A really good, interesting and tactical (but luckily not too dice oriented) analysis.
However about the frenzy skill - it does the exact same thing for every team (though it is better for some).
For: It opens up the flanks, allows more takeouts due to serfs and extra blocks, makes one turning easier (and possible but unlikely with UD), opens up for unseen subsequent pushing gaining extra squares or pushing say the ball carrier free in a "scrum" and punishing opponents when things get tough.
Against: Sometimes he gets close to an opponent and isn´t that controllable.
I mean with Dwarves you stated yourself that the slayer was the "key player" - not due to him having av 8 or Dauntless I assume
It was the frenzy thing
About the change of who can host the EB I think you have misunderstood the intention behind a little.
What was opened up for was a change in the thought that the highest who hasn´t attended before has to host it next year.
This is an issue as a team that isn´t even sure whether they can field a team of themselves, with possibly no support in their "backyard" to help as referees, etc and maybe a feeling that they have to host it - but with no real idea of what it is and just how much it takes to do this it could turn out as a catastrophe.
So therefor the discussion goes to change it in one of two ways.
A) After a period of time a team has the chance to hold it again could be, say 5-8 years.
B) No team that hasn´t attended a fixed number of time can get to host it.
I hope you understand the issue and can see it won´t affect you in any way (or any other team in your shoes)
The “big six” (Denmark, Italy, France, Spain, Germany and England) had decided they would play each other in round one. I hadn’t heard about that decision prior to the tournament and it turned out I wasn’t the only one who got caught by surprise. Even England’s captain objected, but his complaint got dismissed.
Well in all honesty it was discussed in the rules thread, I PM´d people and asked them to get involved in the discussion and it was on the rules page under format I believe for along time.
Geggster, as he has made a thread about, didn´t object about that but on the fact that the 7th game influenced the draw in a way nobody had seen coming in the discussion thread.
Oh yes, and we lost 2-6 to France ( as we had won the tourney on a 4 all draw, we had to go for wins in 2 games ot we would have lost 3-5). One that was a certain draw (but a likely loss if he scored.) and when that seemed like it failed I had to go for a win instead of just stopping my opponent (when I think I had about 50/50 to do just that) which failed as it´s never easy to try and sack a fast team (we played Necro vs Necro).
But other than these small corrections.
Great blog
Cheers