Blood Bowl: Turboleague, part Deux

Back in 2012 (geez, really?!), we played a season of Blood Bowl. I coached a High Elf team, the Tor Achare Titans. The league was eventually abandoned; after the last game, the team with the most points was Braga's Brutes (Orc), with a 5-1-0 record, who were declared Hellbird Turbocup champions by default. My High Elves were second, going 3-3-0.

All in all, it was fun enough that I think we should do it again. I've even got bleachers and everything. Last time, we tried to have a very organized league, with everybody signing on beforehand to play a home-and-home series with everybody else and so on. What ended up happening is that people just sort of gave up on the whole thing, and we never did finish it. So this time around, I'm thinking of a far more flexible format, that can handle anything from just a couple of casual games to a full-blown league with multiple competitive teams. This is what I came up with.

Turboleague format

Each coach has one team, generated as usual with a starting treasury of 1 000 000 gold pieces. The team with the most points on 23.12. is the league champion. The next season starts 26.12. Points are awarded as follows:

  - four (4) points for a win
  - two (2) points for a tie
  - one (1) point for a loss

Tiebreakers: wins, head-to-head record, touchdowns scored, casualties scored, fatalities scored.

Teams may play each other any number of times, but only the best two results against any single opponent count for the standings. There is no challenge system; no-one is ever obliged to play anyone. Teams may join or leave the league at any time during the season. Anyone may apply to join the league by contacting the commissioner (me); applications are accepted at the discretion of the commissioner.

The objective of these league rules is not to deliver a finely balanced competition, but rather to organize a series of fairly random pick-up games into a semicoherent whole.

We will be using the Competitive Rules Pack (CRP), which is available online. If someone wants to play one of the new teams (Chaos Pact, Slann, Underworld), I don't see why not.

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Speaking of my bleachers, by the way, I found some fairly ancient space ork sprues with two bodies still on them, so:

Also, we ordered some stuff from Eureka Miniatures, and they were kind enough to give us a frog standard bearer as a free sample, so here they are, along with a member of the pirate lady gun crew:

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I'll be playing dark elves myself, with a slight variation on the all positionals starting roster.

6 × lineman (420,000)
2 × blitzer (200,000)
1 × assassin (90,000)
1 × runner (80,000)
1 × witch elf (110,000)

For a total of 900,000 gp, meaning we can have two re-rolls as well!

This is, in fact, the same lineup that Mephala's Murderers started the last time we played; I think it's the best dark elf starting option if you want to try all the different player types, which is my main goal this season. Also, I did just fine with two blitzers when I played high elves.

For miniatures, I got a Shadowforge Miniatures Wicked Elf Gridiron Team. They're maybe not the most exquisitely detailed models you could get, but I like them, they've got character, and the pricing is very competitive.

The Sheogorad Saints

#5: Jenassa Samarys, runner
#11: Barenziah Targaryen, witch elf
#33: Raven Dren, assassin
#37: Fieryra Targaryen, blitzer
#44: Irileth Targaryen, blitzer
#50: Methulu Ienith, line-elf
#55: Aralosea Romori, line-elf
#69: Darane Mencele, line-elf
#71: Hlireni Indavel, line-elf
#73: Brelda Quintella, line-elf
#77: Endroni Dalas, line-elf

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So here we are, ready to play a random number of Blood Bowl games! If and when we get around to it, I'll be posting game reports here.

Let's Read Tolkien 54: The Passage of the Marshes

Gollum moved quickly, with his head and neck thrust forward, often using his hands as well as his feet.

Gollum leads Frodo and Sam down through the hills and into the Dead Marshes. They move by night and rest by day, both to avoid detection and to suit Gollum's hatred of the sun. In the marshes, not only is their route and footing uncertain, but they're haunted by strange corpse-lights and apparitions of dead bodies below the surface of the water: the dead from the great battles of the previous war against Sauron. There's a moment of horror when a flying Ring-wraith passes near them, and Frodo begins to feel the malign will of Sauron more strongly as they near Mordor.

Beyond the marshes, the hobbits and Gollum arrive in a desolate wasteland at the foot of the Mountains of Shadow. As they rest, Sam overhears Gollum having an argument with himself, on whether to betray the hobbits or not. A sinister "she" is mentioned. The debate seems to come to no conclusion, and at dusk, Frodo commands Gollum to take them to Morannon, the Black Gate of Mordor.

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The previous time Tolkien's war experience broke into the story directly was way back in the Hobbit, when Bard led a very anachronistic anti-aircraft defense of Lake-town against Smaug. Here, it's the titular marshes that are a memory of the bogs of the Somme. As Tolkien puts it (Letters, 226):

Personally I do not think that either war (and of course not the atomic bomb) had any influence upon either the plot or the manner of its unfolding. Perhaps in landscape. The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme. They owe more to William Morris and his Huns and Romans, as in The House of the Wolfings or The Roots of the Mountains.

You'll notice they never quote that last sentence! For what it's worth, I agree with Tolkien: there's not a lot of either world war in the Lord of the Rings; Tolkien's ideas of war are far more Beowulf than Band of Brothers. But it really is difficult to read this chapter and not think of the mud of the Western Front. I was strongly reminded of Pat Barker's Regeneration.

From the Dead Marshes, the hobbits move on to an unmistakably modern industrial landscape.

Here nothing lived, not even the leprous growths that feed on rottenness. The gasping pools were choked with ash and crawling muds, sickly white and grey, as if the mountains had vomited the filth of their entrails upon the lands about. High mounds of crushed and powdered rock, great cones of earth fire-blasted and poison-stained, stood like an obscene graveyard in endless rows, slowly revealed in the reluctant light.

It's not entirely clear what kind of industry could have produced this kind of devastation. Some of its features seem very modern, like the oily sump at the bottom of the hole where Gollum and the hobbits camp. But Tolkien was, if anything, a committed anti-modernist, so the association of industrial waste and mining slag with evil will, for him, have been a natural one. It was no accident that Tolkien named the sin of opposing God's will the Machine. In a sense, as the hobbits travel toward Mordor, they're traveling through Tolkien's personal psychogeography.

Finally, at the end of the chapter, we have Gollum's debate with himself. In many ways, it mirrors Frodo's struggle on Amon Hen: Sméagol, like Frodo, feels the malign influence of Sauron, and while some of him wants to fight it, his fallen will can't overcome the corruption of the Ring. Unlike Frodo, Sméagol doesn't get a divine intervention.

Finally, on a purely practical note: how are Frodo and Sam's clothes not completely falling apart by now? Do hobbits wear denim?

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Next time: poetry.