NAF Championship? #BringTheFling17

Hi everyone!

As you probably know, in a very few days we'll have another NAF Championship is coming up (29th and 30th April 2017)!
 As always, a great deal of fun and madness is expected to occur in one of the most prestigious and notorious Blood Bowl tournaments of the year.




Following along the "fun and madness" theme...
A bunch of tough lads from TFF decided to continue this lunacy tradition of gathering the best of the best to coach in the NAF Champs, and field a team of mighty Halflings!

Need I say more?   #BringTheFling17

Check out more on the subject in the appropriate TFF thread: #BringTheFling17
 

NAF Championship 2015 is ON!

NAF Championship LIV (2015) is ON.

If you're not there, make sure you keep updated with one of these links:

- NAF World Headquarters media,
- Twitter The NAF@OfficialNAF,
- Facebook NAF Chapionship 2015 event.

Above a gift to be presented to all attendees at this year's NAF Championship!

Last but not least, this year NAF gift!

Road to NAFC 2015

The latest NAF newsletter (09/10/14), announced that the Road to NAFC Championship 2015, will be hosted by FUMBBL. For those that missed it, last year's Road to NAFC was hosted by Cyanide and the prize was a ticket to the NAFC, in Nottingham - UK, worth 55£.

This will be the first time that NAF will sanction an on-line tabletop resurrection style tournament, and, once again the prize will be the ticket to the NAFC!

Quoting Phil / Purplegoo:

"The Road to the NAFC will be contested over 6 rounds of Swiss competition and will use the same rules as the NAFC. 
The Road to the NAFC is set to be the first of ongoing online NAF sanctioned resurrection style events; hopefully allowing members to track their progress via a new ‘online variant’ ranking system. For FUMBBL coaches old and new, this functionality will also be extended to user organised events similar those already running in the [L]eague division there.
For anyone that doesn’t know, the NAF Championship is the biggest tabletop Blood Bowl individual tournament of the year and one of the five yearly NAF Majors. Held at the East Midlands Conference Centre in Nottingham, UK, the 2014 running of the tournament attracted over 170 coaches, and 2015 could be even bigger.
Full details of the Road to the NAFC will be announced later in the year. In the mean time, please discuss and ask any questions you might have in the TFF or NAF forum threads. I’m really looking forward to this form of the game going digital and the collaboration between FUMBBL and the NAF!"

Sounds like very cool news to me!
Have fun.
A.

Ready for more NAF Champs goodness? Here's ceetee report!

Sooo... Are you ready for more NAF Champs goodness?


As a Blood bowl fanatic, tournament SWAG connoisseur, and a very competent Blood Bowl coach, ceetee is a known old friend of the MMN blog, and it's not the first time he is featured in the blog pages, sharing with us his NAFC experience with written reports and photos (NAFC '13, NAFC '12)!

For NAF Champs '14 he took along his Dark Elf team - Corvus Crows -, to achieve the great feat of climbing up there and rightfully conquer his place amongst the very best of this years tournament!

Without further delays, here's ceetee report:


NAF Champs 2014
Recently, I went to the NAF Champs and was fortunate enough to finish second. This is the story of the games that weekend…
With the new rules, TV110, I decided to take Dark Elves with as much Blodge and Wrodge as possible.

Game 1 vs Chaos
Luck will always have a role to play in a game that uses dice, but in a tournament as large as the NAF Championship, all sorts of other imponderables come into play. My opponent for the first round didn’t arrive. How would my tournament have gone if he did?

Game 1 vs Necromantic
Fortunately, the coach sitting next to me was due to play Geggster, one of the tournament organising team, who graciously stepped aside and allowed us to play. Maverick drove downfield in the first half and was making ground, until a 4+ dodge into the cage by one of my Witches popped the ball loose and we rushed in for an early score. In the second half, we received the kick and quickly rushed upfield. A few dodge away and some stalling later, we went in for the 2-0 win.

Game 2 vs Necromantic
The one match up I didn’t want. Over 160 coaches were there, and I ended up playing my brother, Deetee! My first match was ideal preparation, as both coaches had the same roster and the same skills, so I certainly had a chance. I received first in this game and managed to dodge and move upfield for an 8-turner. In the second half, Deetee sent his cage downfield with the intention of doing the same. I started marking his players up to string him out and possibly open some routes to the ball. Eventually one of my Blitzers managed to hit the ball carrier, but Deetee picked it up and forced the thing in for a score. 2 turns left – could we get the winner? I got the ball downfield in turn 7 but was hit, so needed some luck to pickup – pass – hand off into the endzone. 2-1 it was and massive apologies to Deetee for the jamminess!

Game 3 vs Undead
At last, some variety! And this one against the Sizzler, who as we know went on to win. This game was massively influenced by 2 dice sequences. Receiving first, the undead got perfect defence and set about putting pressure on the DE's, who couldn’t pick the ball up. He had a lot of players downfield and looked set to turn me over. On turn 3, I finally got my act together, picked up and passed to a lineman at the line of scrimmage and set about dodging away from the pursuing undead. I rolled something like 6,6,5,4,6,4,5 on the dodges – quite a sequence, although only one of the dodges required a 4+. Still, the momentum changed and Sizzler, now badly out of position went 1-0 down at the half. Kicking in Turn 9, my positioning was out as the undead poured downfield and set up camp near my goal line. I saw a chance to hit the ball carrier, though, but then the second remarkable sequence raised its head – my witches rolled 6 1s in a row over 3 turns. 1-1 it was and a very fair result against a good coach.

Game 4 vs Dark Elves
A mirror match against Myrmedon, another coach I had never faced previously. His roster was slightly different in approach, relying on no Witches, but more rerolls, an apothecary and an assassin. Kicking in the first half, my DEs positioned well, leading to the opposition’s runner trying a remarkable dodge and failing. Picking up the ball, I felt confident I could drive back upfield – however, both Witched wrestled their opponents to the ground and I was suddenly running out of tackle zones. A sideline cage seemed safe enough, but a 4+ lino 1d Pow popped the ball from my blodging Blitzer and the ball was picked up for a score – 0-1! Turn 5, we received and force our way into their half and got the equaliser at half time. The second half started well, removing 2 players on turn 1 and a third in turn 3. This advantage in numbers changed the game, and a score in turn 8 secured the win.

Game 5 vs Lizardmen
SFisher 91 and I have been to a few tournies together but have never played. His Lizzies looked a formidable opponent, but his dice were appalling. Pinning the Saurii was the key and we got a 1-0 advantage at the half. A lot of pushes were rolled. In the second half, I kicked and benefited from pouring rain. He had to use a reroll early on in the 1st turn of the second half, which meant when his skink failed to pick up, it bounced away… We picked it up and went off to score a second. As the man said, his team never had possession of the ball all game. To be fair, he took the dreadful dice as well as anyone might.

Game 6 vs Undead
Winkle Picka. We had met only once before, at the Blood bowl and with the same teams. I managed to put pressure on his cage at the line of scrimmage and bang the ball loose to score – 1-0 at the half. In the second, we received and scored in 5. It may have been possible to stall some more, but I was more confident about defending a 2-0 lead than 1-0. “-1 it ended and I was chuffed to bits that I had remained unbeaten all weekend.
A great tournament with some awesome games. But, how would it have gone for the Dark Elves if we’d faced Chaos in round one?

ceetee



Congrats to ceetee for such a fantastic result, and thank you for sharing once again this awesome experience!
A.

New NAF gift presented in the NAF Championship!

 Here´s a pic of the new NAF subscription gift, as presented in the NAF Championship taking place this weekend.
 The other side says "FAME +1".

   (Picture as shown in NAF official twitter account, @OfficialNAF)

NAFC Pics

Hi, like CeeTee I made the pilgrimmage to the NAFC and although the actual Blood Bowl from a results and dice rolling perspective was a bit of a disaster the weekend itself was still a great experience and I had a fun time.

My friend Thorsten made the trip for the first time and we flew over together from Duesseldorf to Birmingham where we were met my friend Peter who had driven over to England (via a Blood Bowl tournament in France) as part of his two week holiday. We then drove up to Sheffield where we were being hosted by my friends Pete and Anna.  Both Pete and Anna played in the NAFC last year but Anna finds 6 games in two days to be too much, so this year she stayed at home and watched the cricket instead.

Anyhow as you'll know the venue was changed for this years tournament, one of the main benefits for those who don't have, handily placed friends, was the co-located hotel offering good rates.  Here it is from the car park:

The conference centre itself is just out of shot on the righthandside of this picture.  Inside was very nice, with a bar and adjoining lounge areas, plenty of toilet facilities and a gaming hall that looked like this:

Here is a second chance to play spot the (non) geek:

Each day we were provided with a packed lunch, which was fine, nothing outstanding but providing enough fuel for the following games,  What was nice though was being able to go outside sit on the grass and enjoy the fresh air and sunshine between games.  I know, I said sunshine and I'm talking about England but it's true I tell you!!!

There was also a hot meal on the Saturday night included in the price of the ticket but Thorsten wanted to see Warhammer World, which is less than a 15 minute drive away, and all four of us wanted to see the Champions League Final that evening so I can't comment on how good, bad or indifferent this meal was as none of us even saw it.

From the games point of view I took my Undead and first up faced off against .... Undead.  This was the only game of the weekend where the dice wanted to play ball for me and even this started with my Mummy rolling Block and Skull first block having to reroll it and getting double skulls.  Second turn Ghoul failed to pick up the ball and burnt a reroll whilst failing but my armour rolls made up for it and I won the war of attrition 1-0.

The second game I played a very nice American gentlemen by the name of Aron (Aaron?) who had come all the way from Nebraska to play six games of Blood Bowl.  He played very well and most of the key rolls went his way so I lost to his Dwarves in a typical 1-0 grind.

Third game of the day oh look Undead vs Undead again!

Two nicely painted Egyptian themed teams facing off on a nice pitch. Unfortunately my dice descended from bad to worse and I lost the game by the odd touchdown again.

Here's another shot of the boys in action:

The following day I played Amazons and if anything the dice had taken a turn for the worse with the added bonus that he was failing nothing.  However I dominated the game and would of won but for a double skull final blitz free when literally any other result would of brought me victory. 

Lizardmen were next with the strangest set up I've encountered for this team.  Six Saurus plus Silibili and he'd given them Guard as a skill in each round so I was facing off against seven ST4 players with six Guard but only one with Block and the team had no rerolls at all.  However he appeared to of sold his soul to Nuffle for most of the game.  I scored in turn 8 and he had a go at the one turn touchdown.  Even though I'd set up to defend against this possibility he managed to make about 20 dice rolls with nothing going wrong and it was 1-1 at half time. 
More crazy dice rolls prevented me from scoring a winner and left him needing to pick up the ball with a Skink, Hand off to a Saurus and complete two GFIs for what would of been an outrageous win,  Fortunately for me he did the traditional thing and fell over the line. 

That left Wood Elves played by a nice Geordie lady for game 6. 
It was one of those games where the ball just refused to be picked up by the Undead and the Wood Elves kept nipping in and running off with the damn thing!  Although I was finally getting some decent armour/injury rolls and slowly taking Wood Elves out of the game I was 3-0 down before it could make a difference.  I managed to come back to 3-2 as by that time there were only two WE on the pitch, and they were lying down pretending to be dead, but ran out of time and that was that.

We had a bit of a nightmare trip back with the Channel Tunnel claiming not to sell tickets at the gate anymore and some dramas with the ferry, BUT all in all it was definitely worth it and the new venue has to rate as a success.

NAFC 2013 flash report: Ceetee!

Still in the 'aftermath' of the NAF Championship held the 25th and 26th of May (2013), I've managed to get a flash report from fellow TFF'er Ceetee, about his games in this year's tournament.
Here's his take on the event:

Well the NAFC has come and gone, and it was a great experience. I went with my brother and because a lot of us stayed at the venue, the socialising was brilliant. So how about the games?
I took Elves with 2 Blitzers, 2 Catchers, a Thrower and 6 Linos, with 3RRs and an Apo.

   Game 1 - Made of Welsh (Goblins)

Two chainsaws looked a lot of trouble against my AV7 - fortunately, Nobbla kicked back in turn 1, then a 3d blitz took the other off the pitch. A slow grind, hitting as many gobboes as possible lead to 1-0 at the half, and 2-0 at the end.

   Game 2 - DaBoar (Dwarf)
Dwarves are not an Elves' favourite opponent, but some elf stalling led to 1-0 at halftime. DaBoar ground down the field. However, a tiny positioning error allowed me to surf his runner in turn 6 of the second half, so I ran out 1-0 winner. I was given some D6s from his club, too - thanks!

  Game 3 - Jericho (Dwarf)
My second Italian opponent, my second Dwarf opponent! A similar game to the last, 1-0 up, but then some great work from Jericho saw him hand off to score the equalizer turn 16 - close all the way through and a great game.

   Game 4 - Podfrey (Dwarf)

Great. Dwarves again and this time Podfrey. I kicked again and did a good job of slowing the drive up. However, a half-hearted attempt at mobbing the cage allowed Geoff to push through and score at the half. The second half started with some ridiculous positioning on my part, which quite rightly got my all carrier catcher surfed. A lucky throw-in got me back in the game and I equalised in turn 5. A deep kick made it a little trickier, but 6 GFIs later, (including a reroll on the last one!) Geoff won the game 2-1 and went on to win the League championship.

   Game 5 - Stick (Norse)
A complete and utter dicing. Stick is an excellent player, but his dice were dreadful, whilst mine were astounding. Nothing he tried worked, whilst everything I attempted came off. A one-sided 5-0 win that seems more and more ridiculous the more I think of it. Sorry Stick!

   Game 6 - Wilzif (Undead)
The last game, and the chance to face an opponent whom I last played 5 years ago. Wilf received the kickoff and set about smashing my Elves. I used my Apo early on a Wrestle lino which meant I couldn't use it on my Blitzer in the next turn. I got plenty of shots at his Blodge ghoul ball carriers, but Wilf worked the ball into the endzone turn 8. In the second half, he got a great shot on my ball carrier and wound up a deserved 2-0 winner.

So, 3-1-2 and a great weekend.

I will definitely be back next year at the best attended tourney in the UK.
All the best,
Ceetee (*)

(*) Ceetee played with the Drones Club (Pro Elf team), and managed to get a very respectable 53^rd place out of 156 coaches. Well done mate, and thank you for sparing the time to let us know how things went for you!

A.

NAF dice for 2013!

Following the unfortunate news about GW pulling the rug under NAF licence to produce a new colour of Block Dice, here are the "matching coloured sets of 2D6, plus a D8 and a D16" that NAF has announced last weekend in the NAF Championship 2013.

NAF dice for 2013 membership renewals

These four lovely dice will be given to all renewals of membership for 2013, unless of course you prefer to get one set of Blocking dice from the colours that are still available (apparently those are Red, Yellow, Light Blue, Light Green and Silver).

 

And there's a secret within this year's NAF cryptex... I mean dice. You can actually 

combine them into a calendar, and set them to the year they we're issued! How cool is that?

Thank you to fellow NAF and TFF member Lunchmoney, for the courtesy of letting us use his pictures!

Cheers mate!

A.

NABBO TC dugout meets NAFC 2012

After being spotted in the Challenge of Q'uermitt 2012, this time the NABBO Tea Cup memorabilia  - both dugout and dice - have been seen, this time in the NAF Championship 2012!
Check out those yellow circles in the image...

Apparently, out of 182 coaches playing in the tournament, the first one that sits to play with our friend Neil was using a NABBO TC dugout and taking the NABBO dice along with it!
Note that Neil is himself a (hopefully proud) owner of a complete set of NABBO TC collectibles.


How about that for a coincidence?
:)

Update (29 May):
 
As promised, after checking our sources, using Neil's tip, and consulting a powerful oracle in distant Albion lands, we decided to use our most advanced device of warp transmission and send a pm to ceetee! He promptly answer and kindly sent us this pic taken in the NAFC with him holding... you know what!

Kudos to Neil and ceetee for immortalizing the moment!