Following on from his glorious victory at Merseybowl 2013, Sizzler deigned to give the rest of us mere mortals a taste of his genius, sharing his thoughts on TFF about the weekend, in his own inimitable fashion. Without further ado, Sizzler presents…
The Idiot’s Guide to Winning a Blood Bowl Tournament
Winning isn’t for everybody, nor is it easy. Only a privileged few will ever experience the euphoria of victory, the ebullience of conquering all before them and, more importantly, get to gloat about it and lord it over the common man for the rest of their natural life. It takes skill, panache and no small amount of flair just to get close to the top, never mind the summit, and if you ever want to leave your friends broken and battered beneath your feet and hit the pinnacle of excellence then read on. After reading this guide you will no longer suckle at the teat of mediocrity but instead take your place among the pantheon of champions – whether you deserve to be there or not.
“But Sizzler!” you cry. “I don’t even know which side of the dice turns my blitzer into a rocket ship yet. How can I ever hope to win a tournament?”
Never fear, you lovable fool you. This guide has been proved to have a 98% success rate. The only test subject not to win a Blood Bowl tournament after reading it was a deckchair with a face painted on it, but only because it had points docked for poor sportsmanship.
What Will I Need?
Before you leave the house it is imperative that you create your own ‘Winner’s Kit’ to take with you. Many past tournament winners have assembled these in some form or another and each is unique to its owner. They can be heavily personalised and will often contain things that at times seem odd, trivial and even downright ridiculous. Some coaches base their contents on taste, others on superstition while a select few will look for hidden Satanic messages in their favourite episodes of Dickinson’s Real Deal and go off that. Here is my own ready to go kit:
– One Blood Bowl team
– One regulation size Blood Bowl pitch
– Three block dice, two d6 and one d8, preferably all as bent as a dog’s back leg
– At least two fashionable shirts (optional)
– A well tended side-parting (this will show your opponents that you’re serious yet still have a playful edge)
Mimicking this kit, or taking something similar, should put you on a good footing when it finally comes time to roll those dice. Also, since delivering complete domination to all and sundry is thirsty work I recommend having some sort of liquid close to hand. Again the consensus on this varies but if you remember the rhyme ‘tonic water, you’re ready to slaughter, gin and tonic, you’re slumped over your models and vomiting into your dice cup’ then you shouldn’t go too far wrong.
What Will Prevent Me From Winning?
Only one thing, or rather things, will stop you winning a Blood Bowl tournament. They are something that everybody has yet only the loser and the wimp has any need for. They will drag you down, haunt your steps and hinder your ascent to the top of the ladder if you do not dispose of them with all haste. They are a bad influence. They are detrimental to your success. They are your friends.
From this moment on they are the enemy. When you play them at Blood Bowl do not go easy on them. Do not talk to them and, if at all possible, laugh in their faces when you beat them. As a champion you do not need friends any more. Your trophies are your friends now. An inanimate trophy will never disappoint you, or betray you, or tell you that fountain pen ink isn’t toxic just so they and all of their other friends can laugh at you frothing at the mouth and convulsing on the floor because you ate some.
Enough of the What, Give Me the How
As previously stated, winning isn’t as easy as it looks. 99% of people rule themselves out before they even roll the first dice through no fault of their own. Science has recently proved that the ‘Champion’s Chromosome’ is only present in 1% of Blood Bowler’s and, as a result, hope was lost for most of the community. However, this guide should be considered to be a sort of ‘genetic-engineering’ that will allow you to take your place among these board-gaming supermen and finally claim that elusive first Blood Bowl tournament win.
I won’t be using science or facts or anything resembling the truth to teach you to win, but rather an inconsistent and highly embellished anecdote. It will be a story of humanity, of redemption, of the triumph of good over evil. Heroes will rise and villains fall. Or it will be a migraine-inducing wall of text containing no rational structure whatsoever and feature surrogate images from the internet as I took no photographs of my own.
Regardless of that, it’s a tale I like to call….
Merseybowl 2013 – Living It Large in Liverpool
Game 1 – Hana (Norse)
As a champion in waiting I knew that the five games of Blood Bowl standing before me this weekend were nothing more than a formality. Being honest I was a little disappointed that the organisers hadn’t simply called the whole thing off on Saturday morning and just presented me with first prize there and then. There was also a Warhammer Fantasy tournament next door which would also have benefited from bestowing upon me whatever their equivalent of first prize was (probably some sort of necklace made from the finger bones of anybody who hadn’t flocked their movement trays).
But nay, as nobody possessed my incredible foresight (I said ‘foresight’) I would have to sit through the long yet incredibly enjoyable process of winning five consecutive games of Blood Bowl.
My first opponent was Hana. A prominent Geordiebowler, she presented what I considered to be a serious threat. Not only was she good at the game but she was also using norse. Not only that, but she had more positionals than I did, more skills that would be more useful given the match-up and generally just a little bit more chutzpah. As is always the case when reminiscing about past tournaments though, even ones so recent as a few days ago, my memory has faded. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, the copious amount of curry and booze or maybe it was just all of the cheering and applause that was directed at me over the course of the weekend. Either way my brain has gone soft and squidgy and, until turn eight of the second half and my final turn, I remember nothing.
What I do remember, though, is that by the final turn of the game Hana had fallen right into my trap. The ball was right where I wanted it to be (on the floor), my one player able to score was exactly where I wanted him (so far from the endzone that he would require two go-for-its to get over), and the passing rolls required to get the ball to him were within comfortable parameters (extraordinarily high and requiring ludicrous shenanigans to pull off). To an outside observer this would seem as though Hana had orchestrated an excellent defence, but what she had actually done was commit one very fatal flaw – she had tried to prevent me and my beloved winner’s trophy from coming together.
The dice came up trumps and I managed to score the winning touchdown. Hana’s dice were terrible all game and my armour dice were on fire. She played a great game with what were, for most of the time, limited and rapidly dwindling numbers. There were even moments when she could have bagged it and perhaps gone on to deprive me of my precious NAF Trophy. But thankfully I won and the commissioning of that wall length trophy cabinet two days before the tournament began was still looking like a great idea.
Game 2 – Valen (High Elves)
I couldn’t find a picture of Gav, so here’s one of a squirrel instead:
Of all the games I played on that magical weekend the one against ‘Our Gorgeous Valen’ was probably the easiest. Not only was he outmatched in every sense (his ability to sing along to the Grease soundtrack paled in comparison to my own) but his roster was a poorly thought out affair that didn’t even feature Morg ‘n Thorg or a single 200K special play card. It was also, he tells me, the result of a drunken binge and a bet that he lost with himself.
I knew that Gav didn’t stand a chance of winning. I’m too good to be beaten by anyone but to pass the time between now and the prize giving ceremony I decided to humour him and play. The game itself was once again a blur. I didn’t pay much attention to the first half as I was too busy keeping my shirt from creasing and rehearsing my victory speech in my head. What did stick, though, was that Gav received and long-bombed a pass to score in two turns. It was then my drive, where I planned to execute a classic grind and score in turn eight and then receive in the second half and do the same again. Gav’s team was falling apart and things were looking promising.
However, it suddenly dawned on me that stalling out against a beleaguered high elf team and their massively outclassed coach would not make my victory seem ‘Hollywood’ enough and so, in the spirit of fair play and showmanship, I elected to score in turn seven and thus give Gav the chance to not only replenish his ranks but also score a one turn touchdown. I went 2-1 down at the end of the half due to what would be considered a ‘noob error’ if it were performed by a lesser man…
It was never in doubt though. Winners do a lot of things. They drive speedboats filled with bikini clad women; they ride around cities in open-topped buses and wave; they get together to spray champagne over each other with their shirts off and then refuse to address the confusing feelings that result from it. But the one thing they never do is panic. So when it was looking like the best I could hope for was a 2-2 draw and some sort of worthless accolade like second place I decided to step it up a notch. Several little metal figurines stood between me and the reward I was born to receive so I decided to remove them completely from the board. Not in a ‘pick them up and hide them in your underpants’ kind of way but rather a ‘make some dice rolls, cross reference those dice rolls with the relevant sections of the rulebook and then act accordingly’ kind of way.
And there it was. Victory was mine once again. In order for my opponent to keep his dignity I restricted his obliteration to a measly 3-2. I could have done more. Despite there being only eight turns in a half I felt confident that I could have hit hit thirty, maybe forty more touchdowns, such is my majesty.
Living With Victory and Its Side Effects
Winning is like a drug. People can like it too much. For those who have never experienced it before it can be a potent brew. Most people can handle at least two or three tournament wins a year before developing any serious complications. When taken in moderation victory can be a stimulating and rewarding endeavour.
However too much glory can, in rare cases, be detrimental to your health. There have been noted cases of previous winners who have so thirsted for more triumph, so craved success, that they have gone off the rails. When there are no tournaments to attend they will challenge local vagrants to a Blood Bowl one-dayer using the Waterbowl ruleset. They will draw little faces on their fingertips and, one-by-one, utterly overwhelm them at Carcassonne or Dominion. Their working and personal lives will be shattered as they lose the ability to relate to humans and instead communicate only in probabilities and made up Warhammer manoeuvres.
These are the worst case scenarios but nobody is truly immune. If you ever feel yourself seeking victory when there is none to be had then you may test positive for ‘Gloryhound-itis’. It is a condition that can ruin your life as it not only affects you mentally but will also inflict the same physical symptoms as haemorrhoids. The only known cure is to throw your next game of Blood Bowl, preferably to a player of markedly lower ability. This will alleviate some of the pressure to win and may even reduce your standing in the community, as well as your NAF ranking, but it’ll all be worth it in the end. Besides, you’re still a winner in your own mind so should have no problems winning the next tournament.
Game 3 – J-TY (Dwarfs)
Considering that he was a man with a double-barrelled surname J-TY turned up with neither a shooting jacket or a barely suppressed hatred of the working class. Also, my hopes that he would bestow a knighthood upon me after I destroyed him were short lived, as was the possibility of receiving a couple of hectares of land as a reward for my services to Blood Bowl. There would be no cash for honours here, only the rip-roaring phantasm of raw skill that I would be laying at his feet like the ceremonial sceptre presented to the kings of old.
After paying the necessary respects to God, the Queen and St George we set about playing toy soldiers. His Royal Highness Prince Jonathan was using dwarfs and a deep kick rendered him powerless to advance. As a player of significant calibre I had no problem throwing as many one dice blocks as I could find and, as befits an athlete of my standing, even tried a few half dicers. You know, just for laughs. My outlandish blocking, expert positioning and excellent spacial reasoning was then rewarded with a diving tackling deathroller to the face.
But we all know how this story ends. Due to my revealing the outcome of the tournament at the start of this report the thrill and the suspense is gone. In the movies there’s usually some sort of climactic build-up, the bad guy is eventually dispatched and a buxom blonde ends up in the protagonist’s arms. Nothing like that happened here. The outcome was decided early, J-TY wasn’t so much dispatched as beaten at Blood Bowl and I got to sit back-to-back with Geoff Porritt. Winning is always fun, always enriching, always invigorating, but not always glamorous.
I never found out what happened to Prince Jonathan once the tournament ended. Rumour has it that as penance he was forced to relinquish his seat in the House and Lords and act as ambassador to Sunderland for a week.
The Winner’s Diet
Our mothers have always told us to eat our greens, to exercise regularly and to stop wearing their clothes when they’re out of the house. If we wanted to walk an unattainable career path like becoming a world class athlete or a functioning member of society then this could be considered good advice, however as we prefer to spend our weekends pushing little tiny models around a table we must disregard it and write our own rules.
The first is that the Winner’s Breakfast should be as lethal to your stomach as it is possible to get without ingesting something that you bought from some Iranians in a car park. The more serious the stomach ache and the greater the duration of your torment the better. The second is that the Winner’s Lunch should not exist, owing to the gastric cataclysm that the Winner’s Breakfast will have unleashed upon you. Third and final is that the Winner’s Dinner should only be acquired after fighting your way through a rabid pack of starving Warhammer players who think the term ‘leave some for the rest of us’ is some sort of obsolete rule from a previous edition.
By obeying these rules you will quickly become a champion. A sickly, emaciated champion.
Game 4 – Podfrey – (Undead)
After a sedate evening in Liverpool and a pact among friends to never disclose the photographs that were taken it was time to address the new day. As the draw for round four had been published at the close of play the previous day I knew that I would be playing former World Number One and baby-making extraordinaire Geoff Porritt. Other men might quake at the prospect of facing such a Blood Bowling powerhouse but I was optimistic and looking forward to taking on the role of giantkiller.
However having traded in my stylish shirt for the bright sky blue polo shirt of the Waterbowl I would now be playing at a significant handicap. Gone was the well-cut image that I had presented on day one and instead I sat there, tired and with a side-parting that was at least four degrees off of its optimal angle, but still proud to be sporting my flamboyant league regalia.
I’m not one to brag. I don’t like to toot my own horn or boast about my own talents or explain to people how I’m better than them in almost every sense. The number one quality demanded of a champion, after the ability to cure leprosy with a single touch, is modesty. So it would perhaps come as a surprise then to hear that Geoff Porritt had no answers to my vast and varied repertoire of Blood Bowl tactics. The man truly was out of his depth. The plan was easy. From the word go I had decreed that the best approach would be to sit back, preferably whilst looking dashing, and to let Geoff’s players systematically fail every dice roll that concerned the ball. At first I was concerned that taking this route to victory would not contain enough machismo but soon settled into it. Besides, there would be plenty of time to look heroic when I was picking up my trophy.
Game 5 – Barney the Lurker (Lizardmen)
Barney and I have played each other more times than I can count and he has always played second fiddle to my excellence. Always has he been the Watson to my Holmes, the Bonaparte to my Wellington, the Geordiebowl to my Waterbowl. It’s a role he seems to slip into quite easily nowadays. Maybe he’s tired of the relentless thrashings I deliver unto him or maybe he just submits to the better man out of respect. Maybe he has some sort of congenital condition that prevents him from winning at Blood Bowl. All and none of these questions would be answered when we sat down to play our nine millionth tournament game together.
Imagine that you have two blocking saurus on your team. Imagine that they’re your best friends; you do everything together. You have picnics in the park and ride bikes in the city and share your deepest feelings with them. You laugh with them when they’re happy, you cry with them when they’re sad. There are no secrets between you – you’ve trusted each other since you were children and you swore that you’d be friends for the rest of your lives. Now imagine that they’re gone because they were both blocked off the pitch on turn one. Now you’re alone, you’re frightened, you don’t know what to do. The world is scary now, it’s darker.
But in that darkness there is light. You take a leap of faith and stretch out your hand and somebody takes it – a diving tackling kroxigor. He’s also fragile, like you, haunted by the spectre of betrayal. You don’t know if you can love again, neither does the kroxigor, but you both slowly begin to open up. You’re no longer afraid, you begin to think that maybe you can learn to trust again. And then the kroxigor is gone, blocked and killed in the second turn of the game.
And thus went the game for Barney. Yes, he was very unlucky, but even had his flagrant overuse of dodging AG1 saurus and his withering observations of the finer points of caging come to anything he would still have lost. I don’t put much credence in the crackpot superstition of the ‘Dice Gods’ but if they were up there, looking down on us from their kingdom just below Heaven but just above the fortress of Ming the Merciless, then I think it’s safe to say that they favoured me that day. It’s a well established fact that the laws of probability will often bend in favour of champions and so I can only say that I got what was deserved – a 3-0 win and a tingly feeling inside after obtaining that most elusive of beasts – maximum available points.
So You’re a Champion. What Now?
Congratulations, félicitations, glückwünsche and whatever the Spanish call it. You should now have won a Blood Bowl tournament and be ready to stride headlong into a world of success, adulation and all the free shrimp you can get your hands on. You’re not the same person you were before you started reading (and hopefully finished, this took bloody ages!) this guide. Your old life is gone now, you can never go back. Bright and beautiful things await you now: free airline upgrades, priority service at Little Chef (participating branches only), the ability to stand head and shoulders above anybody who has yet to win a tournament.
There is nothing more to teach you. Take the knowledge you have learned here today and share it. Or covet the information and sweep the spoils of victory all for yourself. This guide may not have been comprehensive, well researched or indeed of any use to anybody whatsoever but hopefully it will go some way towards helping you sort your life out. I mean just look at you, you’re a disgrace.
But that’s all for now folks. Thanks for reading, or as the French say, ‘où est la bibliothèque?’
This article first appeared in the NAF Newsletter in March 2013.
Fantastic and hilarious. Written by a true champion.