Last weekend saw REBBL’s family of one-day tournaments continue to expand with the addition of the tried and true format: a Cripple Cup. No apothecaries, no rerolls and no retiring means that the game plan for this tournament is to grind your opponent into the dust and hope you have enough of a team left to limp over the line to victory. By the end of the day 33 coaches had thrown their players into the meatgrinder, hoping to achieve glory before the injury toll became overwhelming.

Congratulations to Gengar’s Bonerash’s Ded’Unz’ for taking out the inaugural REBBL Cripple Cup with a regulation Nurgle scoreline of 1-0 over cheeseex’s Bretonnians, The Star Studded Stompers. Not content with second place, their fellow countrymen WE WANT GRIFF (coached by RhysA) scraped their way to a 1-0 victory over the High Elves of Luminouslight’s Legal Tender Tyrants in the best-of-the-rest consolation event, the Niggled Cup. For those who were unable to view the excitement on the day, the match statistics for both finals are reproduced below.

Deaths

With the Cripple Cup being even more about murder and mayhem than your regular Blood Bowl match, lets explore the match statistics from the whole tournament to fully catalogue the carnage.

The obvious place to start is to tally up the number of deaths across the event. Over the 72 completed matches a total of 50 deaths were notched up, meaning a death was seen about every game and a half. Special mention must go to AtomicCaleb, whose Skaven team Star Wars: A New Cripple managed to amass five deaths in just four matches. AtomicCaleb was the only player to achieve the dubious honour of receiving more deaths than games played, with the three players on four deaths (RhysA, Luminouslight, and Stouticus) playing seven, seven, and five games respectively.

When looking at which players have the lowest life expectancy, it’s no surprise to see that the squishier and less useful players top the table.

The overrepresentation of the races on this list may be down to the mix of teams that signed up to the first Cup. With seven Skaven teams there were just so many more rat bodies around to get beaten up. But the Elves, Bretonnians and Chaos each had three teams participating, showing that the more robust races do have an advantage in the attrition stakes.

Injuries

In the Cripple Cup, death has a silver lining. It is swift, mostly painless, and the player isn’t stuck hobbling around the field and dragging the team down. With no rerolls allowed, it’s not even a bad thing to take on a few journeymen here and there to take the heat off your rostered team (Shoutout to Luminouslight who took this approach to the extreme giving 12 journeymen a spot in the lineup over the whole tournement, and to Iron Master who had the most journeymen in a single game with 4).

But the true legends of the Cripple Cup are those players who overcome injury and adversity to get back on the pitch and carry their team to victory. And there were certainly a lot of players who got started on their path to glory with a total of 45 permanent injuries dished out over the tournament.

With this being the first installment of the REBBL Cripple Cup, many players rather shockingly managed to make it to the end of the tournament with all limbs attached in the correct location. There were four players, however, who were eager to rush into dismemberment, accumulating two permanent disabilities over the tournament. While a good start, these players will have to continue in this form next Cup if they are hoping to become such legends of the format that their names will become synonymous with the trophy in years to come.

Bruisers

When someone is getting punched in the face, presumably there is someone doing the punching. So which players were the cause of all the pain described above? Below are the top ten players for casualties and deaths inflicted. Also shown is their general player-removal capacity through KOs and crowdsurfs to show that these bullies will stop at nothing to clear the opposing team off the pitch.

Wrapup

That brings us to the end of our brief look at the butcher’s bill for the first REBBL Cripple Cup. Thanks to all the players/casters/viewers who participated to make it such an enjoyable day. With plenty of maimed players, exciting play, and some budding ‘stars’ beginning to develop, I’m sure the Cripple Cup will find a very comfortable home in the REBBL tournament calendar.