On Expectation, the Enemy of Fun

Well hello again. It turns out a bunch of you read my last blog so dammit, I just have to do another one. We went to our first tournament of the year this Sunday - the "Wave 1 Championship" at Travelling Man Leeds, our home store. 16 players, four rounds of Tiny Spaceships and only the second week of the year, and so inevitably I wanted to try out a new list I had next to no practice with. Oh yes, that's how we roll. Below is a verified true image of the reaction I get in my house when I explain how this latest new list is going to be "great". 

So I'm not going to give a blow-by-blow because there are many better blogs out there by better players for that sort of thing. But to sum up, this is the list:

Space Whale Parade

MG-100 StarFortress - Cobalt Squadron Bomber - 99

    Cobalt Squadron Bomber - (63)

        Trajectory Simulator (3)

        Perceptive Copilot (10)

        Proton Bombs (5)

        Seismic Charges (3)

        Skilled Bombardier (2)

        Veteran Turret Gunner (8)

        Pattern Analyzer (5)

MG-100 StarFortress - Cobalt Squadron Bomber - 99

    Cobalt Squadron Bomber - (63)

        Trajectory Simulator (3)

        Perceptive Copilot (10)

        Proton Bombs (5)

        Seismic Charges (3)

        Skilled Bombardier (2)

        Veteran Turret Gunner (8)

        Pattern Analyzer (5)

Total: 198/200

Oh yes indeed, I will take two StarFortresses to the ball. And you know what? I had a blast with them. I ended the day 2-2, which if I'm honest is two more wins that I was expecting. More importantly, they were all fun, challenging games and I learnt a hell of a lot from them, especially that I've totally forgotten how to maneuver Large Base Ships in the 6 or 7 months since I last tried. But I guess that's not wholly the point, is it? The point is that I wasn't walking in the door expecting to do well, and so lower-mid-table janky nonesense was a good day out. 

Boom, Motherf*ckers.

We talk about this a lot in the car, the teenager and I. It's something we keep coming back to.

Very early on in my competitive experience I had an opponent stomp off after a game in a huff because whilst he's smashed my puny list off the table, I'd got points off him, robbing him of the 100-0 he "needed" for his MOV. Now I'm an grown adult <censored> years into my 40s, so it's not like it left me sleepless, but it's stuck with me as the "go to" example of not being that guy. Because we've all flown against that guy, and if we are really honest, we've all been in some way that guy. You can say you haven't, but I won't believe you. Yes, you. 

Over the last couple of years I've come to the conclusion that one of the worst mistakes you can make in this game is setting yourself up to fail against your own expectations. Because its frustrating when you're not doing well, and that can be out of your control even at the best of times - you can get bad draws, bad dice, just miss out on those razor thin range or arc calls, and that only gets worse if you can feel a targeted event standing slip away from you. And that last thing you can control, and by the time you get in the room, and see your opponents, you should be able to get a realistic sense of how you're going to do. 

What is this defeatist nonsense?? I hear you yell at me. That's not what I'm saying at all. If you've got a strong list, practiced moves and a favorable tournament meta then of course "hey, I could win this" is a reasonable statement. But you've still got to play the games and you've still got to manage that pressure you've just put on yourself; because that's where I see people get frustrated, and if we're feeling confessional that's where I get frustrated at times. And frustrated players aren't good players, and aren't fun players. 

This all may sound obvious, but its a lesson everyone has to keep re-learning. That first event after the event you just did really well in can be extra hard because you want to keep that streak up. That list that really well in club night might only have performed because everyone there was trying out unfamiliar things, just like you did. X-Wing is not a "solvable" problem, and yesterdays answers are not tomorrows and in order to have fun - which is surely the point - putting yourself under pressure is counter-productive. If you're there to experiment with something new (like me this week), then wins are a bonus, because table-time is the victory condition. If you're there with your on-meta, drilled to perfection list, then you damn well better aim for the top tables. Aim at the right place, and judge yourself accordingly. 

Yes, this is the sort of conversation that wiles away the long car journeys around the North of England. As a final note, I should add that the Teenager may occasionally listen to me, as he took out a list he put together in the car on the way into Leeds, full of ships he didn't really know, and went 1-3. "Pretty fun day though", he says.