NAFC Report

OK, time for some words from me while the memories are still fresh. Unlike me, after a weekend of excellent geeking. With a skip in my step I left my (lovely) children behind on Friday afternoon and headed to Nottingham, with the traffic changing a two hour journey into a three hour one, wasn’t bothered as I had podcasts on the car radio, and I knew that people were travelling from all over Europe to get here, plus Chance from the US. Arriving in the bar at the Orchard hotel, I delayed checking in in favour of heading to the bar, and immediately started seeing old faces and putting old names to new faces, which I think makes sense.

The bar was out of draught lager, which did not bode well, but it was a temporary gas glitch and the fizzy stuff was soon flowing merrily again. People trickled in throughout the evening, with various board games taking place in the lovely spacious bar, as well as some people heading off to sample the Bugman’s at the nearby Warhammer World, or heading into central Nottingham.

After not nearly enough sleep following too much beer, I made a vain attempt at doing justice to the amazing breakfast, which pretty much itself justified the £25 per head for the rooms. Then the obvious thing was to sit behind a desk next to registration and collect money for 80 almost identical NAF mugs. If you ever want a hangover cure, this was not it. People seemed pleased with them though, which was pretty much the idea. I was sat next to Axiom of Beastface miniatures, who started to get a bit of trader envy as Tritex built an entire shop on the table down the way, and then Willy Miniatures unveiled their banner!

After a welcome from chief zebra Joe, round 1 got stuck to the walls (the online thing started in round 2) and we were off. With the state of my head, I was pleased to be facing Pug, partly because he’s a lovely chap and partly because he was playing halflings, complete with Puggy and Willow. His chef failed, and a touchback meant a BT tree got the ball, but when you have 6 S4 monsters with various useful skills, it’s not much of a problem. Highlights of the game included a skink making a long pass, only for another skink to drop it, and winding Pug up by getting the name of his team wrong. Again.

It wasn’t quite as comfortable as it could have been, as at 2-1 he rolled a Blitz and got a halfling under the ball. I had enough players left to swamp the lone fling and hold on.

Lunch was of the packed variety in bags, mine was excellent, including some more welcome water. This was turning into a cheap day, as I wasn’t physically able to start drinking again until 6. Most people ate lunch outside in the glorious sunshine while the refs did the data entry.

I was very pleased to see the draw appear online, and lots of people able to access it on their phones in the hall due to the venue’s free wi-fi. I spent a few cheerful hours on Friday sorting out the best format to get it from Score online, and it was great to see it in action, including the response from the remote Facebook and Twitter community who provided great feedback throughout the weekend.

I was playing Val’s Dark Elves, and this game was where my skinks developed armour of steel, which pretty much held for all 6 games, except for the latter stages of this game where they decided to leave the pitch. Receiving in the second half at 1-1, I was feeling cheerful about my chances, but then a saurus double both down left the ball carrier open, and I came within few rolls of losing. Draw a fair result in the end.

I got my 3 and 4 player BB boards out after round 2 and popped them with the rules at the end of the venue, but I think most people had played enough to want to play more in between rounds! I also took a chance to peruse the 8 or so Duel entries, on all of which the modelling in particularly was of a fantastic standard.

Game 3 was against SimonMLF from France, and his 223 NAF-ranked Norse (not that I checked beforehand). In this game the skinks were truly invulnerable, and a skull-reroll-skull from him for his return TD followed by a Blitz for me in the second half meant that I went in 2-0. Not a nice way for him to finish the day, but it meant that 4 of the Team Scotland contingent had finished the day on 2-1-0. Happy days. There were 10 in total on 3 wins, and 16 on 2-1-0.

Took the drinking a bit easier on Saturday night, but enjoyed games of Smash Up, Love Letter, Robo Derby and Sopio before some midnight pizza from Dominos shared with the Swedes (one of whom wanted vegan, which is not something I’ve got from a pizza place before!).

Breakfast on day 3 was suitable epic, and I headed over to the venue early, bumping into Sizzler on his way back from the casinos after no sleep. Ah, there go his chances, thought I…

Did a bit of tweaking to Score so that the NAF names were displayed instead of real names, as being the geeks we are the concept of real names was proving a little difficult for those in the room to comprehend. Surprisingly for a gaming tournament, the room actually smelt nicer on day 2, as Stig had taken his notorious Nurgle for a serious wash.

Game 4 was a Celtic clash, as I took on DaPiranha, the captain of Team Wales, another excellent opponent. He scored pretty quickly, and then sacked the ball carrier (who I thought was mostly safe – sad times), but I managed to recover and go in at 1-1. I then smashed up his team. It was horrible. And won 2-1.

Lunch similar to the previous day, and the best painted teams were on display, with Indigo taking pics of them with his fancy equipment. The standard was amazingly high as ever, with a foldable barrel dugout full of dwarves, a graveyard of undead and a whole team of trollslayers, complete with one in the bath who looked alarmingly like Buggrit.

Game 5 v Prez, and more skaven, followed by more smashing. We are part of the same league on Fumbbl but hadn’t played in real life. The smashing should have meant it was comfortable, but that’s never really the case when there are gutter runners on the pitch, and again a 4+ pickup would have secured the draw. Felt a bit silly when in my turn 16 I handed off to a skink and set off down the pitch to score, realising half way I was 11 squares away. Oops.  A look around the top tables confirmed that there were Lizards on all 7 of the top tables, including one Lizard mirror match, and I had a moment’s pang as I had previously encouraged as much variety as possible!  All for a good cause though, with Eurobowl on the horizon.

Little bit of nail-biting followed, as I was on 4-1-0, and as there was only one person on 5 wins it was down to strength of schedule to see who faced him in the final. I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be me, as I think the later you get the draw, the better it is, but I haven’t done the maths properly on that. Turned out to be Sizzler, which was a disappointment to the collected mass of GBBL players around me. Though I shouldn’t talk about Don Vito that way.

I got to play Rockstar, an excellent Danish coach who I had previously met at Waterbowl, though we hadn’t played because I had the good fortune to win the Waterbowl legacy team (underworld), so meandered around the bottom tables with them. He was using Dark Elves, and my Krox duly made a pain of himself by persistently standing next to the ball carrier with his prehensile tail. I managed to get him into a pretty tight spot, but a load of 3+ rolls got him out of the corner. Wrestle came into play for the first time (still not sure about it), and the ball bounced around between the teams for a while until he sneaked in for his Turn 8 score. My half was a lot duller, with me performing a slightly incompetent 8 turn stall pretty much, giving him a half chance each turn, only a couple of which came off. I should possibly have run it in during Turn 12, but quite fancied finishing the weekend unbeaten, so took that option instead of going for the win, which might have got me best of the rest, but it was a long shot, and I hadn’t killed enough elves to be sure of him not scoring.

Jervis appeared for the prize-giving, which is always nice, and the rapturous reception for the mighty Sizzler was an excellent Blood Bowl moment. Always an amazing weekend at the NAF Champs, and hopefully everyone who wasn’t there got a flavour of it through the social media coverage. If not (or if so), you’ll just have to come next year!