[Team Blog] Kicking From The Sides

[Mico Selva]

My name is Victor Frank Moreau. I serve as the apothecary of The Sidekicks, who are a Blood Bowl team taking part in Crunch Cup VII, here in ALTD0RF. More importantly, though, they are goblins, and as such, have not seen much success in this noble sport. Not yet anyway. I have decided to chronicle the team's fate, as I am the only one member of the squad having enough combined brains and life expectancy, to be able to do it.

A few words about myself, to start of. I am not a goblin myself, but a human. I was born in the noble city of ALTD0RF and have studied medicine at a local university, taught by the best minds of Auld World, including such admired individuals as Hans 'Bones' McCaw (although, I have heard he does not work there anymore). However, my promising career in medical science was interrupted by an unfortunate accident, after which I have decided to leave the city and seek my fortune elsewhere.

You may encounter unkind souls, who will claim that instead of 'deciding to leave' I was 'forced to flee', but I can assure You that was not the case. Some people will just say anything to attract attention.

After a few years of working in less prominent parts of the Empire, I was hired by The Sidekicks' owner, Mr. Trustworthy, as the team's apothecary. Soon after that, the team moved to ALTD0RF to take part in 4th edition of Crunch Cup. So here I am, back in my home city, and while I may go by an ssumed name right now, it will not be for long anymore. Soon I will be ready to reveal myself and finally the scientific community will have no choice but... Well, I think I may have forgotten myself a little here. I apologize for that. Let us get back to the main topic; the team.

Mr. Trustworthy is the team's owner. He also is the biggest and fattest goblin I have ever seen, and I expect him to hold that title for the rest of my life. Usually he sports a very nasty looking grin, with a cigar held between his teeth and eyes looking right through You. I suspect he likes seeing his fellow goblins injured or killed, because he seems to have the most fun when, well, they are injured or killed. Also, when I asked him if he expected the team to win Crunch Cup this season he started to laugh uncotrollably for five minutes and then simply replied 'No.'.
After our last season when we achieved one victory and one tie in a total of seven matches, he commended the team for 'exceeding his expectations'. He probably expected everyone to die.
I also suspect the name I know him by is not his real one.

The team is coached by Mico Selva a well-meaning but not particularly bright Ogre. He is just not smart enough to deal with the team's shortcomings, and sometimes reminds me of a blind child lost in the fog. I often see him weeping when his goblins get creamed on the pitch and trolls forget what they were supposed to do. For some reason Mr. Trustworthy seems to think the coach is doing good enough job, though. Figures.

The core of every goblin team are its trolls, and we have two that we can be rather proud of: Chewbacca and Mr. Spock. When they remember what to do, of course. And when Chewbacca does not eat his team-mates. He already got two, including a very promising one named Little John. I tried scolding Chewbacca for it, but he did not understand and fell asleep. I then tried throwing rocks at him, but he did not even notice. Let us just hope he will not get hungry during the match very often.
Both trolls have benefitted from my presence in the team and are now more capable fighters than the average representatives of their species. I wish they were a little smarter too, but all in due time, as they say...

Then we have the Goblins armed in various tools and weapons. It has always baffled me how they are able to convince the referee that all this equipment is just 'lucky charms'. I guess, 98% of Blood Bowl referees being goblins helps a lot here. Usually the illusion breaks when we start using the weapons, ending in half of the team sent off, unless the referee is bribed (and he usually is).

The first one 'tech crew' is Igor, called a looney even by his fellow goblins. He scares me sometimes. Well, allright, they all scare me actually, but Igor is much more efficient in this regard than his team-mates, trolls included. I think he has a death wish. Why else would he be running around with a working chainsaw? And to think I was warned about scissors in childhood. Somehow, Igor has managed to survive for 12 matches relatively intact, and by 'relatively' I mean this one incident when I had to sew his head back on. I have not yet been able to detemine if this has caused any brain damage.

Fanatical Samwise Gamgee does not move anywhere without his spiked metal ball on a chain. I honestly think that the usefulness of this item is very limited on a Blood Bowl pitch and statistics seem to agree with me, since Samwise has managed to hurt himself many times more than hurt his opponents. My suggestions to remove him from the team were not met with applaud, though. I guess Goblins like seeing terrified faces of elves watching a death cloud of chains and spikes spinning their way, even if this is more smoke and mirrors than a real threat.

Jimmy Olsen is our new bombardier. He recently replaced Robin the Boy Wonder after the latter's unfortunate death by being stomped on by a walking tree. It is hard to say anything about him right now, but he will have a hard time living up to his predecessor's (completely undeserved) reputation as a brutally efficient and accurate bomb-tosser. I well remember that one fumble, which took out himself and two of his team-mates off the pitch.

We also have a new pogoer now. Ron Weasley has been unanimously voted Dr. John Watson's successor after Watson smashed his hip while happily jumping around the pitch. Ron was never the brightest out there and is not aware that the rest of the goblins consider the team's pogo stick to be cursed. I am not sure they are wrong, as Watson never managed to do anything right and Ron's debut in new role has ended up with him in the injured box. Twice.

Next one is Enkidu. There is seemingly nothing special about him, except he is probably the toughest Goblin out there, capable of enduring punishment, which would have send many of his bretheren to the mortuary (and not to work as the diener, mind You). His determination to stay alive has made him the main target of Mr. Trustworthy, who has instructed Mico Selva to put Enkidu on Line of Scrimmage duty at every opportunity, and tell our trolls to throw him as frequently as possible. Results of this inner cold war remain to be seen.

Another goblin worth mentioning is Tonto. He has learned to wrestle down opponents, which is supposed to help our goblins in retrieving the ball from the other team. Well, to be honest, I have not yet seen him actually do that, but the potential is there, I guess.

All the other goblins are rather ordinary, at least for now. We shall see, however, what the future brings us in this regard.

Our first match of Crunch Cup VII is against a certain High Elf team, of which I long though it was named Arwen's Reapers. The truth has proven slightly different, though. They are a moderately developed team, with one impressive star blitzer, but only one of four allowed catchers recruited so far. Their roster also now lacks one player to reach the full eleven, but it is unclear if they are waiting until the last moment to hire someone, or will just go with a suicidal volunteer journeyman lineman, of which there are always plenty around.

I also wanted to mention a minor controversy surrounding our seeding at the start of the season. We were initially placed in group #3, of which I was very happy, since it was populated by rookie teams mostly, which would have increased goblin survival rate a lot. However, Mr. Trustworthy was not pleased, and after a certain amount of bags of gold have changed hands, we were swapped with some undead and are now in group #2, facing experienced chaos, nurgle, necromantic and dwarven teams.

This is going to be a very busy season for me.

[Barmution]

Really looking forward to reading your match reports, Mico!

Just hoping that the report featuring Pus won't be an eulogy of one kind or another

[Nikolai II]

Great story, all of it, although I am a bit uncertain about the meaning of one parable

Originally Posted by Mico Selva

and sometimes reminds me of a blind child lost in the fog.

You mean "reminds me of someone who is put into what others would think is a difficult situation, but for them is just as easy as a walk in the park"?

[Lebe666]

Nice !

So how have you fared with Bombardier ?! I see so many tips that say to not pick that goblin ! Trying out gobbos I agree with that consensus ... dam bomb only screwed up !

[Slyspy]

A good back story, I hope your Gobbos provide you with some entertaining matches!

[Mico Selva]

Thanks for the comments, guys. Entertainement is what goblins are all about, so I definitely expect interesting matches ahead. Don't ask me about the results, though.

Originally Posted by Lebe666

So how have you fared with Bombardier ?! I see so many tips that say to not pick that goblin ! Trying out gobbos I agree with that consensus ... dam bomb only screwed up !

I completely agree. The bombardier completely destroyed my game a couple of times. Still, I wouldn't leave home without him.
The potential is there. You just have to restrict Yourself and only throw the bomb when it really makes sense. Treat him as yet another regular goblin otherwise, just remember he does not ignore tackle zones, as the others do.

@Nikolai
Yeah, I know. The meaning is intentionally unclear.

[Mico Selva]

Matchday #1 - against Arwen Rapers (High Elf)

Allright, where do I start? Okay, we lost. Surprise. Right before the match I overheard our coach Mico Selva talking to his colleague, hoverdog "We need to hurt those elves, or we're really funged.' he said 'If our trolls are not in good form, we don't stand a chance."

Our trolls were not in good form that day. And we were indeed "funged".

It was all going relatively well up until a point. By relatively well, I mean elves scoring quickly, after our aggressive attempt to retrieve the ball from the elven thrower ended in a failed pogo leap by Ron Weasley. Trolls not being very bright did not help too.

But coach claimed this was all according to his plan. Letting elves score was the only sure way to get the ball from them, he explained. Now we were supposed to advance towards their endzone slowly, hiding behind the trolls, and hurt as many elves as possible in the process. It even kind of worked, with Samwise Gamgee (our Fanatic), Chewbacca and Mr. Spock (trolls) managing to KO one elf each and Ron Weasley entering the elven half still holding the ball.

But then bad things started to happen. First clue that something will go wrong appeared when Igor, our Looney, chainsawed a knocked down elf and failed to hurt him, even though a nearby troll has lent a friendly stomp on the groin too. Then Samwise got himself surrounded by elves and knocked down, his ball and chain falling on his head and knocking him out.

Next, our coach has made his first mistake, telling Ron Weasley to dash forward, believing that a screen made of goblins and trolls will be able to stop elves from reaching him. Underestimating elves is never a good idea, but underestimating a super-agile elf who can basically dance around the pitch like it was empty is something straight of "Things I Should Never Do" book. Now, the elf somehow failed to knock down Ron Weasley, but then our coach made another mistake. Instead of sending a friendly nearby chainsaw to deal with this, he told Chewbacca to push the dancing elf away. Yes. Push. The. Dancing. Elf. Away.

Yeah, it failed.

And then everything well straight to hell. Goblin hell, that is. Elves were probably somewhere else. Somewhere with more fluffy clouds and bright sunshine.

Ron has decided to dodge away from the elf. Remembering his 'incredible' leap from the beginning of the match I wanted to shout 'DON'T DO IT, FOOL!', but it was too late. Ron landed face-first on the pitch and the ball scattered to an empty space, meaning two seconds later it was in hands of some elf running towards our endzone.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, must have thought our coach, telling Chewbacca to throw Enkidu after the running elf. Enkidu braced himself for landing and... and it was the last things he has done in his life, as Chewbacca's teeth crushed his little goblin skull moments later. Mr. Trustworthy then started to laugh so hard, tears came down from his eyes. I think he also shouted 'How's your armor now!?' at some point.

Eyes of our coach were also watered, but he was not laughing. He told Igor to run towards the nearest elf and slash him with the chainsaw. This is never a very reliable move, and Igor must have been additionally distracted by Enkidu's death screams, as his swing was far from perfect and he applied the chainsaw straight to his gut. The elf only smirked, turned around and rammed Ron Weasley, who has just managed to pickup himself from the astro-granite. On falling again, his head has hit a rock.

At this point Mr. Trustworthy was laughing so hard I had to reanimate him, so I was not able to tend to Ron's injury. I also do not really know in details what happened next as I hurried to my infirmary, only seeing on the way that Crow, one of our rookie goblins, was pushed off the pitch by some elf and must have not been treated kindly by the audience, as he ended up in my infirmary too.

Like many others, including one of our trolls.

I had my hands full until the end of the match, but I managed to notice that right before the referee has blown his whistle, our only player on the pitch was Chewbacca, lying face-down with six, or so, elves stomping on him and kicking his head. The scoreboard showed 0-4.

Have You ever tried running away from an angry mob of fans dragging three quarters of the team (including one troll) with You, on stretchers? Well, let us just say it is not a very pleasant experience, especially if team owner does not wait for You and rides away in his carriage a few minutes earlier. Still laughing.

Victor Frank Moreau

[Barmution]

Excellent report, I imagine it takes a lot to be able to write so inspired about what must have been a horrible match to play. Condolations to the familiy of poor Enkidu, if it's any consolation his extra armor probably gave Chewie some digestive problems. I'm seriously hoping you're not saving all your luck for the injury rolls against Pus, tho You getting Ripper++ will be quite enough on my plate, I fear...

[Lebe666]

I'm laughing a lot ! Ye poor goblins ! Nasty Elvez !

[Slyspy]

Top write up. It is good to see that the Sidekicks are keeping to a consistent standard of play.

It almost makes me want to start a Gobbo team, but then I realise what a crazy idea that would be!