For the benefit of Narly...
My season? (some of this is straight copied from my midseason summary)
My first game was against Lizards. I was plagued by 1's all game, ususally on the easy stuff. An awful misclick tried to send a lineman dodging through 3 kroxigor tackle zones. This landed me with my first loss, although plenty of people looked ready to skill up.
Match 2 was dwarves. again nothing would go my way. Opening drive all I needed was for the pass to go forward to almost guarentee the score but instead it was fumbled next to a runner. second half went no better. I could not recover the ball despite freeing the ball 3 times, all the bounces went straight to dwarf hands. Things are now looking grim. No pass completions in 2 games.
I do pick up a catcher for next game though.
Match 3 was against Woodelves. 2-2 draw was not really fair for the elves. Due to failed pickups from my thrower etc, I spent most of my drives trying to stop the elves from collecting the ball near my endzone. A fatal mis-click gave the elves an advantage at the end of the first half, I hit accept before changing to a defensive formation, leaving a gap (from a ko'd player) up my left flank which the elves danced through to score. A greedy play from the star wardancer meant he dropped the ball instead of scoring, this gave me the chance to equlalise, robbing the poor elves of the W.
I now have 2 catchers and the team is shaping up.
Match 4 is against Rats. I put my first win on the board. I played them like I was playing dwarves. 2-1 grind and lots of casualties left BDH redeemed, the skills really coming in.
Match 5 was against chaos. They had no big guy and no guard. I had 2 with guard, ball handling skills and both teams had equal block. Its looking to be interesting. Despite having the guard advantage and throwing more blocks I just couldn't break those goats. My guys seemed to have developed glass backs for the game. The numbers advantage quickly went to Chaos and a frustrating 1-1 draw ended the game.
At this point I've got an ogre with guard
Thrower with accurate
blitzer with guard
blitzer with tackle x2
blitzer
catcher with block
catcher
A bag full of line men, 2 with smashed ankles as the Doc doesn't deal with the riff raff.
Not a bad team overall, they just don't follow through with results.
I bought more tackle as there were darkelves and gobbos to come. Add to that 2 orc teams and it will make for a tough end to the season. Unfortunately the darkelves dropped out after I chose a second tackle player and I didnt see another dodge player after the Goblins. Skill very much wasted. I'd have taken guard if I'd known Woody was dropping out.
Goblins was a 3-0 route. It wasn't very fair, he had 1 skill on the whole team and had to take a loner fanatic. I had 4 lots of block (2 with tackle) and some guard. It was never going any other way. This gave me guard on another blitzer as well as a tackle blitzer. Also got block for the other catcher. A nice looking team.
I could not connect to panda so that game was a draw. My final game of the season (as the last week is a draw against the retired Delves) was against an Orc team with quite a big TV difference. I received to start. Unfortunately a riot downed a number of my players to start, including my thrower. I had to scramble to get the ball with a lineman and didn't get chance to cage up properly. Due to a poor start and good pressure I had to score earlier than I would have liked in a very scrappy drive.
With 2 turns left the orcs sent a lone blitzer in scoring distance. I marked him and got multiple players between him and the endzone to shut him out. In a heroic effort the orcs had to GFI to get a hand off to their blitzer. He caught the ball, made 2 dodges (one into a tackle zone) and GFI to score! Didn't even need a reroll. I got that sinking feeling after that.
The orcs started the second half with a text book 8 turn grind. I lost both linemen on the LOS on the first turn and it went down hill from there. Than didn't even use a reroll all half.
Overall I faired much better against the speed teams. With these teams I played physical and got good results. With my other league team being wood elf I found them very mediocre when I had to rely on playing the ball. Missed hand offs, dropped catches, missed passes. Horrible. Where I thought I could get the edge with my extra guard the armour rolls wouldn't go my way (chaos) and I ended up outnumbered.
I don't think I'll play humans in a league again unless it was light on bashing teams. I'd much prefer trying to muscle the lighter teams, when I was outpowered I didn't have the ability to move the ball well and really struggled. I'm guessing this was more to do with my skill level, playing style and the culture shock after playing a lot of elves, rather than a problem with the human roster.
Wall of text over. thanks to everyone I've played, its been a lot of fun. Next time we do this it will be LE edition and I'll be goblins or Nurgle.