I’m probably going to ruffle some feathers with this post. What will follow is a suggestion for how to play games with your friends that will help you grow as a player, expand your play group, and have fun all at the same time. I’m going to flood this post with pictures of me and my friends having fun while still competing, which is not only possible, but I’d suggest it be the goal.

It also is, despite this introduction explicitly stating otherwise, going to give people the impression that I’m judging and accusing them of doing something wrong. I’m not calling anybody out, and not targeting any person or group in particular. What I am going to do is suggest, for those who are only playing ‘meta’ stuff, that they try a different approach for the health of their play groups and the game as a whole, as well as their own individual success.

It’s not just for the nebulous ‘community’ though – the following can potentially make you a stronger player and lead you to competitive success, so if you’re only in this for yourself it’s still a reasonable strategy. Even if it doesn’t increase the number of trophies you take home, it might just make you a happier person anyway, and that still counts as winning in my book!

I previously wrote a post about the effects of perfectionism and how it negatively impacts your experience as well as your competitive success. I’d recommend you give it a read if it’s something you think you could use help with. This post is going to speak to the same concept, but from a ’embracing the positive’ rather than ‘avoiding the negative’ aspects of that strategy.

OK, with that out of the way, let’s get to the point. It’s only my perception, but in various discussions over the past few years I have seen a theme of ‘competitive players’ playing ‘good things’ almost exclusively, and weird, off-meta, and ‘bad things’ being seen as a waste of time. Huge portions of tournament attendees take whatever the ‘best thing’ is in a given moment. The Nemesis Statistics Project sees certain warbands and pairings have greater than 20-fold more reported results than average. On one hand, I get it. You want to win, and you want to increase your chances by playing whatever is ‘good’. Winning is also fun for most people, and since this is a game you generally are hoping to have some fun while playing it. It’s usually not fun to get crushed by a meta list, so some people feel trapped into either not playing, or playing the meta list themselves.

Despite this, two times this year my teammate Andrew and I have placed First and Second respectively at Golden-Ticket/Worlds Qualifier Grand Clashes, and we did it taking relatively un-played deck pairings with less common warbands. Andrew got first place with Zikkit’s Tunnelpack CC/WnR and Mollog’s Mob RF/RR. I got Second with Dread Pageant CC/WnR and Emberwatch BA/WnR. These were, at the time, either effectively never seen, or had been written off as ‘garbage’ – Zikkit and Dread Pageant even being included in some D and F tiers on some rankings in the wild. Wrack and Ruin has generally been viewed as ‘bad’ and Realmstone Raiders got a hard pass from many on release as well.

I am not saying this to toot my own horn and act like we’re some pair of geniuses who sees the matrix in a field of lemmings playing whatever they’re told to by consensus. What I will say is that we were able to figure these things out and find success because we practice in a different way than many other people, and you can replicate this too. In fact, I hope you do! So how did we do it?

The Strategy

It’s simple, really. Stop playing all your games like you’re trying to win a Worlds ticket, and start playing your games like you’re having fun with your friends. If you have to fake it until you make it, so be it. You might get really good at this game. Even if you don’t, you’ll probably have had more fun than if you’re grinding out the same meta matchup over and over.

Let’s pause to assess the available landscape right now. As of this post, we have 9 rivals decks in second edition, four of which have plot cards. That makes for 30 different valid nemesis combinations. We also have 36 warbands in rotation for second edition at the moment, and any of those can pair with any of the 30 nemesis combos. Obviously, they aren’t all going to be as strong as each other, and you may not own every product, but we have in this moment 1,080 potential warband/nemesis pairings and 324 Rivals pairings. That doesn’t even account for the near infinite number of individual card combinations when deckbuilding.

I’d wager that the huge majority of us haven’t touched a fraction of that. Haven’t even considered it. Heck, I’ve played 158 games in second edition so far – even if every single one was a different combo I would still be <11% of the way through.

Have you every played Hexbane’s Hunters with Emberstone Sentinels and Edge of the Knife? I did last week, and it was fun! I even won that game, just barely. Have you ever played Jaws of Itzl with Reckless Fury and Edge of the Knife? I did last month, and got obliterated! But you never know if you don’t try. I’m bringing Kamandora’s Blades with CtC/Wrack on Friday, and since my goal is to share a laugh with somebody, I honestly don’t care if it’s good. I also just might find out it kicks butt, and never would have learned that if I just played whatever was ‘safe’ for the 15th time.

Grab an interesting deck and warband, slot in that ‘weird/bad’ card, jam lots of different practice games with different people, don’t drive away a local scene by spamming whatever the ‘best’ BS is and have fun with your homies. You just might end up in the podium like we did, and I legitimately credit that to the fact that I have a good sized play group at home where everybody plays different stuff every week. Nobody is playing Grymwatch/Gitz, nobody is running Pillage/Cata that often, nobody was playing Dromm much beforehand, nobody was playing Ephilim or Domitan in first edition beyond a few games, and so on.

This gave me a huge variety of play experience in practice sessions – because I see lots of warbands and deck pairings from both sides of the table and get to play a huge number of people. That wouldn’t happen if my crew and I were all running the ‘meta’ thing; first off because we would play the same stale matchups all day and learn less, and second because 75% of my play group would quit because the game would become unfun and unwelcoming. Then I wouldn’t have anybody to practice with, and what’s the point of that?

The benefits of playing for fun are many:

• You’re more likely to have fun and enjoy yourself, and find yourself wanting to play more games
• Your opponents are more likely to come back and play you next week, and invite their friends to play too. This means you get to play more people, more often, and get more practice, which matters as much or more than taking a strong pairing if you’re looking to win
• You’re more able to lean from more diverse situations, which will increase your skill and overall game knowledge
• You’ll be better able to anticipate your opponent’s choices because you are more likely to have played with or against their pairing or a similar one
• Your tournament opponents might have less knowledge of your abilities or cards because you’re playing something ‘weird’ and you might catch them by surprise

I won’t pretend there aren’t some downsides:

• When you do find something that ‘works’, you’ll potentially have less time to perfect it because you’ll have spent time exploring your options beforehand
• If your playgroup takes the same approach, you’re less experienced against whatever the ‘top meta threats’ are since you haven’t seen them as often
• You might lose a ton in a tournament when you guess wrong and then feel bad

Wrap

Play what you love, but love what you play, and love your friends. Being the king of an empty player base just isn’t worth it, at least to me. Losing in practice is totally fine, and I promise you it is safe and cool. Losing in competition is fine too! Sometimes, you can learn a lot more from a loss than a win. Playing a stupid deck with a funky warband is not something to be scared of, especially if you’re laughing with friends while it happens. For all you know, you’re about to stumble into the next tourney-winning combo anyway, and have a heck of a lot more fun while you’re at it.

Wrap

If you have something you’ve found joy playing, especially if it’s not the same thing other people are doing, please consider writing a love letter and sharing it with the community.

I don’t want to ‘yuck anybody’s yum’ so to speak – if you really do enjoy playing the hardest thing all day every day, then you do you! Just be mindful that your local scene might suffer because of it, since not all of your opponents are looking for that, and you might find that eventually the only games you’ll be playing will be online. I have benefited a huge amount by taking my foot off the gas and focusing on fun with other players engaging with Underworlds in a similar way, and I hope you’re able to do the same.

Until next time, enjoy yourself at your local game night with friends, and don’t be too surprised when you find you have lots of glory to spend!