Report on the NAFC Final

Brilliant sunshine greeted the two combatants as they trotted out to fight for the 4th NAF Championship – Bloodbowl LIII.

One on side were the Lizardmen team, Pilous Lézards. These lizards were coached by Frenchman Clement Bozec-Claverie (Bouzzy). He had overcome SCS.Sam’s Chaos Dwarves, Stig’s infamous Nurgle team, Manu’s fantastically painted Dwarves, Galmor’s Wood Elves (somehow shutting out the woodies, no mean feat for a team with ST2 ball-carriers) and had come from behind at half-time to beat World Number Two, Planlos’ Lizards. Bouzzy was looking confident and rightly so.

On the other side were the Undead team, Rigor Mortis Renegades. This team was coached by Andy Berry (The Sizzler). Andy’s from Bloodbowling powerhouse, the Waterbowl league in Manchester, but the coach wasn’t looking his best by any means. He had been out all night trying to spend the team Treasury in a casino (apparently failing) and was looking a shade worse than half of his team members. There was genuine concern that he might not last the game, but having beaten Cracol’s Wood Elves, MissSweden’s Amazons, Garrick’s Norse and Pippy’s Lizards – and drawn against Ceetee’s Dark Elves (who himself went on to win the League Championahip on 5-1-0) – The Sizzler was still going to take some beating, sleep or no sleep.

The Lézards had a block Kroxigor, 3 block saurus, a tackle saurus, a break tackle saurus, an unskilled saurus, 5 skinks and 3 rerolls.

The Renegades had a guard mummy, a block mummy, a guard wight, a regular wight, 2 block ghouls, a wrestle ghoul, 6 zombies, 3 rerolls, a coach and a cheerleader.

The Renegades won the coin toss and elected to kick. I couldn’t work out whether this was standard undead tactics, confidence or just delaying needing to protect the ball until copious amounts of caffeine had kicked in.

The hot weather had sent the crowd a bit manic and they rioted, taking up a turn.

T2 – The Lézards had a fairly poor start – getting nothing but pushes in their early blocks. They did pick up the ball at the end of the turn without drama, leaving all of the skinks behind a wall of scales. The Renegades first turn was an aggressive “get stuck in”. Just about all players got into saurus/krox contact, with the guard mummy right in the thick of it.

T3- The Lézards now had a chance to maybe get an armour break or two and get the Renegades on the backfoot, but it wasn’t to be. A fairly poor turn again on blocking was then turned catastrophic when the break tackle snake-eyed a dodge to close the final corner of the ball-carrier’s cage near halfway. This left the ball carrier looking rather worried at a block ghoul within easy reach. Both coaches inhaled.

There wasn’t any hesitation – the ghoul went right for it. And he promptly rolled double skulls. Immediate reroll. Double push. The skink wasn’t out of danger though as he had been pushed into contact with a zombie who had a two dice on him – alas for the Renegades, pushes again. Bouzzy exhaled. The Renegades’ turn did finish with a KO’d saurus though.

T4 – Bouzzy recovered his position a bit and looked out of jail with some knock downs, however there were Renegades players all around his cage. Some terrific chain pushing from the Renegades in their fourth turn got the ball back into zombie contact for another two dice. Pushes again. Having used most of his men, this could perhaps have been rerolled by Sizzler to get the ball loose, but he elected not to.

T5 – Bouzzy, elated still to have the ball, casualtied a wight (who regenned), got rid of some cage pressure and switched attack from right to left. With the ghouls and remaining wight stuck the other side of the screen, it was now going to be very tricky for the Renegades to get back in time to stop the score and Sizzler quietly reminisced about his chances at the ball (or it could have been a small nap, difficult to tell).

T6 – There was a bit of drama as the Lézards cage rolled downfield and the break tackle saurus failed a simple dodge again to close the final corner of the cage, but he just about made the reroll and the TD was pretty much in the bag.

The score came in Turn 8 and the Renegades final turn of the half caused no damage. 1-0 to the Lézards at half-time, but crucially the KO’d saurus from T3 failed to recover on both of his two attempts.

Second half – T1 – Bouzzy grimaced knowing that some high armour rolls from the mummies could spell curtains for him, with one saurus already missing. First block, POW, 12, 7 – and a saurus was karted off to the KO box due to Mighty Blow. Sizzler, not content, repeated the trick and the drive, if not the match, took a decisive turn. The Lézards were down to 9 – and 5 of those were skinks. The block ghoul failed the pick up in his own mid-field and Sizzler elected not to reroll. I wondered whether he’d be made to pay for this as the Lézards might just feel backed up enough into just going full on for the ball. It would have required many, many GFIs to put the undead under pressure and Bouzzy decided against it, reorganizing his defence.

T2 – Sizzler’s block mummy injured the tackle saurus straight away. Ah. Now – Lézards had serious problems. The zombies could now double mark the remaining TWO saurus, and tie up the Krox leaving block wights and ghouls to track down the skinks.

T3 – Skink duly injured and Sizzler set up an elongated cage at midfield, with guard perfectly placed just in front of the ball-carrier. With four corners covered, it almost looked like a bus heading off down towards the Lézards endzone. Almost.

T4 – another skink injured

T5 – I think both Bouzzy and I felt that Sizzler would attempt to injure a few more players and send the game into Overtime. However the Renegades put the ball in as soon as they could – which either demonstrated confidence of sizzling proportions or amnesia about there even being Overtime. Coach Sizzler was unresponsive later when asked.

Unfortunately for the Lézards, from his three KO’d saurii, only one returned leaving him with 7 players against a full undead team. Hmm – this was going to be a problem.

The Renegades defence was looking strong but perhaps a little narrow – the Lézards decided that sending a couple of skinks down a flank, protected by as many players that could keep pace, would be the only way of surviving. The score wasn’t really that likely even if it came off, but a hand-off was announced from a deep skink nonetheless. The ball was scooped successfully. However two GFIs were needed, before the hand-off and a snake-eye from the first GFI was met with sharp intakes of breath from the all sides.

T6 – The ball had even bounced nicely for the Renegades and only one skink remained in the way to stop several players pouring through the gap onto the ball. The skink didn’t even see the block mummy coming and went down hard. The ball was within range of a blodging ghoul and once he had it picked up, a double dodge from a different ghoul put enough players between the remaining saurus and the ball that not even a desperate saurus blitz was going to work. The Lézards sole chance was a straight POW on the ball from the skinks that could get close enough. They made the multiple skink dodges to get there, but needing a straight POW – a skull then a both down on reroll was predictably insufficient.

T7 – Sizzler blitzed his way free and facing only half a team, could afford to stand just short of the goal-line saluting the crowd, before putting it in T8.

There was still time for a Riot or perhaps a Quick Snap to help with an equalizer but with only 7 players still, it just wasn’t going to happen for the Lézards. And it didn’t.

So handshakes all round and the Rigor Mortis Renegades won the 4th NAF Championship/Bloodbowl LIII – the third winner from the Waterbowl in the last six events – and the second from the same house in the last two – (word is that Jimany’s School of Bloodbowl’s fees have just tripled!)

I must say how gracious both opponents were throughout – especially Bouzzy who really didn’t get much of a chance with the mummies removing 6 players between them, 5 in a handful of minutes at the beginning of the second half, let alone a couple of catastrophic snake-eyes.

It was clear from the Awards Ceremony that the Sizzler was a popular winner – not so much burning the candle at both ends, more destroying it. Will he rewrite the playbook about winning a major? Will he really tell us what happened on the road to Saigon? Will he keel over and join his team for next season? What we do know is that the legend off the pitch has now got a few legends on the pitch too. All Hail the Sizzler!

Report by Paul Gegg (Geggster)