Sunday, January 14, 2007

Delusions of Adequacy

Ah, yet another blazing opportunity to keep my huge ego in check. And believe me, I need all of those I can get.

Played in a Confrontation tournament yesterday. A lot of fun. But I decided to not go with the 'broken' lists that people have said I've taken before, and went with a lot of cheaper Wolfen, and no predators.

Got my ass kicked, and hard. Having a dragon eat half your army on turn two kind of smarts a little. Trying to have my 'balanced' list compete against a 200 pt dragon character who can summon a 175 pt dragon for free - no contest.

Not like the first game - where I got kicked even worse (if that is possible) because there I didn't manage to kill a single model of my opponent - at least against the dragon I did kill a few elves before being completely wiped off the board. But at least there it seemed to be a bit more balanced - it was his entire force that was kicking my butt, not one model.

I'm a bit conflicted though. On one hand I'm against all the restrictions that the Italians and Belgians are pushing, and really believe you should be able to take nearly anything. On the other, I've always felt that some armies just can't compete against some things - i.e. dragons. And now that they have a dragon character (at least before, if you took a dragon you couldn't take much of anything else because you had to take a character as well, but now it can be both.
That one 200 pt model took out my entire 500 pt force, most in one turn.

I try really hard not to complain - but man some of these spanking really smart. (I've faced knight armies as well that have wiped me out to the man without taking a wound also).

In the end what frustrates me a lot is that I know I'm a mediocre player and painter. (Of course you can check out my models here) but I'm stuck in an area of extremely stong players and painters. To the point where the top 4 players in the nation all come to the local tournaments here last year - and most of the time kick my butt. (The number 1 ranked player from last year has basically quit the game, and #2-4 were there yesterday (the #4 ranked player had the dragon that so thoroughly kicked my ass in the third game - he won the trip to France at Origins last year (ironically, with the almost the identical list I would have brought had I played in that tournament)). Now granted, these guys are good players, and great painters - I just don't feel in their league at all. I get a bit lucky, but they hand me my ass every time we meet, consistently.

But it does keep my ego in check any time it threatens to do something stupid, like make me feel adequate or anything.

2 comments:

Michelle said...

All of the guys in my house (17-year-old twin boys and the 41 year old big boy) are currently into MarcoLand which, I think, is an online game.

I've just exhausted my knowledge of the gaming community (though I did pay D&D back in college).

Keep playing with the top dawgs! It will sharpen your own game and you'll still learn something new each time you get slaughtered. I'm sure that sounds much worse than it actually is.

Mike Carter said...

you'll still learn something new each time you get slaughtered.

Nah, that doesn't sound bad at all. Of course that which does not kill you makes you stronger.

Oh yeah - they killed all my models. Twice!

Seriously, you do learn more from defeat than from victory. Such as how nasty dragons are, and how little chance my poor wolves stand against them. Didn't learn any way to have a snowballs chance in hell fighting them however! :-) :-) :-)

I hadn't ever heard of MarcoLand, but then I spend enough time on computers at work, I don't generally play games on them. I'm weird enough to like to actually play against people to get my ass handed to me. Having a computer do it is even more humiliting!