League Play
I wasn't planning on using the Avion Yellowhawks (Corporation humans) in the first DreadBall league I ran from January thru March. When assessing interest in the league it sounded as though we were going to have two Corporation teams and two Orx teams from our four coaches. Not having a single Veer-myn or Forge Fathers teams didn't sit well with me, so Sebastien volunteered to play the Veer-myn and I opted for Forge Fathers. In the end we ended up with six teams registered: 2 Orx, 2 Forge Fathers, 1 Veer-Myn and 1 Corporation.
After two rounds of play, our lone human player opted not to continue so we were human-less and sitting at an odd-number of players. I was already coaching The Royal Eternian Rams but also added my Yellowhawks in to round out the teams and provide a full representation of the core four teams.
League Finals
The top four teams were a good mix, with only the Orx going unrepresented for a prize. The third place game was between Seb's Veer-myn and my Forge Father team, the Royal Eternian Rams. This was a great game with a lot of scoring, swinging the lead back and forth several times through the course of the game.
Near the end it looked like the Rams had it all buttoned up with but a great rush by the Veer-myn strikers gambled for a bonus strike of two points. With the score at one point in the Veer-myn favour, and only one rush remaining to each team it was going to be close. I gambled away my first two action tokens in hopes of getting a card that would allow me to score, and did get one that I could use. I also needed to double my attempt to pick up the ball. Everything worked out except for the strike throw...
A well fought game that went down to the wire, Seb's Veer-myn take 3rd place in the Trilogy Cup!
The game for top place was played between Orrin's Funky Fathers and my Avion Yellowhawks. This was a very tight, low scoring game through the early stages. When we got closer to the end I was able to pull ahead by 5 points at the end of the 13th rush.
So after being a surprise entry into the league and an impressive run, the Avion Yellowhawks turned out to be the winners of the 1st Trilogy Cup!
Congratulations and thanks to everyone who played in our first league. It was a lot of fun, and I hope to do another one over the summer.
Closing Thoughts
I quite liked the provided league rules in the core rulebook, but they do feel specifically aimed at club play. By that, I mean a regularly scheduled repeating event where everyone shows up every time. The reality of things with gamers locally seems to be far less organized, and that simply doesn't seem to be possible for most players. Or perhaps it's simply a matter of desire, I don't know.
Regardless, I think a second round of league play would need some modifications in order to work. I'd likely try to do a round-robin schedule where all of the games for each team are set ahead of time, for each round. The games could be played at any time during each week (1 week per round?), and the results reported back.
I would still like to keep the MVP auctioning at the beginning of the rounds because I think that adds a really fun group dynamic to the game, as well as some extra drama to games that might otherwise turn out to be tough slogs for the underdog.
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