April in NAF Tournaments
Somehow, we’re already a third of the way through 2018. How did that happen?! There has been plenty of big Blood Bowl news in April, and lots of it matters if you play in NAF tournaments.
Firstly, let’s talk Chaos and the upcoming GW releases. In case you’ve been living under a rock (a rock that annoyingly blocks out Wi-Fi), you’ll know that new Chaos minis and a Chaos Spike! Journal are about to arrive. Those of you who are up on the NAF committee minutes (if not, check the latest ones out here) will know how we as the NAF are planning to respond to the ongoing GW release cycle: ‘… it was decided to have the NAF-tournament-rules review done by end of October each year, announce it on November 1, and go into effect on January 1‘. To elaborate on that a little: if and when any new newness arrives from the lovely people at GW, we will absorb it, discuss it and then in November we will let you know what will be mandated at NAF tournaments in 2019. We’ve switched to this annual review process to give members some routine in the current climate of ongoing rules releases, as well as giving clarity and certainty. Hopefully, no-one should be confused as to what’s coming and when, and this cycle will bed-in and become normal quite quickly. We have been asked how we’ll deal with new star players outside of the annual cycle, and the answer is that, if new stars arrive in a book, TOs are welcome to include them in their rulespacks as they currently do their own house ruled stars. If you love Dave the Amazing Tapdancing Beastman (probably not in the new Journal, but that’s my guess), you don’t have to wait until Jan. 2019 to ask to include him.
With the themes of star players and clarity in mind, check out our new Tournament Team List document. You’d be surprised how often I’m asked what is allowed at a NAF tournament; can I have Glart, Glart Jr. or both on my Underworld team? Who can hire Horatio? What is a Rotspawn?! Wonder no more, this document gives you the menu from which TOs can choose. If you allow stars, this is the list. If you allow other inducements, these are the ones you can choose from. I’m really pleased with how this turned out, a good job well done by Gaixo and ManticoreRich! We’ve spotted the odd typo, expect these to be corrected when Rich’s schedule allows. Also thanks to GW, who allowed us to put this together and give our members something to point at.
Lastly, let’s talk charity. Blood Bowlers are exceptionally generous, charitable souls, and this is often reflected in brilliant work done, fundraising at tournaments. The NAF are often asked for donations as prizes or auction items, so with this in mind, we’ve set-up Blocksfam, our charitable donation drive. It works quite simply: at four events, you can donate some swag to your NAF representative (at the upcoming NAFC, that’s me). We give you raffle tickets with which you can win a cool prize (this year, a World Cup pitch, to be drawn at the NAFC ‘19), and then we distribute the stash across the NAF charity tournament world. Hopefully with some bias towards sending cool gear to different continents, upping the novelty value of the donations we make. A lovely idea, and I know you’ll all give generously. Can’t attend one of the four events, can’t give your swag to someone who will donate on your behalf? We’ll work that out and make sure you can contribute. Contact us / watch this website.
The NAF Championship is coming, and with it the first glimpse of the World Cup ’19 pitch. But before that, April gave us some great Blood Bowl. You played in 55 different tournaments (including one Streetbowl and two 7s), the Road to the NAFC was decided (congrats to Bugrum for FUMBBL victory!) and the Online Danish Open kicked off. Phew! Here are three examples of lovely tournaments that took place in April:
This is the down under version of the Eurobowl or Amorical Cup, and carries with it the gravitas of NAF Major status. So this was the biggest fish in the April pond, and happily TO D_Arquebus has written us a lovely report:
Australia has a forum www.ausbowl.com that helps to coordinate coaches from around Australia and New Zealand for both Leagues and Tournaments, and general BB chit chat :). Since 2011 we have run a series of Country-wide / International Tourneys attended by coaches from all over Australia and New Zealand. The Ausbowl State Championship and the Ausbowl Team Championship run on alternating years. The State Champs is limited to teams of 6 from each State / Territory in Australia and Island (North and South) in New Zealand. The Teams Champs is just teams of 3 of any sort you wish. The venue changes each time with a different State / Territory / Island hosting.
This year was the 4th Team Champs to be held, and it was hosted in Sydney (Ryde-Eastwood Leagues Club). We had 7 teams with coaches from as far afield as New Zealand (3.5 hrs flight), Darwin (4.5hrs flight), and Perth (5hrs flight). One of the best things about a team event is the chance to meet or catch up with coaches who, due to the size of country, you don’t get to see much. In my experience they also often demonstrate the highest level of sportsmanship and good spirited play. This time was no different and the TO’s job was made that much easier as a result.
The ruleset in brief was 115 TV, with tiered skill packages (see NAF Tourney Page for details) and each Team limited to one of each race. The Teams of 3 match up in the ATC with a roll off of the captains and who then alternate putting forward a coach to play and be matched by the opposition. This reinforces the team-based nature of the event and allows Captains to vie for an advantage even before the first kick off. This year as a change up, I had the Captains nominate the race rather then coach. Then the team of 3 could swap rosters among themselves once the match ups were determined. Australia and New Zealand have a large number of coaches who completed the 24 path early in the piece (at least 6 before 2012) and many more walking the road. I wanted to give players a chance to celebrate their experience and ability with different teams and add some extra questions into the pre-match matchmaking :). 7 Teams was not ideal but the dreaded real life interrupted another team or two from coming and so I arranged a ‘Bye’ round for all but the New Zealanders in which I or one of my stand in coaches joined the team for an inter-team game. This maximised the games everyone got to play during the weekend and made sure the Kiwis (New Zealanders) got to play against as many new people as possible.
Trophies were given for Sports, Painting, and then Winners and Runners Up. Again the order was to reinforce the importance for me that team events (and all events for that matter) should celebrate the Sportsmanship of coaches and the Hobby and in this case was equally or more important than the Team who dominated all before it 🙂 .
Congrats go to following:
Sports – SLOBB (Sydney League of Blood Bowl) Lazy Lumps – Peakie, NFA, lolvenom (D_Arquebus (TO) in middle back)
Painted – SLOBB (Sydney League of Blood Bowl) – NFA (Flings)
Winners – SLOBB (Sydney League of Blood Bowl) Bone Idlers – Redcard, Bojo, Rabid_Bogscum (mid back), D_Arqubus (TO)
Runners Up – Westies (Western Australia) Brunificus. Thomsy, D_Arquebus (TO), Dropshort
As TO I would like to thank all attendees , some of whom traveled great distances and all of whom played in great spirit for supporting the event as always. It is both for and because of such coaches that we can continue to run these great Team events :). I would also like to thank the Venue Ryde-Eastwood Leagues Club for hosting us with a great space and friendly staff. Thanks to Jed Hansen who was handily down from Darwin and who volunteered his time and camera for the great photos in this report. And last but not least Chavo and Cullymon who could not attend the whole Tourney but who sat in on some of the Bye rounds for me to make the Organising that much easier.
2019 we are taking off to allow Australia and New Zealand to send as many teams as we can to the World Cup 4 in Dornbirn! But we will resume again in 2020 with the Ausbowl State Championships in New Zealand. 🙂
Lovely stuff there. Here are some photos of the contestants, first the whole group, then best painted, the best sports, winners and then runners up:
I selected the Polish Open because the game is kicking off over there and I reckon a fair few of us already have one eye on Eurobowl 2020. Over to domingo for news as to how the PO went in 2018:
Perfect start of the new Blood Bowl season in the beautiful country of Poland – the Polish Open 2018! The third edition of this most important of tournaments in Poland was held on the 14th and 15th of April in Warsaw and racked up a total of 54 coaches. Although there was a risk of losing one or two due to the hardcore before party!
With a great mix of races at the tournament (most notably an appearance of 3 Vampire coaches and the most represented race were Humans with 7 coaches), the Top 3 was dominated by them sneaky Dark Elves and stubborn Dwarves. The ultimate Polish champ is AndreAkraz and his Dark Elves – with Polish Open being his debut on the major tournament scene!
Apart from the great number of coaches (biggest tournament in Poland as to date), we had some sweet glittering prizes from such notable sponsors as TMS Miniatures, PuppetsWar and Awakened Realms, to name a few.
The Polish Blood Bowl tournament scene is getting bigger and bigger and it is hungry for blood! Are you ready to test our skill? You will be welcomed with opened arms and you won’t be disappointed with the matches.
A great advertisement, there. You can’t tell me you don’t fancy a trip to Warsaw! Some photos from the event below:
Here is a great tournament that Blocksfam was made for. ForceCommander has been running the 4D for 11 years by my count, and has helped raise an enormous sum (nearly $40 k) for a charitable cause – the fight against pediatric cancer. Jamie writes:
Really tip-top stuff, here are some winners and action shots!
I wasn’t at any of these three events (sadly!), but I did make the Monkeybowl in the UK. Read all about it here.
TD Notes
In terms of the day to day role of TD, it’s been my quietest month so far, which has coincided nicely with my busiest real life month for some time. Good job, guys, thanks for the help! This month, I’ve sanctioned 36 tournaments (31 Blood Bowl, 1 7s and 4 Streetbowl), we’ve had some new staff join us, and in the background other projects to enhance your NAF tournament experience have been ticking along. Big shout out to NAF Bulgaria, it was a lovely thing to sanction your first tournament (Mootland Grand Half-Bowl, 9th June. Get thee to Sofia!). Welcome to the club, and let’s see you at Eurobowl soon! Side-note – Eurobowl registration ends on 27th May. Do not miss out, if you’re a Euro, book NOW.
I’m really happy to welcome OptimusPrime to the global staff team as NC for Greece. Yannis has been doing a lovely job over there, geeing up a Eurobowl team, liaising with me re: tournaments and distributing NAF gifts. I know he’ll do a fine job. In Spain, long time NC Frikipe has retired, and we’ve promoted Hachablanca to the top job, bringing in Bletos and DarkDuke to the wider RC team. Spain have a thriving, passionate BB scene, and it’s important we get the right staff in place to oversee and help out. It’s been a quite project of mine to reach out and connect more with the different regions, and I hope that’s going well here with the new staff. If it isn’t, don’t be shy and tell me about it!
Project wise, Nick has made some great updates to the Glicko ranking system, covered here. I think these really enhance the Glicko page and give you even more stats to pour over, which is great work. We were completely blindsided by this fantastic visualisation tool made by Sparse, and of course we’ve been straight in touch to talk about what could be next. I’ve really enjoyed playing with this over the past couple of days, and I hope you will too!
The other primary line in April was concerning tournament management software. Babs poked us in the staff section of the NAF forum (and I’d love that to happen more often, NCs and RCs!), asking if Score! (the software we most prominently advertise on thenaf.net) is really the best we can do. It’s a fair challenge, and I’m taking a look at it. I actually feel that Score! does the job in the vast majority of cases, but I admit that it is pretty clunky and looks like it might run on a Commodore 64. There are three workstreams here. Firstly, I know that some of the regions have written their own software; I’m investigating these and having a look to see if we can host them and provide them to a wider audience. Secondly, I feel many TOs either put up with some of Score!’s foibles or simply don’t know what it can provide. I’ve asked Mike to write us a better, more intuitive user guide, and as you’d imagine, he’s begun the task with his usual enthusiasm. Finally, I’ve begun to reach out to coders or talented web types that may be able to work with us to improve Score! or indeed, one of the regional options we find and round off some smooth edges. We’ll see where that goes, maybe nowhere, but we’ll look. As ever, these projects are only as good as our volunteers, I certainly don’t know my BUS cable from my Python (or even if that’s a reasonable joke), so if you can help or know someone that can, shout. I’ve already had some fantastic help with this one (thank you to our talented regional software writers for their help and communication!), but more is always better. I’m always looking for good hands, so even if you aren’t IT minded but fancy doing a job for the NAF, you know where I am!
Why Didn’t I think of That?
This month, let’s talk captains, shall we? In 2018 so far, I’ve had a handful of tournaments come in with some sort of captaincy gimmick, and I really like the idea.
Take this tournament in Spain (I Vulcaniabowl) as an example. The rulespack promotes a lowly Lineman to ‘captain’ status, and leaves him a pool of skill resources that will really mark him out as a special player on the team. This should lead to some really individual builds and fun Linemen, which you don’t often see at a tournament, or even in a league these days with D3 MVPs. I love the idea of a Lino being more feared than a Wardancer, and the fluff that he is a mini skipper is great.
Next, check out the Congac Bowl in France. Not only do we have a captaincy gimmick; the way the captain is used scores you points. Happily, not enough points to overcome results as the primary way of winning the tournament, but the tiebreakers are effectively down to how well you utilise your captain and what he does in each match. It’s a game within a game, and I’m into the idea of playing the match in-front of you, trying to win, but also having a secondary objective in the back of your mind of using your captain to score or get a completion, or whatever. Again, that it doesn’t supersede winning is the big thing, for me.
How else could you incorporate captains? I’d love to see some ideas below, have a think and write me some fun captaincy rules! I’d love to steal, er, see them. 🙂
Holiday Plans
It’s time for a look at September! With Chaos in the news, your appetite should be whetted for some Chaos Cup action, and September is the month of the final NAF major of the year.
German Team Bowl 2018 – 1 / 2 Sep
I think I’ll be off to Cologne in September for this one. The German Team Bowl has been successfully running for a few years now, and team BB is always great fun. I hear Cologne is a wonderful city, so this is a pretty attractive trip!
Pouring Rain Open IV – 15 / 16 Sep
One day, I’ll make the Pouring Rain Open, Norway’s big one. The team over there (by all reports) do a tremendous job, and Norway looks a pretty awesome holiday destination. Why not join Zulu and the gang?
Chaos Cup – 15 / 16 Sep
The big one in the USA. Chicago is a great town, Katie and team run an impressive show and your Blood Bowl is major! No BB bucket list is complete without a trip to this one, and I can heartily recommend you make it. There is still time to book a flight… 😉
Next Time
It’s come around again – the NAF Championship explodes through the East Midlands Conference Centre this coming weekend, and of course I’ll be covering all of the fun in my next blog (as will everyone else on social media, I bet!). Away from the Nottingham madness, I’m visiting a new country for me, Hungary, to play BB in Budapest. Cannot wait for that one, I always love immersing myself in a new BB culture (and the beer… If you submit a tournament from 9-13 May, I may turn it around slightly slower than usual!). Keep your eyes on the internet for news on the 2018 NAF gift, the WC pitch and everything else that pops up this weekend, and I’ll speak to you again at the end of the month. If you’re playing, have a good one, and if not, wish the rest of us luck!
Nice report as usual. In regards of the Captain’s thingy: In the 5th year in row, at the Big Boys Battle, we have a lineman captain as well. He gains a General Skill (little boost for Stunties) and he has the so called “Adaptive Skill” on top of that. This allows him to adapt to his next opponent and he can pick any normal skill for the game. Once he may even take a Double skill. Due to ongoing brain damage at the LOS he forgets the skill right after each game.
Great gimmick! There’s loads of mileage in ‘captaincy’, I think! 🙂