Ben, a competitor from the World Championships who also wrote a great love letter to alternative play modes in the past is back for another post. Recently he attended the Alberta Classic and ran into a brick wall trying to overcome the legendary ‘Wolverine Pit’ of the far north. Despite a disappointing competitive result, he’s managed to keep enthusiasm for the game and is here to share with us ways to keep your chin up and reasons to persist despite ‘doing poorly’.

I’ve talked about it on and off before, but winning really isn’t everything. Even the most competitive among us need to recognize that in an event with more than a single player, only one can win, and only half are going to be in the top half. There’s a pretty good chance you’ll find yourself at the bottom of the pack even if you felt good coming in to an event – I know I have before.

Let’s listen in to Ben’s experience and reflect on ways to enjoy competition without pressure.

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I was really hyped for the Alberta Classic this year. I had practicing a lot, getting the reps in and refining my deck. Our local crew did a mini tournament to practice, and I did pretty well. I was even taking some games from the big dogs in my area. I was feeling confident with my choices, confident in my abilities, confident that while I probably wasn’t going to win, I’d have a respectable placing, and maybe earn a ticket back to Worlds again this year.

Things, however, did not go according to plan. I was crushed, flattened, stomped, steamrolled, and generally trashed throughout the day. And by some of the nicest folks as well. First opponent was Sam, who wrote an amazing Love Letter on his first tournament.

I was clearly too cocky here, and lost 1:2. It was a tight one, a crit save from Mollog could’ve won me the match if it had gone through, but I scored well and we had fun. So I rallied and came up against Ross, who had drawn against my good friend Jules in the previous round. Again I was too confident, and lost 1:2. We had been hanging out the night before, and it was a pleasure to get our first game together.

Lunch time, time to reassess and regroup. So far I was the ‘best loser’ having scored pretty well throughout my games, usually less than 5 glory behind each game.

Game 3 was against Steve, a player from Saskachtewan and a new face for me. After the game I was surprised he wasn’t higher in the ranks as he played cool and smooth, smart choices at every step, and incredibly generous when I realized my mistakes. I started to get a little tilted, and I think he could tell so was just an absolute gentleman the whole time. 1:2 result again and I had to get some air and cool off. For my final game against Jer I was pretty chill again, no need to sweat it when you’re battling for last place. A lovely player, another gentleman and a couple nice friendly games. 1:1 draw, with Jer getting the moral victory with 2 more glory over our games. We considered pushing into game 3, but were happy to walk away with neither of us having an 0:4 day.

I ended up ahead of Jer on the board thanks to my strong glory differential, down only 13 glory over 10 games, but still solidly at the bottom of the table. My sparring partner Jules ahead of me with 2 ties to my 1. We weren’t super stoked with this, considering the effort we’d gone to. Last year we did about the same, and we had barely been playing two months and were very restricted with our warband and deck choices. I can’t blame my dice, or my cards, no excuses or whining. I played pretty well most of the time, but not quite well enough. My opponents were all wonderful, the games all great fun, I just didn’t quite do what I needed to.

We had both bought tickets for the Edmonton Open, our chance for redemption!… and it got cancelled. With that, our motivation to play plummeted. We’re not very good, and we don’t have a chance to prove ourselves wrong. So where does that leave us? (Playing some AoS of course!) Well all the reasons we play this game are still there. Nothing has changed about that. It’s fun, it’s fast, the dice will be your best friend or stab you in the back, leading to some hilarious (or tragic) outcomes. I will promote this game to my 40k friends as something with a good depth in the deck building, but fun and easy to throw down. There’s so many advantages to this system and games always felt more entertaining to me.

So let’s focus on that. We win and we lose, and sometimes we win a bunch in a row, and sometimes we lose, and sometimes we lose at a tournament. It’s been about 3 weeks now and I haven’t yet played a game. But I really want to. I want to play a new warband and build a new deck to try out some weird jank to confuse my opponent. Lets roll some dice and see what story they tell.

The past is gone. This isn’t a campaign, and every game is its own unique scenario. Warbands clashing together for glory and plunder. Focus on the fun, and narrative of the game, not your performance. Make sure your opponent is on the same page (tournament prep vs jank fun doesn’t synergize so well) and just have a blast. Play games for fun, go back to rivals even, test something that no one else has, or that everyone thinks is trash. It probably is, and maybe it’ll cost you a game. But who cares if you’re having fun.

It can get hard in the competitive scene to remember why we started in this hobby. It’s to have fun! It’s basically just an excuse to hang out with some friends. So if you’re feeling down about your performance, or didn’t get a result you wanted. Try, for a while at least, to judge the game on some different parameters. Keep a count of your glory, but also, how many times you made your opponent laugh during the game. Keep them smiling, you’ll keep smiling. No one will remember the score in a week, but you’ll both remember ‘aving a good time.

PS. Thanks to Sam, Ross, Steve and Jer for great games and making me smile. Also to Jules and Curtis for being rad training partners, and Derek, Yury and Peter and the rest of the Calgary crew for good times and great games. I’ll be back at Ogres soon…

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Thanks again to Ben for providing this write up and a good perspective check on why we play games in the first place – because they’re fun. Sometimes you take one on the chin, but that doesn’t mean you have to give up competing, and it doesn’t mean you have to stop playing for enjoyment.

If this is something you’ve struggled with in the past, check out the post “Embrace the Concept of Good Enough and Overcome Perfectionism“.

Have you ever had a disappointing competitive result? How did you cope with it? What lessons did you learn? Let us know in the comments, and until next time, keep on spending that glory!