Smash Of The Week II - Week 7

Phillipe Flabbybun: Hello and welcome avid viewers to your latest instalment of Smash of the Week! After a lack of games to cover last week we have had the time to get Arni back in the studio!

Arnild Swoonzenorger: It took Arnild many suns and moons travel across ancient forests, arctic tundras, barren deserts, grand cities and dilapidated villages to make it back to this hell hole, and after all my travels Arnild has learnt one thing. 

Phillipe: What's that?

Arnild: Churle Chastey is a cheap, cretinous bag of carrion waste, who wouldn't fork out for the padded seat on Arnild's coach! Arnild has inch long splinters in the softest, most undesirable places now Churle, and you will pay for this you disease!!

Phillipe: Not this again... Viewers, let's look at last weeks games whilst Arnild 'chats' with our director.

Weirdos of Farthing Wood (2) - (0) Chaos disUnited
Beginning their M.A.D. league journey last week against the weirdos were the renegades team, Chaos disUnited, and although they've showed up to the party almost half way into the season headcoach Alec Funguson was adamant in his pre-game interview that this was the season opener! As it turns out disUnited had been booked in for the opener, but whilst travelling had got lost in a freak cloud of 'mystic mist' which had drifted in from the Chaos Wastes. What felt like a week of travelling for the renegades was actually two months and worse than this they ended up in the remote village of Scalpeville rather than their original destination! As fate would have it though the Weirdos were in the hamlet for a team check up (Scalpeville is renown for it's apothecary academy, S.A.W.) and a game was quickly arranged.

Chaos fans are some of the most devoted in the land, and as such had been patiently waiting for the last two months in the original stadium and not allowing any other games to be played until disUnited arrived. On hearing that their team had appeared out of the mist and were playing in another stadium they grew understandably discontent (more so than usual for a chaos fan) and a sorcerer in the crowd teleported them to the stands from which they began to unleash their frustrations on disUnited vociferously and with projectiles, with one eagle eyed fan (literally eagle eyed, chaos fans are a funny bunch) hitting and crushing the skull of a marauder with a large piece of Warpstone! This sparked what was to be the most violent game of Blood Ball in the history of the M.A.D. after a total of twelve casualties and three deaths were inflicted (not counting those in the crowd), and both teams were happy to have the academy doctors on hand! On receiving the ball minotaur Khall Rageclaw cleared some space on the pitch by pushing a trogre into a crowd and disUnited formed a cage and edged forward. Meanwhile, their troll attempted to greedily eat a Weirdos runt, which escaped the gaping maw and instead crawled up its nose, clearly tugging on something important and causing the Troll to leave the pitch screaming in pain. With the troll gone the cage was left exposed and a trogre blitzed the ball carrier, crushing the marauder under-root as he did. This caused the ball to squirt around the ensuing mosh, which eventually ended with a runt throwing a touchdown for a Weirdos score! This riled the disUnited fans further causing more projectiles to rain down from the stands, this time knocking out a renegade goblin! The surprises for this game weren't over yet though, and with the familiar rev of his chainsaw Helmut Mutt took to the field and immediately assaulted a surprised troge! The half ended with a failed runt fling, with the beast ending up buried in the ground rather than dancing about in the endzone.

After a pinpoint kick from disUnited the Weirdos were on the backfoot for their receiving drive and were forced off the ball by Khall the minotaur. After a minor scuffle the ball ended up going out of bounds into the crowd twice, who after seeing so much bloodshed on the pitch hastily threw it back at the players! The ball left the pitch a third time and was launched into the centre of the gridiron, much to the surprise of goblin Sliri Spitefinger who failed to gather the ball and ended up on the bad end of a trogre block. With the ball uncontested, and Helmut Mutt having an accident on his own chainsaw, the Weirdos collected the ball and strode it home for the second score and the win.

Orocarni Stiffbeards (2) - (1) Middenheim Reformers
Blood Bowl can often be a game of fine margins, but when a series of uncontrollable elements gather against you those fine margins can sometimes become gaping holes, as was the case for the seemingly cursed Middenheim Reformists.

Playing against last year's runners up, the Orocarni Stiffbeards, was always going to be an uphill struggle but when the weather is so sunny and bright that it actively encourages a running game, against a team of running specialists, it makes your game plan that much more difficult. Couple with this with some of the Inmates' history catching up with them and your game is never going to be a good one! It is well known that the Middenheim Reformers are conscripted from individuals of a 'complicated' past, and a fair number of their 'followers' tend to be the families and friends of those scorned by the players! As it was, emotions had taken over a particularly angry (and drunk) section of the crowd in the pre-game warm up and as the players took to the pitch for kick of their vitriol exacerbated to such a level that a riot exploded, sweeping across the Inmates backline and leaving six humans (and a dwarf) knocked down and dazed. The riot was promptly stopped however when superstar Morg 'N' Thorg, who was on the Inmates' payroll for the game, sauntered out from the dug-outs and politely asked the crowd to cease by hammering the heads of a dozen individuals together. During all of this the referee had blown the whistle for kick-off and dwarf star-runner Merrytoe had collected the ball and scored a touchdown through the melee! The Inmates received the ball and quickly took up positions behind Morg, who efficiently engineered a hole for a catcher to run through, successfully snatch a pass from the air and score to equalise the game.

For all their wins the Stiffbeards have not been excellent at shutting out opponents, and judging by headcoach Bavor Thulin's hairdryer treatment of his team at the interval this was a game he had identified as a good chance to do so! Angered by their halftime dress-down the dwarfs took back to the pitch and hunted down the scoring catcher, perhaps taking their retribution a smidgen too far after a mass dog-pile suffocated the life out of the player! Their fury had clearly given the Stiffbeards the adrenaline shakes and it took a couple of attempts to gather the ball, by which time the Inmates' were upon them and with a decent shot of scoring a second! When it's not your day it's not your day though, and the humans were no better with the ball than the dwarfs and fumbled a pass attempt, and despite their best efforts to cage up around the ball it turned out to be too lose and the Stiffbeards managed to get in, collect the ball and run in a second score to win the game.


Phillipe: And that's it for last weeks games! Enough excitement to spread over four games, ehy Arni?!

Arnild: What do you mean, "How will I pay for it?" you stuttering, misery of a man? Arnild was clear, he needs the splinters removed from his nether-regions after you sent a pile of broken wood in the guise of a carriage to collect me! Tweasers!?! What do you mean, tweasers!? These shards are too big for tweasers, I would need finger sized pinching tools to remove them! In fact, your fingers look to be around the correct size... Come back here with that hand!!

Phillipe: It's great to have you back Arni, although I'm sure Churle would have paid an arm and a leg... and a few fingers by the looks of it... to keep you out of the office! G'night and see you next week all!