Southern Shrike Bowl '09

So just attended Southern Shrike Bowl 2009 last weekend. It was a blast, and definately an enjoyable event.
To put a bit of perspective into things. Bloodbowl was only really just starting up in Adelaide last year. Southern Shrike Bowl was being organised for the first time, and the CCKUP ran it's first league in the 2nd half of the year.
I myself heard of Shrikebowl around March I believe, and figured It might be interesting to get into the game. I wanted to do a Norse team, because who doesn't like manly Vikings, but the local GW did not have any Marauders in stock at the time. So I grabbed a box of Orcs, and went from there.
At Shrikebowl last year, I came dead last! I went a bit flavourful with my skills, and it was basically my first time playing the game. I had a few good draws, some tight games, but in the end, no wins are no wins.

So this year, was aiming a bit higher than that ;). I wasn't aiming to come in first originally, I mean, Khemri aren't exactly known for their game winning abilities (More like, team destroying abilities). However, after a very very nice first game against Necromantic, I was at the top of the leaderboard due to giving them a thumping of 8 casualties! 2nd and 3rd games followed with a win against the Wood Elves and a win against Humans, and at the end of the first day, I was sitting in 1st place with 3 wins! However, there was still a tough road ahead. I knew it would still be quite a task for Khemri to win the tournament with others on 3 straight wins as well, one slip up would spell the end of my first place chances.
So unfortunately, first game Sunday morning I lost against Dark Elves. It was a tough game. It was going basically to plan, but the Dark Elves managed to sack my ball carrier near the end of the first half, and steal the ball away for a 2-0 lead. It was uphill from there, I got a touchdown on the 4th, so had 4 turns to turn over the Dark Elves (now reduced to about 8 players) and score again to tie the match. With a spell of decent luck, I managed to do that! However, elven magic kicked in and after a 1 dice blitz that sacked my ball carrier, the elves were away for another touchdown.
That basically crushed my winning chances. I managed an undeserved tie against Wood Elves (My opponent had some terrible luck, and it should have been more like 3-1 loss than the 1-1 tie it was) and then got a 1-0 victory over Dark Elves to round out the day.
So with a 4-1-1 record, I managed to grab 2nd place in the end. I unfortunately did not get the prize I wanted (It was taken just before my shot to choose), but that's just the way things happen.
I had a great time at Shrikebowl '09, and I got 6 tough Bloodbowl matches out of it. Looking forward to next year, hoping to one up myself and go for the glory!