Well, just to prove me totally wrong I began the evening suspecting we'd be a bit quiet, since I was so late posting the announcements - and with my usual skill at predictions, despite the Trinsic folks not being able to make it we had probably our biggest crowd to date, so many people betting that Mapper was getting seriously overworked at the till! I may have to hire more staff to help him out at this rate...
As for the fight results, things went rather like this ;
Sky vs Sapphie - Two well trained and experienced fighters to kick off the evening, skills gave a slight advantage to Sky in of all things magic resist, and she was also slightly stronger, whilst Sapphie rated higher for intelligence. Sapphie rushed in for an early lead, but Sky held her ground, fought back and wore down Sapphie's defence to turn the fight around, a well fought victory for Sky.
Bernie vs Goldy Feathers - Similar stats, similar skills, marginally more experience for Bernie so it promised a pretty close competition. The strange calculation that produces a 'barding difficulty' in the animal lore info suggested Bernie was slightly ahead on paper, and she certainly rushed in fast to land the first hits, but then it was neck and neck right through the battle until a couple of hits from Goldy slowed Bernie down, and Goldy ended a very tight fight with a hard finishing peck that clinched the match.
PeckyBalboa vs Frosty - Some seriously high stats for Pecky mark her as a potential champion, still some training to go but already a strong arena record makes her one to watch. Frosty's a veteran, well above average battle chicken with an edge in skills over Pecky, and looked likely to put up a decent fight- except, the first time we started the bout, Frosty simple froze and failed to fight back at all!
Clearly something was wrong, so after a short break to heal Frosty, we restarted the bout - and this time Frosty was fighting back.... but it barely die her any good, Pecky was still on about 2/3 of her health when Frosty was finished off by a set of very heavy hits, and Pecky scored another impressive victory.
Quicksilver vs Nari - Two very strong birds, slight edge on strength with Quicksilver but Nari also slightly above average for intelligence and speed. Tiny edge on anatomy skill to Nari too, maybe that could offset the higher hitting power of Quicksilver... so hard to tell how this could go! Quick, true to her name, jumped in fast, Nari stood her ground and things were even to begin with, but suddenly Quicksilver landed a series of very heavy blows that stunned and slowed Nari, who never recovered from that set of attacks and despite her hanging in bravely the victory soon went to Quicksilver.
Old Blue Eyes vs Geeko - Very similar birds, close in stats and skills and pretty much 'veterans' of the arena. Unusually, since we usually see a fast run in by one of the fighters, Geeko seemed to saunter across casually to Blue, but there was nothing casual about Geeko's actual fighting. She tore into Blue very quickly, and never let up, and despite everything suggesting these two were closely matched Geeko seemed to be in a seriously nasty mood and took it out on Blue!
For the final novelty - we thought we'd see how these new and trendy bane dragons work, and it seemed reasonable to let one play against it's namesake and original, a 'normal' (as in not 'Greater!) dragon. The cunningly named 'Normal Dragon' was reasonably well trained, whilst Bane Dragonn was almost freshly tamed with no training to note, most of the crowd suspected the edge would with the normal dragon. As I keep noticing, I can't predict the outcome of a fight worth a damn, and I'd have suspected a similar outcome - however the bane dragon proceeded to rip into the normal dragon with a vengeance, winning convincingly and quickly!
And so, after a pretty hectic night, results currently stand at :
4
eckyBalboa
3: Lightning, Quicksilver, Sky
2 :
1 : Old Blue Eyes, Sapphie, Tea, Cerulean, Trinsic Steel, Trinsic Rose, Bernie, Nari, Roadrunner Two
Pecky going strong, can we find a challenger for her? We had a couple more people collect new coops and battle eggs to start up their own stables, so it's perfectly possible a new contender will appear next match!
Next bout will be Monday, 4 October, 8PM UK time, as always at the O*T Arena!
