BLOOD BOWL – Journey of the Maulers: Tryouts

Match reports are always a double-edged sword in Blood Bowl. They are wonderfully entertaining, but the documentation and smoothing can cost a normal worker like me a whole week of free evenings. For this reason I`ll have only a small summary this time, but full reports will surely come at some time in the future. So what happened next during the Journey of the Maulers? I had painted a small bunch of fans to practice the color scheme and to give the sideline a bit more flair. The Maulers themselves had a strong staffing problem because their squad did not have enough players to play a regular Blood Bowl game yet. Some of the models were still in the Sterilium bath to get strip them of the old paint. So what do you do in this case when you are in the Blood Bowl world? Right, you're having a tryout!

An old friend of mine, Ralf Brockhausen, against whom I have already played some wonderful games, is kind of a hobby hero to me. Nearly 20 years ago, when you could barely find something about Blood Bowl in German-language forums, he worked on a small hobby project on tabletopwelt.de, in which he built a team of Ogres, the Schildweg Butchers (they can be seen in the article on solo campaigns).

Meanwhile, he is rather playing Blood Bowl 7s, a smaller version of the game that has been around for years but is not that common. In this variant, there are only seven players in the team and no re-rolls, which makes it a very fast and chaotic game. For his developing Norse team, he had built a stadium that looked just so great that we simply had to play a game!

   "I told you to show me the entrance pass Z37!" Said the gatekeeper with a voice that sounded like two millstones rubbing on each other.

   'Deez punies are crazy...', Boz thought to himself as he gave in after several hours of bureaucracy and finally set up camp with his troop in Bergendorf, a small suburb of Talabheim, which had an astonishingly high-quality brewery maintained by dwarven hand.

   They had made good progress on the river route, completing the way from Kislev to Talabheim almost in record time...but had lost another player during their travel. Tumpa, the current Mauler's thrower had been devoured on the first evening by a mimic demon when he had marched straight into the monster's open mouth on the way to the privy. The demon had assumed the shape of an outhouse, waiting for unsuspecting prey. But things had taken a good turn. In the evening his boys had clashed with a small group of Norscan Valkyries who were on their way to Altdorf to start their own Blood Bowl team. Before the impending dispute could reduce the entire brewery and the adjoining inn to rubble, the dwarven owner had intervened and had suggested settling the dispute in a game with a smaller number of players. Boz could not have arranged it better himself, because now he had the opportunity to hold a little tryout and to fill up the ranks with some new prospects. But without a thrower, he would have to think of something to find the right ball carrier for the match ...

To create the team you receive only 600K gold pieces and may take only a limited number of specialists. The rules can be found on the NAF website, an english speaking Blood Bowl community. Since in the Göttingen Blood Bowl League BB7 has been played for a very long time by now, we also used a few house rules from there.

The Valkyries and the Maulers played on a small pitch next to the brewery. True to a Dawi, the greenskins were provided with the pig stall as a dugout, while the Valkyries were allowed to park their team in the noble beer storage.

Damn mess…

Modelwise I hadn't actually cobbled together a ball carrier within the fans mob, so I decided to use the Squig as such. When you build models for Blood Bowl, it is important for you to ensure the recognizability of the positions. Each position should be identifiable by a particular optical feature, and in the case of a thrower, this is often a ball. Catchers most of the time have a big glove and Blitzers something spikey on them.

BB7 plays differently than the normal version and changes what the pros call "Meta" heavily. Especially players with built-in skills have a strong advantage here, because when you're not allowed to buy re-rolls, they built-in skills will make life much easier for you. If you have them against you on the other side, the danger factor increases additionally for your players. Norse players with "Frenzy" in particular, as they can push of opponents of the smaller field with ease.

So I was forced in this game to move as centrally as possible on the field, since the Yeti pretty much scared me. With all the players with Block, however, I had the disadvantage early and soon my K.O. box was cheerfully filled.

I almost had to thank Ralf that he stole the ball relatively early and turned it into a touchdown, as I got my knocked out players back this way and I in turn managed to send off a few of his ladies.

In the second attempt I tried to sneak past the side, but the Yeti did a great job and freed up the ball again.

Until halftime I managed to prevent another touchdown, but shortly after the next kick-off I had a déjà-vu, when the Yeti again blew my players out of their socks and the ball carrier went to the other side of the field.

Although I was able to batter the monster into the dugout at some point, the result did not change. Ralf's Valkyries comfortably sealed the final score of 2:0 and sportsman as I am I bore the result with my typical serenity.

   Boz had enjoyed the pretty, little fight and although the boys had lost the game, the Maulers had won at the end of the day - the old Blackorc now knew exactly who would join the team for the rebuilding of the team and who would not. Soon he would give them a real test...

Well, already curious who made it into the team? Then just stay tuned when the Journey of the Maulers continues!

Greetings from the Chaosbunker

Dino