That awful situation...

Blood Bowl, despite using dice, is a game that ultimately you influence with how skilled you are. How well can you position your players to force your opponent to do things he doesn't want to? Have you marked the right guys on the opposing team to stop them just dodging away? And so on.

Occasionally though, luck decides that you're screwed utterly either way. Like the time I lost one of the best players I've had to a single pitiful Goblin.

The match was going well, I was hammering the Goblins 1-0 as expected, and a few had been carted off the field, Badly Hurt (the least serious injury type, with no permanent effect).

I eased back in the chair, grinning as my team, the Shadowstain Slaughterers, advanced unstoppably down the wing with the ball. The Goblins were crippled by the stupidity of their Trolls, who refused to do anything they were told, instead choosing to stand in the middle of the pitch picking their noses for around 3/4 of the game.

At the time my best player (whose name, sadly, I forget...I named him myself :( ) was a Chaos Warrior who had levelled up in a previous match. His dice roll on levelling (double 6's, a 1/36 chance) was particularly awesome, and he was able to get + 1 in Strength, one of the most coveted and rare level up rewards possible.

As a result, his already above average strength was boosted to crazy levels. He was the only Chaos Warrior in the whole league to have a Strength of 5, equal to my Minotaur and the stupid Trolls I was against now.

The Minotaur on my team (Zarnkrak Limbpeeler, who is currently the only Blood Bowl star to have his own breakfast cereal! Check out the ad on the right - http://www.sturmvonstahl.info/ ) had been the only casualty this match, taken out by the Goblin Chainsaw shortly before I got half my team to stamp on him with the predictable result.

The injury hadn't been severe, but I thought, hey, I've got the nasty guy off the pitch, may as well use my doc and get the Mino back for giggles.

It was then that it happened.

The STR 5 Warrior hit a Goblin, getting to roll 3 dice (the maximum you can get) against him. It was virtually guaranteed that the Goblin was going down.

I looked in horror at the result -

[Both Down] + [Both Down] + [Both Down]

With no rerolls left, I would have to take this crappy outcome.

Right, I thought, stay calm. You have high armour, the Goblin will probably get squished. Bang, both players are on the floor, and my turn ends. My armour held.

Next turn, the Goblin stands up (he wasn't hurt) and kicks my Warrior while he's on the floor, with absolutely no-one else helping him. I almost laugh, and then my I noticed that it actually broke my armour. Injury roll is 10 on the dice...so that means a casualty. Casualty result? DEAD.

I believe that my scream was heard in Africa at that point, and my sobs rocked the foundations of the house.

The referee sent the little green git off, but it was no consolation to my best player, who lay motionless in the dugout, face down in the mud, a giant glowing white skull icon hovering mercilessly over his head.

Next turn I scored and won the game 2-0...which felt a little hollow. Even worse was the knowledge that I'd wasted my healer on the Minotaur, and so I may as well have killed the Warrior myself.

Let's do a quick analysis of the chance of that horrible injury happening, shall we?

First, the chance of getting triple dice all saying Both Down is 1/216.

Next, the chance that a lone Goblin would break my armour with no help by kicking me while I was down is 1/6. (surprisingly high!).

The chance that the injury would be so serious is also 1/6.

The probability that the injury would be death is 1/6.

So if my maths is correct (which it my not be, but whatever :D), this leads to a final chance of 2.14 x10^-4.

And the cruellest irony of all? If I hadn't given him +1 STR, I would have given him Block - a skill that means a player isn't knocked down on a Both Down result...

I do take a kind of masochistic pleasure from having experienced such an event though. It always raises an eyebrow when I tell my opponents that I fear tiny Goblins above all others!

Also, to break up all this text, enjoy a nice screenie of Zarnkrak Limbpeeler as he is today, Claws and Tentacles included:

He just wants a hug. Honestly.

Last match he fought with a rival Minotaur and eventually gave it a Broken Neck (though it was very, very tense and Zarnkrak nearly went down a couple of turns later...but that's another story!).