What's in a Win?

Here's the latest "Car Question" - "Hey, Dad, when are we going to win something". To which I reply "Son, this is valuable Father-Son Bonding time that in years to come we can look back on with fondness and teary eyes. We are already winners." True Story, or maybe not. Dear Reader, you can decide for yourself. But back on topic, we have one last Hyperspace event to go as the Season winds to a close, and one last shot at Glory and Shiny Bragging Dice, and so the question of how good we actually are, and how much we care about that seems to come up. 

Please Sir, I would like some Loot. 

So lets start with the obvious; we're not bad at this game. I'll probably do some sort of performance review after next week so I won't get into here, but broadly speaking I think we're OK.  We've never managed to win any sort of event between us, but have a decent collection of 2nd and 3rd places in smaller events and good performances in larger ones. So thats really not what this is about, this is more about how much we (I!) care and how much we (I!) should.

So its easy at this point to say "don't care about winning, care about having fun" and that's totally right, but this is a competitive game, and you should totally care about winning. If you're going to events and doing the tournament thing then winning is what it's about. Now doing this at the expense of your or your oppenents fun is totally dumbass, so don't do that, but you should always bring your best intent. And lets be honest, being smashed around 0-4 is rarely fun, although I have been and it sort of was. What I'm getting here is, i think, that "fun" is relative, and often tied to your expectation of success. 

In the car I talk a lot about that expectation, because whilst you can dumb luck your way to winning (and I'm going to keep saying "winning" but for the sake of easiest lets assume I mean "top cut" interchangeably for larger events) that's not really how it works. You may need a bit of luck, but you also need to have the right sort of list and the right sort of practice with it. So if you rock up with an unfamiliar, off-meta list, then 3-3 at the UK System Open (which the Teenager did with Double Silencers) is actually a pretty solid win. 

*Droid Noises * 

There are also events you know you aren't going to do well at but are there for other reasons. There's just been a new wave hit, and whilst I can try out all sorts of stuff at club night, thats a couple of games a week and not really enough to dial in how a build is working at any sort of speed. So you need to get them into a competitive environment, and 3 or 4 games at a Store Event will tell you that. The downside is of course that not everyone will be there to fly practice lists, so at least one totally stuffing should be expected against someone's Top Tier MurderList. But you're still there to fly your best game, but your parameters for winning are different. 

But here's the secret thing - I want to win an event. I mean, of course I do! I've been playing this game for competitively for a couple of years and I feel I'm not terrible at it, and I'd quite like to bloody win something!  It's not a bad ambition to have, and I'd be really daft to put the time into planning and thinking and practicing if I didn't want to get some solid performances out of it! So now that's out, tune in next time to see how we close out the Hyperspace Season.