Welcome along to another TD blog! Quite a short one this time, which is probably a blessed relief to those of you that dutifully struggle through this each month! Kidding aside, while good things continue to happen, the nature of things is that there’s not always bags of fully formed stuff to report. With that in mind, I won’t keep you for too long!
With no hot off the presses GW news to talk about, let’s reflect on what is going to be another big year for NAF Blood Bowl. Alongside our five individual major tournaments, this year, we will see all three of our current continental team majors contested! Alongside the ever fantastic, oft-spoken of and already sold-out Eurobowl in October, in June, our attention will turn to Ottawa, Canada for the Amorical Cup. Spaces are evaporating quickly, so if you want ‘in’ on the North American Eurobowl, get a move on! Finally, in July, the Ausbowl State Championship / Wyrdstone Cup will take place in Auckland, NZ. If you’re in that part of the world, get yourself along to the Oceanic team major! The first of our eight major tournaments this year will take place next month in Dusseldorf, as the Dungeonbowl is back for 2020, and we will have all of the news, views and winners from each and every big one as the year progresses.
February has been busy enough on it’s own, with 66 tournaments taking place (including the bonus leap year weekend). That’s three Sevens, a Dungeonbowl, a Specialist, a Blood Bowl Draft and 60 Blood Bowl events, for the stat fans among you. I was looking to line up my traditional three reports, but a few unlucky events mean that I haven’t got all that I wanted this time (sounds like my last game, actually…). Luckily, the one report I do have should make up for it, so I’ll let Julio take up the story from Santiago, Chilie.
Reports
Feb 15 2020, Santiago, Chile.
12 coaches arrived to the EntreTurnos bistro to participate in the “Jugar para Ayudar” tournament.
It’s mid-summer and our usual “Blood bowl vacation period”, but due to a car accident of one of our BB comrades, we decided to organize an additional one to raise funds support him. In addition to the tournament the community donated some board games and organize a raffle to raise some extra funds.
The event went smoothly starting at 11:30 until 19:00, with Luis Montero (Utto) winning the tournament with a team of Dark Elfs. The tournament used a 3 tier system and had 3 rounds. We knew immediately that this was about crushing your opponents, 9 out of 12 where bash teams.
After this great tournament, where we had the chance to have some beers with friends while we support one of our BB comrades. We are ready for the one that will take place on March 28 in Santiago. If you are around by that date, come on and join us for a nice tournament.
Short and sweet. As ever, Blood Bowlers doing fantastic things via their hobby for the less fortunate will always get a space here, and a round of applause from us all. Great stuff, Julio! And now the best bit of any blog I write: photos of Blood bowlers having fun others have taken.
TD Notes
As I alluded to above, this has been a ‘behind the scenes’ month, but no less busy because of it.
Firstly, if you didn’t catch the announcement, this month we welcomed Matte8, Gaixo and Hachablanca to the approval team. All three are underway and approving tournaments, and I can already see we made the right choice appointing them (even Nate! 😉 ).
One thing I’m really keen on is leaving TD in a better place than I found it. That isn’t to say that I found it in a sorry state, but now that the NAF is approving in the region of 1000 tournaments each year, it really is too much for one person alone, if that person is to do the job properly, let alone accomplish anything else. Getting more people involved allows us to expand our reach, increase the languages spoken within the team and spread the workload. Hopefully, this improved infrastructure should help us all going forward, not least whoever follows me! Thanks to the three who have joined us, and please, pick up their emails if they contact you!
Otherwise, the tournament staff team has grown in February. Spleggy has joined the UK cohort and will be managing the North West of England as well as Yorkshire, and Temujin71 has taken over from Kilowog in Oklahoma / Texas, US. Welcome to the party, chaps!
Next, we’re looking to get our important tournament documents (stored here) translated into at least French, Spanish and Italian. As part of our ongoing efforts to reach out to the non-English speaking areas of the NAF world (more on that another time, but exciting news to come, I think), getting these documents into other languages is an important step towards becoming more multi-lingual as an organisation. Thanks to El_Nota, thot and Rolex, who are beavering away at this in the background as we speak. Expect the page to update as time goes along.
Other behind the scenes stuff has mainly involved our star coding man Ketil / Kyrre. Firstly, it looks like we’ve finally bested our much advertised issues with PayPal. I don’t want to get too excited, but if that really is fixed, that’s a lot of man hours saved and a lot less confusion and frustration for those joining and renewing online. Secondly, we’re in the process of updating the view of the tournament page so everyone can see ‘Pending’ events (at time of writing, this isn’t pushed through yet, but is imminent). This is a small but cool quality of life improvement, meaning you can see what tournaments we as approvers are working on and plan your time / your tournaments in similar areas accordingly. This should help alleviate future clashes, and help you as TOs know what status your tournament currently has. There is much more at the moment as a fledgling software team is grappling with all of the zeroes and ones, but most of it is yet to bear fruit. Thanks to Ketil in particular for continuing to be a marvel, and for driving through important improvements for us.
Holiday Plans
Nothing incredibly novel I’d not thought of this month, so I’ll skip that section and dive straight into July plans (not including the ASC, see the above link for that!)!
Bilbali Teams Cup V 3/4 July. I forget what I’ve already covered here in previous blogs, but this is a banger, so I don’t mind repetition if I’ve mentioned it before. Selling out fast, so get in there quick! Go find that cider wall, you won’t regret it. Until the morning.
B7 202011/12 July. One I’ve always wanted to get to but never quite managed, B7 is a properly storied, old school Blood Bowl tournament.
The Sacred Scarab Cup 18 July. Good old, Khemri themed fun out in Canada. Looks a low agility blast, to me!
Next time
No doubt we’ll have more to say in March, as the Dungeonbowl will crown our first major champion of 2020. I’ll get back on the report horse over on thetacklezone, as and when I play an event I’ve not rambled about before!
How will Coronavirus affect the NAF?
Hi Finn.
I guess that TOs and travelling tournament attendees will have to make their own decisions as events unfold. I hope the answer is that Coronavirus will be quickly contained and we’ll get back to business as usual.