This past weekend was the 1st Annual Blingtoof’s Gitbash Bloodbowl tournament! It was held here in Toronto at the very awesome gaming store Meeplemart. My buddy Tristan from GWPertinent has been trying to convince me to attend one of the many Bloodbowl tournaments he goes to every year, but I was always a little hesitant to go. But with Blingtoof being held at my local gaming store, I didn’t really have an excuse! So I got out my old Nurgle Rotters team, put together a roster (with Tristan’s help), and headed on down to test my very poor Bloodbowl skills against some of the best players in Ontario!

Blingtoof had a few rules that were a little different from your average Bloodblowl tournament. Since it was obviously Goblin themed, there some awesome rules for fielding goblins on any team, encouraging fouling, and sneaking goblins onto the pitch during the game. This added a lot of flavour to the whole event and was really a lot of fun. It also gave me an excuse to paint up some awesome new goblin models for my Nurgle Team!

So with all that explanation out of the way, lets dive right in to the games I played over the weekend and how I ended up doing.

First game: Dave – Orcs

For various reasons, I was really happy that I wasn’t facing a nimble, playmaking, Av7 team like Wood Elves for the first game. But 4 Black Orcs, 4 Blitzers and a Troll is not something to take lightly. But at least they were playing the same game as my Nurgle team was! After grinding him down over the first half, play didn’t really move past the line of scrimmage for either team. As I came into the tournament wanting to play a solid defensive game, this was great encouragement that I was actually doing something right.

He held him this close to the end zone for 4 turns!

In the kick-off for the second half, a blitz result came up and that helped me to bash through a flank to a score quick touchdown. The Orc team did the same thing back to me on the last kick off, but my defense held him just within 3-4 squares to a touch down for a good 3-4 turns and secured me the win.

1-0 win for the Stagnant Society!

Second game: Alex – Norse

For my second game, Alex surprised me with his Norse team. It was not a team that I have any experience playing against and I really didn’t expect to see one at the tournament. It turned out to be a nightmare team for me to face, as everyone was Av7/8, almost entirely with block and backed up with Werewolves and a Yeti with frenzy to mess me up even farther. By turn 4 of the first half I only had 3 models left on the board. He had killed, injured, or knocked out almost my entire team. It was nasty, but luckily all my players regenerated from their wounds giving me a full roster for the second half. I started that second half down by only a single touchdown (a feat considering what I had to work with) and I had almost managed to push a tie, but he outplayed me and scored again late in the second.

0-2 loss.

Third game: Tyler – Orcs

Last game of the day was against another Orc Team! A much better matchup for me than those damn drunk Vikings. While Chris’ Orc roster was a little different that what I previously faced, the core of 4 black orcs, a troll and some blizters was the same. I was confident that I knew what my team needed to do.

Whatever plans I had didn’t really matter once I started rolling stupid good and filled his dugout with knocked out Orcs to score a quick touchdown. He almost managed a comeback touchdown with an amazing thrown goblin maneuver, but it was countered with some goblin tricks of my own. The dice were certainly on my side for most of this game, we could only laugh at how many 10’s and 11’s I ended up rolling.

3-0 win for the Stagnant Society!

Do'h! So close. Damn go-for-it rolls!

So I finished off Day 1 with a pretty impressive 2-1-0 record. This was waaaay better than I expected to do, so I was a little worried about who I was going to be matched up against for Day 2. I had expected to lose all my games and ending up with 2 wins on the first day was good enough for me, so whatever happened on Day 2 – I had already declared myself a winner. But the final two games still needed to be played!

Check back soon for a report on my final two games, the final tournament results and prizes.