A very welcome invite lead to a mid-week game of Guildball around at Mike's. And for the Sky Sports fans out there, the Fishermen (looking to put the ball in the net) were pitted against the Engineers (looking to turn the screw)....or something like that.
Above: Manager Mike managing. (None of us currently have a proper Guildball pitch. Mike uses sheets of foam board, I use foot square kitchen floor tiles, with the lines marked out in string. Classy).
Mike's Engineers:
Pin Vice - Captain
Mainspring - Mascot
Hoist
Velocity
Compound - Goalkeeper
Decimate
My Fishermen team:
Shark - Captain
Salt - Mascot
Greyscales
Kraken
Angel
Sakana
Mike won the dice off and chose to receive. Pin Vice collected the ball, and Mike's plan to score in the first turn came to nothing when Velocity dropped it in the first passing attempt, doh!
Above: Oops! Butterfingers.
On writing up this game, I realise two things, firstly, pictures of Guildball games are really dull. (I know that Mike's currently white pitch is a little featureless, but even with a bespoke Guildball pitch, I am not sure that a pictorial record would keep your attention for very long). And secondly, I get thoroughly enthralled with the game and forget parts of it.
For instance, I cannot remember how Shark got the ball, but he did, and went on to score. I do however, remember that Kraken successfully used Harpoon to disrupt Pin Vice's movement.
Using Hoist and Velocity Mike controlled the kick-off and very quickly equalised.
I managed to get the ball out to Sakana on the subsequent goal kick, and after Kraken got some easy momentous knock-downs, Sakana put me in the lead again. Shark also managed to pull his legendary play over five of the Engineers team. Nice.
Mike gets the following goal kick to Pin Vice, and with some clever shenanigans, between Pin Vice, Hoist and Velocity, he got the latter to score their second goal. I could have done more to stop the goal, but I failed to use Shark's Tidal Surge to leave Pin Vice's melee zone. It would have been a score of eight all at this point, but unfortunately, it was also during this turn that Salt perished, so Mike was leading 10 to 8.
Shark collected the goal kick and ran with it to the cover of a nearby wall, but he needed a further turn before he could try and score the winning goal. But, unfortunately by now Angel was very unwell, and without Salt's Defensive Support she only had a few wounds left. I had made the mistake of leaving Decimate's melee zone and the passing blow took a heavy toll.
Due to a huge pile of momentum tokens, Mike won the activation automatically for the next turn. He couldn't get to Shark who was now poised to score, but this was not a problem. He could easily get to Angel, and with influence to spare on Decimate, he put her down, to win the game 12 to 8.
My previous game against Joe had ended with exactly the same circumstances, although Joe had left it to the very last influence to take out my player for the win. The only difference in the two games; I did a total of two wounds to Joe's players, against Mike's Engineers, I only did one!
This was my best Guildball game yet, despite the result. I was very happy with the team, and despite some frailties, I will probably run the same line up again next time. Despite the two take outs, Mike's team is also a footballing team, which I think gives a better game than those teams which focus on take outs rather than playing the ball.
Thanks again to Mike for the game, which no doubt we will be playing again very soon. And as an added treat for all you Ballers out there, Dan has begun a Guildball blog (The Goalpost - yes we all saw what you did there Dan), which you can find at:
http://thegoalpostgb.blogspot.co.uk
Happy wargaming to you all.
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