Intro - life so far in GLB

OK, so how does an Australian end up playing GLB?

I play a boardgame that is very loosely based on the NFL called Blood Bowl. I'm in an Australian based online league for this game (SWL - Southern Wastes League), with quite a few other people. A lot of us tend to dabble in other games we find, including previous attempts at Hattrick (Soccer) and Battrick (cricket), which some of the other still play, but never quite hit the right spot for me. I think part of the reason was I never really felt any sort of attachment to the players in those games, and the interaction was fairly limited.

Thus, when one of the guys suggested GLB, describing it as being like Hattrick and Battrick but you can create your own players, it piqued my interest and I decided to give it a go.

Now I have played in the odd Fantasy NFL league and followed NFL a little bit, but I wasn't tremendously up on the game.

For my first player, I decided to go with a C, as it is probably the most analagous position to the one I played in our football (Rugby League). Since I had the points, I decided to boost him 3 times coming out of the gate as well. Being a naturally competitive sort of chap, I made sure to do at least a little bit of homework, reading in the tpat guide that Strength and Blocking were the way to go. I also noticed right away that Line General looked like a very useful ability.

Not long after creating my C, a gift from the heavens of 100 FP arrived, and I decided to make a G to go along with my C. Both players had the usual rookie mistakes of investing in SAs too early, but apart from that they were fairly solid builds. At this point, I essentially bummed around in the D-Leagues, as my friend who'd introduced me to the game was trying to get a team. There was never any question I'd be joining that team with my friends from SWL.

At this point, I was also itching to have another crack at some O-Line players, avoiding the mistakes I'd made the first time around. It was fairly close to the end of the season, and I realised I could do a quick double boost and be in a position to make a useful addition to a new expansion team, so I decided to create a whole O-Line (as well as the obligatory vanity QB).

My friend got his team, and my original players promptly joined up, where they remain to this day. The Southern Wasters have done fairly well in our one and a half seasons of existence, and I am now the O-Line coach for that team, which is going fairly well.

http://goallineblitz.com/game/team.pl?team_id=3129

In the meantime, I fielded lots and lots of offers for my new O-Line players, but no-one seemed to cotton on to the fact I had an entire O-Line built ready to go as a unit. Eventually, a nice chap with handle rmiller PMed me, asking about the whole lot, which I was stoked with, as I really wanted to use them as a unit, and had built them with L and R specialisations from the getgo in mind. rmiller was the OC for the new St Johns Fog Devils, and after our preliminary discussions put me through to barbelith, his owner, and soon enough all my lads (including the QB) were Fog Devils.

This new team struggled in our first season, as we were heavily outrecruited as our management was more after quality of agents than quantity in levels and numbers. In our second season, we have come on very strongly now, with our offense in particular doing well, and we are punching well above our weight in terms of levels. The O-Line are going extremely well, which is very satisfying.

http://goallineblitz.com/game/team.pl?team_id=3577

It was seeing this process unfold that made me decide that I really wanted to own a team and have a crack at building from the ground up, which is what the rest of this blog will be about.