Tuesday, October 31, 2017

I like my learning with curves

This week in Blood Bowl action it was all about dwarves fighting dwarves.  Slow, smelly, tough, and clumsy, it figured to be a slugfest from start to finish.  It was a contest between the upright, lawful, and admirable Cutiest Pies regular dwarves piloted by yours truly and the fiendish and corrupt 2 Bulls, 1 Ball Chaos Dwarf team.

On the other hand these are Blood Bowl players so probably both teams are evil bastards, it is just that one team likes to use Claws to cheat a little.

I had a lead on the opponent in terms of Team Value so he got a wizard, which is a huge advantage in a game where somebody likely wins 1-0 or 2-1.  Stopping a touchdown can easily be a win.  However, the cost of this is that I had a better team and could easily dominate the brawl in the middle of the field.

I had to kick to him and he quickly got the ball, taking some big risks to get it into the hands of one of his Bull Centaurs.  They are both strong and fast and pretty much define the Chaos Dwarf team.  He ran his Bull Centaur across the goal line and scored on turn 4 giving me 5 turns to return the favour.

The kick back to me was a Blitz, and I had prepared terribly for that eventuality.  It was a near thing for him to just grab the ball again and score, but I got ahold of it and gained control of the match.  I ran my runners down the field with the ball while my brawlers punched his team around but I had to contend with a Bull Centaur chasing them down trying to get the ball back.

This is where the story takes a meta turn.  My opponent wanted to blitz my ball carrier and smack the ball away but he started moving before clicking Blitz, so while his Bull Centaur could wander about it couldn't attack.  This is really frustrating - it sucks to have a UI issue swing the game.  Halfway through his movement he realized the problem so he used his wizard to knock down my ball carrier and pop the ball loose, intending to continue running over and scoop it up himself.

But using your wizard ends your turn.  So he knocked over my ball carrier, went to continue taking actions, and realized it was my turn because once you click the wizard, the game ends your turn.


He was pissed.  Two possible ways to stop my TD were at hand, and one was lost due to the UI, and the other due to not knowing the rules fully.

I get it.  I lost a game on the back of not knowing how the wizard works early on in my Blood Bowl career and it *sucks* to have a valuable resource lost to no real effect.  That is a really shitty feeling.

In any case although my ball carrier was knocked over by the wizard there weren't any enemy players nearby to capitalize so I grabbed the ball again and ran in for a TD, tying up the game at 1-1.  My opponent tried to set up a 2 turn TD to regain the advantage but couldn't manage a throwing game with Chaos Dwarves - no surprise there.  However, I managed to knock 3 of his players off of the pitch before halftime was called and none of them made it back.

Starting the second half I was up 8 players to 11, which is a really serious advantage.  There isn't much to say about the rest of the game, because I got the ball and with my numbers advantage I punched him around the field with little difficulty.  I pushed a Bull Centaur into the crowd and slowly wore his team down to guarantee my win.  With my team being up 3 players and having more skills the second half was just a safe, careful grind to a 2-1 victory for me.

I like winning, but I don't like winning like that.  In a board game you can let people take back moves when they don't realize the rules, but in a computer game you are pretty much stuck.  Even if he knew the rules exactly I still had good chances to win but this kind of thing is pretty devastating, no doubt about that.

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