This post brings me no pleasure to write, and I put off doing it as long as possible, but there have been a number of factual inaccuracies floating around following the Foul Bowl tournament situation, and I believe the reputational damage to the NAF and to me means that I do need to state my understanding of the facts.  Then people can at least make their own minds up in full knowledge.  I have not included screenshots and citations of conversations, as it would have taken a while…

I have posted this here rather than on the NAF site as this is not meant to be “the NAF v Frogboy” or even “Sann v Frogboy”, but me trying to protect the community and the organisation that I have spent at least five years trying to make better.

Foul Bowl is a one-day Blood Bowl tournament in Firestorm Games in Cardiff, run by Frogboy.  I didn’t make it to the first year, but took a car-full (six people) to the second year, and ran Score as well as playing.  It was lots of fun, in a brilliant venue, and I had Foul Bowl 3 on my calendar.  As soon as it was announced I also offered to run Score again, and we discussed the possibility of using the website a bit better before the tournament and on the day.

On October 7th Frogboy posted on the (little-read) NAF forum that he was considering the App races for Foulbowl.  These are 4 races published on the BB App (Savage Orc, Nobles, and Skaven and Dwarf variants).   I immediately posted that I thought this was a bad idea.  He Private Messaged me asking why, and I tried to explain that it muddies the water around the introduction of Khorne and Bretonnians (K/B), and which are sensible and not sensible teams to use in tournaments.  It was a bit tricky to explain so I thought I would be able to talk to him in person about it at Exebowl (on 14th Oct).

Before Exebowl, Frogboy went more widely public with his plans, on Twitter, Facebook and TFF.  He got involved in a somewhat heated discussion on Twitter with Joemanji and JBone, among others, and as it was on Twitter there were quite a few crossed wires .  

At Exebowl, I explained to Frogboy about my concern – that conflating the app teams with K/B was equivalent to saying that the NAF are letting in a whole load of bonkers teams, and as I was planning to be very involved in Foulbowl I would rather he did not include the App teams.

We also talked about NAF sanctioning.  Frogboy had previously put the tournament on the NAF site, which is equivalent to asking for sanctioning, but possibly not everyone realises this.  Gaixo (Tournament Director) approved it, as is standard for returning tournaments as it is often assumed that the rules are basically staying the same.  Frogboy could not remember putting the tournament on the site, but i got him to log in and it showed the tournament on his list – the only way that this happens is if you have entered the tournament in the first place.

At this point I was getting somewhat frustrated and pointed out that it was also likely to be him as he had spelt “tournament” as “tournement”, as I had seen him do this before (and he did it the next morning).  This may have been perceived as an insult, which it was not meant to be. 

He then posted the next day that he was withdrawing from NAF sanctioning, in a long post about the NAF.  I posted that some of the items he has said were not helpful and/or not true, and he called me a bully, along with other unpleasantness.

At the beginning of November Frogboy posted that he was considering making random pairings each round (rather than Swiss).

By November 4th there had been a number of withdrawals from the tournament, and Frogboy posted that he was cancelling the tournament.  This led to a number of posts on TFF and in various places on Facebook that were factually inaccurate and thus drawing wrong conclusions, which led me to writing this.

So, in summary:

• The tournament rules with the App teams were never submitted to the NAF for sanctioning;
• Non-sanctioned teams are allowed in NAF tournaments, with games involving those races not being counted in the database.  Tournaments that have rule packs including non-sanctioned teams are discussed on an individual basis with the Tournament Director.