CanCon - Day 1 Results

A great day for yours truly with me holding down first place after the first two rounds and probably dropping to 3rd or 4th after a 3rd game loss. The way it works is that after every round, the top team plays second place, 3rd plays 4th and so on down the list. Then after the results are fed through the computer, the leader board is re-shuffled and then the same method is used again with the only proviso that you cannot play the same person twice.



Scoring is a weird science as well. Maximum points you can score are 6 with 3 points up for grabs for the win and a bonus point for doing more casualties and a bonus point for winning by 2 TD’s or more. Lose by only 1 TD and you get a point, and if you lose yet do more casualties, the loser can get the bonus point. Its also +1 point for playing for both guys and hence a winner will get 6, 5 or 4 points and the loser could get 1, 2 or 3 points. A draw is 2 points each plus the bonus points… As I said, its confusing.



Also, you score your opponent in both sportsmanship (out of 10) and a painting score (again out of 10) and these points are used for tie breaks throughout the draw and standings. They are kept secret though and you can only award a score of 10 for sportsmanship once in the entire tournament.



So onto my games today:



Game 1 vs Lockheim Dockers (Humans)
A game against humans is a great draw first up. They are the ultimate generalist team and are basically able to run, catch and pass well and have decent speed and average armour. They are the epitome of “average”. I won the toss and surprised my opponent by electing to kick off and hence he received. I am prepared to do this against teams who are quicker than me. If they get past me, they’ll score quickly and hence I can grind out an equaliser before half time and then receive the ball for the 2nd half and then grind out the winning TD. Its not a pretty tactic, but it is the Dwarven way.



Anyway, I did very well and the Dockers actually got pushed back and I took out both his Catchers (receivers) early on so he had no passing game. The I ground his front line backwards before he eventually had to force a pass, coughed the ball up and I was away. 1-0 at half time.



The 2nd half was all mine and I ground him into the dust and scored with 2 turns to play. He went for the consolation TD, missed it and I took maximum points (6). 2-0 on touchdowns, 2-0 on casualties. The only downside was that I didn’t get any skill rolls.



Game 2 vs Crazy Ivans (Chaos Dwarves)
Chaos Dwarves are tough, I find them incredibly hard to beat. They’re Chaos Dwarf Blockers match equally against my Longbeards and they usually have 2 Bull Centaurs which are over twice the speed of my team and are the strongest guys on the field. Luckily, my opponent had one of his two Bulls injured in Round 1 and hence I only had one to contend with. Funnily enough that one had skilled up and he had taken the skill “Sure Hands”. Seems as though this big Bull was going to be his ball handler… which is not how I would exactly play them (that’s what the Hobgoblins are for!).



And it proved to be the downfall of the Crazy Ivans as again I elected to kick, turned him over as his Bull kept fumbling the ball (despite the Sure Hands) and again I lead at half time.



The 2nd half was a dour affair and he nearly turned the ball over from me and for a while there I thought I was done for… but my Runner got his 3rd touchdown of the tournament (and hence a skill – which later turned out to be Dodge) and I was off to the races with a 2-0 win. The Ivans though won the casualty count 1-0 and hence I received 5 points (now 11 out of a maximum 12) and I was ranked #1 going into Round 3.



Round 3: vs The Pissheads (Norse)
Would you believe that there are actually 4 guys from my home suburb of Glenbrook here and I met one of them in Round 3. The Pissheads (yes, Norse love their beer!) had also had two wins but were not winning casualty scores and had a TD against them, so they were on about 9-10 points.



The game though was a cracker with both teams dominating on defence. I won the toss again (!!) and again elected to kick. Norse are big hitters but have glass jaws with a low armour value. They can dish out the damage, but the key is to get amongst them and hit them first.



In hindsight, I probably should have received as the Norse stormed down and got only 3 squares from my endzone but because the weather was raining, the ball slipped out and it was spilt. The rest of the first half was a scrum in my own quarter of the field, but I kept him out and had inflicted 2 casualties. Nice!



But the 2nd half was a disaster. I had horrendous luck and struggled to beat the Norse armour (despite it being shit house) and he in turn inflicted 4 2nd half casualties and I was on the back foot big time. Eventually numbers took their toll and I lost the ball, it popped straight towards his team, he passed over the head of my ragged line and I was behind with a quarter of the game to go.



The restart saw the Pissheads get a blitz (free turn) and hence they crumbled my offence before it could start. Plus the ball from the kick off landed on my goal line which meant my slow dwarves needed to go 100 yards to tie it.



We tried valiantly and perhaps would have done so but my Runner failed a simple dodge roll (double 1’s!!) and the ball was spilt. I managed to defend him out to stop his 2nd TD and hence I received a 0-1 loss plus lost the casualties ultimately three to four. I scored 2 League Points and was back down the list.



Play starts at 9am tomorrow… I think (??) I am playing another Dwarf team but with the sportsmanship and painting points secretly in the mix, you never know.



I am missing one Blitzer for Game 4 as well, but that is the only big injury I have had so far. I have enough cash to hire my Star Player Grim Ironjaw as well… so that should give me a good shot.