Tournament Director Blog – Nov. 19

Here were are again. As I write this, it’s December. December! Another year is almost behind us, but as ever, there is no let-up in NAF tournament news. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

The big news this month is the ongoing sale of outstanding (in both senses of the word) NAF World Cup stock. You still have time to bag some exclusive NAFWC4 loot, and at the same time, a bargain in the form of rare NAF dice. If you’re a collector, someone who couldn’t make the big one, or simply a Blood Bowler, there is something here for you. Get over to the sale page (follow the link and click ‘Goodies’, e-mail Torsten and bag yourself an early Christmas present. You deserve it, you’ve been very good this year!

Nov. 1 saw the publication of the 2019 NAF Annual Review. The details are in this post, but in essence, we have once again reviewed the GW output from the previous 12 months, the state of NAF tournaments and your feedback, and we have slightly tweaked a couple of things in our NAF rules. I’m still getting 2020 rulesets featuring links from 2017-2019 submitted; be aware I’ll be deleting the old rules from this website over my Christmas holiday. I mean. Couldn’t be any more festive, killing off old .pdfs, could it?! Speaking of GW, the rumour mill is already at full speed regarding the impending Ogre team release. What do they have in store for us, I wonder?

November has been busy. Counting the Nov. / Dec. crossover weekend, you have been off participating in 84 tournaments, including 5 Sevens, a Deathbowl and a Specalist event (great to see the variants continuing to get some love, more on that Deathbowl tournament shortly!). We’re also back underway online after a short break, as the Waterbowl double elimination event is up and running. I was back in action at the COSH Team Tournament 1 (I always love an optimistic prediction in a title, let’s hope for 2+!), and you can get a flavour for how that went here. That report, however, has nothing on our three blockbusting TO reviews in this space this month, as I think we’ve got one of our best ever review sections. We are celebrating all that is good about NAF tournaments; variants, charity, team play and creativity are all represented, so I’ll shut up and let some fine TOs do the talking!

 

Reports

First up, to Germany via Canada, as Stimme brings Deathbowl to Europe.

Eurovision Death Contest 2019

Deathbowl, the four-player variant of our beloved fantasy football game, has been played and optimized by our Canadian brethren for many years now. But as a tournament, it still had to find its way to the Auld World. To remedy this, the first instance of the now annual Eurovision Death Contest was held this November in Hamburg. Fifteen brave souls (the math geeks amongst you are probably wondering how that number is supposed to work if this already includes the host, but hold your thoughts) showed up to determine the overall winner in four fiercely fought games over two days.
For the complete ruleset and more, head to eurovisiondeathcontest.jimdofree.com. But in a nutshell: every coach tries to score into the direct opponent’s endzone. There are two balls involved, and while only the final score against your direct opponent is entered into the NAF database, the coach scoring the most touchdowns at his/her table gains the most tournament points. A major recent rule overhaul included the introduction of continuous play: when a touchdown is scored, the active coach’s turn ends, but gameplay continues – there is no reset or new drive, only at halftime. This fixed a big flaw where slow, grinding teams barely had a chance to reach the endzone before their neighboring Skaven or Elf opponent ran in the ball – thus causing everybody to reset.
Accordingly, the racial composition showed more bash than dash: No squishy Elves of any kind dared to enter the killing fields. The most popular race was Chaos Pact with three teams, followed by Chaos with two teams. Several other physical teams such as Orcs, Undead, Nurgle or Chaos Dwarves came out. Nevertheless, a Skaven team coached by Siggi took home the first place trophy. Maybe surprisingly, they did not win Most Touchdowns, as a Chaos team (coached by MadMö) had scored an equal number of TDs, and allowed fewer against. Most Casualties went to an Undead team coached by Troublemaker, with a solid 23 table-wide induced injuries.
Overall, the tournament was well-received. While Deathbowl matches are significantly longer than regular Bloodbowl matches, they provide a very different experience, with shifting alliances, unexpected new mechanics and at times more chaos (less though than one might think). One drawback is of course that you need a multiple of four coaches to participate. And coming back to your initial question, how we ran the thing with 15 participants: When one coach cancelled a few days before the tournament, I ended up playing two teams, Goblins and Khemri, locked in an eternal battle against each other at the bottom tables outside competition. That actually worked quite well. At least for the Goblins, who won one and lost none of the four matches.  

Ace. It’s lovely to see the variants kick on, and Alex bring Deathbowl to Germany. Can’t wait to see how next year goes! Some images of four-way mayhem can be found behind this link. I would have put them in manually, but they’re pretty high quality / big!

Next, to Cardiff, Wales UK, and charity via thatasianguy.

Foodbowl

Brief

For the past few years, I’ve had people nagging me about running a tournament. But as I run our local league, I personally felt I needed a reason to run a tournament. Foodbowl was inspired by the unfortunate situation of so many people who were struggling to get by and were pushed into a position where they would need to make use of food banks in order to help make ends meet. All profits earned from the event would be donated to the Cardiff FoodBank.

Originally, I planned for the event to be solely for Blood Bowl, but opened it up to Necromunda. For Blood Bowl, I opted to use the All Teams Viable Variant. This allowed for a more significant mixture of races and to reflect player abilities.

We received strong support from the community and our sponsors for the event. Firestorm Games, KR Cases, Tacklezone, MDP (Model Display Products), The Bonehead Podcast & Two Drunk Flings & Friends. In total we had 30 people sign-up for Blood Bowl & 24 for Necromunda. Along with extra donations from those unable to attend.

The Event

Foodbowl featured a 4 game day for the event, with prizes and raffle at the end of the day. With a tight schedule to adhere to, it was quite a manic day filled with some unexpected team builds and results.

Final standings for the event:

1st Place – Verbal_HM
2nd Place – Ceetee
3rd Place – Jayward
Gloworm Award – Rubick
Most Touchdowns – Gcoleman76
Most Casualties – Orcster
Stunty Cup – Hawca
Last Place – PorkPieMudEye

Necromunda featured as an Ambot Wars! Event. With gangs following all the standard rules for the game, not featuring the typical resurrection style of traditional tournaments. This side of the event focused on gangs completing missions in order to obtain part to upgrade their Ambots. After the Ambots were upgraded in they then competed in a knockout arena of death until only 1 Ambot was left standing.

Final Thoughts

Foodbowl was a fantastic event. With more positive than negatives regarding the event. ATV is an interesting rule set. It brings out a large amount of variety. Four games makes for a tight schedule, but achievable. Feedback has suggested that we remain at 4 games, views are uncertain regarding ATV. Discussion may take place regarding an alternate set. Key point I will have for any future events with 4 games in one day – a designated spare player who is not me. But I would be happy to run this event again in conjunction with Necromunda, with the aim of helping a different charity each year.

An total of £600 was raised from ticket sales, donations and the raffle. Which was then donated to Cardiff Foodbank on Thursday 21 st November.

Overall I’m grateful for the generosity shown by all those who attended and those that provided
support for the event.

Cracking. The generosity of BloodBowlers (and nerds in general!) never ceases to impress me. thatasianguy sent me 70(!) images, so I’ve only included a handful here. There are more over here.

Finally this month, over to Denmark for a tournament that has fascinated me for a while. Kristian picks up the tale of the Copenhagen Team Draft.

The Copenhagen team draft II

The Copenhagen Team Draft – part II – once again twisted the regular meta on its head and made for a wondrous tournament full of teams you don’t normally see, even though we must admit nobody chose Khorne. 
The setup is basically a 2 man squad tournament with the added twist, that your squad start by drawing a number to see who gets first pick among the available races. Exactly one of each race is available, so no more Wood Elf spams. If your squad chooses first, you also choose your second race last. Then you and your squadmate can fight over who gets to play the top team and who gets to play one of those exciting teams that nobody wanted to play.
To get the players even more involved as a squad, each player is given 5 cards that makes it possible to interact with his fellow squad coach. 2 cards that makes it possible to ask for help and briefly discuss a tactical issue (1 and 2 minutes), one card where you get to roll your partners dice once, one card where you ask your partner to roll your dice and finally using the last card will allow you to point out a mistake your partner is about to do.   
This year we had 20 participants that eagerly dove into the draft and that meant we had a wide field of 20 races at the tournament. The winners ‘Outsiders’ had gotten away with choosing the power duo Wood elfs and Orcs played by well known names at Danish tournaments (Jaqra and Pete). All in all a great day with lots of new matchups, and an absolutely insane meta. 
We promise to be back next year!
The organizers
MissSweden, Runestone and Iltempogigante
I do find the concept fascinating. Some brief images below. I quite fancy playing one of these tournaments, someone in the UK needs to run with the idea, or I need to go visit my Danish friends again! 🙂

TD Notes

In the wake of Dornbirn, things have been rocketing along. This month, we approved 53 of your Blood Bowl tournaments and a fair few variants: 2 Sevens, 2 Streetbowl, a Dungeon 7s and a Specalist. That’s a decent haul this close to the end of the year!

I was happy with not only how the Annual Review was received this year, but also how it appears to have ‘bedded in’ with the community. I’m acutely aware with all things that you can never please all of the people, all of the time, but I think in general, the decisions we make, how we make them and the structure we’ve set up seem to have gone down well, and I’m appreciative of that. Communication and decision making with / for such a varied and disparate group as the NAF membership is never straight forward, but I like to think that we strike a good balance. If not, you can tell me!

In staff news, welcome to Brian / Tank, who takes over as NTO in Denmark. Hooray! Welcome to the team, Brian.

The eagle eyed among you will note a new page on thenaf.net, inspired by the latest in an occasional series of emails I receive about tiers and tiering. In this case, it was specifically about how tier structures differ in Sevens, when compared to normal Blood Bowl. Why, Josh Wojcik wrote, do the NAF recommend tiers for Blood Bowl and not Sevens? It’s a good question, not least because we don’t recommend tiers, but he’s not the first to have bought the point up. With some digging, I found an old post on thenaf.net by Mike / Sann that I think some people have been using as a recommendation, or at least considering the ‘NAF standard’ While that isn’t the case, I can see why (if you came across that page on Google, or whatever), you may think that way. Considering the way people were using the post, I rewrote it with some of the current thinking and had Josh contribute his thoughts on Sevens tiers, so we could put an article up as a ‘page’ for people to refer to if they wish. Those of you that are Sevens enthusiasts may want to take a look; I’m not sure you’ll all agree on what race falls where, but it’s a good conversation starter! I’m always up for community ideas for additions to what we offer on thenaf.net; I’ve no doubt there is more we could include. For instance, check out this new Sevens pitch we’re now hosting on the Variants page, thanks to Scisco of Smoland Gaming Mats.

Other bits and bobs have been progressing behind the scenes. I’ve seen some code that I don’t understand, but I’m told it’s another step towards improving our Glicko offering (thanks to the team there, we hope to have a good 2020 in Glicko-world) and the NAF Championship ruleset is out. Those of you that follow NAF docs will recognise that lovely background, and I’m pleased that our .pdfs are looking aligned and professional. Well done to that team as well! Lastly, Ketil has fixed up the NAF sig code that some of you use in forums. Cheers to him!

 

Why Didn’t I Think of That?

On my visit to Colchester this month for the COSH Team Tournament 1, I encountered yet another new tiering system. Quite apart from the strange place some of the races lived within the hierarchy, it was a another way of looking at the traditional ‘carrot’ tiering system with which we’re all so accustomed (lesser races get more skills / cash / both). In this case, a squad of three received the same package skills for each team in the squad, depending on the combined perceived strength of the trio of rosters. So, if everyone took tier one, you all got few skills, and tier three many, with shades of grey between (for instance, two Stunty exponents could really set up Wood Elfs or Undead with a handy old package, if you wanted to go that way). I thought this was an interesting wrinkle. I have my ups and downs with the ‘encouraged variety’ direction that TOs point themselves in. Really, it is very rare and pretty lucky that true variety happens, more often than not, you just move what is attractive and see a lot of that instead of the traditional big hitters. I like ‘stick’ (each coach must take a race from different tiers) styled events even less, as the enforced restriction feels harsher than encouraging it. Here, there were obvious winners, but I did like the fact that the incentives applied evenly across the squad. A fun wrinkle, and one to think about later, perhaps.

 

Holiday Plans

What are you up to in April? What about attending…

Two Drunk Flings present Sin City Bowl 11 Apr. Blood Bowl’s greatest self-publicists are thinking this could be a new one-dayer attendance record. Get to Derby if there is still room, or just for a drink if not!

Eucalyptus Bowl 2020 18/19 Apr. Our new Oceanic major moves into year two. Who will bring home the bacon?

Umeå Spring Bowl 4 – Spring Break (Tackle) 25 Apr. Spring time in Sweden sounds pretty ace to me. If you’re after a break in the new year, why not go Scandinavian?

 

Next time

I’ll be taking December off blogging as I fill my face with more food and drink than is healthy. I hope you do the same; enjoy some well-earned rest, and I’ll see you back here in 2020.

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