THE WORLD CUP - DAY 1

The NAF World Cup was such a momentous event that I can't possibly cover all of it in a single post, so I will be making this a series. I will start with the game reports, so I can get them all down in writing before I forget, then go back and go over the other parts of the experience, particularly the social aspect and the friends we made along the way. So without further ado: DAY 1!

Round 1: Last Action Herons

The round 1 matchups were announced well in advance. After an initial test draw, the organisers had given a date and time for the real deal: 3rd Sept at 10pm local time. As the time drew near, 2,000 people refreshing furiously proved too much for the poor site and it crashed. Still, the organisers were on it, and shortly after a PDF of the draw was made available on the official Discord. Our first opponents were Last Action Herons, a squad of Italian coaches with some NAF experience - no COCORIPOW, but no slouches either. The matchups were mostly favourable, but my Onions would have to open their World Cup run against one of their nemeses: Necromantic Horror.

THE MATCHUPS:

Coach	Team	Coach	Team
Torquemada	Elven Union	Lue	Necromantic Horror
mefspores	Wood Elf	wulfen86	Shambling Undead
Tadhgy	Dwarf	bigwill	Amazon
Outkast	Underworld Denizens	Tundra	Dark Elf
Manuuelesantoro	Necromantic Horror	FalcoNero87	Dwarf
GooseKnight	Snotlings	CaliTheKing	Underworld Denizens

Control teams are a bit of a bugbear of mine. I like my mobility and my long elf plays, and Block Stand Firm/Sidestep makes it much harder to break through opponent lines. Necro in particular are probably the worst as they can not only slow you down, but also easily catch up to you and exploit weaknesses with their wolves, negating your speed advantage and requiring very careful positioning of the ball. So when I saw my opponent had 75% winrate with them (albeit in 6 games) I started to worry. I read up on Necro, had practice games with my squad, rehearsed plays in my mind... Then we bumped into the Herons as we waited for the doors to open, and as we chatted, it became obvious my opponent had looked me up as well, and he was even more scared of me than I was of him. And then, his turn 1, he falls for the old Elven Union sideline surfbait, and charges his wolf up the sideline only to find itself frenzy-following my sidestepping Blitzer into a surfable position. One wolf down from the get go, he loses his nerve and starts charging up the other flank, while my Onions harass him until the ball pops loose. The rest of the game is a bit of a blur, but by turn 16 I have killed both Ghouls and I'm 4-0 up. Scratch one for the Onions!

Meanwhile, my squad was not so lucky. Tadhgy, who days before we'd pegged as our easiest win of the round, got 3 Dorfs deleted turn 1 by the Amazons, and was too many players down to mount anything like an effective defence. Manny's own Necro could not stop the opponent's Dorfs either, despite the relative ease of the draw. Only Outkast managed to come away with a win, for a 2-0-4 loss for the GooseBumps.

Round 2: NetBlitz

All buzzing from round one, we took pictures with our opponents, exchanged numbers, talked about the round, etc. By the time we made our way outside to the food stands, the queue went all the way from one corner of the building, around the next corner and two thirds of the way to a third. I was starving at the time, so while Outkast worked his magic and tried to find some friendly faces in the queue who'd let us jump in, I went to fetch some sandwiches and caffeine from the cafeteria. Eventually, thanks to our combined efforts the squad was fed and ready for the next round. Unfortunately, it seemed like 20 squads failed to upload their results, and 2 hours after the end of the first round, the scheduled time for round 2 came and went without a draw being announced. It took nearly an additional hour for it to finally drop, but drop it did, and it seemed like we were up against a French team: Netblitz

THE MATCHUPS:

Coach	Team	Coach	Team
Torquemada	Elven Union	Poolky	Amazon
Outkast	Underworld Denizens	Castorking	Shambling Undead
Tadhgy	Dwarf	Lodor	Lizardmen
Manuuelesantoro	Necromantic Horror	Nasgar	Dark Elf
Mefspores	Wood Elf	Scurra	Skaven
GooseKnight	Snotling	Aedarian	Orc

Another set of decent matchups. Amazons are a tough matchup for any tackle-less team, but they are not the fastest, so I felt ok about my chances. I chose to kick, and went full-on aggressive from round one, blitzing a blodgestepper into the cage, basing heavily and threatening my opponent's carrier directly. He managed to extract himself quite well, preparing a cage a bit further down. Only problem was, the carrier was 1 square too far from the centre of that cage, and Nuffle was watching. After thinking long and hard, my opponent decided to not reroll that critical GFI, and let the ball go down, reasoning I imagine that the ball was still surrounded by Zons and he would need the reroll later. He was nearly proven right, too. Of the 4 blocks I threw to clear the ball, not one resulted in a pow, and I was left with only a long sequence of 3+/4+ rolls to snatch the ball and run. Still, Nuffle smiled on me, and my thrower handily recovered the ball and chucked it to a catcher who ran it in for the 1-0 - I chose not to stall this time around, as there was no guarantee of safety and wanted to ensure the half-time 1-1. Sure enough, the Zons scored in the 6 turns they had left of the half, and in the second half the Onions stalled out the game until T16 for a 2-1 finish. Once again, the Onions' luck did not extend to the rest of the team. Tadhgy battered his opponent handily, as you'd expect with that matchup, but that was it for wins - Manny drew and the others all lost. 2-1-3 this time, barely a loss, but a loss nonetheless.

Round 3 - Penetramos Muy Fuerte

This time, the round came out in good time, and roughly an hour after our last game we made our way to table 157 for the last match of the day. Morale was flagging now - the squad had lost two rounds that appeared easy on paper, and delays meant we had now been at the venue for almost 12 hours straight. I was the only one left unbeaten, a record which I was keen to keep going... and then I saw the draw.

Coach	Team	Coach	Team
Torquemada	Elven Union	Marcocaccia	Underworld Denizens
Tadhgy	Dwarf	Corwin	Dark Elf
Outkast	Underworld Denizens	Gallo	Shambling Undead
Manuuelesantoro	Necromantic Horror	Fililbaro	Skaven
Mefspores	Wood Elf	PLJS	Lizardmen
GooseKnight	Snotling	Baider	Wood Elf

Underworld, my other bugbear. Anyone who knows me knows it's no secret how much I hate that team in 2020 - overpowered, undercosted, almost always undertiered. I don't think it's an easy team to play necessarily, but if played even moderately well it is extremely difficult to beat. In 3 tournaments prior to the WC, UW had been my only loss, and in two tournaments before that they had been the one game that cost me the overall win. But I was about to discover a whole new dimension of loathing for UW, as my opponent had brought the popular Morg'n'Thorg UW roster.

The game started with my opponent choosing to kick, as expected. I hold the ball back and aggressively base all his snotlings, hoping for him to fail a dodge eventually. He moves his line back 1, blitzes a lino with Morg. Turn. I move the ball 1 forwards, keeping it out of range of all his pieces, and continue basing snotlings and blitzing them with Block to try and thin down their numbers. He continues to just move back and blitz with Morg. For 7 turns, the game is basically reduced to me feeding linos to Morg, shepherding him around to keep him away from the important pieces while I ensure the ball remains safe while I set up scoring threats. I push for a risky stall, figuring he's not going to score T7/T8, and just about bang it in turn 8 after taking a few hits (but also removing three of his Snots!). He's not used a single reroll, so 1TTD is still on the table. I roll Solid Def, at which point I realise that his roster has not 2 but 3 different 1TTD options - throw with Morg, throw with Troll, GR rush. I block his GR score while leaving a screen for the TTM options, base the troll heavily to stop that option, but it's useless - he Swarms a snot under the ball, catches, hands off to a gobbo. Morg chucks the gobbo on a 4++, goblin lands easily, dodges through the line, touchdown. 1-1. His drive now. Essentially a repeat of the first half: He surrounds his BC with Morg, Troll and assorted chaff, and blitzes with Morg every turn. All I can do is nail his scoring threats when he puts them forward, and chip away at his team turn after turn. I manage to kill the GR, most of his linerats, a fair few snots, and by turn 6 it's 7 elves vs 8 UW players, which is enough to hold him back. Seeing no alternative, he potatoes with his thrower, who gets promptly taken down by my Blitzer. No armour break, though, and an attempt to rectify that by fouling fails. Sure enough, thrower stands up, dodges out, picks up the ball in tackle zones, passes it in tackle zones, interception fails, Gobbo on the end zone catches, 1-2. Nuffle decides to give me hope by throwing me a Time-out, only to then take it away as my catcher falls prey to the end zone tripwire. Not going to lie, I was very upset by that game. No complaints about dice or about my opponent - other than slamming the dice cup a bit hard and celebrating the casualties a bit too much (but then again, this might have been me being tired and overreacting!) he was perfectly fine - but it felt like such a cheap and boring roster, played in a way that presented no deep tactical challenges whatsoever, and that could have been resolved by a 5 minute roll-off instead of 2 and a half hours of "Blitz with Morg!". It did not feel like Blood Bowl, but something else entirely, and was a very unpleasant way to end the day. To make things worse, this was our third squad loss in a row, but it needn't have been. Outkast and Manny brought home wins and Tadghy drew, so had things gone differently in my game we could have drawn or even won the round. Disappointed, tired and hungry, we retired to the buses and headed back to Alicante city centre for some much needed food and beer.