The tourney is over and the final standings can be found
here. Although I "only" scored 5 pts. (my goal was 6 pts.) I'm quite satisfied with my overall performance. But now for the match reports...
Match I: 0-2 vs. Norse
My opening match was against the team that eventually would go on to win the entire tourney. Somehow I forgot that Norse teams have a few players with the Frenzy skill and as a result of this, a couple of my players ended up getting crowd surfed early on. After a long grinding drive he finally scored to 0-1 with 2 turns left. Unfortunately he rolled a 10 (Blitz) on the following Kick Off and thus made it impossible for me to score a 2-turn TD.
I was put under good pressure in the second half until one of my Ghouls bravely picked up the ball and threw a Long Pass to a Wight downfield. Sadly he tripped over the goalline (damn you 2+ GFI's!), stunning himself and fumbling the ball into the crowd. Unfortunately it was thrown back onto to pitch in a very favorable position for my opponent and he was able to score another TD.
Match II: 2-1 vs. Amazon
This was quite an uneventful game. The only really thrilling moment was at the end when a combined 5+ / 3+ Dodge could have tied the game for the Amazonians but luckily this didn't happen and my first NAF victory was a reality!
Match III: 1-1 vs. Human
I totally dominated the first half of this game and scored quite easily to 1-0. Unfortunately I made a mistake trying to pick up the ball late in the first half and my opponent capitalised on this error and then the score was 1-1 going into the second half. The second half was a mess. The ball stayed in midfield the entire half and the match ended 1-1.
Match IV: 2-2 vs. Undead
Neither of us was able to break armour and thus only recorded 1 CAS the entire match. I trailed both 0-1 and 1-2 (one of my Ghouls once again scored a passing TD much to the surprise of my opponent). Luckily I also managed to score a 2-turn TD at the very end of the game. The opposing coach was not pleased, to say the least...
Match V: 1-1 vs. Khemri
A game of two halfs, to say the least... I completely dominated first half grinding down the turn marker and leading 1-0 at half time. Total domination. And the everything went completely wrong in the second half... I couldn't prevent him from equalising early on but it gave me 5 turns (partially thanks to a Riot) to score the winning TD. However, I completely fucked it up and luckily one of his players tripped over the goal line in the final turn and the match ended in a stallmate (thank you 2+ GFI's!).
Match VI: 1-2 vs. Dark Elves
This was a very strange match endeed... I slowly but surely removed his puny AV7 players from the pitch and when I scored the equalising TD in turn 2 of the second half I really thought I had this one in the bag... But then the weather changed to Pouring Rain... Although I was outnumbering my opponent by 11 players to 5 I made some poor decisions and when I failed to pick up the ball he pulled a few elven tricks out of his sleeve and suddently he was in scoring position with most of my players stuck in his half of the field. Combined with some appalling dice rolls from me this had just one outcome...
Overall I'm definately not 100% satisfied with my performance in all 6 matches and I feel I should have scored 8 pts. instead of 5 pts. But when taking into consideration that this was my very first NAF tourney I simply cannot be disappointed with the overall result. I also scored the second-most CAS (15), only 3 CAS behind the coach of the Orc team. This was a great experience and with some added training over the next few months I'm sure I'll be able to improve the 12th placed position come the next tourney.
