Week 4 saw the Hearts of Oak entertain the visiting Lizardmen of Temple Tlanta coached by Dave.

My track record against Dave is 0-2 and so I have a healthy respect for his coaching talents (don’t tell him that) and his ability to play mind game shenanigans. This week however I was able to counter the mind games ELVISH BULLSHIT SHENANIGANS in the shape of an AG5 wardancer.

Dave won the toss and elected to kick, which is what I would have done. Git. On offense I was able to progress into his half with only moderate shenanigans required, but I couldn’t really control the clock and so I had to score in turn 3.

That gave him 5 turns to return the favor, but I figured that I had a decent shot at stopping him given the odds of not picking up the ball, leaping into cages and other fun stuff. Sadly that didn’t happen because an AG2 Saurus is overpowered filth. FILTH!

The scaly scum was able to collect the ball without too much issue, and whilst I was able to pop it clear at least once with some Wardancer fun, I couldn’t collect the result. Dave was however obliged to score in turn 7, because like me he wasn’t able to secure the ball well in my half of the pitch. That gave me 2 goes at my KO’d players coming back to start the second half. This was needed as I had 4 at the time (as well as a casualty)

I began the second half on defense, and with 8 players to Dave’s 10. Oh dear. However, at this point nuffle started smiling (grimacing?) at me and a lot of stuff when right. My kick off went deep and I was somewhat able to get some players between the LoS and the ball handlers. The Saurus still predictably picked the ball up but this time he wasn’t able to cage up as much.  There was some shuffling and shoving and Dave was able to move the ball up to halfway, but at that point the War Dancers had had enough. A string of 2/3+ die rolls saw me pop the ball out, go for it twice and dodge out of a bunch of trouble. However I was still leaking players due to the number of 2D blocks the lizards were able to throw.

I got the ball down into the final third, and needed another 2+ to leap away and score with my AG5 guy, but he finally failed something ending up facedown in the mud in the position shown….

That was it for my changes but Dave still had a sniff of a go, thanks to his Dirty trick card – The Ring of Teleportation!

He moved the ball up to the mid-pitch with skinks, but then Nuffle farted in his general direction as the ring fizzled in T7 moving him only 1 square down field and leaving him still out of scoring range.

Phew. One of the tightest games I’ve played in ages. Dave is a great coach but it was competitive for all of the second half and I feel like whilst we both had good chances to put the game away the 1-1 result was probably fair.

My pick for man of the match is my  AG5 War Dancer for me and Dave’s AG boosted saurus. For the elves the ability to leap into a cage on a 2 is so huge. It keeps you competing even when you are playing 5 vs 10 (which is the position I was in towards the end of the game). Dave’s consistent ball picking up was also pretty big as it robbed me of the time I thought I would have to pressure the ball after kick off.

Post-game we both picked up an improvement and one of my long-suffering linemen gained dodge. My coffers were swollen by 40k, which puts me within dreaming distance of a 12th player after the next match.