Firebreather reflects on 24 races in 10 years…

So its 2002 and my work office has just had this new fangled tech installed … the Internet! The Boss asks me to familiarise myself with how it works by spending some time doing searches, now from memory the web was a very different place back then to how it is now. For a start we had the wonder of dial up connections which meant having to wait an age for pages to load, it was also very much text based, a real lack of funny cat videos or social networking tools. All of which meant there wasn’t all that much to search, after a while as a random search I choose to type in Blood bowl a game I had loved but had hardly played since I had left school, and with that my little world changed forever. 😉

That random search turned up some info about a recent BB tournament that had just taken place at Nottingham HQ, called BB resurrection, there was also details on another upcoming tournament to be held at the Spiky club in Reading, so having taking down the details I spoke to the one other guy at my local gaming club that played BB and we signed up.

19^th October 2002 and my 1^st ever tournament, 40 players took part and I remember queuing up to join something called NAF, didn’t really know what it was but they were giving away some cool Black block dice. I took humans as they were the team I had most experience with and I’ve always liked the way that they can do a bit of everything even if they don’t excel at any. I still remember my 1^st game, scored in 2 turns and eventually won 3-1 against a team of orcs. 2^nd game saw another victory against Norse this time and I found myself on table 1 for game 3, I distinctly recall thinking how easy this game was, needless to say things went downhill from there. Managed a 5^th place finish and made a few new friends and from that point on I was hooked.

Now I’m not sure at exactly which point I decided to try and play all the races available, I do know that it was at a point that no one else had done it and when there were still only 21 races available. I also know it came at a point when I had accepted the winning tournaments was something that other people did and that I might as well try and make midtable mediocrity a little more interesting.

In my earlier days I had already played Skaven to disastrous effect at the BB GT in 03, I had this belief that Skaven teams would be much better without all those low strength gutter runners. Orcs had also been given a run out at the 2^nd spiky open again with pretty disastrous results. Pro Elves had been used as BB took me further afield and a trip up north to the Bearded Snot in Lancaster they won me a most touchdown trophy sadly they conceded almost as many as they scored.

2005 saw what was the camcarnage tournament move from Cambridge to London and a first appearance of my Chaos Dwarves, everything was going superbly until game 5 when they ran into a Goblin team coached by Doubleskulls who promptly equalised at the end of the half with a 1 turned and then decimated my CD’s with the kind of precision bombing raid that hadn’t been seen since the dambusters. I remember 8 years later, think that says it all.

 

 

From this point on a different trace was used wherever I showed up, Wood Elves,Undead, Dark Elves, Norse, Dwarves, Amazons, Khemri, Halflings, Chaos, Lizardmen, Nurgle, Vampires,Necromantic & High Elves were all used, the only time I repeated a previously used race was for the ARBBL in Andover, where my Chaos Dwarves re-appeared to take the title.

By this point its roughly 2010 and the only races I have left to use are Ogres & Goblins. Then some bright spark introduces 3 new races to the mix. So the quest continued the Ogres took a day trip to the Albion Coast cup in Southampton, Underworld visited the coastal town of Poole for the Exiles Bowl, while Chaos Pact and Goblins flirted with the bottom & top tables respectively back in Andover.

The completion of the 24 came 10 years after my 1^st tournament at the STABB cup in ST Albans when my Slann team took to the field for 1-0 win against Ummiecoach’s humans.

For anyone considering pursuing the 24 I highly recommend it, there are teams I have used and enjoyed that I otherwise would probably have passed over (Goblins, Ogres) and there are also ones that I might not touch again (Khemri, Slann) but even they had they’re entertaining moments. But that is the great thing about this game every race gives you something different, new skills to utilize or traits to overcome.

To all of my opponents and all the unsung tournament organisers, I salute you.

Firebreather 

http://www.firebreather.moonfruit.com/