https://imgur.com/bdf4fDh

Mighty heroes, filthy peasants and demonic puppets, brace youself,
the NWC2017 TRAILER is out !
The time has come, bring the blood, shed the ball or wathever.

Season two update.

steam://openurl/http://steamcommunity.com/groups/NILBB2/discussions/0/371918937266179273/

I have now updated the Hall of Fame stats. Not much have changed since last season. There is only two new players to join this Hall of Fame list - John.T - Bretonnian Blitzer of the German Goo Guys (Ide Nobu). He made it to number five on the touchdowns scored, and Lupus Neurus - Werewolf of Libyecanthropia (Ozone) who holds the number four spot on the SPP list.

But after two ladder seasons NIL has now seen its first real superstar. The first player to reach max level and 176 star player points are Freyafiár - Norse Thrower of the Antartica Wolves (Ozone). Congratulations Ozone! This means that he will remain the number one on this list.

There is now two dead/inactive players in the Hall of Fame. My dear Bretonnian blitzer Enguerrand D´pee turned into a Zombie during the first season but still sits at number five on the top SPP´s list. Skofti le Choupinet the Yeti of Antartica Wolves (Ozone) seems either to have retired or passed away, but he still is the second best killer and second most violent player in NIL (Top killer first season). Number one killer of NIL after two seasons are Micah Whitemane - Werewolf of the Las Vegas Hustle (Peds).

Greitor Huru - Human Catcher of the Icelandic Islanders (Oberwald) snagged the number one spot on catches list, runner up is last years number one Grimrveig - Norse Runner of the Antartica Wolves (Ozone).

Tor - Human Thrower of the Icelandic Islanders (Oberwald) still holds the number one spots on both Passing and Throwing list. Much thanks to Grashniks inactivity during season two, his High Elf Thrower Andrew also holds the second place in both lists.

Top Scorers, Runners and most violent still leads by same players as last season.

With three days late due to family commitments and unexpected organisational issues (as you may have noticed ;-), I’d like to wish all of you an Happy New Year as well as an Happy Birthday to our dear League created the 1st January 2016!

Yep guys: already one year that Truite_Saumonay and me have founded this BB2 League, devoted to Blood Bowl, one of the best games ever for sure, regardless of medium and form (perhaps on equal terms with the game of Go…?) Only my opinion of course but I’m sure that some of you share it ;-)!
Our aim was to create a private League where everyone could play in the best conditions to enjoy all the aspects of the game (single matches and team developments, through all the possible tournament formats). We are not sure to have already succeeded but we tried the whole year to improve these conditions, thanks to the help of new admins and a lot of players…

Let me take this opportunity to make a little recap of the past year and warmly thank by this way all the occasional or regular coaches who have joined up the New International League throughout 2016 as and when our main tournaments were organised:

- First Truite_Saumonay’s friends, LaCouscoussière (thanks to whom we have a teamspeak channel) and LoutreFourbe, have just made teams to help us launch the League when it was still perfectly unknown…

- But above all, during these tough initial weeks, we had the great chance to welcome and host four very active and involved players, four great BB coaches who very soon became what I called the “four pillars of the NIL”: Ozone, who co-administrates the NIL with me since then, Oberwald (yep Griff in person coming straight from his native Sweden ;-), who is also a NIL administrator now, a model (in way of playing) for most of us and an happy young father since the end of December, Moxxel who played in all our tourneys and won the European Cup 2016, and Pete N3than, our great and indubitable NWC 2016 Champion who is so much involved in the game and so rigorous when he plays that he can unfortunately sometimes shows himself disrespectful for Nuffle and rage quit – even if it’s not at all in the NIL’s spirit (hopefully conceding remains very rare in our League…).

- Oberwald, who also had a little League and a lot of BB acquaintances, immediately invited most of his friends in the NIL: they then became just occasional players (Spett, Escaflowne, RhombuswOw), back and forth ones (Dunkelzahn who is now back one year later, zaz75 who then won our American Cup 2016) or regular ones and other NIL pillars like Khornight, the most spectacular Skaven player ever, who is also now one of our English-speaking casters (and Steam group writers) and who’ll surely help us even more in the future.

- Other important recruitments came with our first Oceasia 2016 I had the great honour to win: first of all SlyAnimal/PapaNasty, one of our nicest players for sure, always ready to help… but also tacetpressim or Anierin who owned the Austral-Asian League with which we co-organised this first Cup. I must also quote our English friend Mercy Flush who also took part in the NWC 2016 and the Austral-Asian Cup 2017, knows well every Cyanide administrator and has sponsored our League from the start.

- Then on mid-February, the European Cup 2016 has afforded us new key players: first of all Helyos of course, our Swiss friend who then became another NIL administrator, but also Grashnik, a very active and nice player (unfortunately absent from BB since December), Lexaeus, Heliocentric and Goodpass, other back and forth NIL players as well as Ethelred, the admin of RPS with which we organised this second NWC 2016 Qualifier.

- The fact that Ozone, Helyos and me were French-speaking players facilitated then the “French recruitment branch” with first of all, Helyos’ friends: Roma, Malphegor, but also Ide Nobu, or much later, QwaZO and Kimo, thanks to whom we now have a discord channel…! All these Frenchies, who all became other NIL pillars each of you knows well, pertaining today to the NIL team, the “Nilistes”, in the French Inter-League tournament called the “Vices Cup”.

- But from the start, another recruitment branch was and remains very active, the Spanish one, due to the fact that I kept playing in the Liga Hispana with one of my team and that we organised the American Cup 2016 with this League: Muppet was perhaps the first Spanish member of the NIL, even if he played only in the Austral-Asian Cup 2017; hades_sdk then joined us and became one of the most active (and nicest) NIL players until then, with a spectacular progress in his way of playing; Kagrash (hades’ friend) was also an important recruitment on March, as well as jdadict.

- On March and April, we also had two decisive newcomers who took part in the African Cup 2016 and quickly became two other pillars of our League: PedsMcDuff, the smartest of us (in every sense of the word – Scottish style?) everyone knows, who won the Champions League Season I, and Otherguy970 (Sly’s acquaintance if I remember) who just entered this last Cup and the last NWC qualifying ladder and won both of them! Unfortunately, he was fed up with the game at the end of November and now we miss him but I’m sure he will come back soon…

- Then during the summer and in the same time we played the NWC 2016, we started the World’s End, a great tournament mainly created by Ozone and Helyos, for which we had a lot of registrations from new trustworthy players: Tablelamp, Chromey/Drewsko, Za_Uvek who then founded an Austral-Asian League called BBLANZ with which we have the great pleasure to organise the Austral-Asian Cup 2017 (not yet completed), and above all, Mysticjon who won the WE with his Hummies and thus saved the World (at the same time he increased it, giving birth to a child ;-).

- And on October came also the League reopening, with (1) a new series of ladders for old and new NIL teams, the Champions League; a lot of new players, more or less rookies and/or active, have joined up the season I: Steelrain, victerror, Rayrabo, desperadito, Rui83DeathMetal, two_larsens and above all Cyborg19/Cyberknight, another great Bret player in the League (is there another League which counts now more Bret specialists than ours? An effect of the Oberwald’s aura;-?); and in parallel (2) a new series of NWC 2017 Qualifiers; first of all, the Austral-Asian Cup 2017 has allowed to recruit other Aussie or Asian players who play from time to time in our Champions League: Peakie, AoKou and Jeheil; then the America’s Cup 2017, organised in partnership with ABBLE, thanks to our South American friends Lembocha and cfarbes, whose first group stage is still in progress.

- But as you all know, there has been a decisive step forward on December when I asked Kimo to make a new post on the official BB group for the Champions League season II and when he decided in the wake of this successful post to create a discord channel in order to facilitate the matchmaking. Now we are all wondering how we managed to live (i.e. matchmake) without this channel before!! Plenty of new players have joined up at this occasion: rycrisp, Kilsaber, Vynyarian, Unzerbrechlich, dazeavy, ClubMediterranee, Diamond Corgi, Splinter, Caprae7 and Aqat. We hope that most of them will remain regular players in the Champions League and become some of our pillars – but we know that to find a NIL pillar is like a gold mining work, a long-term job always full of disappointments…

- So to all of you, regardless of the depth of your involvement in the League, I’d like to say thank you! Of course, nothing is perfect. In the ideal League of my dreams, there would be, in all cases, NOT A SINGLE CONCESSION, and ALL the participants of a tournament with scheduled games would arrange alone their game on time, without the need to put pressure on them or even to replace them – unfortunately the NIL is a real and not an ideal one… But in the ideal League of your dreams, I guess also that the admins would always be in a good mood, welcoming, patient, understanding and fun – unfortunately this is not the case neither and I apologize not to be “always pretty on top of things”, as PapaNasty said.

- Please let me conclude this lengthy speech with two important announcements:
1/ even if the upcoming Qualifiers are already prepared, the partnership with the LFBB concluded, I’ll be, for job-related reasons, much less available since February than I was until then… Ozone has also less time since November and it will be the same for Helyos who needs, for professional and also personal reasons, to step back. So we will really need new volunteers to help us go on administrating the League, organising games, following up players and matches, finding last-minute substitutes and all this funny stuff. I know that I could count on Khornight and Oberwald who will become official NIL administrators on our Steam group, and that I could also count on the Frenchie task force (especially Ide Nobu and Kimo), but if other players had the time and the desire to be more involved in the organisation of the League, please feel free to let me know.
2/ if by chance some of you could and would like to participate financially in the increase of the prize money given in the different competitions, we will soon set up a Paypal link on our official Twitch channel https://www.twitch.tv/truitesaumonay_volante. Those who will decide to donate something just have to indicate under this thread http://steamcommunity.com/groups/NILBB2/discussions/0/458606877327331976/ on the already provided prize money of which tournament (Specific Qualifier, NWC, Specific season of the Champions League) they want that their donation be added.
It’s just a proposal, not an obligation of course – don’t forget that keeping on playing games in the League is already a great way, and maybe the best, to participate!

Once again, Happy New Year and many thanx to all of you and, as we say in French, “longue vie à la NIL!”

Please dear NIL players, take a look on the stats of your best players to complete or rectify the top rankings set up in my last comment: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/NILBB2/discussions/0/371918937266179273/