It may be Sweltering Heat outside (if it is summer where you are, of course!), but the months of June and July in the world of NAF tournaments have been red hot in their own right. Before I get started with the news, if you read no more of this blog, make sure you read this statement and take action: all World Cup rosters need to be submitted by August 16, 2019. See the WC website for more details, but if you take nothing more away from this wall of text, take that!
What are you doing on the first weekend of June in 2020? If you are not answering that question ‘Well, Phil, I’m currently looking into whether I can be in Ottowa for the second Amorical Cup (the US version of the Eurobowl or Aussie State Championship). Doesn’t it look amazing?’, you’re not answering correctly! I’m delighted to see our east coast Canadian friends have won the hosting rights after a high quality bidding process, and I’m sure that following a monster 2019 World Cup this will be a, well attended megatournament. The hits keep on coming across the globe.
In GW news, Wood Elfs have arrived. No doubt some of you are desperate to start fielding that Zoat star player (yes, it’s really a Zoat!) and as ever, if your TO is amenable, please do so. More on this below, but the 2019 Annual Review is already underway, so we want to hear about your experiences with the items in the new Spike! Journals if you choose to use them.
There have been two NAF majors since I last wrote in this space, and we’ve cracking reports from both below. The Eucalyptus Bowl in Oz and the Spike! Magazine Trophy in Canada represent individual majors three and four of 2019, with only the Chaos Cup left to come from Chicago. There looks to be some amazing swag available to those able to join Jeffro in September; check out the Chaos Cup social media for more! The World Cup Warm-up 2019 on FUMBBL is still going (projected to finish before Dornbirn, I am assured!) and generally, the good Blood Bowling times just won’t stop. Across June and July we saw (deep breath!) 122 tournaments take place, seven of which were Sevens (ha!), one Dungeonbowl and two Streetbowl. If you are a variant fan, keep reading, as there is a slight update to our ongoing review below. Alongside reports from the two majors I previously mentioned, we have a report from the biggest Canadian tournament of 2019, POW Town (do you note a slight Canadian theme this month? O, Canada…) and a few words and images regarding a really exciting tournament from Mexico as that scene gets kick-started. This is likely the longest report section I’ve ever included in this blog, but these TOs have really gone to town on their reports, and I didn’t want to edit any of the goodness out. Enjoy!
Reports
The latest Canadian NAF Major, the Spike! was held Saturday, June 1st, and Sunday, June 2nd 2019 at the Atrium Inn, located in Vancouver, BC. This year we had 56 coaches! That ties a previous Spike! record. Coaches from all local areas came out to play along with many folks travelling from afar! We had fellow Canadian coaches from Edmonton, Calgary, Merrit, Victoria and Campbell River along side many Coaches From all over Washington State and Oregon, Michigan, Utah and California! Thanks to all who traveled so far to join us and making this an awesome international event!
I’m certain that everyone had an excellent time with the glory and congratulations to the new Spike! 2019 Champion, Solomon Knicely! Solomon played a Wood Elf team, the Loren Reavers, to a 5-0-1 record over the course of the two days of unrelenting action! Second place went to Thunderbowl member Dylan Jensen playing a Skaven side, the Rol de Fromage, to an excellent 5-1-0 record! Third place went to Dan Armstrong, an excellent coach as I can personally attest to having suffered a tough game 6 loss to, took home third with a Pact team, the Scrapheap Assassins, with a 4-0-2 record!
Painting was again won by Spike! legend and over all awesome guy, Derek Walton! His team the Hot Pink Flamingos was judged to be the finest in the field! As usual Derek did a tremendous amount of work on an astound array of models! Well done Derek!
The Sportsmanship award went to Jamie Stockdale, a great opponent form a local club! Playing Halflings will make you a popular coach among your peers as long as enough Halflings are sacrificed! Most TD’s was taken home by Luke Taylor one of our friends from Washington State. Best Defense, or the Wall as we call it, was won by the amazing Bryan Tew. Most Casualties, our Rambo award, went to Thunderbower Geoff Roscoe. The Goblin Tribal Leeg, the Stunty competition was won, again, by the Goblin master, Mark Burckard, with a healthy dose of Morg to help the cause! Poor Lewis Markstein was “awarded” the Glass Joe, for last place!
Perhaps the most popular commemorative item we’ve ever had was the fuzzy block dice, the kind that hang in your car mirror that we gave out to all contestants this year! .
Thanks to all who came and joined us for the awesome weekend of Blood Bowl action!
Steve Lemky / Blammaham
Random thoughts: By Michael McAree
Well, this was a very competitive year. Apart from a clear separation of first, second, and third, there were a lot of rankings decided on tie-breakers. Table 1 in the last round was not a sure thing for either player; had they tied, either player from table 2 could have been champ (with a win of course).
Spike! 2018′s champ Bryan Tew made a return visit, and despite only giving up 3 TDs all tournament, wasn’t able to repeat his 6-0 run of last year.
We had some weird events this year: Mark Walton Scored 10 Casualties with his Skaven in Game 5, while Luke Taylor’s High Elves scored 8 TDs in Game 4. In game 3, Lair’s Wood Elves managed to move the ball from near his own end zone all the way to score a TD, with only a single Wardancer on the field facing 10 Necromantic players. And late in the series (game 5?), John Macintosh’s Humans moved the ball from endzone to endzone in a single turn! Great moments in Sports, guys.
We had a few repeat performances. From Mark Burckhard, earning his 3rd Goblin Tribal Leeg award (last year he took Second Place instead!) Including a Sportsmanship Award in 2015, that’s 5 trophies for Morg et al in 5 years! Geoff Roscoe’s Dark Elves dropped a bit from last year’s Third Place standing, but they still managed to go home with the Rambo Award. Derek Walton won Best Painted for his Chaos Pact, having won in 2016 with his Orcs. Jamie Stockdale’s Halflings must be a crowd pleaser (or it could be Jamie himself), earning him Sportsmanship two years in a row. And despite changing teams (for the weaker, from Dwarves to Halflings), Lewis Markstein managed to earn Glass Joe his second year.
Thanks again to everyone who donated door prizes, especially Strategies Games and Hammertime Hobbies, who were very generous with lots of Blood Bowl items!
We have a great community and I am always proud to see an event go well. We’ll be seeing you at some of the numerous upcoming tournaments, and of course, next year!
I love two reports for the price of one! Thanks, guys, and well done to Solomon for winning a coveted NAF major tournament, see him posing with the Spike! trophy below. Take in these images from what looked to be a crackerjack event (and lovely furry block dice). After you have, we move over to Lair at POW town, just down the road (sort of) from the Spike! in Calgary.
On June 8/9th, a record 58 coaches made their way to our host venue The Ogres Den Gaming Club in Calgary, Alberta in Western Canada. POW Town is the longest running and largest event in Alberta and is an annual must attend for many regional coaches. This year was no exception. Coaches traveled in from BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba making this a true Western Canadian event. Not only was this the largest blood bowl tournament in Canada, this was the largest single system table top gaming tournament in Alberta for 2019. A pretty awesome weekend of support from our regional coaches.
For the theme of POW Town we always refer back to the team that won the previous year. POW Town 2018 was won by Skaven! Everyone’s favourite rats! Our friends at Hungry Troll brought our vision of not 1 but 2 custom rats to life. Venom and Centipede can be used to represent a Gutter Runner or a Rat Ogre. Every coach got the following swag bag just for showing up.
Our good friends at Maelstrom Gaming Mats put together this awesome pitch for this years event.
POW Town has many moving parts and we partnered with local and international organizations to bring a bigger tournament feel to the event.
We are always looking to improve the event every year. This year we added the first POW Town 7’s event that started the weekend off on Friday night with 16 coaches. Rob Wright (Bastich) won the event with a 3 win undefeated run with Goblins!
On Saturday we kicked off the main event. The build for POW Town has been the same over the last few years.
Team building:
– 26 NAF sanctioned teams are eligible
– Teams get 1.2 million gold to construct their roster
– Star players can be purchased as part of a roster and may be your 11th player. In the case that opposing teams hire the same star, both teams will be allowed to use the player
– Teams must play with a minimum of 11 players
– Teams can purchase re-rolls, apothecaries (if allowed), coaches, cheerleaders or fan factor
– Teams may also include bribes as part of the roster as per the standard inducement cost
– Chefs can only be purchased by Halfling teams
– No other inducements may be purchased (including , cards, extra apothecaries, mercenaries, etc)
– Teams can select one of the following skill packages:
Tier 1 – Amazon, Brettonians, Chaos Dwarf, Dark Elf, Dwarves, Lizardmen, Norse, Orc, Skaven, Shambling Undead, Wood Elf
Tier 2 – Chaos Chosen, Chaos Renegades, Daemons Khorne, Elf Union, High Elf, Human, Khemri Tomb Kings, Necromantic Horros, Nurgle, Slann
Tier 3 – Halfling, Goblin, Ogre, Lizardmen Stunty, Underworld Denizens, Vampire
Teams will have the following gold to buy skills for their teams. No STAT increases will be allowed
Tier 1 – 150,000 in skills.
Tier 2 – 170,000 in skills
Tier 3 – 190,000 in skills
– Stars cannot be given skills
– One extra skill maximum per player
– Each skill may be taken a maximum of 3 times
Scoring:
Win 65 Points
Tie 25 points
Loss 0 points
No bonus points will be used in the tournament
The Glittering Prizes:
As a tournament organizer I always like to see how despite the build not changing, how our coaches decide what teams will drive the meta for the tournament. Of the 26 races available, Underworld, High Elves and Khorne were not taken. The race for the Stunty cup saw 10 coaches take the challenge. Despite the New Halfling SPIKE roster being available for coaches, only 1 coach took Halfings. The top 11 races were :
1. Ogres x 5
2. Undead x 5
3. Skaven x 5
4. Dwarf x 5
5. Vampires x 4
6. Necromantic Horrors x 4
7. Human x 4
8. Lizardmen x 4
9. Goblin x 4
10. Wood Elf x 3
11. Dark Elf x 3
The event went off with out delay or incident. After 6 rounds of play our Champion Bob Langevin (Thibius) claimed the top spot with his Undefeated 6-0 run with Undead!
After the rounds were completed, the painting and hobby judging was conducted. This was a defiate level up in the hobby entries this year. After all was said and done Tom Carter (Phesmic) took home the best presentation award with his Undead team, with graveyard dispay boad. Here is a sample of some of the painting highlights!
Here are the final standings !
Rob Wright (Bastich) took 2nd place with his Pro Elf Squad. Goblin coaches took home some glory. Josh Gatner (Phrygerator) claimed the stunty cup with a 7th place finish. Lane Budgel (Japono) claimed the casualty award with 34! A new POW Town Record! Wood Elves coached by Marc Hawken (soulhunter) took home the most TD’s with 18! Ward Kapach (Wardo) last years Casualty champion took home the Best Sportsmanship award!
We rounded out the event with a fun announcement for next year. 2020 will be the inaugural year for the NAF’s newest tournament series. The Great Plains Grand Prix (GPsquared for short) will debut for NAF Coaches in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Montana. Our annual tournament calendar is host to over a dozen events. Keep your eye on the NAF tournament page for ongoing details.
Lovely stuff, thanks Lair. He did include even more pretty paint job photos, but we only have so much space! I must say, I think these are some of the best best painted images we’ve had here, so a really top effort by some skilled hands in Canada. Now, over to Oz for the first running of the Eucalyptus Bowl since it was awarded NAF major status. Brace yourselves for a big one but a great one! TO Rabid covers how Eucalyptus got the gig and gives us a most useful history lesson and insight into the Aussie scene. Enjoy!
A Brief History of the 5th Major
In the beginning
Back in 2002 and 2003 when the NAF was formed, 4 major tournaments were allocated throughout the world, in line with the traditional fluff from Blood Bowl lore. The Blood Bowl went to Great Britain, and has since been renamed the NAF Championships. The Chaos Cup went to the United States. Both these tournaments ran in 2003. The Dungeon Bowl was allocated to Germany and the Spike! Magazine trophy went to Canada. Both these tournaments according to NAF records commenced in 2004. Perhaps forgotten among all this was the granting of a 5th Major to Australia. With a vibrant community “down under”, possibly helped by having early representation in the BBRC and NAF through Stephen “Babs” Babbage, it was agreed that with the tyranny of distance it was a little unfair on the Australasian Blood Bowl community to not have a “Major” they could play at.
The 1st Major – Southern Wastes Scrimmage?
So, funnily enough, the first NAF Major ever played was in Australia, at a convention called CANCON. CANCON was an annual gaming convention held in Australia’s capital city Canberra, run over the Australia Day holiday weekend around the 26th January every year. CANCON itself turned 40 this year and Blood Bowl has been played there at least in 3rd ed form as far back as 1995, and at least once when it was in it’s second edition (1988-1993). Now CANCON as a name doesn’t sound particularly Blood Bowly, so it was determined that the tournament Major should be known as the Southern Wastes Scrimmage. A name drawn partly from the long running Australiasian based Fumbbl league, the SWL or Southern Wastes League. With Tom “GalakStarScraper” Anders finalising details of the rulebook, a blurb was put into the Living Rulebook legitimizing this Southern Wastes Scrimmage in Blood Bowl lore. Truth be told, it has never really been a name associated with CANCON, and perhaps that is a reason for it sometimes being the forgotten Major. In fact, the only time the name Southern Wastes Scrimmage was associated with CANCON was when it was registered under that name on the NAF website, which has since been changed in the NAF records to CANCON, to ensure the consistency of the tournament name through the years.
Progression vs Resurrection
In Australia the majority of tournaments ran not with the resurrection style tournament common in the rest of the world, but with a progression style more in line with league play. CANCON was no exception. Which made for a rather brutal weekend of Blood Bowl, where one bad game could wreak havoc on your entire tournament. It was particularly tough in the days before the “free Journeyman” rule came into effect, where players were forced to field incomplete teams based on previously accrued injuries. It wasn’t until 2005 when an expat Brit Ian “Doubleskulls” Williams and an Aussie Ben “Chunky” Hayes, ran the very first Eucalyptus Bowl in Sydney that we finally saw what a resurrection style tournament was. This style of tournament format would take off, and take over the vast majority of tournaments, both new and old in Australia. Throughout this period CANCON remained a progressive tournament, it was to many, part of the charm of the tournament. It took a very different style of play to succeed at CANCON, and as the last remaining progression tournament, as well as being the NAF Major it both attracted and turned away Blood Bowl players throughout the region. Its greatest strength as seen by some, was also its greatest weakness, with many players loathe to put themselves through 7 games of Blood Bowl, where injuries, winnings, and skill rolls played such a huge part in individual success.
A rivalry is born
Eucalyptus Bowl and CANCON have had a healthy rivalry. Eucalyptus Bowl grew in prominence through the fine organisation of Ian Williams and later Richard “Virral” Andrew. As a stand-alone tournament, it was solely organized for Blood Bowl players, and extravagant gift packs and bulging prize tables suddenly became the norm, creating a bit of an arms race with some of the other prominent stand-alone tournaments such as Southern Shrike Bowl in Adelaide and the now retired Sandgroper Cup in Perth. CANCON also had some fine organisers who generously gave up their Australia Day Weekend to run a tournament with significantly more paperwork involved. Stephen Babbage, Clay “Clayinfinity” Meteyard, the late Gavan “Drakeular” Pearce and now Anthony “Chopper” Cutting. CANCONs draw was that it was the Major, and also the attraction of the convention itself. However, being attached to the convention meant that prize support was limited, and in later years with the increase in gamer numbers in other systems, space soon became limited as well. Players were required to register and book in to play Blood Bowl earlier and earlier, something that has ultimately had a negative effect on player numbers.
Neck and Neck
Player numbers continued to grow with Blood Bowl in Australia, with the peak being early in this decade. Eucalyptus Bowl and CANCON traded the title of largest ever tournament in the Southern Hemisphere like two prize fighting heavyweights. CANCON reached its peak with 72 NAF registered coaches in 2010 and Eucalyptus Bowl went a little bigger in 2011 with 74 NAF coaches (76 total).
| Year | CANCON | Eucalyptus Bowl |
| 2005 | 30 | 28 |
| 2006 | 38 | 31 |
| 2007 | 30 | 42 |
| 2008 | 46 | 51 |
| 2009 | 63 | 57 |
| 2010 | 72 | 56 |
| 2011 | 54 | 74 |
| 2012 | 50 | 70 |
| 2013 | 55 | 63 |
| 2014 | 46 | 58 |
| 2015 | 36 | 48 |
| 2016 | 36 | 46 |
| 2017 | 20 | 54 |
| 2018 | 34 | 50 |
# NAF Registered Coaches
The decline
There was a steady decline from these heydays. Eucalyptus Bowl managed to keep numbers of 45+ each year, but CANCON in part due to the aforementioned problems with space at the convention, continued to drop in player numbers. New blood came into the game with Games Workshop rejoining the community, but many of the old guard dropped off. 2017 would be the last time CANCON would run as a progression tournament, moving to resurrection in 2018 in line with community wishes. After a disappointing turn out in 2017 at CANCON, I fielded inquiries from within the NAF about Eucalyptus Bowl becoming the Major. It was decided that we would review the situation in 2018, and if player numbers dictated, then the Major would transfer to Eucalyptus Bowl in 2019 to coincide with its 15th Anniversary. This is what ultimately occurred.
A new name?
As the Tournament Organiser of Eucalyptus Bowl I found myself torn in what direction I wanted to take. The Eucalyptus Bowl Trophy (an old GW Headquarters league trophy (Games Workshop’s head office and Mail-order Headquarters were in Ingleburn, South-western Sydney) was fished out of a garbage bin, cleaned up, and re-purposed) was in a state of disrepair. Truth be told I had been hoping to replace it for a number of years. I didn’t really want to rename the tournament the Southern Wastes Scrimmage, but I did want to honour the past winners of CANCON if I could. I got in touch with GWs Andy Hoare for some fluff ideas, and at one point had settled on the idea of a Southstorm Cup, in honour of the Southstorm Squids. I was going to Kickstart and/or beg the NAF for money and get a bronze trophy made and engrave it with the CANCON winners from 2003-2018 and future years would have Euc Bowl Winners. In the end, all my ideas seemed too far fetched, and I would still be stuck with renaming my tournament, or having the Southstorm Cup as the major prize at Eucalyptus Bowl, which felt unnecessarily complicated. Eucalyptus Bowl had its own proud history and some excellent logo’s and graphics, and I didn’t really want to push that to the side.
Eucalyptus Bowl Shield
And so, it was that I settled on getting a shield made as our new perpetual trophy. The plan was just to get a shield done in the style of the central shield within our logo. But a few emails back and forth and the company I had engaged assured me they could generate a 3D model of the entire logo using layered wood panels and some 3D printing. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.
So, with our shiny new Trophy and our status confirmed as the 5th major, it was time for……
Eucalyptus Bowl 2019 – The 15th Anniversary of Eucalyptus Bowl.
61 Coaches joined in for the fun and excitement of our special anniversary year, including 11 first timers. All coaches received a star player Eucalyptus Bowl Treeman and accompanying Stunty Koala player courtesy of Hungry Troll Miniatures.
We also expanded our range of Eucalyptus Bowl patches. Adding a special 15th anniversary badge, and 5, 10 and 15 year (we have 5 coaches that have attended all 15 years of Eucalyptus Bowl) veteran badges to go with the alumni badge we released last year.
Eucalyptus Bowl is mostly a static ruleset. In 2007 we embraced the LRB 5.0 and allowed teams of TV 125 to compete with all skills and players coming from this budget of 1.25 million gold. In other words there wasn’t a skill package, players could choose to spend the generous budget on their choice of players and skills (limited by one bonus skill per player). We didn’t allow “doubles” skills, as the idea was each team played to their strengths without having access to a band aid solution. The ruleset stayed like this for many years with a brief period where we played at 115 TV and 120 TV to try and reduce the complexity of rosters and cut down on games running over time. Following a period where players were complaining about coming up against all MB or all Guard builds, we opted to limit the numbers of each skill chosen to 2. Removing this limitation for General skills the following year as some teams really struggling without access to Block.
In 2016 we elected to introduce tiering. Not wanting to “play Nuffle” I decided to implement tiering based on historical success at the tournament, rather than my own arbitrary opinion of which team belonged where. Teams that have won Eucalyptus Bowl multiple times were restricted to a TV of 115, one time winning races played at TV 120 while the rest played at TV 125 and Stunty at TV 130. This meant that some teams such as Necromantic (115) and Nurgle (120) were probably outside their natural tiers. But at least everyone knew where they stood.
For this 15th anniversary we scrapped these tiers (they will return in 2020) and allowed all teams to play at 125 TV with Stunties getting an even bigger boost and playing at TV 140. Across the 61 coaches only 3 teams went unrepresented. Elven Union, Nurgle and Underworld.
At the conclusion of 5 rounds we had 2 undefeated coaches, neither of who had tasted Eucalyptus Bowl glory before. Anthony “Chopper” Cutting (2 Time CANCON winner and holder of the 2 highest NAF coach rankings in Australia) from ACT and James Fynmore from VIC. Interestingly it was a match up between the 2 winningest races at Euc Bowl, Orcs Vs Necro, and reflected well our typical tiering.
In the end it came down do an Orc Blitzer needing to Dodge and GFI while holding the ball in Turn 8 of the second half to break a 1-1 stalemate. The dodge roll failed, but a team reroll took care of that, and the final GFI was successful, giving the title to a man that just loves to win Australasia’s Major whichever tournament holds it.
Our second top prize is Stunty King, to encourage people to bring the vertically challenged teams. The winner this year was Geoff Watson with Goblins.
Our third pick of the prize table is for Best painted. For the 4th time in 5 years this title was taken out by Jonathan Delacy, with his spectacular Chaos Dwarves.
| Champion | Anthony “Chopper” Cutting | Orcs |
| Stunty King | Geoff Watson | Goblins |
| Best Painted | Jonathan Delacy | Chaos Dwarves |
| Best Newcomer | Lee McColl | Norse |
| Runner Up | James Fynmore | Necromantic |
| 3rd Place | Alex Hardwicke | Undead |
| Most TDs (16) | Joshua Ng | Skaven |
| Most Cas (32) | Phil Evans | Ogres |
| Most Kills (9) | Kyle Harper | Orcs |
Of interest to some is that Eucalyptus Bowl tiebreakers run entirely on opponent score. We play 80 points for a win, 40 points for a draw and 10 points for a loss. So a win and a loss is slightly better than 2 draws, but 3 draws trumps 1 win and 2 losses. There are no bonus points so you live at the mercy of how your opponent’s fare, however we prefer to reward those that play on the top table all weekend over someone that submarines through the field. We do have issues with tournament software if we have coaches that don’t play all their games, meaning they don’t maximise their potential tournament score which can have a negative effect on their opponents. At the moment I manually adjust and add average tournament score to players in lieu of missed games and apply that to opponents score. However, if anyone wants to update SCORE and give me a field for average tournament score per game played, I would be eternally grateful.
Being a big tournament, with a tiering system that may discourage the playing of some rosters I wanted to devise a way to encourage the playing of as many different races as possible. A few years ago, I introduced Best in race medals, and these get given out after the aforementioned prize winners. The key though is that the highest ranked but least represented races get an earlier prize. So this year 59th a Khemri coach chose from the prize table before 6th a Chaos Dwarf coach. I get the rosters sent to me 1 week prior which allows me to pull the trigger on getting the medals made, and as an added bonus also gives me time to check all rosters are compliant. The coaches also enjoy the pre-tournament banter about which teams aren’t being played and which is the most represented.
I’d really like to see some international raiders test their mettle “Down Under”. We typically run in July each year, however to accommodate the AusBowl State Championships, our version of EuroBowl, for next year we have moved to April. The venue is all booked for the 18th and 19th of April 2020, I hope to see people making the trip.
James “Rabid_Bogscum” Russell-Wills
Well – I’m going to call it. That’s my favourite report in this section of any month so far, 18 months into the TD blogging. A lovely job, James, and a fantastic brief history of time for tournament Blood Bowl aficionados everywhere. Well done Chopper, quite the force down under! Now to Mexico, where a new group set up a new tournament this July and had a blast!
I have no formal report from the tournament per se, but looking at the Mexican BB community page on Facebook and having chatted to the TO in the lead-up to the event, I know it was a fantastic start for a new section of our community.
28 coaches, 26 of which were new NAF members is a terrific effort and testament to Fletcher and Raul and their work over in Mexico. When the dust settled, Mr Chummer aka Jorge Martínez was victorious with his Skaven outfit, but more importantly, it seems as if the idea of a NAF tournament has taken hold and attendees had a blast.
Here are a couple of images Raul sent over of you guys in Mexico having fun; a group to watch, if you ask me! From zero to 28 is a fair old jump, where will it end?
World Cup Focus
I hope you’ve been following the World Cup comms. I say again: squads, get those rosters in, August 16th is your deadline! You’ll also need to forward your base sizes to the WC team so that you get the right size skill markers, and squad captains recently got a detailed communication from Torsten on a host of other organisational matters. If you have not received this yet, yell at Torsten! Everyone else, I find the WC Twitter feed to be the best source of news, views and HYPE TRAIN CHOO CHOO noises, so chuck them a follow. Who wants to buy me a pint of WC beer Dornbrew Belly Shocker come October? I’ll let you form an orderly queue, don’t worry. I’ve time to drink them all, I’m sure!
As we continue to build the hype for the big one, it’s nostalgia time. Last time in this space, we looked back at the inaugural World Cup in Nottingham and the glorious (and stylish, considering majesty of a Basque beret) victory of Les Azes. This time, it’s the turn of Amsterdam 2011.
The second NAF World Cup took place over the weekend of 18-20 November 2011. After the success of Nottingham, the stakes were really raised in Holland, as well as the attendance! Dutch Dave and team did an amazing job putting on a show the NAF had never seen before, and the WC hosted a quite incredible 480 coaches. I suppose that number was about as big as a World Cup can get when housing every coach in the same pub or pair of pubs after play, and de Shutter really felt like it was home to every coach that weekend.
This time, coaches played in their teams throughout all nine rounds and the English took the spoils. Machester’s finest became the NAF’s finest for four years, but really, Blood Bowl was the winner, as they say. I’ve had a bit of trouble turning up images from the second World Cup; most links appear to be dead, which is a shame. If you can point me at an album, do so in the comments!
Results:
Winning team: Waterbowl (Eng.). JimJimany (Wood Elf), Ambush3 (Norse), Joemanji (Undead), Purplegoo (Lizardman), Podfrey (Dwarf), Leipziger (Skaven).
Best Individual: Kaltenland (Ita. Skaven)
Runners-up: Team Argentina (Den.)
Third: Lutece Noobz (Fra.)
TD Notes
I may not have been writing in this space, but June and July have been Busy months with a capital ‘B’.
Firstly, the numbers game. Over these two months, we have sanctioned 107 tournaments, including 7 Sevens (I’m not making this up, promise!), 3 Streetbowl, a Dungeonbowl, 2 Dungeon 7s and two Deathbowl. Phew! A decent run-rate by anyone’s standards; you guys don’t ever seem to let up the pace (not that I’m complaining)!
Next, staff additions. People often ask in elected committee position contests ‘how best to grow the NAF’. I’ve always (often?) said that the best way of kick-starting a new or growing scene is to get someone passionate and organised on the ground in that territory and empower them to serve their community and the NAF by welcoming them into the staff network. With that goal in mind, Bulgaria and Brazil have new NTOs, Emilius and sergiolmroma, respectively. This is great news and I’m sure the guys will help both their respective communities on the ground and us as ‘the NAF’ with news and views from new places. Welcome, guys!
You may have noticed our announcement regarding website updates a few days ago. I’ve mentioned both of these topics in this space before, I think, but both are important enough to briefly touch upon again. The games database is plainly our greatest asset, and I’m glad we’ve given it a little love and attention with our new, automated recalc. Hopefully this will cut back on or eliminate the ‘lag’ and funny numbers some of you have experienced from time to time. On the new variants point; our review was conducted with passionate, expert NAF members, we decided what we are adding and we’re going to go ahead and add them! All will be explained in more detail when the rulesets are completed, but I don’t expect this to be far away. A note on the rulesets: the team that have put them together have done a fabulous job of producing professional, attractive documents, and I absolutely can’t wait to share them with you and broaden your NAF Blood Bowling possibilities still further. Watch this space for more details, hopefully next month!
Regular readers will be aware of our Annual Review process and how and why we went about conducting that in 2018. Well, it’s time to go again. This year, we have a good deal less to discuss, but again, your NTO and selected RTOs have been invited to contribute and reflect the feelings of their communities. If you go to the forum and read the introduction, if any of that is something you feel strongly about, please, write to your local staff member and make your view known. I was asked why this forum isn’t a free for all for all members again quite recently, and the reason is that we want to strike a balance. We want views from the four corners of the NAF world and to empower every member to feel like they have a say, but at the same time, we probably can’t have a sensible conversation or pick out a majority view if we drink from the firehose un-diluted. This seems like a good happy medium, and it went really well last year.
The subjects for your consideration that will be discussed prior to our 1 Nov. 2019 tournament document revision are:
- The Undead, Halfling and Wood Elf Spike! Journals (and if any of the items therein are problematic from a NAF tournament format standpoint)
- Whether ‘legacy’ CRP star players should remain mandatory at NAF tournaments where races have access to stars, or whether they should now be classified as ‘NAF recommended’ (in the same way as Slann, for instance)
- Any other business
Again, I hope there won’t be too much to discuss and there will be fewer revisions to our documentation than last year, but we’ll see!
Why didn’t I think of that?
Denmark is increasingly becoming the home of funky European innovation, and the The Copenhagen team draft II event is going to be no different. Perhaps I have ‘Draft’ on the brain after the variants review, but the idea of this tournament is really interesting. It’s a pairs event where the races are ‘drafted’ according to a random draw. If you come out of the hat first, one of you pair gets first choice of the 26. The other will then get the last choice of the draw. Pair two will go second and second-last, etc. I guess this means that the races will ‘even out’ (well, sort of), but generally it’s a good bit of fun. The tournament will be using the 2020 Eurobowl rules, which is innovative in itself, because they don’t exist yet! Well done to the handsome (so it says on his email signature) runestone and friends for this idea, and if you’re able, do make it down on November 23.
Holiday Plans
If feels a bit odd to be raiding the database for December goodies, but here we are! Break out your Santa hat, gloves and scarf and get to:
WBBL: School of Hard Knocks 2 – Foreign Exchange 7 Dec. It’ll at least be warm in Wellington, NZ, and also this is some fine (and a little mad!) Blood Bowl action while you’re taking in the rays.
River City Dungeon Bowl 2 14 Dec. More Floridian Dungeonbowl to enjoy, and enjoy they will!
The Red Trophy III 14/15 Dec. High drama in High Wycombe; if you’re in the UK, get down and have a pre-Christmas Blood Bowling blow out.
Next Time
It’ll already be August and the Chaos Cup and World Cup will both be so close you can almost taste them… Well done for getting this far! I appreciate this month was a long blog, but I hope a worthwhile one!