{"id":265,"date":"2013-09-17T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-09-17T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pagan-gerbil.net\/?p=265"},"modified":"2013-09-17T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-09-17T08:00:00","slug":"bristol-regional-tournament-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pagan-gerbil.net\/?p=265","title":{"rendered":"Bristol Regional Tournament 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Bristol Regional Tournament! Held at Vanguard Wargaming, like the Bristol Blitz<\/a> before it, and the first tournament I\u2019ve been to without Jen. Oli<\/a> came along and borrowed my Corporation team as his own Void Sirens weren\u2019t painted yet.<\/p>\n

I took a lot of umm-ing and ahh-ing about what team exactly I should take. My initial thought was <\/font>for <\/font>Veer-myn<\/a><\/font> as they<\/font> had done me so well before, but on the other hand I\u2019d been told at that tournament it was not fun to play against. I decided to go with the Z\u2019zor – because I had only played one game with them before, because they almost derailed me at the Welsh Regional, and because I don\u2019t do well with bashy teams and this would be an opportunity to get some practice. In addition, people are put off by their Skill 5+ Strikers, but that\u2019s what I am used to with the Veer-myn anyway.<\/p>\n

I suffered from the Kickstarter mispack problem, so I had too many guards and not enough jacks. In the special provision given to tournaments, you can take the team like that and choose either a card and a 2mc penalty or a coaching dice and a 2mc bonus. Given that I would always want a card to give me the option to buy one in the game, I went for the card option. With the remaining 18mc, I chose extra ranks on both of my Strikers and a Defensive Coach (to try and keep them safe).<\/p>\n

It was a fun event – five games squeezed into a single day, and 14 players overall. A bit more hectic than the previous Bristol tournament, but with only six players then it could be a little more relaxed with timings.<\/p>\n

The only thing slightly marring the event were the new rules – in the week before the tournament, the ball launch rules<\/a> changed twice and most people had no chance to play with them. On top of that, the widely rumoured change to Judwan to drop them down to Speed 4+ was used, removing their tournament penalty. These changes weren\u2019t in the rules pack, and I was wondering if there was anything else going to change before the day. However, the new launch rules were printed out for everybody and weren\u2019t too difficult to follow – although I think once people get used to them their play might change a bit. In spite of the last minute changes though, it was a very well-run event and everything happened as it should – the games went so smoothly, we actually finished a little early. Three cheers for Liam!<\/p>\n

Game 1 – Broadside Bandits (Kev\u2019s Marauders), Away<\/h2>\n

Start as you mean to go on! Kev hadn\u2019t played at all since the Vanguard Season One League<\/a> back in March – and that game was against me. He hasn\u2019t lost anything though, as he beat me by a landslide – even when I got 3pts early on! My Strikers had Jump and Roll – neither of which came into play. A couple of times he managed to push me onto the ball launch path, and got me bashed by the new launch rules. Luckily, Z\u2019zor don\u2019t get knocked out too easily.<\/p>\n

Game 2 – The Lunar Darksiders (Cai\u2019s S2 Corp), Away<\/h2>\n

This time, I got exactly the skills that I wanted – Safe Pair of Hands and Skill increase. They worked quite well, although I always seemed to be throwing with the Safe Pair of Hands and catching with the other one. I managed to kill a human Striker, and get a 6pt win out of it.<\/p>\n

Game 3 – Saltford Spankers (Oli\u2019s S2 Corp), Away<\/h2>\n

I enjoy playing against Oli, because I think we are quite close in skill level. This time, my upgrades were Roll and Skill Increase – again, Roll never came into it and the Skill Increase was heavily relied upon. In this game, I failed many dashes and evades, and even got knocked down a bit. Oli used his Running Interference quite well to break my scoring runs. I lost many actions trying to stand up players that had no intention of standing at all – Oli even took a picture to show how many players were lying down at a time (from both teams). I used the last turn to score a single point and bring my beating down to a 4pt loss.<\/p>\n

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Game 4 – The Clone-A-Cell Crushers (Adam\u2019s Marauders), Away<\/h2>\n

Adam was a skilled opponent, and by this point I thought that I should focus more on smashing. This was successful! I got two kills! I lost by a landslide, and I don\u2019t think I scored any points at all. Adam also managed to kill one of my Strikers. Once again, the skills I got were Roll and Backflip and were unused. Adam was very lucky with his dice – he managed to score about seven injuries on the Z\u2019zor Striker, and to dodge five successes from a Z\u2019zor slamming his Orx in the back on a single dice.<\/p>\n

Game 5 – Orcs Orks Orx (Dave\u2019s Marauders), Away<\/h2>\n

I played Dave back in the Vanguard Season One league earlier this year, and he brought his yellow-armoured Orx again. He suffered some very bad luck – I managed to push one of his Guards onto the ball launch and got him hit, and he also failed a ball pickup with his Jack on the DB1 hex. When I scored in the next rush, his goblin got killed by the ball re-launch. <\/p>\n

Both of my Strikers had A Safe Pair of Hands, and I managed to win by 5pts, in part thanks to his goblins constantly missing their 1-dice attempts at 4pt shots. In the final rush, seeing that I couldn\u2019t win a landslide and wanting to get a bit further in body count, I spent all my actions Stomping and Slamming, and had no ref checks against me, but didn\u2019t even send anyone off.<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

Conclusions<\/h2>\n

The full results are on Liam\u2019s website<\/a> – I got 11th place out of 14 players and Oli came 6th. Sebastian Gerhart came top (winning an awesome, awesome trophy), and CJ (who I played in the Vanguard Season Two league) got the metal spoon – because a wooden spoon is not futuristic enough for DreadBall. Sebastian has put a few blog posts about his experiences there on his blog too – trophy<\/a> and match reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was a fun day – and I think either I didn\u2019t focus enough on murder, or my dice were against me. It\u2019s quite possible that both were true – I had some awful rolls, and missed a hell of a lot of 3pt strikes through the day.<\/p>\n

I was surprised at how few teams were represented – I think there were equal numbers of Corporation teams, many Marauder teams, one Judwan and one Z\u2019zor team. I wasn\u2019t surprised that Forge Fathers and Robots were left out, but I was surprised that there were no Veer-myn. Maybe I\u2019m the only one not put off by Skill 5+ after all.<\/p>\n

There is another tournament in Bristol being considered for January next year. Hopefully everyone else had a good enough time to come along to that one, and we can get some babysitters so that Jen can come along too. Next big DreadBall event on the calendar is the National in Essex in November!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Bristol Regional Tournament! Held at Vanguard Wargaming, like the Bristol Blitz before it, and the first tournament I\u2019ve been to without Jen. Oli came along and borrowed my Corporation team as his own Void Sirens weren\u2019t painted yet. I took a lot of umm-ing and ahh-ing about what team exactly I should take. My … <\/p>\n

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