July in NAF Tournaments
July’s NAF tournament headlines are probably twofold. Firstly, we have some new stars and inducements from GW to look at. The second Spike! journal has hit the shops, and Dark Elfs now have more choice in BB2016. TOs are already asking if they can include Modrix Hex and friends at their upcoming events, so this is a good time to remind everyone reading about the NAF’s new annual review policy. Look out for more in-depth annual review announcements in August; we’ll be letting you know more formally we’re trying to do (and how you can help), timescales and what you should be expecting come November 1st to guide you in your NAF tournament world in 2019, when we will be announcing whether we are formally accepting or rejecting the new stars and inducements. However, in the mean time, if you’d like to include new newness, just ask!
Secondly, we have some more NAF World Cup news, and it seems the Dornbirn team are continuing to deliver on the organisational front, this time regarding a deal on rental cars and perhaps even childcare. Read all about it here and catch up on the NAFWC podcasts here. Just over two months until registration opens; I hope your team is set and you’re counting down the days?
As ever, you’ve had a busy month. July featured a total of 44 Blood Bowl tournaments and two each of the Sevens, Beach and Streetbowl variants, rounding us off at 50. From Finland to Uruguay, the U.S. to Poland, you’ve been attending tournaments and enjoying the great game. Let’s have a look at three particularly fine examples:
Atlantic Coast Charity Cup 2018
We begin with the Atlantic Coast Charity Cup (or ACCC) in the U.S. This is the President’s event, so he gave me a hard time until I included… That’s not true, of course! I asked Nate for a write-up in-part because this was the first tournament to benefit from your Blocksfam donations, and I wanted to highlight how your generosity is helping charitable causes. El Presidente picks up the reporting:
The Atlantic Coast Charity Cup is one of the more prominent events on the East Coast of North America, mainly owing to the fact that it allows Blood Bowlers to contribute to a good cause while also winning a fair bit of loot for themselves (it’s possible that the opportunity for a weekend in Virginia Beach at the peak of tourist season also helps!). This year was no different on that count and featured raffle prizes donated by fantasy football manufacturers, gaming clubs, private individuals, and the NAF. The NAF’s involvement was thanks to the new Blocksfam program, in which NAF members can trade their extra kit (which most of us have at least a drawer full of) for entry into an annual drawing and a general sense of magnanimity. The NAF then distributes those donations to charity events around the world for use in their fundraising efforts.
After six years of benefitting charities that aid injured war veterans, a natural fit for a city that hosts the world’s largest naval base, the ACCC made a fairly dramatic pivot to Fetch-a-Cure, an organization that provides financial support to families dealing with canine cancer. While this might seem relatively frivolous, I gained first-hand experience with the issue when my own dog underwent an expensive and ultimately unsuccessful battle with the disease last year. I could hardly believe the cost of treatment, and on doing some research discovered that it’s not uncommon for people to sell their cars or take out second mortgages in order to afford it. Despite some apprehension about how this cause would be received by the local community, a uniformly rugged and pragmatic lot, I was pleasantly surprised by positive reactions all around.
With that serious stuff out of the way, let’s talk about games and toys! A total of 50 coaches participated, surpassing our previous high mark of 46 set way back in 2013. Almost every corner of Virginia was represented, as were Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Maryland, New York, and even Michigan. It wasn’t an incredibly competitive affair, as most of the veterans chose lower tier teams and there were a dozen Stunty sides in play. In the end, local coach Bob Fletcher and his long-suffering Norsican Wulflings emerged with their first ever tournament win, no doubt buoyed by the karma afforded Bob for having donated a professionally painted dwarf team to the raffle table. A dozen other trophies were also awarded, ranging from the common (most TDs and casualties) to the somewhat unusual (worst defense, most injuries suffered). Even if they didn’t do well (or poorly) enough to win an award, all participants left with new memories and miniatures, to say nothing of the beer and burgers stored within their midsections.
Perhaps more importantly, $4,800 was raised for our charity, also a new record for the ACCC. In total, the tournament has generated nearly $20,000 over its lifetime, and hopefully has at least a few more years left in it. Thanks to everyone who has helped to make the tournament a success, and I’ll look forward to seeing a few more of you next year.
Excellent, and annoyingly well written! Nate has included some images of you guys having fun below, as well as a link to further photos from the weekend. A fine cause well supported, well done to all.
Much more to see here!
Now to Scotland, UK and the Burger Bowl. This one has been going nicely for a few years now, so I asked Ant / Purdindas (co TO with Garrick / Graham) to write me some words. Here he goes!
Scotland’s self-styled, premium two-day blood bowl event underwent a makeover this year with a new venue, new organiser and a new ruleset. Some excellent sponsors deserve a shout out. Namely; Tritex games, KR Multicase and Two Drunken Flings.
With the old RAF club closing; organiser Garrick (Pictured) opted for a more up market Swedish themed bar called Akva located in the west side of the city centre of Edinburgh. The whole of the upstairs was reserved for both days.
The prizes were excellent also. A fine haul of swag up for grabs.
Garrick – ready to register players on the Saturday and all the prizes available to the winners
The ruleset was inspired by the Eurobowl rules with the addition of star players being made available to tier 3 teams. This is essentially 1.1 million teams with the following skill choices:
Tier 1 – Wood Elf, Undead, Lizardmen, Skaven, Dwarf, Chaos Dwarf, Orcs, Dark Elf, Norse, Amazon, Bretonnian – 6 normal skills
Tier 2 – Chaos, Chaos Pact, Human, Khemri, Slann, Necromantic, High Elf, Elf, Nurgle, Vampire, Underworld, Khorne – 7 normal skills & 1 double skill
Tier 3 – Halfling, Goblin, Ogre – 6 normal skills & 2 double skills
Goblins may buy 0-3 bribes and Halflings may buy 0-1 master chef
This year’s event attracted 39 participants including many high-profile visitors from England and even a couple of Swedes who I’m sure felt right at home in their playing surroundings.
With the level of Blood Bowl being played, this was set to be an epic encounter…
The Event: Dice were rollin’ and beers were flowin’.
Anyone taking a moment to look around would have witnessed a great atmosphere with some great banter from some excellent players and games which hung on a knife edge.
After fifty-seven games of blood bowl; many coaches took the chance to enjoy the clement weather and grab a few beers in the sun before dinner. This was then followed by the inevitable pub crawl…
All in all, a massive 218 games were played with the following results:
1st Pipey
2nd Stick_with_Poo_on_the_End
3rd Don_Vito
Most TDs: StephenBrands with 14
Most CAS: Awesome with 18
Best Painted: Goldeneye
Top Tier 2 (as there were no Stunty Teams): StripeyDave with Humans
Top Newcomer: Rambo2369
Master Chef of Happiness: Adeptus_Fringilla
The Visitors from south of the border were dominant on the day; too strong for the Scots
and Swedes.
Lovely, and well done Brendan and the rest of the invading Geordies. If you follow these links to TFF, you’ll find a write-up from Graham’s perspective and some match reports from the winner.
Sin City 7s 2018 & Sin City Bowl V
Finally, back to the U.S. I usually like to spread these reports out to three different NAF regions, but I was stuck for a third report this month, and Mark Perre / AL13N had done such a good job of bigging up the Sin City weekend on Facebook, I knew he had a lot of material he could contribute. Sure enough, he was kind enough to forward me the following at short notice. The weekend is actually three days of BB; firstly a Sevens tournament on the Friday. Then, ‘straight’ BB on the Saturday, and a non-NAF ‘draft’ event come Sunday. Three times the fun, if you fancy a trip to Vegas in 2019! Firstly, the 2018 results and an image of your Sevens 1-2:
Justin Gatner Sin City Bowl 7s 2nd Place refused me stepping down so he could take 1st! Great guy love this dude!
Sin City V Champion JJ Tew!!!!
SCBV in progress
Stunty Champion Michael Haley – Goblins!
Sin City Bowl was historic as Bryan Tew becomes the 1st player in the world to play all 26 Teams and have 160+ Ranking on all 26 teams! Shout out to Mike Davies for crunching all the numbers!
Bryan Tew the Draft Champion! His 3 Strength 5 guys controlled the pitch. He caused the most Casualties and allowed the least amount of Touchdowns as well!
Lots going on there – well done to Bryan (who I understand from online chat to be somewhat of a legend!) for reaching an ELO ranking of 160 with each NAF race. I’ve heard of coaches noticing 150, but I’m reliably informed that Bryan is the first to hit 160 x 26. Where will it end, I wonder?! Plus Tew junior is following in Bryan’s footsteps, well done JJ! A Blood Bowling dynasty is apparently in the works. Thanks again to Mark for stepping in and helping out, and check out this excellent video for more coverage of the venue and the weekend’s fun and games.
I continued my Blood Bowl travels, this time visiting Bilbao in the Basque country to play the Bilbali Teams Cup. Read all about my lovely time here, and get this one on your bucket list!
TD Notes
This month, we’ve sanctioned 51 tournaments including four Sevens and one Dungeon Sevens event. I notice we’ve got a Deathbowl submission sitting awaiting my attention later today from Quebec in Canada which will be a first for 2018, so I’m really looking forward to reacquainting myself with those rules!
July saw the addition of another new member of the tournament staff team. Please welcome Idroj to the party; he will be looking after the Mallorca in Spain. This is an area that is growing pretty quickly in both leagues and tournaments, and a couple of requests and questions coming through from the region prompted us to act and add a staff member. Please give him a big hand!
As ever, we’ve a few irons in the fire project-wise, but nothing new and fully formed yet to report. There was a lot to talk about in June (perhaps I should have kept something back!), and this will be a large section again as we move through August with annual review chat, but for now, it’s back to the controversial subject sack o’ topics.
One question I get asked fairly often is what the NAF policy is going to be with CRP star players that are not appearing / not going to appear in BB2016. We presently have the Zara / Karla combination available to Halflings at NAF tournaments, for instance, where it appears clear that Karla is a straight swap for Zara in the rules. Other stars (e.g. Ithaca Benion) seem to have also left the game and been replaced by new players. What is the NAF plan, with all of this?
To open it out a little to talk about BB2016 changes and updates more generally: currently, we think it’s important that TOs and members retain choice while we’re in this weird state between completed editions of the game. We presently allow CRP stars and inducements (e.g. wizard, cards, Dolfar Longstride) that may no longer exist in BB2016, however, since the new rules are not yet complete, it seems pretty harsh and impulsive to remove or outlaw what came before, if we want to at all. The races covered in Spike! journals are getting ever more toys to play with, and it would be overly punitive to forcefully take away stars and inducements from those not yet lucky enough to be covered. It’s alright for Dark Elfs to have ten stars, two wizards and a bunch of other bits, but spare a thought for Ogres if we remove Brick, Piling On and the CRP wizzie? Also, we don’t know where BB2016 will end up, and what the game will look like in 2020 and beyond as the releases evolve. It makes sense to retain elements of the last solid, complete Blood Bowl ruleset in the NAF tournament documents, at least for now.
Of course, this adds to the overall confusion that we are currently wrestling with, as new coaches rush into the game without knowledge of the CRP rules we’re retaining and grizzled vets aren’t quite yet up to speed with BB2016. We hope the structure and content of the annual review and updated NAF tournament documentation will reduce this fog of being between rulesets, but I think we all accept it can only go so far as the old and the new clash. There is a philosophical question to be answered regarding what the NAF does when BB2016 is complete, but we don’t appear to be anywhere near that day yet. It might be that we transition to the new rules (or the new rules we accept via the review process) fully. It might well be we retain CRP elements that suit NAF members and NAF tournaments (as well as the additional races we allow – don’t worry, there are currently no plans or thoughts to remove any of these, before I start a riot). I don’t have a crystal ball and I can’t predict where we’ll end up, but I can assure you we’ll do our best to remove confusion and provide the best ruleset we can for the membership with your feelings and preferences taken into account. Your feedback on this stuff is always most welcome, so as we move forward, don’t be shy about letting us know how it’s going!
In summary – keep using everything in the NAF tournament list for now, and for the foreseeable future. If and when we change anything, you’ll know about it in advance.
Why Didn’t I think of That?
Two American tournaments to mention here this month. Firstly, we have the Kalcutta Auction Open. At first, there appears to be little novel or out of the ordinary about this ruleset; 1.2 million, buy all of your players, inducements and skills with that cash. A very commonly seen structure for U.S. events. However, check out that draft system! Instead of tiering the teams, coaches bid starting gold on the races as they come up to the auction block. An ingenious idea, and probably overcomes some of the possible, slight limitations of this style of ruleset (i.e. minmaxing, diversity). If kill all the things Norse is the best choice, how much will you have to pay to pick them up? And then how good are they after you’ve paid for them? Lovely stuff and a cracking thought experiment before the tournament. I can envisage some very detailed plans and draft boards, I reckon you’ll pick up Pro Elf / Elf Union pretty cheap!
Secondly, the The Pro Bowl. A similar ruleset structure, but this time, it’s 1.2 m for players, and then 400 k for skills. 400 k! And then a couple of free stats. You are going to see some monstrous teams in Florida come September! We covered the 850 k starting treasury H0rnswoggle Cup here a couple of months back, and this is right at the other end of the spectrum. I don’t even want to think about the sort of ClawPOMB craziness or unstoppable Wardancers that can be built in this ruleset. I think if you’re attending, you had better have a plan for any eventuality. I’ll be fascinated to see which super-pumped roster wins the day. From afar, I don’t need the headache of trying to overcome it!
Stop the press! Since I wrote this section, Big Daddy’s All Star Cup has become a thing next May. 2 million. Wow.
Holiday Plans
December is traditionally a slow month as we all have other things on our minds, but there are some intriguing tournaments in the database:
Krampusbowl 3 8 Dec. The Austrians are running a Krampus themed one dayer in lovely Vienna. I bet that’s a great town to visit in the run-up to Christmas.
River City Dungeon Bowl I 8 Dec. – The infamous Floridian River City series goes Dungeonbowl. This has been a long running series of events, and I reckon this will be a fun variation, if you’re in the area.
The Winter Elflympic Games 15 Dec. – Another infamous tournament, the Elflympics are back, this time it’s winter. If you like it crazy and you’re in England, get yourself over here for he madness.
Next Time
I’m in sunny Bognor Regis, UK for Thrudball 2018. Hopefully we raise of money (not least via your Blocksfam donations!). Until then, keep on keeping on, and as ever, all feedback below the line is welcome.