Blood Bowl

Eloise and I have been working through things to do in the evenings since moving to Scotland. So far, that's included several films and the first series of Yes Minister on DVD. We also have a pile of old board games to get through though, including Blood Bowl - a Games Workshop game that's basically a more violent version of American football set in the Warhammer world. It must be well over ten years since I played and the first time for Eloise, but it was good fun.

For the record, I was orcs and she was humans. I was receiving the ball (and thus attacking) in the first half, but got so stuck into pummelling her team that I forgot to do anything with the ball until too late. The strategy paid dividends though as by half-time I'd ko-d three of her lineman. We'd both had a man sent off for fouls, but I was able to start the second period with a numerical advantage of 11 to 8, which gave me a greater chance to stop her scoring.

As it is, Eloise came pretty close to the opening touchdown, managing to run a catcher into my end zone and get a thrower with the ball dangerously close - only for him to fall over attempting to dodge by blitzer and open up a good scoring opportunity. At this point, one of my orcs was able to scoop up the ball, while I inflicted further damage by pushing two more of her players into the crowd (where they were also ko-d). By the end of the match, she only had four men left on the pitch - who were regularly getting knocked down - though it still required my lineman to 'go for it' (and use my final team re-roll in doing so) in order to score the game's only touchdown in the final turn. A fine example, I think, of the orc strategy (i.e. concentrate on roughing up the opponents first and then use numerical superiority to score a running touchdown).