Sapphie versus Protagonist ..
Total newcomer Protagonist made her appearance in the ring for our first fight, against the slightly more experienced Sapphie - but both had been training heavily and were highly skilled, so it promised to be a close fight. A quick run in by Protagonist gave her a very slight lead, it was extremely close all the way through the fight but she held on to her slim lead, and in the end Sapphie lost by the tightest of margins. Congratulations to Protagonist for an impressive debut fight.
Tea vs Sky
Getting hard to find even fights for some of the Europa battle chicken flock, there are some extremely high-stat birds out there - and two were in the ring for this match! Both way above average stats (and better than most characters, or at least better than most of mine!) and fully trained to 4xGM, this was set to be a bruising match. Sky piled in first, and landed a couple of hits but Tea shrugged them off and retaliated hard. The fight swung between the two, until finally Sky managed a couple of attacks that slowed Tea a little, and she quickly took advantage of that and clinched a close victory.
Quicksilver vs Shadow
(A slightly delayed match, we got them in the ring and a huge lag wave swept in, to the point where we suspected the server had died - subsequently it seems it was just the Tokuno area that was affected, but we thought the world had stopped for a moment!)
A 'skills versus raw stats' match, I'd a suspicion shadow could take this one if she landed a few hard hits early, being much stronger than Quick, but if it didn't go well in the first few seconds, Quicksilver held all the advantages..... and Shadow must hate me, since although she rushed in and was keen enough, she barely landed a hit! Quick blocked or evaded pretty much everything Shadow tried, and in return kept landing blows that drained Shadow's energy until a final flurry of attacks brought Quicksilver a well deserved win.
Linnea vs Nugget
A believer in consistency, newcomer Linnea arrived with stats of 136, 136 and 136! Not fully trained yet though, we decided to see if the peculiar 'barding difficulty' that shows when you lore pets works (quite how it's calculated I have no idea, it never seems to make sense!) and brought Nugget in to test it out. The result was an incredibly close fight, absolutely nothing in it at all right to the wire, and the winner - with a whole 7hp left to her name, it was so close... Linnea! A good night for new competitors, and for Pookster's stable since that's also home to Protagonist.
Yin vs Lightning
Lightning still looking incredibly strong, very high stats and a lot of skill to back them up. Yin is well above average for a fighting bird, and also fully trained, and usually powers through her opponents - but tonight, Lightning was in a mean mood and not taking any prisoners... Yin got in fast and landed a couple of hits, but Lightning settled down, blocked Yin and set about a rapid demolition of her opponent.
And for the 'novelty' bout - we thought we'd have a look at this 'pack instinct' again, so Tari risked life and insurance money getting five hellhounds (regular, not the upgraded bane version!) and we set them up against a fairly well trained and fully fed Bane Dragon. The trick for the Bane would be to kill fast and move on to the next, not get distracted ... and it began fairly well, one hound falling quite fast, but the constant attacks of the others told heavily on the bane's speed, and although it poisoned and badly hurt a second hellhound, that was all it could manage before the slightly reduced pack won through.
Current league placings, with three matches to go for this season :
7 : Lightning, Quicksilver
6 : Sky
5 : PeckyBalboa, Tea,
3 : Trinsic Rose
2 : Trinsic Steel, TwoTimeChampion, Sapphie
1 : Old Blue Eyes, Cerulean, Bernie, Nari, Roadrunner Two, Dryad, Frosty, Goldy Feathers, Spot, Yin, Geeko, Protagonist, Linnea
Next match scheduled for Saturday 5 February (remember, Mondays are Bagball nights through this month!), as ever 8 PM UK time at the O*T Arena, Zento!
