Oh wow, it’s actually been 3 months since I made any GRUMBBL content! Sorry about that, unfortunately, some adulting has come around this summer and well… I have my own little Halfling due in October which is both exciting and terrifying at the same time! What better way to distract myself from the perils of soon to be fatherhood than the have a look at our top Division after another thrilling season eh?!

For the top half of the Division, this was one of the tightest we’ve had in a while, with only 3 touchdowns separating the top 2 and the results of 3 different games affecting the outcome. It’s great to see as we LOVE close games in GRUMBBL, not only that we love to see not-tier 1 teams doing well too, which we’ve seen here!

So with that, here’s the Season Five, Division One Retrospective!

Crackatoa
Coach: Ancient
Team: Underworld
League Placement: Champion

What a Season… WHAT A SEASON for this team! Underworld aren’t exactly a top tier team and last season only managed a 7th place finish, skirting the relegation zone for a few weeks too, so to come into their second season and manage a Champions spot is fantastic from Ancient! The final week was a little touch a go with some results very much going his way, but you can’t deny this is a great finish and a real boon to the league. He was actually very close to sealing it in the penultimate week too if it weren’t for some troublesome Vampires.

We’ve always thought of Ancient as one of our top coaches and this Division One win utterly confirms that. Congratulations!

Thousand Guardains
Coach: Jbazza
Team: Khemri
League Placement: 2nd

Consistency isn’t a word you often use in relation to Blood Bowl, but boy is it pertinent when it comes to our most decorated coach. For all the crap we give him (and we really do!) there’s no denying Jbazza thoroughly deserves his spot at the top and again this season he proved why, barely missing out on the top spot by a Goal Difference of just three.

Khemri are another difficult team to play, so to have them once again at the top of the table is a feat in of itself. It’s a well-developed team too with some nasty players, the Blitz-Ra’s, in particular, are terrifying, so don’t be surprised for another top-place push next season.

Malthead Marauders
Coach: Leman_X_Russ
Team: Lizardmen
League Placement: 3rd

A big contender for a top place finish this season and he very nearly pulled it off, falling just 2 points shy with an unfortunate loss in the final week to confirm his 3rd place spot. An excellent season all around, especially having just been promoted after dominating Division 2.

Again this team will be another to watch next season, as you could argue on paper they’re probably the best team,  being the only Tier 1 team in the top 3. Leman has proved too he’s up there with the best GRUMBBL has to offer and will surely want another go at the Champions spot.

Beasty Boys
Coach: Shitpitcher
Team: Necromantic
League Placement: 4th

Another good season for the Necros, posting a pretty good 5-4-2 which funnily enough is identical to their Season 4 record with a total of 19pts out of 33. Unfortunately with the Lizards and Underworld boasting great seasons. they were just pushed out of the top 3 despite this.

I’d like to see a real push though in their final season for top 3 once more, if not a go at the Champions spot. They’ve proved they can compete with draws against the top three, so if they can get a few more points against teams below them in the table, there’s no reason why they can’t!

Pestilent Pesteres
Coach: Adam
Team: Skaven
League Placement: 5th

Adam seems content with giving me heart attacks each time he plays, especially with that skirting of the relegation zone for the first part of the season, although he excellently recovered for a respectable 5th place. He wasn’t too far off his previous season’s total either, only dropping 2 points.

Like the Necromantic however, their position suffered from a strong Lizardman and Underworld perfomance, dropping them down into 5th compared to 2nd. I do say this every Season but I truly think Adam has it in him to win one of these one day, with good results against strong opponents, he just needs to tighten up a bit at the back and nab a few more points against teams in and around his position to keep up!

Jolly Crew Mates
Coach: Jolly
Team: Skaven
League Placement: 6th

A much, much better showing in Jolly’s second outing to the top division, taking a respectable 6th place rather than the immediate relegation compared to his last attempt. This team just can’t stop scoring either with a scoring rate of 2.5 touchdowns per game, even outscoring most of the teams in Division Two who are playing an additional 3 games!

He really just needs to tighten up his defence as the Skaven conceded 23 touchdowns overall, which is an average of 2 per game. If he can manage that, he’ll be scoring his way into the top 5 in no time!

Washington Kanyes
Coach: Draoi
Team: Chaos
League Placement: 7th

Droai is no stranger to Division One, having spent plenty of time there with his previous Kislev team and he’s back with the brutish Chaos having worked his way back up. At first, I thought we’d see a really strong showing with 3 wins out of the first five games, but unfortunately, they just couldn’t keep up with what is a very tricky league for Chaos teams.

There were plenty of good results but definitely, some points dropped unnecessarily, however, we all know that Chaos are a slow-burn team so next season could be their true showing. A good showing overall for their post-promotion season and with being 8 points off the drop zone, they should feel relatively safe for next time.

Hollow Point United
Coach: 7Tails
Team: Vampire
League Placement: 8th

Honestly, the fact they were one place above the relegation zone is more a testament to how tight the top half of the Division was rather than a reflection of the Vamps performance, with a fairly comfortable 4 point cushion between them and 9th place. 3 wins out of 11 definitely could be improved upon and there were a few games that Tails definitely could have grabbed a few more points, but considering … y’know… they’re VAMPIRES, this was a decent showing and testament to Tails’ ability to keep this team up.

It is however going to get quite scary next season, there are some good looking teams coming up next season so our MasterBiter will need to keep on his toes if he wants to stay up!

Rotterdam Rotters
Coach: ZG4T
Team: Nurgle
League Placement: 9th (relegated)

Bold was the choice to bring a fresh Nurgle team into this Division as opposed to continuing with the levelled Norse team and it didn’t quite pay off. Despite a 33 Casualties caused, impressive for a fresh team with little Block or Mighty Blow, ZG couldn’t quite pilot the team to survival, with only 9 points out of a total of 33, 4 off the safe spot.

However, he can keep his head held high as he took 3 of those points from the Season 4 champions themselves with a brilliant 2-0 win over the Khemri, showing some of that talent we saw last season. I won’t be surprised if we see a decent Promotion spot campaign from this team next season.

Also, I got this prediction quite wrong…. but not as wrong as another team (we’ll talk about that soon enough!!!)

Bohemian Rapscallions
Coach: Alx
Team: Human
League Placement: 10th (relegated)

Oof, that was a bit of a drop! From a really strong 5th place showing to firmly in the relegation zone shows just how Competitive Division one can be and alas the Humans fell victim to some really strong teams that upped their game. A total of 3 fewer wins compared to Season 4 was enough to drop one of our longer-lasting coaches, despite a strong opening few games.

It was a leaky defence that seems to have done them dirty this time with the second-most touchdowns conceded overall, so that’s something that needs working on. If those holes can be plugged, there’s no reason Alx can’t work his way back up and we know from previous seasons he is more than capable!

Hamilton Hopefuls
Coach: Aaramus (me!)
Team: Halflings
League Placement: 11th (relegated)

Halfings are hard yo!

This was expected honestly, pretty much every team I got points against last season were relegated and unfortunately those that survived I couldn’t quite get any against the ones that stayed up (1 point compared to 6 versus the Underworld and Vampires).

There were a … few one-sided games (the game against Khemri was just baffling unfair, even for Halflings), but at the end of the day, I just didn’t get the ball in the endzone, with a very poor 6 touchdowns scored in 11 games, NOT GOOD! Plenty of Casualties were caused, with 7 of those being permanent deaths too, so still a good showing in that regard. Not bad defensively either it has to be said, only conceding 2 more touchdowns compared to last season despite a promoted Lizardmen and Skaven team. In fact, I actually had the 6th best Defense in the entire Division… I JUST DIDN’T SCORE ANYTHING MYSELF!

Alas, Division 2 seems to be the next calling for my Halflings, which is going to be a very new challenge considering that division is such a war of attrition, something ‘lings aren’t exactly well equipped for!

Schittsburg Shockmasters
Coach: Patrick
Team: Elf Union
League Placement: 12th (relegated)

So um, I got this wrong… very wrong!

If you remember, I famously predicted in my Season 5 article that Patrick and the better-elves would make the top 4, if not fight for the Champions spot. My reasoning was that the team seemed perfectly suited for taking on the tackle-light Division One with plenty of slow teams to take advantage of whilst being speed enough to not be outdone by Skaven, Lizards and Underworld.

However, it just…. didn’t go to plan. 2 wins and 6 points places them firmly bottom of the pack with a team full of injuries and stat-busted players that couldn’t even put a Touchdown past the Halflings!

Perhaps I need to just stop predicting things, it seems to curse the teams that I think will do well!