Blade of Thorns (BoT)		Case | Aenima | Khayman Mordia | Malory
		versus
		Destruction Eternal (de)		Rave | ViperMac | Calamity | Ur Drago Storm Trooper | Veruca Salt | The Angelus

Both armies take three trow, a few dwarves and some fetch. Blade of Thorns takes a heavy infantry selection, while Destruction Eternal trade away nearly all their myrmidons for fourteen soulless. Both teams set up a strong defense in the center, BoT splitting the remainder of their army into two flanks while DE sends a strong flank north (a large component of which is soulless).

DE play the bridge game for a while, but their flank is taken out mercilessly when it moves in on BoT's side of the river. This crushing defeat is mainly due to the inherent defenselessness of soulless on an open plain, and ViperMac's dwarves, who seem reluctant to realize their full explosive potential.

Ur Drago: dude, where is our flank?
Storm Trooper: it died

BoT bring two trow in behind the DE center force, which distracts DE sufficiently to allow a BoT myrmidon rush to succeed, wreaking havoc upon DE's dwarven heroes. Khayman also sends a squad of zerks across, who cluster up and are blown into small pieces of tartan cloth. Even after this little accident, BoT are still up 64% to 45%.

The bridge battle continued to go well for BoT after their Oleg-termination exercise, and eventually DE ran out of dwarves. This allowed BoT's Olegs to march across the bridge, basically spelling the end for DE's remaining infantry.

Once again, BoT went for a three-way flank, sending all of their trow to the center. DE took the same selection as before, ViperMac controlling the whole 42% of the north flank. The battle started badly for BoT as their three northern dwarves all exploded with a single trow kick, which allowed DE to press their northern flank back down. In the bridge battle, particularly nasty dud bounces enabled DE to take out all of BoT's artillery. Then the chaos came.

BoT's massed trow and infantry swarm charged the DE positions simultaneously. It's hard to follow the resulting battle even at 1/4 speed, but Destruction Eternal seemed to be stunned and unable to focus their force on any part of the offensive. After the battle died down, DE were left with little but soulless. These floating fiends were still able to hold one flag as time ran out for an 8-1 score.

Destruction Eternal started in the northwest, while Blade of Thorns were southeast. Both armies set up defensive positions and sent spiders to grab balls; BoT's trow was able to steal the crucial center ball and run with it, but once it got halfway back to base, a mis-kick resulting in it getting stuck on a hill. BoT concentrated on that ball and neglected to reinforce their southernmost ball, which was intercepted by the DE trow and taken back to the western river along with all of DE's other balls.

Case managed to steal one ball out of the river with his trow, and ran south along the riverbank, veering east when the opportunity arose. He then turned around and dealt to a squad of DE spiders, but DE's trow was quick to grab the dropped ball and run west again. Case followed, but a momentary hesitation with 0:01 on the clock let DE break free and claim the ball uncontested during sudden death, the vital fifth ball spelling an 8-4 win.

Destruction Eternal started southwest this game, while BoT were again opposite them in the northeast. Ball grabbing ensued, and BoT lost their trow in the middle (doing severe damage to the enemy trow in the process). After the initial ball-moving flurry, there were three balls at the DE base, four balls around the BoT base, one in the northwest river area and one stuck in a pool in the center. BoT had a lot of problems moving their four balls and managed to run three of them off to the edges of the map, one disappearing off the overhead map and thus out of play. They subsequently managed to move one off the wall with a dwarf.

Destruction Eternal tried to attack the BoT base with their hurt trow, and were killed. Their zerks had been split into three squads, which were hunted down individually and killed by BoT's zerk pack. DE kindly contested the center ball long enough for BoT's zerks to reach the enemy base, and they managed to steal one unguarded (well, underwater thrall don't contest) ball to seal the win 6-2.

This game, Destruction Eternal took maximum infantry (except ghols), four wights for pus, a dwarf and a journeyman, plus a smattering of archers. They used the dwarf's satchel charges to prepare a ghol bomb. Meanwhile, BoT were taking no archers and using their points on three wights for pus, a journeyman and five dwarves. Destruction Eternal sent a large force to the middle and a smaller warrior force flanking south, while BoT's warriors all quickly flanked to the south.

Aenima's warrior flank made it across the ford, and ran straight for the enemy base. They carried on, heedless of the slings, arrows, pus, ghol bombs, cocktails and swords of outrageous fortune. Unfortunately for the four warriors who managed to reach the enemy village, they found not the undefended flag that they were expecting, but a sea of thrall. And so ended the BoT offensive.

Meanwhile, BoT's defense was coming under assault from the DE attack force. The battle was a confusing mess of dwarves, archers, friendly fire, satchel-mined alleyways, friendly fire, dwarves being hacked down by warriors and a briefly undefended flag. Hardly the emphatic cap to the match that BoT were seeking, but they were able to pull through on points anyway.

Blade of Thorns show how myrmidons beat soulless any day on Trow Terries, and this points advantage lets them carry off the match despite some losses in the later games. Like the fabled Civilians, their planning-time banter seems to lend them almost mystical qualities of teamwork, despite their lack of cryptic slang.

- Butcher