{"id":28860,"date":"2015-10-06T09:52:19","date_gmt":"2015-10-06T14:52:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=28860"},"modified":"2015-10-20T14:54:11","modified_gmt":"2015-10-20T19:54:11","slug":"half-time-ch2-hobbit-breaking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=28860","title":{"rendered":"Half Time CH2: Hobbit Breaking"},"content":{"rendered":"

The pitch is colder than a witch's glare after an inappropriate comparison, and the sky, which is the exact<\/em> color of death, is the gods’ own smothering pillow. Today is our first match against a high elf team called the Surf Somethings. If the races of the realm were represented on playing cards, high elves would feature on the king of hearts and halflings would headline the instructional card for drunk 52-card-pickup.<\/p>\n

At some point while I’m staring at the rippling, glistening muscles of the high elf team as they gambol and stretch merrily, drunk on pre-victory, someone in a striped jacket asks if I want heads or tails. “No thanks,” I say. They decide that means heads, and with this call my luck budget goes towards securing us the kickoff.<\/p>\n

The Surf Buddies are watching in fascination as my team assembles on the field. I guess they've never actually seen someone field a halfling team before. So we had that <\/em>in common, anyway. One way or another, we were both about to discover if it was possible to underestimate these lardbuckets. Pervince Potatoe, way at the back of the field, looks back through the freezing air and throws me a conspiratorial wink.<\/p>\n

The crowd is a little quicker on the uptick than you'd expect of Blood Bowl aficionados and have already realized that they are not going to get an entertaining match today. The rioting delays the match a little; we're going to have a shorter first half as a result. This means less time for us to be scored against and less time for us to score, which, all in all, probably works out to our benefit.<\/p>\n

And then there’s no more delays or excuses. The whistle blows.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Kickoff bites the air like a cannonball\u00e2\u20ac"it could not have flown more directly at Pervince if it had been a meatball sub. He's on the ball in an instant\u00e2\u20ac"he scoops it off the pitch\u00e2\u20ac"and just like in his How to Play Blood Bowl <\/em>funnybooks, he winds his arm up and sends that ball flying.<\/p>\n

Four feet in the wrong direction.<\/p>\n

And then the Surf-a-Durfs, concluding that it is <\/em>not <\/em>possible to underestimate these lardbuckets after all, turn off the part of their brain responsible for not killing halflings.<\/p>\n

Elves scramble over my boys en masse–vaulting their helmets, or slipping their reach, or dodging clumsy gropes, or\u00e2\u20ac"and this was clearly their first instinct\u00e2\u20ac"driving cleats and wicked hooks straight at ruddy noses. I know exactly what I expected going in and it looked pretty much like this: six hundred pounds of combined halfling blubber crashing to the snow in five hot seconds. Milo Cotton, bless his ailing little heart, catches one elf's ankle and drags him down. It’s the sole point of contention in an otherwise conciliatory bloodfest. Meanwhile Pervince is clutching the ball with both meaty hands and gaping in horror at the pincer closing in on him–with a squeak I can hear from the sidelines, he rushes to the shelter of the treemen.<\/p>\n

One of the Surflings tries to reach under one of said treemen, who seems to wake up and realize he’s playing Blood Bowl. The tree-fist travels in slow motion–everyone, particularly the elf, seems surprised when it connects. The sound I hear is both the best news I've heard all day and the worst thing I'd ever heard in my life.<\/p>\n

My boys keep a few of the Surfettes from joining the party on my half of the field, but there's four of the bastards already there and they’re coming for Pervince like a butcher’s collection agent. Pervince shrieks and flings the ball to…I don't know, I guess he just flings the ball. It lands over by the Surfreesbro end zone and within moments an elf thrower\u00e2\u20ac"<\/p>\n

–hold the fuck up, he has throwers<\/em>? Like, people who just throw? Can he do that? So how come all I’ve got is these–<\/p>\n

Anyway, he’s on it, and he scoops up the ball like it's his job, because holy shit it is.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Somebody stop him from,” I say, but by the time I say “stop him” he's already passed to a teammate at the center line and by the time I say “uh” the ball is literally in my end zone. The halflings look up as the whistle blows, either realizing dimly that a goal has been scored or respecting the Pavlovian call to the charcuterie tent. It’s the first goal that’s ever been scored against me and it already feels familiar.<\/p>\n

“Have we started yet?” bellows a treeman.<\/p>\n

Not a lot of time on the clock for the first half, but apparently if you let your opponent score you get to receive the kickoff again. So really, by scoring points he's just playing into my hands. This is an awful start and I have very little time to turn it around, but I’m determined to get my own touchdown in at some point, and I might as well start now. I situate my rabble and the Surf Assholes punt the ball to goddamned Pervince Potatoe again.<\/p>\n

Pervince does what worked (did not actually cause his death) last time and runs the ball up the middle of the pitch to hide behind the treemen, who get the basic idea and start punching elves with affable stick-toitiveness. But they've only got the front lines plugged, and this game appears to be at least <\/em>two-dimensional. The actual halflings nearby are about as snappy on the defense as overfed pandas, and before anybody knows it Pervince is surrounded by pointy-eared friends and admirers. His shrieking game is not up to what happens next. I would have averted my eyes if it was absolutely any of the halflings but <\/em>Pervince. The ball squeezes through a crack in the tangle of elf-ministered halfling misery and lands in front of Milo Cotton with ten seconds left on the first half. He grasps for the ball, stumbles after it, sends it corkscrewing completely out of reach. It lands in front of an elf, who\u00e2\u20ac"with absolutely no time to score and no compelling strategic reason to do so\u00e2\u20ac"picks it up, as if to say, “Look how easy that shit was.”<\/p>\n

It's halftime. Time for a rousing motivational speech.<\/p>\n

“Fuck.”<\/em><\/p>\n

And back out on the pitch.<\/p>\n

It's our turn to kick the ball, and to my mild surprise we do that to the minimum required standard. We do such a good job, in fact, that the Surf Dicks have already scooped up the ball and rammed it through my defenders for another touchdown. My boys put up a game effort of trying to block passes, but we just can't seem to get the knack of having the ball or stopping other people from having the ball. Unfortunately, our present strategy kind of hinges on these considerations.<\/p>\n

They kick it to us. I ask the gods, if they love me, to show me a sign and let anyone but Pervince get the ball.<\/p>\n

“I've got it!”<\/p>\n

He's got it. He has trouble actually picking it up, and to be fair, my defenders have trouble actually defending against the elf blitzes. By the time Pervince has wrapped his sweaty mitts on the ball, he looks up to find four elves rushing towards him with no teammates in sight. Pervince proceeds to throw a pass essentially to the charging elves. They snatch it from the air effortlessly and jog past Pervince to score for the third time.<\/p>\n

And I think to myself, alright. Enough is enough. This game might be practically over, and we may have lost it, but I could promise myself at least this: this game would not <\/em>end 3-0.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

SURF RIDERS SWAT SKEETERS 4-0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I can’t believe that went exactly how it was always going to go.<\/p>\n

Next week: the unexpected (seriously) rematch (no, seriously).<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The pitch is colder than a witch's glare after an inappropriate comparison, and the sky, which is the exact color of death, is the gods’ own smothering pillow. Today is our first match against a high elf team called the Surf Somethings. If the races of the realm were represented on playing cards, high elves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lets-play"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28860\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}