May 13, 2025 • 63 mins
The playoff field has been pared down to 4 teams remaining, and after a lengthy discussion of the Quarterfinal bouts, Yannie and Nathan look at the Semifinal matches. Who will come out on top between Halflings, Khorne, Necromantic Horror, and Skaven?
Hosts - Yannie & Nathan
Audio Engineer - Scott Jensen
Executive Producer - Wayne Knox
Check out Tales From the Pitch on Substack (https://substack.com/@empire864/note/...
)
Don't forget to Like & Subscribe!
Find all of our links here!
https://linktr.ee/empiregamessc
Hosts - Yannie & Nathan
Audio Engineer - Scott Jensen
Executive Producer - Wayne Knox
Check out Tales From the Pitch on Substack (https://substack.com/@empire864/note/...
)
Don't forget to Like & Subscribe!
Find all of our links here!
https://linktr.ee/empiregamessc
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Welcome in, everybody to write stuff. A blood ball podcast
brought to you by m Higher Games. I am Yenny
here with Nathan, and we are running out of content
for this season.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Yep, we're scraping the bottom of the barrel here. The
game's heat up. We have less stuff to talk about that.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Yeah, if you were worried about our Giant Playoff preview
episode a couple weeks back, you will enjoy this one
probably more, I guess.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yeah. It's a little bit more condensed, a little bit
more truncated. I would say the playoff games were overall
pretty high quality, right, the lots I mean all of
these games were decided by one touchdown, which was not
the case the first round of the playoffs. So yeah,
lots of lots of pretty good games to cover here.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Yeah, and you might have seen them because we streamed
them on our YouTube channel. Definitely go give the follow there. Uh,
those previous games got streamed, and our upcoming games are
also going to be streamed, so you will be able
to watch the thrilling conclusion of Empire Cup Season eight
(01:18):
on your screens at home and revel in all the joy.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Bring beamed directly into your cortex. By the monkey killing
cortex chip. Uh, what's the what's the name of the companyink? Yes,
beamed directly to your cortex, Yes, via neuralink.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Just stay away from microwaves. All right, we've got I
figured we go through in chronological order the way the
games happened over the course of the week, so to
give you the chance to talk first, so that yeah,
we had great Treed, good boy us and slaughter Husse eleven.
And not to spoil to anything, so that maybe the
(02:02):
last time I say that name on this podcast.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Yeah. It was a bloody, bloody game by far, the
most damage that my team has taken during the course
of this league, and I dished out basically for every
casualty I didn't do in my first game against Chris,
I inflicted two in this game, more or less right,
(02:26):
because I'm playing against stunt E's will had his kind
of like pick of inducements, and so he opted to
go with the Mighty blow plus four package of Morgue
and deeper, and so I was worried about my players
safety and apparently I had every right to. In the
(02:50):
first half, I got the ball first and I opted
to score. I think I exploded like two nons. The
very first nome I touched in that game exploded, and
then I think I casually had to know him on
like turn two as well. And then my drive got
(03:12):
a little suspect because I think Deep Route like based
my ball carrier and I had to kind of like
make a dodge with him and that was not necessarily safe,
and I failed the dodge but got the reroll, and
that was like pretty scary in that moment because I
feel that first dodge and was like, uh oh, this
(03:35):
is how I lose the game, because I think both
Morgan Deep Route kind of had me like pinned up
against the sideline. But I managed to wriggle out of
there get the touchdown, and I was hoping to stop
Will there, but I knew he had like a lot
of time, and sure enough I wasn't able to stop him.
(03:55):
So I think we were tied one one at the
half and then I have to kick back to him.
Now at this point, I've managed to take out quite
a few gnomes and I even managed to ko a tree.
I think the blood Spon kote a tree somewhere in there,
and actually I think my blood spond KOed two trees
(04:17):
a kot a tree on the first drive and it
didn't come back, and then I cooed his other tree,
the non deep Roote tree. It was a trivial and
tree face or whatever. The two trees on his team,
they were both kaoed by the end of the half,
and so he got one of them back for the
drive on his offensive drive, and he actually went for
(04:41):
a throw teammate touchdown with deep Roote and got a
touchdown pretty fast, and so that left me time to score.
So I was in an interesting place where my goal
was to grind through his team, chow as many players
up as I could on that drive, and then score
(05:07):
on turn sixteen, send it to overtime with no and
have him out players that could actually score, right, And
so it looked pretty good like that. It looked like
that attempt was gonna work, because I think he had
(05:27):
like a bad His first turn of defense was really
really bad. I think he failed to dodge or something.
He did something on that turn that caused like a
premature turnover. And I had a lot of follow up
hits on gnomes and I think I casually two of
those nomes. I think it killed another one. It was
one of those where I just removed a bunch of
(05:50):
players and I kept blitzing Morgue with my blood Spawn
because I was trying to get morg out of the
game because that would really alleviate the pressure. I could
just stall, however, I wanted to then right with if
your only option to get to my ballcarrier is trees,
I can play keep away from trees, right and so
(06:15):
on that drive. After that turn where I removed people
and that was probably one of the best turns that
I've had all season, I experienced one of the worst
turns I've had all season where I rolled My first
block of the turn is double skulls and so I
have to reroll it. My like third or fourth block
(06:39):
of that turn is double skulls again, so I have
to reroll that. And I was trying to save all
my rerolls for the the overtime, right if I'm playing
for it, and so I then I ended my turn
with like a blitz from the blood Spawn into deep Root,
(07:03):
and I hit deep Route on five and I roll
both down, both down, and I really don't want deep
Root hitting my blood spond back and so I use
pro I get a push, so I opt to use
the push. I go for it, the blood Spon fails
to go for it. I'm actually fine with this because
(07:23):
then the blood Spon's on the ground and Deep Roots
not hanging with my blowpos two right. However, Will breaks
armor and then casually is the blood Spawn, and I
actually thought my chances to win the game like expired
right there, because I don't have a piece now that
threatens the big guys the way that the blood Spawn does. Unfortunately,
(07:46):
it was only missed the rest of this game. It
wasn't out for the following game. But I basically just
have to score in this instance because I can no
longer threaten more than it can no longer threaten Deep Root,
and I really don't want him blitzing one of my guys,
Mighty Blobilist to every turn while I try to like
(08:06):
keep the ball away from him. So we're tied two
to two, and so we line up. At this point,
I'm down a few players. I think I'm playing with
like ten on defense, maybe maybe nine. And then he
(08:30):
is lining up and I've killed a lot of gnomes
by this plant of the game, and so he's he's
still got one fox. He gets back his other tree.
So he's got both trees deep Root, Morgue, a Fox,
a Gnome, Lineman, an Illusionist, and the beast Master, because
(08:50):
he was talking about how he wished the tree hadn't
come back in the game that way he would have
had one of each piece, and the tree broke up
the beautiful symmetry of his team at that point. So
but so yeah, he's got He has like a huge
strength advantage on me now because the Bloodspawn's gone and
I still have some solid players left. And on his
(09:16):
opening hits deep route kills like my block Mighty Blow
blood Seeker just straight dead. And I had used my
pothcarry earlier in the game because a random foul that
he threw resulted in a blood Seeker dying as well,
and so I opted to a pothcarry that and got
it back in the game, And so I don't have
(09:39):
a pothcaarrey for this hit. The guy's dead, which was
a shame because I think that guy had two casualties
during the course of the game. He was really racking
nomes up, and so that's obviously bad. And he kind
of like makes a cage, he gets the ball to
a Fox, he makes a cage around it kind of
(10:01):
towards midfield, and so I commit a good chunk of
my team there. I leave two of my wrestle tackle
marauders like midfield, because if the Fox tries to reverse
field on me, I wanted them in a place where
they could go wherever they needed to on the on
(10:23):
the field, because they those were my answers to the Foxes. Right,
And so I get a block on Morg and I
knock him over, and I get a random armor brake
on Morg and he's stunned, which is great because that
means he's out of the next play. I have a
two die hit on a tree which I throw and
(10:46):
it ends up being like push push, and he opts
not to stand firm, and then I go two die uphill,
which was not great, and I roll a skull and
I've got one reroll left, and so I'm like, well,
can't you it here? But my goal was to try
to like push my way into the cage with some players,
and so my guy goes down, and so that tree
(11:08):
I didn't knock over kills my block tackle guard Corn
Gore on the next turn with his hit, which is
a straight up debacle for me because that guard was
like giving me the strength I need. He was like
very instrumental on that previous turn because his assist was
(11:30):
needed for Morg and the tree at the same time.
And so that guy's dead. And he had scored like
seven Star player points worth of stuff in that game
because I think he had to casualties. Plus he scored
like one of my touchdowns, and so I'm out that guy,
and Will reverses field with the Fox, runs it to
(11:53):
the opposite sideline, like goes for it twice, and then
he had is Deep Route go to blitz one of
my wrestle tackle guys, but Deep Root's got to make
a go for it, and he rolls a one, and
so he tries to loaner and fails the loaner check,
(12:14):
and so Deep Route just kind of falls over midfield,
and I send my guy after the Fox, the wrestle
tackle guy. My first block on the Fox is double skulls,
so I have to use my last reroll because the
Fox is easily within scoring position at this point, so
(12:36):
I have to use my last reroll. I get pushes
and then I have to like do a go for
it to do the follow up hit. But I managed
to knock over the fox and casually did get it
out of the get it off the field, so I
know we're secure for overtime. And I throw like a
(12:58):
couple more hits, and I move one of my guys
into scoring range, you know so, and then I run
like another Marauder over to go pick up the ball
and succeed on that that pick up, and I am like,
then the position that I'm in is like do I
throw it past this turn? I do throw it next turn? Right.
(13:19):
If I throw the pass now, it needs like a
sixer accuracy. But if I roll like a four, a
four three or a two is going to be wildly
inaccurate and the ball will end up somewhere on the
pitch and I don't necessarily want that, so I opt
for the pass on turn sixteen. Will doesn't have like
a good way to really stop me from scoring. I
(13:40):
think I do like a I think he moves like
a non illusionist next to my guy who who is
in scoring range. But everything else is to kind of
tied up, and so I get I think I'm able
to like block off the non illusionist side step and
where it can teleport two, I block off that blitz
(14:05):
it out of the way so I don't have to
make a dodge with a guy, and I walk up
to throw the pass with the marauder. It's a short
pass and need a five. I roll a four. The
pass is inaccurate, it scatters to the left, it scatters up,
and then it scatters diagonally back onto the guy that
I targeted, who rolls the four to catch it because
(14:26):
it's not accurate, and then he makes his go for
it and scores closes out the game three to two.
I get I get bailed out by an inaccurate pass
on the last turn to avoid overtime because I think
if we go to overtime then I may not have
a team through Morgan Deep route by that point. So
(14:49):
incredible end to that game. It was good that overtime ended, too,
because I wanted to go home and watch and Or
because the new three episodes we're like ten minutes away
from premiering from the end of that and if I
had been uh, if I had been late, I would
have heard about it, heard about it from my and
OR watching buddies.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
So well, yeah, I'm very glad for your for your
and OR fandom. That Yeah, that was the result.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Yeah, it was a It was a crazy game. Like
I said, lots of blood on both sides, and he
killed two of I in my estimation, he killed like
my third and fourth best players. And I think it
depends on the type of global player you are. You
might think that the block tackle guard player might even
be better than my dodge block dodge sure hands corn
(15:37):
gore right, depending on what kind of situations you're looking for.
But yeah, that game was that. That game was a
nail biter. That was some playoff bloodball right there, for sure.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah, I want to deviate a little bit from our
normal procedure into our in memoriam by game for this one.
So for Great Tree good Byes, we had slime no
blindman murdered and then for your team scourgerish the slate
grip and.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Right, Yeahox was the guy who died earlier in the game.
But yeah, Ox, this this is my salute to fallen
heroes right here. You can't see it, but I am
saluting them. Uh these guys are They served me extremely
well during the course of the season. Ox was a
(16:31):
was a was a piece I could always count on.
I'm giving him his obituary. Now, this is abituary bituary
for a fallen Blood Bowl player. Ox.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
He was.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
He just it was always where I needed him during
the course of the season. He was a really instrumental
piece to a lot of my wins. And uh, he
was my favorite sculpt of the of the corn goers.
He's the corn gore who's like like bringing his fist
down on somebody. Looked really cool, Like you look at
the model and you're like that, that guy's got juggernaut
(17:06):
for sure. And so yeah, well I'll miss you. And uh,
Scourgeriss he was. He was the blood seeker. He was
most confident, which is why he got Mighty blow first.
And so I wish I wish he were still around.
There's lots of halflings that I think he would love
to be killing somewhere down the pipe. But yeah, well
(17:31):
we'll see you at the crossroads.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Guys. I think they both earned their entrance into Corns.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yeah yeah, Corns domain for sure. Yeah yeah, I mean
all you can ask for. I mean they both had
two casualties in that game, so honestly, I guess that's
really what they got. What they deserved then, right at
that point, they fought with enough honor and spilled enough
blood to uh to enter Corn's domain.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Yes, all right. Our next game was on the other
side the brackets. We had tried rebranding to the some
luck shots did not work.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
R O U s G is a one to zero win.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Yeah. The joke I made right after that game was
if I told you that there was a Gnome Corn
game and a Scave in Dark Helf game and the
results of one of those games was one to zero
and the result of the other one was three to two,
which do you think is which I think most people
would say, Well, the Scaven Dark Heaf game is the
(18:31):
one that had five touchdowns in regulation, and you would
be wrong.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Yeah. So this game we saw some interesting counterplay betweens coaches.
Scaven went in as overdog because of no rerolls Key Striten, value,
nice and Lean probably would have liked to have some
rules for this game, but over over dogging Bomber and
(18:58):
having an answer for Bomber that was more expensive than
Bomber himself. On the other side for dark Owls, which
is an interesting strategy. He told you about it before.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Yeah, Coop went to go with the Wizard, and so
you can't fireball before the other person takes their first action.
But Frog, when we looked it up, Frog does not
have that same limitation on it. Frog says before or
after anybody's turn. So I believe one was receiving in
(19:31):
that game, and so Coop hit Bomber with the frog
with the zapp before Bomber even got to throw a bomb.
And so if you look at the tour play recap
for this game, Bomber threw a lot of fouls, but
that's a frog shaped bomber stepping on people's heads. And
so one used every part of the frog there on offense,
(19:56):
and this game was a tail two halves. One did
some catastrophic damage to the Zerok Chucks before halftime, like
got rid of both Wichel's got rid of like two blitzers,
two bloggers, right something along those lines, just chewing through them.
(20:17):
And then Coop is setting up on defense with I
don't know, or he's setting up to receive the ball
in the second half with like seven or eighty people,
and turns the game around, starts chewing through some scaving.
Somewhere in the first half, the rat ogre got KOed
(20:39):
and it didn't come back in to the game, and
so that second half of this game was like really harrowing.
Wan managed to strip the ball, but there was like
this crazy sequence towards the end of the game. Wan stripball.
He's taken the ball, gets it with a runner and
(21:00):
runs to his own backfield. And I think one has
moved through his rerolls at this point, and one goes
to hit a player and double Skulls uses his last
reroll and double skulls and that blitzer hits the ground
(21:22):
and k is kot. So one goes from trying to
throw a hit to losing a player right, which is
like worst case scenario. And so Coop knocks over the
gutter runner with the ball. He recovers the ball, so
the next turn Wan has to scramble. He gets like
(21:43):
a one die hit with like a wrestle gutter runner
gets the boat down, the ball pops out, One recovers
it with another gutter runner. Coop goes to hit that
gutter runner, and so the thing is the ball keeps
moving ever closer to Wan's zone as the sequence keeps happening,
and so it's one of those where like if the
(22:06):
right elf knocks the ball loose and another elf goes
and grabs it. Then Coop can tie the game. In
this instance, he's just like a couple steps away from it.
And so the turn where Coop can probably get that
the touchdown that he needs, he goes to throw the
hit and he finally rolls double skulls, and so he
(22:28):
of course has no reroulls. His player goes down, one's
able to move the ball out of the way, clock expires,
and one wins it one to oher on the back
of the double skulls. I think it's fitting that the
zero look Chuck's the last role that they made in
that game was double skulls. You know, I think when
(22:52):
you're playing with zero rerolls, that's probably the gonna be
the case. More often than not. The last thing that
you do in a game is gonna be a failure.
Last thing you do in the season is going to
be a failure.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Of some kind. Right, But overall, you know, it was
like it was a really good season.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
To yeah together, I agree with the yeah. I mean,
Elves are not a bad candidate for this, right. You
succeed on everything on a two and he had some
bad luck in the early part of the season, but
his team came together late in the season and then
you really got to take advantage of the inducement game
(23:27):
after that point, and so he was able to take
some some outsized inducements and then he you know, it
didn't hurt that he played fairly well in a lot
of those games. He was talking about how the no rerolls.
It's kind of like sevens. I think both of those
situations make you better black ball players because you got
(23:47):
to focus on what's important. You really got to decide
is this action worth taking?
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Yeah? Yeah, one death in this game. It was very
death filled week with all only four games. We already
have the four desks critical one one of the which
elves dead on turn two. I think that honestly was
one of the big turning points of the game was
on turn two which elf is dead turned three, the
(24:13):
other which office out. Yeah, So like those would have
been pieces he would have loved it had Like if
it's a witch Alf going down and has a ball,
gets wrestled down, It's got jump up right so you
can get it. There's a chance like wrestles not good enough.
He just picks it up and runs yep, and that's out.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
But yeah, right, which Elves would have been really good
down stretch, but that that wasn't an option here.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Yeah, unfortunately. Okay, next up, we've got the other game
from this bracket center for the semi finals matchup here,
bad Moon Rising Southern California Trojans a two to one
somewhat classic gym game.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Yeah. I put a textbook gymming in as my no
for this game. This was and Chase mentioned that he
felt like he needed to stall one more turn, but
he felt he felt confident enough. I don't even really
think he took that much damage at this point, right,
(25:15):
I think his whole team was in good shape, and
so he he scored and gave Jim two turns, and
then Jim managed to wrangle up a touchdown during that process,
and then Jim was able to eat most of the
second half and score, and then Chase didn't have enough
in the tank to tie it up to send it
(25:36):
to ot. So yeah, I mean, I think this was
kind of a kind of a textbook gym game. This
is probably the game I got to see the least of,
so I'm not entirely confident. I saw the initial foray
into the game, and I think I was doing some
Blobal play test at the time, so while the rest
(25:59):
of the game was resolved, I was busy playing my
own game. I was just checking in to see what
the score was and stuff like that, so, you know,
but this was one I had actually picked Chase for
that game because I felt like his team was in
really good shape to beat Jim. But Jim did get
money for that game. He took a biased referee, which
(26:22):
is kind of an interesting pick, but I can see
the justification, right, You want to foul with some zombies,
and the biased ref makes it so that your guys
are less likely to get kicked out, and Chase had
a dirty player, sneaky get and so you can pay
one hundred and thirty k or whatever at this point
to kind of negate that player and then make your
(26:44):
fouling about twice as effective. Maybe maybe that's not how
the math works out on it, but you know, you
can throw fouls with zombies opportunistically and then they'll stay
in the game twice as often.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
So yeah, yeah, so that's gonna set us up for
an interesting match to talk about in the second half
of the show. Yeah. We got one game left, though,
which was Halflings and black Works.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Yeah, the Halfling Justice and of Salesman. This was a
crazy game. I don't know if you got to watch
any of this.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
I did not get any.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Okay, so I had. I watched the whole first half
and I just I had it up on my computer
while I was doing other stuff, playing some video games
and had it up and was keeping track of the
game that way. And the first half was like all
(27:43):
Wayne ur Agon got the ball first. Ur Agon went
scorched earth like, fired a bunch of his team to
get his team value down low enough so that Wayne
wasn't have all of the stuff that he's as him to.
Wayne had to cut his team to eleven players, he
(28:04):
had to fire some of his skilled up Halflings, and
then he opted Urgan had it at such a level
where because he overdogged Bomber and a bribe, Wayne could
then get Griff and a chef.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
And so.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
But there's like a world where Urigan goes into that
game without Bomber, and I think if he knew how
Bomber would end up playing out in the game, he
would probably opt not to take Bomber. The one of
the things I'll say about this game is I was
surprised by the number of times one of the players
(28:47):
got punished for one of their decisions. It was quite often.
There were a lot of things in his game where
one player got screwed and you could think, oh, that
lost that player of the game. And so the first
half was all Wayne, like I said, and Jurgan's got
(29:12):
the ball in like a kind of like a caged
up situation, and he ends up making a dodge of
the goblin. And if this goblin breaks free from this dodge,
Jurgen probably scores, because I think Wayne would have had
a lot of trouble trying to muster a defense, and
(29:34):
Urregen had set up like a screen on one side
of the pitch was kind of like working its way down.
Jurgen was had like first half Heregon was having trouble
hurting halflings and uh uh, he might have gotten like
one or two casualties or whatever. Swayne's got thirteen. He's
got Rodney and Griff for this game. And so this
(29:58):
halfling fails, I mean, sorry, this goblin fails. The dodge
in this instance fills the three up with a reroll
and the ball lands within three squares of Rodney and
so Rodney gets uses once per half, hits it with
the fishing line, reels it in, hands it off to
Griff and Griff has gone the other direction and Urgen
(30:20):
can't catch him. He's just out of position for it.
And so Wayne puts the ball in. It puts Yurigen
back on defense, and Jurgen has I think two or
three turns to score. It may have even just been
two turns to score or something like that, and Wayne
was thinking, you know, I'll take this touchdown here. I'll
be in good shape. It'll be hard for Urgon to score.
And Jurgen puts together this drive which is a classic,
(30:49):
like I'm using every part of my team, maximizing squares,
sets up like a really good screen on one side
of the pitch, and manages to tie it up at
the half one to one. And Wayne's got a one
(31:11):
turn attempt, and so he sets up I think he's
out of rerolls at this point, but he sets up
a one turn offense kind of like thing where he's
got people positioned at different parts of the pitch depending
on where the ball could land. He's got Rodney, who's
got on the ball, who can then, you know, use
(31:33):
that to go recover the ball, and the ball scatters
all the way back to the end zone and scatters
out of bounds, and so he gets it, gets a touchback,
so it gets to put on whoever it is. So
that saves him like a bunch of rolls, right because
he doesn't have the roll to pick it up. He
doesn't have to do all this other stuff. He just
gets to stick it on the half link that's right
next to the tree. But the one tree has to
(31:56):
like knock a black ork out of base with the
other tree, the throw is a little bit safer. No
rerolls the tree, double skulls falls over, no one turn attempts,
don't even get to throw the half link at this point,
and so both players are setting up with like ten.
Wayne gets the ball back and I watched like a
(32:17):
little bit of this half because when I was watching it,
I was like, Oh, Wayne's got this. He's going to
be able to stall the whole half and so I
was going to have to work, and so I left
the house. So during the drive, I get to where
(32:43):
I'm gonna go get some lunch, and during that drive,
Jurgen has started to just pummel halflings he's just peeling
them off the pitch. His team's in pretty good shape,
and he's more or less forces to Wayne. Scored, forces
Wayne to score much faster than he needed to, and
(33:04):
so Urigan gets the answer back on his offensive drive
and he sets up a another drive. And there's just
way fewer halflings at this point than there were at
the beginning. And somewhere along the way, Urgan had a
goblin who got an agility down during the course of
(33:27):
the season, and so this goblin is the is the
point man on the screen, and so Wayne manages to
set up a three die block with Griff into Urigan's
seven speed block dodge goblin and finds the pal on
(33:51):
three dice, and so that goblin falls over. The ball
scatters from that hobgoblin to the agility four plus goblin,
who spikes a six to catch it, and youre agon
makes the dodge the four up dodge with a dodge
reroll to run that goblin in and score it and
(34:12):
turn sixteen to tie the game to send it overtime,
and so there and overtime, neither of them have rerolls.
Wayne went one for six on the chef in the game.
He got one reroll in the first half, went over
in the second half, and so I think Jurgen may
may have had like one reroll for overtime, and then
(34:35):
Wayne wins the role, and then they had Urgon had
like a lunch to get to so there was like
the suspense built for a few hours because Oregon went
to like a like a lunch at like one of
the nearby restaurants. Then came back so they could finish
out the game. And sure enough, Wayne's got the ball
(34:56):
and jur Agen sets up his defense and he just
he's peeling half wings because I think Wayne was. I
think Jurgen had nine people in o time overtime, Wayne
had seven. So that's how they set up. And so
the trees are still active and Griff is still active,
(35:16):
but like Rodney got murdered somewhere in the second half,
and so Jurgen really pressures the cage that Wayne is
making and at some point he manages to get one
of the tackle black works on Griff, and so Wayne
(35:37):
goes to dodge away because that's his best option in
this instance. He has not used grifts once per game yet,
so he goes to dodge and he rolls a one,
and he uses Griff once per game, and it's a one.
Griff falls over the ball, lands in like like behind
the trees, and so Urregon sends the house after it,
(35:58):
but he can't get anybody on to the ball because
you know, the Black Ork team is just kind of
like slightly too slow. So on the next turn, Griff
stands up, walks onto the ball in three tackle zones,
rolls the five to pick it up, dodges Out gets it,
and then manages to get away far enough away. Then
(36:20):
on the next turn, you're Agan's best option is to
blitz with like some goblins, and so he's got to
set up like a bunch of goblins to throw like
a two die because all the Black Orks are out
of range thanks to the way the trees were positioned,
you know they were they were a good like fence
against the Black Horks. And so Urgan fails like a
(36:41):
go for it with one of the goblins to set
up an assist, and then Griff dodges Out breaks away,
scores the third touchdown for the half wings, and then
Urgan's got a couple turns to score. He's got like
three turns to score or whatever, and Wayne, I think
is playing defense with four four players. I think he's
got the two trees one halfling left. It was the
(37:05):
tackle halfling, which we mentioned, uh get several episodes ago
that halfling somehow had had was the sole survivor of
the the halfling massacre in this.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Game, obligated to mention the tackle halfling.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yep, exactly, and so the so Wayne's playing defense with
like four players at this point, Jurgen's team is still
really slow, and Jurgen manages to set up a cage
and I think Griff goes for like a four up
dodge to blitz the ball carrier and fails. It falls over,
(37:44):
and all Urgan's got to do is make two go
for it's to score. He makes the first go for it,
he fails the next go for it, and the game
runs out of time. Urgan loses three to two. They
rolled out the kicks to see what it would have been.
If you're gonna have managed to make it, You're gonna
would have won on kicks, which is one of those
(38:04):
irrelevant things you know, because you you know it doesn't
it doesn't quite matter, but that is about as close
as the game gets. You know, failed go for it
to tie the game to send it to kicks. So
an incredible game, just just outstanding game overall, Like you know,
(38:25):
it's that's everything you want from a playoff game.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Yeah, by far, I think this round top to bottom
quality has been excellent.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Right right, Yeah, you play all season to get games
of this caliber.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Right, Yeah. Well we've got our in memorial for this game.
We have for having justice, we had ohs Bracekirdle, and
for our salesmen we lost Dolmayan.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Yeah, and that's actually an unforced error for your Again,
I didn't mention this at the beginning of the game,
that Goblin will strip ball tackle. He had two random
things Urgan forgot to mark him, and so on turn one,
Urgon puts a Goblin on the line near one of
(39:13):
the trees because the intention was to dodge away, so
he put that character on the line, and then he
failed to pick up the ball on turn one. He
used a reroll then and lost the reroll, and so
the tree just kills that Goblin. And so you can't like,
how does the game play out if you're Agon's best
(39:35):
like his best Halfling answer, Goblin, his best Griff answer, right,
because he can dodge into a cage, Go two, die uphill,
you know, and he's like fifty percent or something to
pop the ball loose out of griff. You know, if
that players in the game and not dead, how does
(39:56):
the game play out? I don't know, right, Like it's
a toad different game. But you're again just unforced error.
Put this goblin in a place for him to explode.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
PSA, mark your models, mark your models.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Yeah, yeah, know what you're know what you're getting rid of.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
All right, let's gonna do it for this round before
we get into the semifinals. Are gonna take a quick
break and be right back. Okay, we're down to three
games left. There's a chance all three will happen before
the next episode, depending on how they schedules. But we're
in the semifinals. In semi final number one will be
(40:36):
happening the day after recording this, right, So we've got
halfling Justice and Slaughterhouse eleven.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Yeah, So the next forty five minutes of the episode
is me describing every inducement scenario that could happen for
this game. So strap in.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Yeah, it's hard, it's hard to communicate this over and
audio media. But prior to starting the recording, Nathan was
doing the doctor strange, going through fourteen million possibilities coming
to the proper and doc plan.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
Yeah, so let's see if I can get deense it
down to something parsible for like an audio format. Right
what we've got in this game. So, because of the
damage that I took during the course of the Will game,
I have nine active players, which means, as it stands
(41:33):
right now, we both just submitted our rosters, I would
get two Marauder Journeymen to add to the game. Now,
my treasury has two hundred and eighty five thousand gold
in it, and that's because before the Will game, I
rolled a one on my treasury and lost half of it,
which was really stupid. That's the second time that's happened
to me this season. Both times I've actually thrown away
(41:57):
money so that I would be under four hundred K.
So I need exactly a one for me to lose
money in that situation, and so I lost half of
my treasury there. So I can't just like freeboot Morgue
and you know, go into the game with like morg
That was like my original game plan was if I
(42:17):
had to play against Wayne, I would just go in
with whatever my team is and then hire Morgue, and
then he has to decide whether he wants to dispel
Morgue or use that for other stuff and go into
the game with like the Giant and you know whatever else.
But I think the blood Spawn and Morgue are both
actual reasonable threats into the Giant, like they can actually
(42:39):
get the Giant off the pitch. So I was fine
with that scenario, right Anyway, that's not what's coming to pass. Instead,
I've got nine players in two hundred and eighty five goals,
so I can. I'm down two corn Gorees and two
blood Seekers for this game. I have two in addition
(43:01):
to the guys who died. I had a Tackle corn
Gore who's missing this game, which really sucks because he
this is like a type of game where block druggernaut
tackle just feasts. And then I had another blood Seeker
missing this game, and this is U and actually like
blood seekers in this kind of matchup. One because four
(43:23):
strength is harder for like halflings to gang up on,
and two four strength makes it so that the trees
don't get three dice on you, and so it makes
them less likely to get knocked over plus their armor ten,
so they actually have a pretty good chance of withstanding
some mighty blow hits during the course of the game.
So the the I could buy a blood Seeker, I
(43:46):
could buy extra models Wayne's team. He hasn't made any
adjustments to it yet. I had one blood Seeker who
could take a skill, and I've already locked in the skill.
I locked in and Guard because I think it's the
most useful skill in this situation where I may need
(44:07):
to knock over trees at some point or another, it
will very least need to throw hits on trees. I
would not have that option. I would not have that
option without like taking some extra guard. So the nature
of the way that tour play works is that and
(44:30):
the rules that we have written for the league. The
way it works is like if both players agree they're
not going to make any more changes to their rosters,
if anybody makes the changes before the game starts, the
other person gets a chance to kind of respond, and
you go back and forth making whatever changes that you want.
So I actually think the only advantage that I have
here I can't undercut Wayne. I'm not going to do
(44:52):
the Urgan thing. I'm not going to scorch the earth
because the players that I have remaining I think are
actually good in the matchup. There's nobody that I think
is dead weight on my roster. I think the only
advantage that I have is I wait to see whatever
change is Wayne is going to make. I don't make
any changes, and then I submit my roster and I
keep the full two hundred and eighty five gold because
(45:15):
then I have the option to induce say Borak, if
I want. I can see what his team looks like,
and then I can hire a star player if I
think it's good enough, and then walk into the game
that way. So the reason I made the joke about
spending forty five minutes talking about inducements is because just
(45:38):
the way the inducement math works out, depending on if
I take any inducements, then I give that extra money
to Wayne. And so really what he's got to decide
is like he has multiple options. I think he's going
to go with a setup where he's got griff Chef
(46:06):
and then he'll hire halflings down to the point where
he can take Rumbelow. Rumbelow has got some use against
my teams. I've got three different Marauders with Russell and
I've got a tackle or I've got a dodge Beastman,
and so Rumbelow actually has lots of application against that setup, right,
(46:28):
And so I think he's fine taking Rumbelow as a
as the worst case. And then if I hire any
star players, and trust me, I've considered hiring Hackflim. But
if I hire Hackflim, then that puts him to three
point eighty and he could take more, right, So it
(46:48):
kind of it kind of I have to determine what
star players I'm fine playing against. I considered Skidder as well,
because Skidder is I think Skiter's suite of skills is
actually really good because he's got Prance all tail and shadowing,
(47:09):
which means if there's a situation where Griff can't just
blitz Skitter off of him and he's got to run
the other way, Skitterer can be like glued to him,
and Prance all Tail makes it. Prances just really good
against stunties because there's a lot of scenarios where if
(47:29):
a stunty dodging away needs a four, they're gonna feel
way more of those dodges. And so Skiter plus like
tackle on Key. Halflings can just really gum up the works,
and Hackflim also has prants all tail, so I think
both of them are really good in this matchup. The
(47:50):
question is is do I think I've got enough on
this roster to endure Mighty Blow plus two hits from
either Deep or Morgue if I take one of the
star players.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
So yeah, that is going to be an interesting game.
I think obviously you're coming off a game against Santy.
Nomes are way different.
Speaker 2 (48:17):
But they are way different. Actually, I think gnomes are
easier to kill than halflings. Though I think my team
was engineer. I've been engineering my team because I figured
somewhere in this playoff structure I was going to play
against a critical massive dodge and I was going to
(48:37):
be ready for that. Now two of my tackle guys
were are m I A for this game? Which really
sucks because that was I was trying to make sure
I had enough tackle for this for this specific matchup.
But so now I got to deal with like, I
(48:58):
don't I look at like whether grad double drill, then
I don't think, and I'm like, this guy's not good
enough right, not enough strength, not enough speed. The thing
that the thing that has always flummixed Wayne when he's
been playing halflings is the speed of characters, which is
why I think either Hackflim or Skider is probably the
best call for this matchup, because there are board states
(49:22):
where a gutter runner with the ball running the full
distance in the other way makes it so that the
halfling team does not have any good answers for him,
and I could see where like hack Flim being able
to dodge through tackle zones on two ups with could
could end up being really good. And I think three
(49:43):
strength on Hackflim means he's gonna, like Wayne would have
to throw a lot of halflings at him to knock
him over. So that I might I've already played against
more I don't know, three times with his team. I've
killed him once. The other couple of games he's been
still roaming around the field. You know, I think Morgue
(50:06):
is way more mortal than say a deep route because
deep roots got seven strength, and I got to like
find a lot of assists to get blood spawn assists
into that or blood spawn uh blocks into it. But yeah,
I don't I don't know. I might just lock my
roster in and just go into the game as it
(50:27):
is playing against Rumbelow, I think is fine. Rum Below
is fragile. Rumblow is significantly more frail than any of
the alternatives. And while he's good into my team, I've
got pieces on my team that are really good into Rumblow.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
So yeah, that will and that is. There's only two
games left, so it's hard to pick a game of
the week. Yeah, but I'm excited to watch that one
and I will offer no further input and to suck
for for that game. But our other game, we got
bad nourizing r o us. I think this game. I
(51:08):
guess if I had to give a game the game
of the week status, it would probably be this one,
just because these sketches have had a long history of
facing each other in the playoffs.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
Yeah, and I think Jim's got the Lion's share of
the record, right probably. Yeah, I probably should have looked
this up before now. But I think traditionally Jim is
one kryptonite. There are not a lot of things that
are one kryptonite. But but yeah, they did not play
(51:48):
in season two. I don't I don't have season one handy.
Season three, they did not play. It's season four. Jim
won the championship over one. Season five, they did not play.
(52:16):
Season six. We've got them not playing against each other,
I believe, Yes, that's correct. Yeah, no, they did play.
One got the one got the win. That was one
the vampire team versus Goblins, and that's not a good
(52:39):
matchup for the for the goblins because like, the goblins
can kill like every single throw on the table. But
if you've got a whole bunch of giga vampires, then
the vampires just still do what they want in the game. Right,
So that was that season six. Season seven, I don't
(52:59):
think they play. They did not. Yeah, so now this
is the first time he's played since season sixth then,
and Jim was on a completely kind of a goofy
team at the time. Right. It was a Goblin team
that overperformed. I think it's just because Jim was really
good at wrangling every single drop of efficiency out of
(53:21):
a team.
Speaker 1 (53:23):
This is a rematch from earlier in the season as well.
Jim had a gyming game to one win, so it'll
be interesting to see. I think that this Necromantic team
really came along and I know at the start of
the playoffs we were talking like the team looked a
little underdeveloped obviously had lost a lot of key pieces.
(53:45):
But now you know you've got two werewolves with blocked
out and tackle and.
Speaker 2 (53:49):
One of those wherelds can even can even take a
regular skill. Jim actually has one, two, three, four, five
skills that he could potentially take before this game, depending
on what he thinks is useful in this game or not.
So he's been kind of managing his team value by
not taking these skills. That's an extra hundred K, right,
(54:13):
so I think that's part of the reason why he
hasn't taken it. He's got a level up on a
mighty blow Wraith. I think I would probably take tackle
for this game, just so that way you've got something
that's a threat to gutter runners. He's got another wraith,
the wraith that normally dies isn't the place where he
can take a skill. I would be tempted to take
(54:34):
tackle just you got gutter runners. You're planning its gutter runners.
I'm just always tempted to take tackle to answer them. Right,
He's got a flesh going with the skill. He's got
a Google block surehands Google with skill and then blocked
dot to tackle Wherewolf all can take skills, So there's
a lot of a lot of advancement he can do,
(54:58):
and I'm interested to see what he's go to choose.
I mean, block guard is really good on the flesh gun,
then both flesh guns would be block guard. And that
makes it so that you just kind of want to
like get the scavin into a scrum with you, right,
Like you just want to create just like a massive
pile and let your skills, your skills take over the
(55:20):
game at that point. Yeah, block dodge tackle on a
wearolf that's real good at killing gutter runners as well.
Speaker 1 (55:30):
Yeah, if I was, if I was like sitting there
with gutter runners, I would be really scared of those
because by itself, it can like one wear well by
itself is just covering such a large swath of the field,
and you're gonna get to and you've got frenzy, so
you've got you've got to survive Ford Dice with tackle.
Speaker 2 (55:50):
So now let's imagine one of these weirrels had thirty
extra SPP.
Speaker 1 (55:57):
Also a rave advocate exactly what that rath had before
it died.
Speaker 2 (56:02):
It's Jim said, it was the raith that always died
because it died in the game versus Austin, apparently it
had died. It had been neutralized multiple times during the
season already.
Speaker 1 (56:11):
So yeah, yeah, I think that is going to be
a very interesting game to see because he, like you said,
all those little micro decisions could lead to some very
interesting inducement play being able to like, I can pick
and choose skills where I want them and still get
a star player that you really want somewhere in there,
(56:32):
possibly or some other specific inducement you like.
Speaker 2 (56:35):
So yeah, I mean the best star players available to
him are like Ivan and Wilhelm, right, I actually think
Wilhelm is of minimal use versus Skavin because the clause
are what's really good. One is even taken the extra
step of pre clawing his couple models on his team.
(56:58):
Both his rad Guger and Blitzer armors armor downs, so
they're already optimized versus Clause. They've shed that extra weight
so that way Clause can't affect them. Uh So yeah,
I mean, like both the playoff games that One has
played so far, he's done incredible amounts of damage to
(57:19):
his opponents before like winning, I think there's a good
chance that Jim can shake off the damage and and
then like flip it on one and get some real
big damage into him.
Speaker 1 (57:38):
Right. So, yeah, that's going to be that was that
think's going to be the what it comes down to
this game, especially you know just watching have you watched
the other games. He is not afraid of going to
overtime if that's what it takes. He will play out
that entire second half as if he's going overtime to Yeah.
(58:00):
So it's like, you know, very conservative on rerolls, and
then if you're he's going to put you in a
position where you can try to win in regulation. But
if something happens and all of a sudden you cough
the ball up and I'm sitting here with a full
complement of rerolls, that you're in a bad spot.
Speaker 2 (58:19):
Yeah. Yeah, Necro is just like Necro's a very good
positional team. It'll actually be like it's not easy for
the one turn to happen against Necro because you can
put the flesh golums and you can put like a
wraith on the line, and that lack of repositioning makes
(58:44):
it so that you can't just get like chain pushes
and it throws off all of the one turn math.
Basically there's an all link. One has a he's got
two plays as you can one turn, but they both
have but one of them's got side yea. Yeah, they
(59:05):
both have sized up and sprint and so they need
they need a chain push to get across the line
as it is, and so Jim actually has the tools
to prevent that on the roster.
Speaker 1 (59:19):
So yeah, yeah, it's gonna be an exciting game to see.
And then yeah, depending on well, this game is happening
on Friday, so we should get another episode in before
the finals hopefully.
Speaker 2 (59:35):
Yeah, depending on depending on how it plays out, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (59:38):
Which will be good. But that's pretty much all I
have for this week.
Speaker 2 (59:42):
Yeah, I think we can just take a real fast.
We can close out the episode mentioning submitting rosters for
next league. Okay, I see if we've got two people
who've got the rosters in. I know Warren's one of them,
but thing somebody else got there and yeah, okay, yeah
(01:00:02):
Fred's got his end as well. So we've got a
form set up. So if you're creating a new team
and you're adding skills to it, you'll create the team
and tour play and register for the league, and then
you'll go to bb roster, make that roster and add
the skills to the players that you want, and then
(01:00:24):
you can submit that. And so you've got up until
the league begins to submit those. There's been there's quite
a lot of talk about new teams, but we actually
have like a ton of like redraft teams entering the league.
And so the reason we're not adding skills yet is
because that's like a strategically disadvantageous for the people who
(01:00:47):
have submitted their rosters. Anybody joined the league can go
take a look at the skills that you've taken and
then kind of like try to counter pick you. So
that's why we haven't added stuff yet. Don't worry about it.
We will take care of it before you get there.
Uh So, yeah, there you go. That's news right there.
(01:01:07):
If you did redraft your team from previous leagues, remember
that we had like extra gold and make sure you
leave one hundred k in your treasury.
Speaker 1 (01:01:17):
So, yeah, one more thing. There were a little under
two months out now for Paul Metico.
Speaker 2 (01:01:25):
Yeah, I think it's like six weeks away or so,
and yeah, that would be fun. I actually need to
I did a little bit of QURN play testing for
Polental Cup. I haven't really found a corn list that
I've liked for tournament player. I think it actually involves
skitter now that I think about it. You probably just
add you probably just flex seal Skitterer onto any QRN
(01:01:46):
team and then boom, suddenly you've got a scoring threat
that you didn't have before. So yeah, but yeah, there
you go.
Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
Yeah, find your find your teammate. If you're looking for somebody,
you know, go ahead and post in the discord. Something
surely will join.
Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
Yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing who's coming from out
of town this time around. We had a pretty big
turnout last year, and but a bunch of people from
the neighboring league jump in a team. Formats are always
kind of fun anyway, because you get some you get
some flexibility with like the team that you make and whatnot.
You know, just it's it's a fun time for sure.
Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
Yeah. Looking forward to intentionally playing this one, not being
a ringer. Yeah, Yeah, that's that's going to do it
for us this week. Appreciate y'all listening wherever you are listening.
We're on pretty much every major platform, so wherever you're listening,
make sure you're liking your thumbs up, following subscribing whatever
iterations of those options are available on that platform, and
(01:02:47):
then maybe go to like a couple others and do
that too. You know, if you go to one additional
platform a week, make the whole suitep do something like that,
make it make it better for us.
Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
Yeah, you get two people to listen to the podcast,
and you'll get to get join the initiative level of
Empire Games podcast listeners, and each of them will get
to people to listen to the podcast. You'll move up
to the demi witch level. I'm just looking around the
(01:03:18):
room for things to name right now.
Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
Yeah, eventually, and then eventually at the end, he gets
some very nice avon Pink Block Dice.
Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
The Empire Games Blood Bowl Mercedes that you get to
drive around town in.
Speaker 1 (01:03:34):
Oh gosh, that would be a good one. That will
be in communication to try to get that set up.
But yeah, appreciate it, listen and we'll see you next week.
Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
Goodbye, everybody,
Welcome in, everybody to write stuff. A blood ball podcast
brought to you by m Higher Games. I am Yenny
here with Nathan, and we are running out of content
for this season.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Yep, we're scraping the bottom of the barrel here. The
game's heat up. We have less stuff to talk about that.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Yeah, if you were worried about our Giant Playoff preview
episode a couple weeks back, you will enjoy this one
probably more, I guess.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yeah. It's a little bit more condensed, a little bit
more truncated. I would say the playoff games were overall
pretty high quality, right, the lots I mean all of
these games were decided by one touchdown, which was not
the case the first round of the playoffs. So yeah,
lots of lots of pretty good games to cover here.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Yeah, and you might have seen them because we streamed
them on our YouTube channel. Definitely go give the follow there. Uh,
those previous games got streamed, and our upcoming games are
also going to be streamed, so you will be able
to watch the thrilling conclusion of Empire Cup Season eight
(01:18):
on your screens at home and revel in all the joy.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Bring beamed directly into your cortex. By the monkey killing
cortex chip. Uh, what's the what's the name of the companyink? Yes,
beamed directly to your cortex, Yes, via neuralink.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Just stay away from microwaves. All right, we've got I
figured we go through in chronological order the way the
games happened over the course of the week, so to
give you the chance to talk first, so that yeah,
we had great Treed, good boy us and slaughter Husse eleven.
And not to spoil to anything, so that maybe the
(02:02):
last time I say that name on this podcast.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Yeah. It was a bloody, bloody game by far, the
most damage that my team has taken during the course
of this league, and I dished out basically for every
casualty I didn't do in my first game against Chris,
I inflicted two in this game, more or less right,
(02:26):
because I'm playing against stunt E's will had his kind
of like pick of inducements, and so he opted to
go with the Mighty blow plus four package of Morgue
and deeper, and so I was worried about my players
safety and apparently I had every right to. In the
(02:50):
first half, I got the ball first and I opted
to score. I think I exploded like two nons. The
very first nome I touched in that game exploded, and
then I think I casually had to know him on
like turn two as well. And then my drive got
(03:12):
a little suspect because I think Deep Route like based
my ball carrier and I had to kind of like
make a dodge with him and that was not necessarily safe,
and I failed the dodge but got the reroll, and
that was like pretty scary in that moment because I
feel that first dodge and was like, uh oh, this
(03:35):
is how I lose the game, because I think both
Morgan Deep Route kind of had me like pinned up
against the sideline. But I managed to wriggle out of
there get the touchdown, and I was hoping to stop
Will there, but I knew he had like a lot
of time, and sure enough I wasn't able to stop him.
(03:55):
So I think we were tied one one at the
half and then I have to kick back to him.
Now at this point, I've managed to take out quite
a few gnomes and I even managed to ko a tree.
I think the blood Spon kote a tree somewhere in there,
and actually I think my blood spond KOed two trees
(04:17):
a kot a tree on the first drive and it
didn't come back, and then I cooed his other tree,
the non deep Roote tree. It was a trivial and
tree face or whatever. The two trees on his team,
they were both kaoed by the end of the half,
and so he got one of them back for the
drive on his offensive drive, and he actually went for
(04:41):
a throw teammate touchdown with deep Roote and got a
touchdown pretty fast, and so that left me time to score.
So I was in an interesting place where my goal
was to grind through his team, chow as many players
up as I could on that drive, and then score
(05:07):
on turn sixteen, send it to overtime with no and
have him out players that could actually score, right, And
so it looked pretty good like that. It looked like
that attempt was gonna work, because I think he had
(05:27):
like a bad His first turn of defense was really
really bad. I think he failed to dodge or something.
He did something on that turn that caused like a
premature turnover. And I had a lot of follow up
hits on gnomes and I think I casually two of
those nomes. I think it killed another one. It was
one of those where I just removed a bunch of
(05:50):
players and I kept blitzing Morgue with my blood Spawn
because I was trying to get morg out of the
game because that would really alleviate the pressure. I could
just stall, however, I wanted to then right with if
your only option to get to my ballcarrier is trees,
I can play keep away from trees, right and so
(06:15):
on that drive. After that turn where I removed people
and that was probably one of the best turns that
I've had all season, I experienced one of the worst
turns I've had all season where I rolled My first
block of the turn is double skulls and so I
have to reroll it. My like third or fourth block
(06:39):
of that turn is double skulls again, so I have
to reroll that. And I was trying to save all
my rerolls for the the overtime, right if I'm playing
for it, and so I then I ended my turn
with like a blitz from the blood Spawn into deep Root,
(07:03):
and I hit deep Route on five and I roll
both down, both down, and I really don't want deep
Root hitting my blood spond back and so I use
pro I get a push, so I opt to use
the push. I go for it, the blood Spon fails
to go for it. I'm actually fine with this because
(07:23):
then the blood Spon's on the ground and Deep Roots
not hanging with my blowpos two right. However, Will breaks
armor and then casually is the blood Spawn, and I
actually thought my chances to win the game like expired
right there, because I don't have a piece now that
threatens the big guys the way that the blood Spawn does. Unfortunately,
(07:46):
it was only missed the rest of this game. It
wasn't out for the following game. But I basically just
have to score in this instance because I can no
longer threaten more than it can no longer threaten Deep Root,
and I really don't want him blitzing one of my guys,
Mighty Blobilist to every turn while I try to like
(08:06):
keep the ball away from him. So we're tied two
to two, and so we line up. At this point,
I'm down a few players. I think I'm playing with
like ten on defense, maybe maybe nine. And then he
(08:30):
is lining up and I've killed a lot of gnomes
by this plant of the game, and so he's he's
still got one fox. He gets back his other tree.
So he's got both trees deep Root, Morgue, a Fox,
a Gnome, Lineman, an Illusionist, and the beast Master, because
(08:50):
he was talking about how he wished the tree hadn't
come back in the game that way he would have
had one of each piece, and the tree broke up
the beautiful symmetry of his team at that point. So
but so yeah, he's got He has like a huge
strength advantage on me now because the Bloodspawn's gone and
I still have some solid players left. And on his
(09:16):
opening hits deep route kills like my block Mighty Blow
blood Seeker just straight dead. And I had used my
pothcarry earlier in the game because a random foul that
he threw resulted in a blood Seeker dying as well,
and so I opted to a pothcarry that and got
it back in the game, And so I don't have
(09:39):
a pothcaarrey for this hit. The guy's dead, which was
a shame because I think that guy had two casualties
during the course of the game. He was really racking
nomes up, and so that's obviously bad. And he kind
of like makes a cage, he gets the ball to
a Fox, he makes a cage around it kind of
(10:01):
towards midfield, and so I commit a good chunk of
my team there. I leave two of my wrestle tackle
marauders like midfield, because if the Fox tries to reverse
field on me, I wanted them in a place where
they could go wherever they needed to on the on
(10:23):
the field, because they those were my answers to the Foxes. Right,
And so I get a block on Morg and I
knock him over, and I get a random armor brake
on Morg and he's stunned, which is great because that
means he's out of the next play. I have a
two die hit on a tree which I throw and
(10:46):
it ends up being like push push, and he opts
not to stand firm, and then I go two die uphill,
which was not great, and I roll a skull and
I've got one reroll left, and so I'm like, well,
can't you it here? But my goal was to try
to like push my way into the cage with some players,
and so my guy goes down, and so that tree
(11:08):
I didn't knock over kills my block tackle guard Corn
Gore on the next turn with his hit, which is
a straight up debacle for me because that guard was
like giving me the strength I need. He was like
very instrumental on that previous turn because his assist was
(11:30):
needed for Morg and the tree at the same time.
And so that guy's dead. And he had scored like
seven Star player points worth of stuff in that game
because I think he had to casualties. Plus he scored
like one of my touchdowns, and so I'm out that guy,
and Will reverses field with the Fox, runs it to
(11:53):
the opposite sideline, like goes for it twice, and then
he had is Deep Route go to blitz one of
my wrestle tackle guys, but Deep Root's got to make
a go for it, and he rolls a one, and
so he tries to loaner and fails the loaner check,
(12:14):
and so Deep Route just kind of falls over midfield,
and I send my guy after the Fox, the wrestle
tackle guy. My first block on the Fox is double skulls,
so I have to use my last reroll because the
Fox is easily within scoring position at this point, so
(12:36):
I have to use my last reroll. I get pushes
and then I have to like do a go for
it to do the follow up hit. But I managed
to knock over the fox and casually did get it
out of the get it off the field, so I
know we're secure for overtime. And I throw like a
(12:58):
couple more hits, and I move one of my guys
into scoring range, you know so, and then I run
like another Marauder over to go pick up the ball
and succeed on that that pick up, and I am like,
then the position that I'm in is like do I
throw it past this turn? I do throw it next turn? Right.
(13:19):
If I throw the pass now, it needs like a
sixer accuracy. But if I roll like a four, a
four three or a two is going to be wildly
inaccurate and the ball will end up somewhere on the
pitch and I don't necessarily want that, so I opt
for the pass on turn sixteen. Will doesn't have like
a good way to really stop me from scoring. I
(13:40):
think I do like a I think he moves like
a non illusionist next to my guy who who is
in scoring range. But everything else is to kind of
tied up, and so I get I think I'm able
to like block off the non illusionist side step and
where it can teleport two, I block off that blitz
(14:05):
it out of the way so I don't have to
make a dodge with a guy, and I walk up
to throw the pass with the marauder. It's a short
pass and need a five. I roll a four. The
pass is inaccurate, it scatters to the left, it scatters up,
and then it scatters diagonally back onto the guy that
I targeted, who rolls the four to catch it because
(14:26):
it's not accurate, and then he makes his go for
it and scores closes out the game three to two.
I get I get bailed out by an inaccurate pass
on the last turn to avoid overtime because I think
if we go to overtime then I may not have
a team through Morgan Deep route by that point. So
(14:49):
incredible end to that game. It was good that overtime ended, too,
because I wanted to go home and watch and Or
because the new three episodes we're like ten minutes away
from premiering from the end of that and if I
had been uh, if I had been late, I would
have heard about it, heard about it from my and
OR watching buddies.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
So well, yeah, I'm very glad for your for your
and OR fandom. That Yeah, that was the result.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Yeah, it was a It was a crazy game. Like
I said, lots of blood on both sides, and he
killed two of I in my estimation, he killed like
my third and fourth best players. And I think it
depends on the type of global player you are. You
might think that the block tackle guard player might even
be better than my dodge block dodge sure hands corn
(15:37):
gore right, depending on what kind of situations you're looking for.
But yeah, that game was that. That game was a
nail biter. That was some playoff bloodball right there, for sure.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah, I want to deviate a little bit from our
normal procedure into our in memoriam by game for this one.
So for Great Tree good Byes, we had slime no
blindman murdered and then for your team scourgerish the slate
grip and.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Right, Yeahox was the guy who died earlier in the game.
But yeah, Ox, this this is my salute to fallen
heroes right here. You can't see it, but I am
saluting them. Uh these guys are They served me extremely
well during the course of the season. Ox was a
(16:31):
was a was a piece I could always count on.
I'm giving him his obituary. Now, this is abituary bituary
for a fallen Blood Bowl player. Ox.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
He was.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
He just it was always where I needed him during
the course of the season. He was a really instrumental
piece to a lot of my wins. And uh, he
was my favorite sculpt of the of the corn goers.
He's the corn gore who's like like bringing his fist
down on somebody. Looked really cool, Like you look at
the model and you're like that, that guy's got juggernaut
(17:06):
for sure. And so yeah, well I'll miss you. And uh,
Scourgeriss he was. He was the blood seeker. He was
most confident, which is why he got Mighty blow first.
And so I wish I wish he were still around.
There's lots of halflings that I think he would love
to be killing somewhere down the pipe. But yeah, well
(17:31):
we'll see you at the crossroads.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Guys. I think they both earned their entrance into Corns.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yeah yeah, Corns domain for sure. Yeah yeah, I mean
all you can ask for. I mean they both had
two casualties in that game, so honestly, I guess that's
really what they got. What they deserved then, right at
that point, they fought with enough honor and spilled enough
blood to uh to enter Corn's domain.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Yes, all right. Our next game was on the other
side the brackets. We had tried rebranding to the some
luck shots did not work.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
R O U s G is a one to zero win.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Yeah. The joke I made right after that game was
if I told you that there was a Gnome Corn
game and a Scave in Dark Helf game and the
results of one of those games was one to zero
and the result of the other one was three to two,
which do you think is which I think most people
would say, Well, the Scaven Dark Heaf game is the
(18:31):
one that had five touchdowns in regulation, and you would
be wrong.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Yeah. So this game we saw some interesting counterplay betweens coaches.
Scaven went in as overdog because of no rerolls Key Striten, value,
nice and Lean probably would have liked to have some
rules for this game, but over over dogging Bomber and
(18:58):
having an answer for Bomber that was more expensive than
Bomber himself. On the other side for dark Owls, which
is an interesting strategy. He told you about it before.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Yeah, Coop went to go with the Wizard, and so
you can't fireball before the other person takes their first action.
But Frog, when we looked it up, Frog does not
have that same limitation on it. Frog says before or
after anybody's turn. So I believe one was receiving in
(19:31):
that game, and so Coop hit Bomber with the frog
with the zapp before Bomber even got to throw a bomb.
And so if you look at the tour play recap
for this game, Bomber threw a lot of fouls, but
that's a frog shaped bomber stepping on people's heads. And
so one used every part of the frog there on offense,
(19:56):
and this game was a tail two halves. One did
some catastrophic damage to the Zerok Chucks before halftime, like
got rid of both Wichel's got rid of like two blitzers,
two bloggers, right something along those lines, just chewing through them.
(20:17):
And then Coop is setting up on defense with I
don't know, or he's setting up to receive the ball
in the second half with like seven or eighty people,
and turns the game around, starts chewing through some scaving.
Somewhere in the first half, the rat ogre got KOed
(20:39):
and it didn't come back in to the game, and
so that second half of this game was like really harrowing.
Wan managed to strip the ball, but there was like
this crazy sequence towards the end of the game. Wan stripball.
He's taken the ball, gets it with a runner and
(21:00):
runs to his own backfield. And I think one has
moved through his rerolls at this point, and one goes
to hit a player and double Skulls uses his last
reroll and double skulls and that blitzer hits the ground
(21:22):
and k is kot. So one goes from trying to
throw a hit to losing a player right, which is
like worst case scenario. And so Coop knocks over the
gutter runner with the ball. He recovers the ball, so
the next turn Wan has to scramble. He gets like
(21:43):
a one die hit with like a wrestle gutter runner
gets the boat down, the ball pops out, One recovers
it with another gutter runner. Coop goes to hit that
gutter runner, and so the thing is the ball keeps
moving ever closer to Wan's zone as the sequence keeps happening,
and so it's one of those where like if the
(22:06):
right elf knocks the ball loose and another elf goes
and grabs it. Then Coop can tie the game. In
this instance, he's just like a couple steps away from it.
And so the turn where Coop can probably get that
the touchdown that he needs, he goes to throw the
hit and he finally rolls double skulls, and so he
(22:28):
of course has no reroulls. His player goes down, one's
able to move the ball out of the way, clock expires,
and one wins it one to oher on the back
of the double skulls. I think it's fitting that the
zero look Chuck's the last role that they made in
that game was double skulls. You know, I think when
(22:52):
you're playing with zero rerolls, that's probably the gonna be
the case. More often than not. The last thing that
you do in a game is gonna be a failure.
Last thing you do in the season is going to
be a failure.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Of some kind. Right, But overall, you know, it was
like it was a really good season.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
To yeah together, I agree with the yeah. I mean,
Elves are not a bad candidate for this, right. You
succeed on everything on a two and he had some
bad luck in the early part of the season, but
his team came together late in the season and then
you really got to take advantage of the inducement game
(23:27):
after that point, and so he was able to take
some some outsized inducements and then he you know, it
didn't hurt that he played fairly well in a lot
of those games. He was talking about how the no rerolls.
It's kind of like sevens. I think both of those
situations make you better black ball players because you got
(23:47):
to focus on what's important. You really got to decide
is this action worth taking?
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Yeah? Yeah, one death in this game. It was very
death filled week with all only four games. We already
have the four desks critical one one of the which
elves dead on turn two. I think that honestly was
one of the big turning points of the game was
on turn two which elf is dead turned three, the
(24:13):
other which office out. Yeah, So like those would have
been pieces he would have loved it had Like if
it's a witch Alf going down and has a ball,
gets wrestled down, It's got jump up right so you
can get it. There's a chance like wrestles not good enough.
He just picks it up and runs yep, and that's out.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
But yeah, right, which Elves would have been really good
down stretch, but that that wasn't an option here.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Yeah, unfortunately. Okay, next up, we've got the other game
from this bracket center for the semi finals matchup here,
bad Moon Rising Southern California Trojans a two to one
somewhat classic gym game.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Yeah. I put a textbook gymming in as my no
for this game. This was and Chase mentioned that he
felt like he needed to stall one more turn, but
he felt he felt confident enough. I don't even really
think he took that much damage at this point, right,
(25:15):
I think his whole team was in good shape, and
so he he scored and gave Jim two turns, and
then Jim managed to wrangle up a touchdown during that process,
and then Jim was able to eat most of the
second half and score, and then Chase didn't have enough
in the tank to tie it up to send it
(25:36):
to ot. So yeah, I mean, I think this was
kind of a kind of a textbook gym game. This
is probably the game I got to see the least of,
so I'm not entirely confident. I saw the initial foray
into the game, and I think I was doing some
Blobal play test at the time, so while the rest
(25:59):
of the game was resolved, I was busy playing my
own game. I was just checking in to see what
the score was and stuff like that, so, you know,
but this was one I had actually picked Chase for
that game because I felt like his team was in
really good shape to beat Jim. But Jim did get
money for that game. He took a biased referee, which
(26:22):
is kind of an interesting pick, but I can see
the justification, right, You want to foul with some zombies,
and the biased ref makes it so that your guys
are less likely to get kicked out, and Chase had
a dirty player, sneaky get and so you can pay
one hundred and thirty k or whatever at this point
to kind of negate that player and then make your
(26:44):
fouling about twice as effective. Maybe maybe that's not how
the math works out on it, but you know, you
can throw fouls with zombies opportunistically and then they'll stay
in the game twice as often.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
So yeah, yeah, so that's gonna set us up for
an interesting match to talk about in the second half
of the show. Yeah. We got one game left, though,
which was Halflings and black Works.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Yeah, the Halfling Justice and of Salesman. This was a
crazy game. I don't know if you got to watch
any of this.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
I did not get any.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Okay, so I had. I watched the whole first half
and I just I had it up on my computer
while I was doing other stuff, playing some video games
and had it up and was keeping track of the
game that way. And the first half was like all
(27:43):
Wayne ur Agon got the ball first. Ur Agon went
scorched earth like, fired a bunch of his team to
get his team value down low enough so that Wayne
wasn't have all of the stuff that he's as him to.
Wayne had to cut his team to eleven players, he
(28:04):
had to fire some of his skilled up Halflings, and
then he opted Urgan had it at such a level
where because he overdogged Bomber and a bribe, Wayne could
then get Griff and a chef.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
And so.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
But there's like a world where Urigan goes into that
game without Bomber, and I think if he knew how
Bomber would end up playing out in the game, he
would probably opt not to take Bomber. The one of
the things I'll say about this game is I was
surprised by the number of times one of the players
(28:47):
got punished for one of their decisions. It was quite often.
There were a lot of things in his game where
one player got screwed and you could think, oh, that
lost that player of the game. And so the first
half was all Wayne, like I said, and Jurgan's got
(29:12):
the ball in like a kind of like a caged
up situation, and he ends up making a dodge of
the goblin. And if this goblin breaks free from this dodge,
Jurgen probably scores, because I think Wayne would have had
a lot of trouble trying to muster a defense, and
(29:34):
Urregen had set up like a screen on one side
of the pitch was kind of like working its way down.
Jurgen was had like first half Heregon was having trouble
hurting halflings and uh uh, he might have gotten like
one or two casualties or whatever. Swayne's got thirteen. He's
got Rodney and Griff for this game. And so this
(29:58):
halfling fails, I mean, sorry, this goblin fails. The dodge
in this instance fills the three up with a reroll
and the ball lands within three squares of Rodney and
so Rodney gets uses once per half, hits it with
the fishing line, reels it in, hands it off to
Griff and Griff has gone the other direction and Urgen
(30:20):
can't catch him. He's just out of position for it.
And so Wayne puts the ball in. It puts Yurigen
back on defense, and Jurgen has I think two or
three turns to score. It may have even just been
two turns to score or something like that, and Wayne
was thinking, you know, I'll take this touchdown here. I'll
be in good shape. It'll be hard for Urgon to score.
And Jurgen puts together this drive which is a classic,
(30:49):
like I'm using every part of my team, maximizing squares,
sets up like a really good screen on one side
of the pitch, and manages to tie it up at
the half one to one. And Wayne's got a one
(31:11):
turn attempt, and so he sets up I think he's
out of rerolls at this point, but he sets up
a one turn offense kind of like thing where he's
got people positioned at different parts of the pitch depending
on where the ball could land. He's got Rodney, who's
got on the ball, who can then, you know, use
(31:33):
that to go recover the ball, and the ball scatters
all the way back to the end zone and scatters
out of bounds, and so he gets it, gets a touchback,
so it gets to put on whoever it is. So
that saves him like a bunch of rolls, right because
he doesn't have the roll to pick it up. He
doesn't have to do all this other stuff. He just
gets to stick it on the half link that's right
next to the tree. But the one tree has to
(31:56):
like knock a black ork out of base with the
other tree, the throw is a little bit safer. No
rerolls the tree, double skulls falls over, no one turn attempts,
don't even get to throw the half link at this point,
and so both players are setting up with like ten.
Wayne gets the ball back and I watched like a
(32:17):
little bit of this half because when I was watching it,
I was like, Oh, Wayne's got this. He's going to
be able to stall the whole half and so I
was going to have to work, and so I left
the house. So during the drive, I get to where
(32:43):
I'm gonna go get some lunch, and during that drive,
Jurgen has started to just pummel halflings he's just peeling
them off the pitch. His team's in pretty good shape,
and he's more or less forces to Wayne. Scored, forces
Wayne to score much faster than he needed to, and
(33:04):
so Urigan gets the answer back on his offensive drive
and he sets up a another drive. And there's just
way fewer halflings at this point than there were at
the beginning. And somewhere along the way, Urgan had a
goblin who got an agility down during the course of
(33:27):
the season, and so this goblin is the is the
point man on the screen, and so Wayne manages to
set up a three die block with Griff into Urigan's
seven speed block dodge goblin and finds the pal on
(33:51):
three dice, and so that goblin falls over. The ball
scatters from that hobgoblin to the agility four plus goblin,
who spikes a six to catch it, and youre agon
makes the dodge the four up dodge with a dodge
reroll to run that goblin in and score it and
(34:12):
turn sixteen to tie the game to send it overtime,
and so there and overtime, neither of them have rerolls.
Wayne went one for six on the chef in the game.
He got one reroll in the first half, went over
in the second half, and so I think Jurgen may
may have had like one reroll for overtime, and then
(34:35):
Wayne wins the role, and then they had Urgon had
like a lunch to get to so there was like
the suspense built for a few hours because Oregon went
to like a like a lunch at like one of
the nearby restaurants. Then came back so they could finish
out the game. And sure enough, Wayne's got the ball
(34:56):
and jur Agen sets up his defense and he just
he's peeling half wings because I think Wayne was. I
think Jurgen had nine people in o time overtime, Wayne
had seven. So that's how they set up. And so
the trees are still active and Griff is still active,
(35:16):
but like Rodney got murdered somewhere in the second half,
and so Jurgen really pressures the cage that Wayne is
making and at some point he manages to get one
of the tackle black works on Griff, and so Wayne
(35:37):
goes to dodge away because that's his best option in
this instance. He has not used grifts once per game yet,
so he goes to dodge and he rolls a one,
and he uses Griff once per game, and it's a one.
Griff falls over the ball, lands in like like behind
the trees, and so Urregon sends the house after it,
(35:58):
but he can't get anybody on to the ball because
you know, the Black Ork team is just kind of
like slightly too slow. So on the next turn, Griff
stands up, walks onto the ball in three tackle zones,
rolls the five to pick it up, dodges Out gets it,
and then manages to get away far enough away. Then
(36:20):
on the next turn, you're Agan's best option is to
blitz with like some goblins, and so he's got to
set up like a bunch of goblins to throw like
a two die because all the Black Orks are out
of range thanks to the way the trees were positioned,
you know they were they were a good like fence
against the Black Horks. And so Urgan fails like a
(36:41):
go for it with one of the goblins to set
up an assist, and then Griff dodges Out breaks away,
scores the third touchdown for the half wings, and then
Urgan's got a couple turns to score. He's got like
three turns to score or whatever, and Wayne, I think
is playing defense with four four players. I think he's
got the two trees one halfling left. It was the
(37:05):
tackle halfling, which we mentioned, uh get several episodes ago
that halfling somehow had had was the sole survivor of
the the halfling massacre in this.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Game, obligated to mention the tackle halfling.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yep, exactly, and so the so Wayne's playing defense with
like four players at this point, Jurgen's team is still
really slow, and Jurgen manages to set up a cage
and I think Griff goes for like a four up
dodge to blitz the ball carrier and fails. It falls over,
(37:44):
and all Urgan's got to do is make two go
for it's to score. He makes the first go for it,
he fails the next go for it, and the game
runs out of time. Urgan loses three to two. They
rolled out the kicks to see what it would have been.
If you're gonna have managed to make it, You're gonna
would have won on kicks, which is one of those
(38:04):
irrelevant things you know, because you you know it doesn't
it doesn't quite matter, but that is about as close
as the game gets. You know, failed go for it
to tie the game to send it to kicks. So
an incredible game, just just outstanding game overall, Like you know,
(38:25):
it's that's everything you want from a playoff game.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Yeah, by far, I think this round top to bottom
quality has been excellent.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Right right, Yeah, you play all season to get games
of this caliber.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Right, Yeah. Well we've got our in memorial for this game.
We have for having justice, we had ohs Bracekirdle, and
for our salesmen we lost Dolmayan.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Yeah, and that's actually an unforced error for your Again,
I didn't mention this at the beginning of the game,
that Goblin will strip ball tackle. He had two random
things Urgan forgot to mark him, and so on turn one,
Urgon puts a Goblin on the line near one of
(39:13):
the trees because the intention was to dodge away, so
he put that character on the line, and then he
failed to pick up the ball on turn one. He
used a reroll then and lost the reroll, and so
the tree just kills that Goblin. And so you can't like,
how does the game play out if you're Agon's best
(39:35):
like his best Halfling answer, Goblin, his best Griff answer, right,
because he can dodge into a cage, Go two, die uphill,
you know, and he's like fifty percent or something to
pop the ball loose out of griff. You know, if
that players in the game and not dead, how does
(39:56):
the game play out? I don't know, right, Like it's
a toad different game. But you're again just unforced error.
Put this goblin in a place for him to explode.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
PSA, mark your models, mark your models.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Yeah, yeah, know what you're know what you're getting rid of.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
All right, let's gonna do it for this round before
we get into the semifinals. Are gonna take a quick
break and be right back. Okay, we're down to three
games left. There's a chance all three will happen before
the next episode, depending on how they schedules. But we're
in the semifinals. In semi final number one will be
(40:36):
happening the day after recording this, right, So we've got
halfling Justice and Slaughterhouse eleven.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Yeah, So the next forty five minutes of the episode
is me describing every inducement scenario that could happen for
this game. So strap in.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Yeah, it's hard, it's hard to communicate this over and
audio media. But prior to starting the recording, Nathan was
doing the doctor strange, going through fourteen million possibilities coming
to the proper and doc plan.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
Yeah, so let's see if I can get deense it
down to something parsible for like an audio format. Right
what we've got in this game. So, because of the
damage that I took during the course of the Will game,
I have nine active players, which means, as it stands
(41:33):
right now, we both just submitted our rosters, I would
get two Marauder Journeymen to add to the game. Now,
my treasury has two hundred and eighty five thousand gold
in it, and that's because before the Will game, I
rolled a one on my treasury and lost half of it,
which was really stupid. That's the second time that's happened
to me this season. Both times I've actually thrown away
(41:57):
money so that I would be under four hundred K.
So I need exactly a one for me to lose
money in that situation, and so I lost half of
my treasury there. So I can't just like freeboot Morgue
and you know, go into the game with like morg
That was like my original game plan was if I
(42:17):
had to play against Wayne, I would just go in
with whatever my team is and then hire Morgue, and
then he has to decide whether he wants to dispel
Morgue or use that for other stuff and go into
the game with like the Giant and you know whatever else.
But I think the blood Spawn and Morgue are both
actual reasonable threats into the Giant, like they can actually
(42:39):
get the Giant off the pitch. So I was fine
with that scenario, right Anyway, that's not what's coming to pass. Instead,
I've got nine players in two hundred and eighty five goals,
so I can. I'm down two corn Gorees and two
blood Seekers for this game. I have two in addition
(43:01):
to the guys who died. I had a Tackle corn
Gore who's missing this game, which really sucks because he
this is like a type of game where block druggernaut
tackle just feasts. And then I had another blood Seeker
missing this game, and this is U and actually like
blood seekers in this kind of matchup. One because four
(43:23):
strength is harder for like halflings to gang up on,
and two four strength makes it so that the trees
don't get three dice on you, and so it makes
them less likely to get knocked over plus their armor ten,
so they actually have a pretty good chance of withstanding
some mighty blow hits during the course of the game.
So the the I could buy a blood Seeker, I
(43:46):
could buy extra models Wayne's team. He hasn't made any
adjustments to it yet. I had one blood Seeker who
could take a skill, and I've already locked in the skill.
I locked in and Guard because I think it's the
most useful skill in this situation where I may need
(44:07):
to knock over trees at some point or another, it
will very least need to throw hits on trees. I
would not have that option. I would not have that
option without like taking some extra guard. So the nature
of the way that tour play works is that and
(44:30):
the rules that we have written for the league. The
way it works is like if both players agree they're
not going to make any more changes to their rosters,
if anybody makes the changes before the game starts, the
other person gets a chance to kind of respond, and
you go back and forth making whatever changes that you want.
So I actually think the only advantage that I have
here I can't undercut Wayne. I'm not going to do
(44:52):
the Urgan thing. I'm not going to scorch the earth
because the players that I have remaining I think are
actually good in the matchup. There's nobody that I think
is dead weight on my roster. I think the only
advantage that I have is I wait to see whatever
change is Wayne is going to make. I don't make
any changes, and then I submit my roster and I
keep the full two hundred and eighty five gold because
(45:15):
then I have the option to induce say Borak, if
I want. I can see what his team looks like,
and then I can hire a star player if I
think it's good enough, and then walk into the game
that way. So the reason I made the joke about
spending forty five minutes talking about inducements is because just
(45:38):
the way the inducement math works out, depending on if
I take any inducements, then I give that extra money
to Wayne. And so really what he's got to decide
is like he has multiple options. I think he's going
to go with a setup where he's got griff Chef
(46:06):
and then he'll hire halflings down to the point where
he can take Rumbelow. Rumbelow has got some use against
my teams. I've got three different Marauders with Russell and
I've got a tackle or I've got a dodge Beastman,
and so Rumbelow actually has lots of application against that setup, right,
(46:28):
And so I think he's fine taking Rumbelow as a
as the worst case. And then if I hire any
star players, and trust me, I've considered hiring Hackflim. But
if I hire Hackflim, then that puts him to three
point eighty and he could take more, right, So it
(46:48):
kind of it kind of I have to determine what
star players I'm fine playing against. I considered Skidder as well,
because Skidder is I think Skiter's suite of skills is
actually really good because he's got Prance all tail and shadowing,
(47:09):
which means if there's a situation where Griff can't just
blitz Skitter off of him and he's got to run
the other way, Skitterer can be like glued to him,
and Prance all Tail makes it. Prances just really good
against stunties because there's a lot of scenarios where if
(47:29):
a stunty dodging away needs a four, they're gonna feel
way more of those dodges. And so Skiter plus like
tackle on Key. Halflings can just really gum up the works,
and Hackflim also has prants all tail, so I think
both of them are really good in this matchup. The
(47:50):
question is is do I think I've got enough on
this roster to endure Mighty Blow plus two hits from
either Deep or Morgue if I take one of the
star players.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
So yeah, that is going to be an interesting game.
I think obviously you're coming off a game against Santy.
Nomes are way different.
Speaker 2 (48:17):
But they are way different. Actually, I think gnomes are
easier to kill than halflings. Though I think my team
was engineer. I've been engineering my team because I figured
somewhere in this playoff structure I was going to play
against a critical massive dodge and I was going to
(48:37):
be ready for that. Now two of my tackle guys
were are m I A for this game? Which really
sucks because that was I was trying to make sure
I had enough tackle for this for this specific matchup.
But so now I got to deal with like, I
(48:58):
don't I look at like whether grad double drill, then
I don't think, and I'm like, this guy's not good
enough right, not enough strength, not enough speed. The thing
that the thing that has always flummixed Wayne when he's
been playing halflings is the speed of characters, which is
why I think either Hackflim or Skider is probably the
best call for this matchup, because there are board states
(49:22):
where a gutter runner with the ball running the full
distance in the other way makes it so that the
halfling team does not have any good answers for him,
and I could see where like hack Flim being able
to dodge through tackle zones on two ups with could
could end up being really good. And I think three
(49:43):
strength on Hackflim means he's gonna, like Wayne would have
to throw a lot of halflings at him to knock
him over. So that I might I've already played against
more I don't know, three times with his team. I've
killed him once. The other couple of games he's been
still roaming around the field. You know, I think Morgue
(50:06):
is way more mortal than say a deep route because
deep roots got seven strength, and I got to like
find a lot of assists to get blood spawn assists
into that or blood spawn uh blocks into it. But yeah,
I don't I don't know. I might just lock my
roster in and just go into the game as it
(50:27):
is playing against Rumbelow, I think is fine. Rum Below
is fragile. Rumblow is significantly more frail than any of
the alternatives. And while he's good into my team, I've
got pieces on my team that are really good into Rumblow.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
So yeah, that will and that is. There's only two
games left, so it's hard to pick a game of
the week. Yeah, but I'm excited to watch that one
and I will offer no further input and to suck
for for that game. But our other game, we got
bad nourizing r o us. I think this game. I
(51:08):
guess if I had to give a game the game
of the week status, it would probably be this one,
just because these sketches have had a long history of
facing each other in the playoffs.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
Yeah, and I think Jim's got the Lion's share of
the record, right probably. Yeah, I probably should have looked
this up before now. But I think traditionally Jim is
one kryptonite. There are not a lot of things that
are one kryptonite. But but yeah, they did not play
(51:48):
in season two. I don't I don't have season one handy.
Season three, they did not play. It's season four. Jim
won the championship over one. Season five, they did not play.
(52:16):
Season six. We've got them not playing against each other,
I believe, Yes, that's correct. Yeah, no, they did play.
One got the one got the win. That was one
the vampire team versus Goblins, and that's not a good
(52:39):
matchup for the for the goblins because like, the goblins
can kill like every single throw on the table. But
if you've got a whole bunch of giga vampires, then
the vampires just still do what they want in the game. Right,
So that was that season six. Season seven, I don't
(52:59):
think they play. They did not. Yeah, so now this
is the first time he's played since season sixth then,
and Jim was on a completely kind of a goofy
team at the time. Right. It was a Goblin team
that overperformed. I think it's just because Jim was really
good at wrangling every single drop of efficiency out of
(53:21):
a team.
Speaker 1 (53:23):
This is a rematch from earlier in the season as well.
Jim had a gyming game to one win, so it'll
be interesting to see. I think that this Necromantic team
really came along and I know at the start of
the playoffs we were talking like the team looked a
little underdeveloped obviously had lost a lot of key pieces.
(53:45):
But now you know you've got two werewolves with blocked
out and tackle and.
Speaker 2 (53:49):
One of those wherelds can even can even take a
regular skill. Jim actually has one, two, three, four, five
skills that he could potentially take before this game, depending
on what he thinks is useful in this game or not.
So he's been kind of managing his team value by
not taking these skills. That's an extra hundred K, right,
(54:13):
so I think that's part of the reason why he
hasn't taken it. He's got a level up on a
mighty blow Wraith. I think I would probably take tackle
for this game, just so that way you've got something
that's a threat to gutter runners. He's got another wraith,
the wraith that normally dies isn't the place where he
can take a skill. I would be tempted to take
(54:34):
tackle just you got gutter runners. You're planning its gutter runners.
I'm just always tempted to take tackle to answer them. Right,
He's got a flesh going with the skill. He's got
a Google block surehands Google with skill and then blocked
dot to tackle Wherewolf all can take skills, So there's
a lot of a lot of advancement he can do,
(54:58):
and I'm interested to see what he's go to choose.
I mean, block guard is really good on the flesh gun,
then both flesh guns would be block guard. And that
makes it so that you just kind of want to
like get the scavin into a scrum with you, right,
Like you just want to create just like a massive
pile and let your skills, your skills take over the
(55:20):
game at that point. Yeah, block dodge tackle on a
wearolf that's real good at killing gutter runners as well.
Speaker 1 (55:30):
Yeah, if I was, if I was like sitting there
with gutter runners, I would be really scared of those
because by itself, it can like one wear well by
itself is just covering such a large swath of the field,
and you're gonna get to and you've got frenzy, so
you've got you've got to survive Ford Dice with tackle.
Speaker 2 (55:50):
So now let's imagine one of these weirrels had thirty
extra SPP.
Speaker 1 (55:57):
Also a rave advocate exactly what that rath had before
it died.
Speaker 2 (56:02):
It's Jim said, it was the raith that always died
because it died in the game versus Austin, apparently it
had died. It had been neutralized multiple times during the
season already.
Speaker 1 (56:11):
So yeah, yeah, I think that is going to be
a very interesting game to see because he, like you said,
all those little micro decisions could lead to some very
interesting inducement play being able to like, I can pick
and choose skills where I want them and still get
a star player that you really want somewhere in there,
(56:32):
possibly or some other specific inducement you like.
Speaker 2 (56:35):
So yeah, I mean the best star players available to
him are like Ivan and Wilhelm, right, I actually think
Wilhelm is of minimal use versus Skavin because the clause
are what's really good. One is even taken the extra
step of pre clawing his couple models on his team.
(56:58):
Both his rad Guger and Blitzer armors armor downs, so
they're already optimized versus Clause. They've shed that extra weight
so that way Clause can't affect them. Uh So yeah,
I mean, like both the playoff games that One has
played so far, he's done incredible amounts of damage to
(57:19):
his opponents before like winning, I think there's a good
chance that Jim can shake off the damage and and
then like flip it on one and get some real
big damage into him.
Speaker 1 (57:38):
Right. So, yeah, that's going to be that was that
think's going to be the what it comes down to
this game, especially you know just watching have you watched
the other games. He is not afraid of going to
overtime if that's what it takes. He will play out
that entire second half as if he's going overtime to Yeah.
(58:00):
So it's like, you know, very conservative on rerolls, and
then if you're he's going to put you in a
position where you can try to win in regulation. But
if something happens and all of a sudden you cough
the ball up and I'm sitting here with a full
complement of rerolls, that you're in a bad spot.
Speaker 2 (58:19):
Yeah. Yeah, Necro is just like Necro's a very good
positional team. It'll actually be like it's not easy for
the one turn to happen against Necro because you can
put the flesh golums and you can put like a
wraith on the line, and that lack of repositioning makes
(58:44):
it so that you can't just get like chain pushes
and it throws off all of the one turn math.
Basically there's an all link. One has a he's got
two plays as you can one turn, but they both
have but one of them's got side yea. Yeah, they
(59:05):
both have sized up and sprint and so they need
they need a chain push to get across the line
as it is, and so Jim actually has the tools
to prevent that on the roster.
Speaker 1 (59:19):
So yeah, yeah, it's gonna be an exciting game to see.
And then yeah, depending on well, this game is happening
on Friday, so we should get another episode in before
the finals hopefully.
Speaker 2 (59:35):
Yeah, depending on depending on how it plays out, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (59:38):
Which will be good. But that's pretty much all I
have for this week.
Speaker 2 (59:42):
Yeah, I think we can just take a real fast.
We can close out the episode mentioning submitting rosters for
next league. Okay, I see if we've got two people
who've got the rosters in. I know Warren's one of them,
but thing somebody else got there and yeah, okay, yeah
(01:00:02):
Fred's got his end as well. So we've got a
form set up. So if you're creating a new team
and you're adding skills to it, you'll create the team
and tour play and register for the league, and then
you'll go to bb roster, make that roster and add
the skills to the players that you want, and then
(01:00:24):
you can submit that. And so you've got up until
the league begins to submit those. There's been there's quite
a lot of talk about new teams, but we actually
have like a ton of like redraft teams entering the league.
And so the reason we're not adding skills yet is
because that's like a strategically disadvantageous for the people who
(01:00:47):
have submitted their rosters. Anybody joined the league can go
take a look at the skills that you've taken and
then kind of like try to counter pick you. So
that's why we haven't added stuff yet. Don't worry about it.
We will take care of it before you get there.
Uh So, yeah, there you go. That's news right there.
(01:01:07):
If you did redraft your team from previous leagues, remember
that we had like extra gold and make sure you
leave one hundred k in your treasury.
Speaker 1 (01:01:17):
So, yeah, one more thing. There were a little under
two months out now for Paul Metico.
Speaker 2 (01:01:25):
Yeah, I think it's like six weeks away or so,
and yeah, that would be fun. I actually need to
I did a little bit of QURN play testing for
Polental Cup. I haven't really found a corn list that
I've liked for tournament player. I think it actually involves
skitter now that I think about it. You probably just
add you probably just flex seal Skitterer onto any QRN
(01:01:46):
team and then boom, suddenly you've got a scoring threat
that you didn't have before. So yeah, but yeah, there
you go.
Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
Yeah, find your find your teammate. If you're looking for somebody,
you know, go ahead and post in the discord. Something
surely will join.
Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
Yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing who's coming from out
of town this time around. We had a pretty big
turnout last year, and but a bunch of people from
the neighboring league jump in a team. Formats are always
kind of fun anyway, because you get some you get
some flexibility with like the team that you make and whatnot.
You know, just it's it's a fun time for sure.
Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
Yeah. Looking forward to intentionally playing this one, not being
a ringer. Yeah, Yeah, that's that's going to do it
for us this week. Appreciate y'all listening wherever you are listening.
We're on pretty much every major platform, so wherever you're listening,
make sure you're liking your thumbs up, following subscribing whatever
iterations of those options are available on that platform, and
(01:02:47):
then maybe go to like a couple others and do
that too. You know, if you go to one additional
platform a week, make the whole suitep do something like that,
make it make it better for us.
Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
Yeah, you get two people to listen to the podcast,
and you'll get to get join the initiative level of
Empire Games podcast listeners, and each of them will get
to people to listen to the podcast. You'll move up
to the demi witch level. I'm just looking around the
(01:03:18):
room for things to name right now.
Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
Yeah, eventually, and then eventually at the end, he gets
some very nice avon Pink Block Dice.
Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
The Empire Games Blood Bowl Mercedes that you get to
drive around town in.
Speaker 1 (01:03:34):
Oh gosh, that would be a good one. That will
be in communication to try to get that set up.
But yeah, appreciate it, listen and we'll see you next week.
Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
Goodbye, everybody,
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