won.

What the FUCK just happened?
What the FUCK just happened?

 


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50 thoughts on “Half Time CH8: Elf Esteem

  1. Brian says:

    Bravo. Just… what. Wait, how. What?

    1. MrGuy says:

      It seems obvious to me that the Wood Elf coach was planning to throw the game all along.

      I’m guessing we’re going to hear about how the Wood Elf coach took the bookies and loan sharks to the cleaners, and now has bought up Ruts’ gambling debts, which will now be raised a la Tom Nook, thus setting us up for Season 2.

      1. 4th Dimension says:

        Or was a massive dick and tried to buy the coach off by bribing him with that bet. He didn’t want anything to spoil in any way his victory run.

      2. I can just imagine the post-game locker room convo…

        Coach: “YOU IDIOTS! WHY’D YOU THROW THE GAME!?

        The Team: “Because you told us to?”

        Coach: “HE REFUSED THE OFFER! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO FLATTEN THEIR DOUGHY ASSES!”

        The Team: “OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH.”

        That One Guy in the Back: “Okay, yeah. That’d have made a lot more sense…”

      3. Syal says:

        Or maybe it’s something like “every other coach knows better than to win the Clean Cup, because [Classier Team Here] makes a point to kill the winners very dead.”

  2. Rutskarn says:

    Posted from mobile, because my internet is expensive garbage:

    Chris was kind enough to write his commentary in advance, which I reproduce here.

    The announcer booth is dead silent. Both commentators stare at the large crystal ball between them. The faint image of the Skeeters on the pitch are visible within its arcane depths. Jim carefully picks up his glass of “red wine”, the merest tremble visible in his hand as he sips. He licks his lips, looks to the camera, then to Bob

    Well, Bob, I-

    The ogre raises a single gloved hand, still staring at the crystal ball. Then, without a word, he stands up with glacial purpose and wanders off shot. There’s the sound of a door opening and shutting.

    Well…ah…

    Jim, looking more pale then usual, adjust the scarf around his neck

    Ladies, gentlemen, spawns of madness, boyz and bosses, undead, unalive, and all other loyal viewers and listeners; It is with great…surprise. And pleasure! Also pleasure, that I am proud to announce the winner of this years cup. None other then the…the Skeeters.

    The vampire looks around the room again, putting a hand over his microphone and leaning to the side. His voice, though muffled, is audible through the broadcast

    Where’s he gone? Is he coming back? Well go find – what’s that noise?

    A steady thumping noise grows louder off to the side of the camera. It swings to the side, revealing a startled looking goblin technician with a clip board. A door next to him reads “Exit”, up to the point it splinters into several dozen pieces as a massive form barges through it, wearing the colors of the Skeeter uniforms and sporting what could be a foam finger

    Skeeters take the cup! SKEETERS TAKE THE CUP!

    Bob, what in the world are you doing!?

    Seasons over Jim!

    The ogre grabs the camera and pulls it towards him, giving the audience a nice close up of his face

    I’m Bob Bifford!

    The image shifts sickeningly quick as the camera is turned to face the vampire, who has half risen from his seat. He freezes.

    And…I’m..Jim..Jonson?

    And this has been another exciting season of BLOOD BOWL! Now me and Jim here are goin’ down to meet the team!

    Did you say -meet- the team?
    The camera turns to look at the ogre, still grinning

    I did! Join us next week for our interview with the team and end season anali…analo…Where we talk about all the stuff that happened this season!

    The sound of buttons being pressed comes from somewhere behind the camera. After a few seconds of this Bob gives a grunt

    Here, turn this off.

    The last image the viewer receives is of a goblin technicians surprised face getting rapidly closer, and then it all goes black

  3. Rutskarn says:

    Additionally, I have a full video of this match I will be delighted to upload once my net is FUCKING WORKING.

    1. Mersadeon says:

      Oh Ruts, now that you mention videos, do you still have the video files for some of your really old videos? I tried watching the Hidden: Source video you and Jibar did on Chocolate Hammer, but those videos all seem to be gone.

    2. Metal C0Mmander says:

      Ah finally I’ll know if this was real-time or turn by turn. Considering the high number of touchdown this game had I’m considering the former but… Fuck it! Your treeman intercepted a pass so I think it’s fair to assume every rules of blood bowl don’t exist anymore.

      1. Mersadeon says:

        I am pretty sure it’s turn based with the extra action rules. The way he describes turnovers support the former part, the existence of doping potions the latter.

  4. Mersadeon says:

    I kinda sorta wish there was a Chaos Halfling option – just because I think it’d be hilarious to see halflings with the weird extra arms and tentacles you can get.

    On topic: I really love where this is going. I’m excited to hear what the indebted coach will do once he actually gets out of debt.

    Oh, and by the way, what race is the coach? I mean, I suppose he’s probably human, considering how he talks about Halflings, Elves and Orcs.

    1. Bubble181 says:

      They do exist in the board game and FUM%BBL, but not in this game, sadly.

      https://fumbbl.com/help:Chaos+Halfling

      1. Grudgeal says:

        Those aren’t an official Blood Bowl race, incidentally. They’re fan-made and can’t be played in any ‘official’ NAF tournaments.

        Also, it doesn’t make very much sense fluff-wise since in the Warhammer-verse Halflings are unique in that they’re completely immune to mutation and chaos corruption, for reasons nobody entirely knows.

        1. Lachlan the Mad says:

          Pffft, Blood Bowl is an alternate universe powered by Rule of Funny already — Chaos Halflings are funny, ergo they should be in Blood Bowl.

        2. Bubble181 says:

          Reason: “even Khorn, Nurgle or Borak can’t find a way to make Halflings useful” :p

          1. Decius says:

            Tenzeech planned it out that way.

  5. Akuma says:

    I can imagine the crowds reaction now. An awkward second that lasts for minutes as they try to come to terms with proof that the universe hates life. Someone starts to applause but nobody joins in, still trying to decide if they should be cheering or rioting. It feels like someone should die for this but it cannot be decided who.

    It’ll probably be the hot dog guy.

    1. James says:

      if this isnt proof that the Chaos Gods are bastards i dont know what is

  6. Christopher says:

    What a long strange trip its been.

    I first met Rutskarn in a jazz club in Miami in 1973…

    As a blood bowl coach myself I have to say I’m so happy whenever elves lose, triply so when they lose to halflings.

  7. Abnaxis says:

    Wait wait wait…

    THREE interceptions? What did those elves do to displease Nuffle so?

    It’s almost impossible to get interceptions with decent players, let alone a Treeman with “Ha ha don’t even think about it” Agility…

    1. Grudgeal says:

      Actually, an interception doesn’t really matter as long as you’re under 4 AGI. All interception rolls are at AGI -2, so it doesn’t matter if you have 3 AGI and standing unchecked or 1 AGI and surrounded by seven opposing players — it’s a 1 in 6 chance. It’s the elves and gunners who have to pay attention to that stuff.

      So yes, displeased Nuffle indeed.

      1. Abnaxis says:

        Yeah, but pulling it off with an AGI1 that’s immobile for 80% of the game is just insulting

        (Though for the record free re-rolls with catch [or burning a team re-roll] bring it up to close to 1/3 (11/36 to be exact), and it’s not like there aren’t a ton of players out there with AGI 4–and AGI4 plus catch only gets you up to slightly-better-than-even-odds [5/9] so like I said, “almost impossible with decent players”)

        1. Grudgeal says:

          Yeah, but pulling it off with an AGI1 that's immobile for 80% of the game is just insulting

          Well, that’s Blood Bowl.

          1. Adalore says:

            experienced the same sort of thing with a rat ogre catching the ball for me in blood bowl 2 vs a real player…that was derpy. Unfortunately I was unable to touchdown with him, I think he self knocked down while trying to do a 2 die block, alas blood bowl.

            1. Grudgeal says:

              I had a mummy catch the ball on a scatter once…

              It would have been hilarious to score with him but with 3 movement and no break tackle that wasn’t going to happen.

  8. The Rocketeer says:

    I am, and have always been, a lifelong fan of Pervince Potatoe. He was the greatest ever to play the game this poorly.

    1. wumpus says:

      If the Skeeters develop a fan base, they should wear special hats to honor Pervince… They’d be call the ‘Potatoe-heads’.

  9. Zak McKracken says:

    I don’t know the game, so sometimes I wish I knew what part of the narration is invented and what actually happens in-game but then I think that might just end in disappointment with the game.

    1. guy says:

      When discussing Blood Bowl it is important to note that most rolls automatically succeed on a six and automatically fail on a one regardless of any modifiers that may be in play.

      So every so often this happens.

      1. Alexander The 1st says:

        See, here’s my question:

        Did the performance enhancing potions refer to an in-game thing you can do? Did Rutskarn try modding the game to make it winnable?

        Or did he win out of sheer luck, and wrote that part to imply it was his plan all along?

        EDIT: Now that I see the post below me, my question is – were the potions in question used for this match then?

        1. Syal says:

          I was assuming the potion was just a narrative reference to the level-ups the characters had been getting.

    2. Mersadeon says:

      Well, I can tell you a bit about it. You’ll notice Ruts sometimes says that players are dumbfolded and just standing around, leaving an opening – this is a concession to the fact that the game is turn-based and turns end prematurely if one of your players gets knocked out or loses the ball, which only makes sense if you don’t think about it too hard.

      Other than that, pretty much anything he narrates about the actual game is doable. Nuffle, the almighty god of the dice, hates you and the rules of the game are complex, so weird things can happen. As guy points out in the other reply to this comment, even the best catcher in the world can fail at picking up the ball and even the tiniest snotling can beat an ogre – if they get absurdly lucky. The “doping potions” are also absolutely possible (but only in certain game-modes) – before a match, you get “petty cash”, money that will disappear if not spent right then, to even the odds when teams of different net worth play.

  10. Grudgeal says:

    And here we see Blood Bowl against the AI in its purest form. Once you know the basic game, it takes a lot not to win. Even with Halflings or Goblins.

    I’ve won 8-0 against the computer once. Mind you that was *using* Wood Elves, not playing against them.

    1. Abnaxis says:

      Honestly, I don’t think we can lay this on the feet of the AI. Ruts rolled remarkably well on the defense, it should have at least been 3-2 without all those interceptions.

      Not to mention somehow the halflings are launching fairly successfully whenever they are thrown. That requires the big guy rolling 3+ (plus one more for every tackle zone, so at least 5+ if it’s really as crowded around the treeman as Ruts makes it out to be) to avoid fumbling, followed by the halfling making a 4+ roll to not crash on the astro-granite. Pretty much every little bugger Ruts flung downfield had only a 9%-33% success chance (12%-44% for Pervince, agile little butter-muffin) , and he still managed 3 of them.

      Not meaning to disparage Ruts’ Blood Bowl skill or anything, but the halflings are considered a joke team for a reason. Throw Team Mate is a real Hail Mary play (so to speak) and it’s practically the only way to score as halflings.

      1. Grudgeal says:

        I’m not so sure myself. Even if you strip away the lucky interceptions, the fact remains that the AI really has no idea how to play the game beyond a vague ‘try to cage, mark opposing players, run dude into opponent’s end zone, pass ball’ play. The AI can’t stall, it doesn’t know how to set up, it doesn’t know how to screen properly, or how to switch sides, it does plays out of order, it does completely irrational blitzes, it never does decisions based on the players’ skills, it never plays deep defence and it is completely incapable of understanding certain playstyles, like the Halflings’ chucking.

        Even if I agree that Rutskarn got blessed by Nuffle, I’d say the seeds that made those lucky rolls *mean* something is based in the AI’s ineptitude. The AI plays the exact same manner regardless of which team it is, and which team it’s playing against: Some vague middle-of-the-road bashy-but-with-passing-to-win style. The only AI team I’m really bad at playing against is Chaos, and that’s only because Chaos means that even with their suboptimal plays they’re liable to hurt my players permanently.

        1. guy says:

          Eh, the AI pretty much went to The Bone Zone this time.

  11. 4th Dimension says:

    So what will be next for or lard buckets? How will they fare against some more bashy teams. Badly, extra badly?

    1. James says:

      Welcome to the first match of the new league, new entrants are the Clean Cup holder the Skeeters, and they are up against former champions (Some chaos team).

      *one blood bowl match later*

      And thats all she wrote folks, every halfling on the field is either injured or dead, the only survivors are two treemen, who are likely to find themselves out of work tomorrow

  12. Aldowyn says:

    Three interceptions. THREE INTERCEPTIONS.

    By HALFLINGS. And a TREE.

    What did you sacrifice to please Nuffle so, Rutskarn?

    1. SharpeRifle says:

      Nuffle loves a Cinderella story!

      1. Metal C0Mmander says:

        Especially so he(she? it? hesheit?) can crush every once of hope from it at one point or an other.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          he(she? it? hesheit?)

          The proper term is shkle.

  13. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Ok,this was following the trend of playing elves and losing,then playing elves and tying,then playing elves and winning.But where do you go from there?Back to the beginning and losing to elves?Going for a tie again?

    1. Bubble181 says:

      Fighting Ogres and losing.
      Fighting Dorfs and losing.
      Fighting the Undead and losing.
      Fighting Chaos and losing.
      Fighting Skaven and losing.
      Fighting Amazons and losing – that could make for fun commentary by the coach!
      Fighting Orcs and losing.
      Fighting Goblins and….Well, I can go on, really :p

      1. 4th Dimension says:

        I don’t think he will have much of the team remaining after those matches so I wouldn’t worry about the Goblins

        1. Bubble181 says:

          Well, yes. *I* can go on. The halflings, most probably, couldn’t :p

  14. Blackbird71 says:

    I’m confused by all the comments (and Chris’ commentary) indicating that the Skeeters just won “the cup”. Two posts ago (CH6: Fat Chance) gave us this bit:

    “”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.””

    Chapter 7 was the game against the other Halfling team, so I’m assuming that was the aforementioned match needed to make it to the playoffs. This chapter, chapter 8, should have been the first game of the playoffs to win the cup, right? So do the Blood Bowl “playoffs” only consist of a single game? I’m unfamiliar with Blood Bowl, but that seems a bit unusual for any regular sport. Am I missing something here?

    1. Alchemist64 says:

      From last post:

      “The day after tomorrow,” I say, “we will play the Wood Elves for the cup. They will win.” I suck in my breath, push my fist against my forehead. “I mean…probably. I can't see it going any other way. I really can't. But…I'm an idiot. So what the fuck do I know about anything.”

      A dozen wide eyes watch me.

      My point is, tomorrow, you're going to play the Panthers again. You're going to win. You're going to win a lot. And while you're winning so quickly and easily the other team learns to hate you by name, all of you are going to train. You know how you're going to do that?”

      It appears Rutskarn omitted the second game vs the other halflings.

      1. Blackbird71 says:

        I guess I missed that part in going back over the posts, thanks for pointing it out.

        So then the “playoffs” consist of only two games, one of which was skipped over?

        And since the coach knew who they would be playing in the second match, should I assume that the playoffs only involve three teams (instead of the typical four that would be needed for a two-game single-elimination)? Or did the coach just automatically presume that the elves would defeat whoever they faced in the first round? Or am I overthinking this, and this is just a factor of it being a tournament played against the computer A.I., in which all pairings are predetermined instead of having simulated games and outcomes to fill out the brackets?

  15. Jarenth says:

    SKEE-TERS

    SKEE-TERS

    SKEE-TERS

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