Our best game of Dreadball so far – I got the Forge Fathers and Veer-myn assembled and challenged Jen to a game. I took the Forge Fathers, and she took the Veer-myn, and we decided to try out cards for a game (no ref this time).
She played Home and I played Visitors – which seems to be the general way that my games have gone so far, and she proceeded to dance her rats all over the pitch. There was a giant scrum on the centre line as our guards got into a huge fight, and one of mine was killed outright. The others did almost nothing for the first half of the game as we slammed backwards and forwards, all the while the rats running around with the ball behind my lines. She scored 2 four pointers, and I was completely unable to even pick up the ball, even with my Strikers.
In rush 8, I managed to get the ball! And transport it all the way to her four-pointer spot! And get it stolen off of me by a Veer-myn striker running straight off of the bench! This was about the time that I managed to clear much off the space on the centre line, asserting that Forge Fathers are stronger than Veer-myn. Even if they can’t score for toffee. This slowed the rats down, although Jen managed to get the ball back up to my scoring zone for a rush 13 landslide victory.
I thoroughly enjoyed the game, despite barely having any contact with the ball. We’d introduced the ref this time so there were more events – the biggest effect on the game came from the ‘double-distance scatter’ event, with the ball ricocheting all over the pitch, especially where it collided with the ref and the scrum on the centre line.
In our next game, I picked up the Forge Fathers again and Jen took the Marauders. It was more difficult for her to get behind me and Sucker Punch my guards, and her lack of strikers made scoring more trouble. Forge Fathers are also pretty good at holding their own against Orx. This time, the dice gods had completely changed their minds and the Goblins found it difficult to pick up the ball, while the Forge Fathers managed to score two four-pointers and a three-pointer for a landslide victory in the second half despite an early Goblin two-point strike.
As with the previous Veer-myn game, I think it helped that I cleared the table of opponents – there are fewer models to evade around, straighter paths to the strike zones, and less threat hexes to worry about. Jen didn’t top up her teams from the subs bench because there were models closer who could be immediately effective to spend the action counters on.
In both games, the fan support and the ref didn’t really matter – no-one scored the high points to get enough fan support for a free coaching dice, and no-one fouled anywhere near the ref. I also realised just how far away the ref can see things going on – it can cover a large amount of the action, if placed near the centre line.
I noticed on the Mantic website that there is a games day at Firestorm games in Cardiff in June, and hopefully I’ll have at least two teams painted by then. I’ll just need to work out if I want to do the work commute on a weekend, and if I can convince Jen to come along too. As there’re two of us, it’ll work out cheaper to drive (even factoring in parking and the bridge toll). I haven’t heard about anything in Bristol yet, and if nothing happens maybe I’ll try and organise something myself. Cut ‘n Thrust Wargaming is pretty good and has plenty of space, and it’s where I played the Dreadball demo game that convinced me to jump on the Kickstarter.