Path to being a better Sportsman

 I did it! I can not believe I did it! I did it... okay, yes I know, that is the third time I have written that (title, heading, now this) and yet... I can only hope you understand what this means to me! For the purposes of keeping names out of this I will not name the opponents I played but you are free to do your own research, wont be hard.  Letting people talk about their armies helped warm them up to me Arriving on the day had me so nervous. This, as was stated to me and I have reiterated here was my last chance at being in this meta and my emotional energy was tied to this. Thanks to some AMAZING help from some members of Tabled Talk's discord server I was recommended to read/listen to "How to Make Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. This was not the first time I had read it but over the last week I listened to it via audio book and applied what I heard. I think it helped a lot. Keeping a smile on my face, not arguing, letting people talk about themselves...

  Today is the day The tournament is today. I sit here writing this at 5:40 in the morning. I have taken a shower, have combed my hair, brushed my teeth and am nervous. Not about the 2 hour drive, that will be fine.  I am nervous over how things will turn out. I have my plan but in the end I know this is a losing battle.  How do I know it is a losing battle? Well, I seem to have gotten a yellow card from my last event by breaking no ITC Code of Conduct rules. I did not cheat, threaten, attack, malign, etc my opponents. They were all fantastic people. Yet I got a yellow card for events held by that group.  You can follow the rules and still lose in social situations. Odd that.  My Chaos Knights, there are many like them but mine have Scales! That is neither here nor there though. This is about today! About my goal to make it through the day and not be kicked out of the event! I will not lie, if I do get kicked out and its not for anything serious I will be frustr...

 What is Playing to Win? This is a curious concept to me. I was informed that I was at an event more to win than anything else.  What is the point of playing a game but to win? Think on it, if you went to an event that cost you money, wanted to play as many games as possible, and are currently 4 wins and 1 loss out of 6 games? Would you not try to play game 6 to win? Now, this is important to me. Vitally important to how I play the game I love. I can not STAND Gotcha's.  What is a Gotcha you ask? Well, it is informing a player after they have pretty much finished their movement you have a 6" Heroic Intervention. It is not informing your opponent you have a way to give a model a +9" move and it can still charge first turn.  These are things that happened to me over that weekend. They were situations that changed how I felt about the game immensely.  What about me? Do I do things like that? Maybe but I honestly do not think I do things. I let my opponent know abou...

 There is a Plan?  So there seems to be a plan. After my last RTT where I had an issue with my last opponent of that event it was recommended that I keep a Game Journal. An idea I took to heart and for most of all my Crucible games I kept said journal with my thoughts on the game, what I expected, and things I could improve or issues I was able to figure out (or was informed of) My game Journal's first entry This journal is a method for me not to say things aloud when it would be inappropriate. Something I am still not 100% on but for an off the cuff idea I would like to believe I did well. To me this is progress, to others, it is not quick enough of the progress they desire.  This is fine. I can only fix things so fast and if it is not going to be fast enough then so be it but I am not going to stop trying.  As I said in my last blog post, this blog will either show my journey or wither as my journey comes to an end in this endeavor. Still, I will go down fighting. ...

Why do I keep playing this game? This is a question that I ask myself constantly.  What am I doing you ask? I play a game called Warhammer 40k. It is a tabletop wargame with models you typically build yourself, modeling them in fun and interesting poses, doing fun and interesting things with a story behind it. You paint these models and give them a life of sorts. You hobby and enjoy the process, for some they don't enjoy it and instead do it under protest so they can play more games, or even farm the experience out to others to do.  From there you place these little models onto a table, play a game with rules, dice, and a tape measure.  Back to the question though and why I am starting this blog. This will either be a blog I will continue or one that will fade to dust along with my desire. Ultimately it is on me to see it through either way now.  I play this game currently not to win though it is enjoyable. Winning used to consume me, I used to punish myself and thro...