I always talk the big talk that I think narrative is the way the game should be played. Well, stuff that, it’s time to get competitive. Realistically, almost most of our games are played in a “competitive-ish” fashion and I very rarely actually get around to a narrative game… at best, it’s probably 1 in 20. So I’ve decided to focus a bit on my competitive play and become more consistent. I was having a good run towards the end of 3rd and I haven’t yet found my groove in 4th yet. This’ll be a bit of a start of articles witha focus on competitive play in general and improving my own performance. But don’t worry too much, I’ll still be dropping my own brand of waffle from time to time and plenty of tournament reports.

Where I’m at

I see myself as a solid 3:2 player who’s able to surprise some opponents with tactical play with slightly off-beat lists. I’ve had some success but I’ve also had off days where I’ve just bombed. I’ve played in a fair few one dayers now at this point but just a couple of GTs and 1 teams event. My two best results have been a 4:1 for 3rd place at my first ever GT and helping get our team to 2nd place in our first ever Teams Tournament. At heart, I am a competitive person and I want to play better and more consistently. Consistency is a key word here… I sometimes just play a crappy game or lose my drive (and tactical overview) and just go through the movements. Now, I want to make that step to really focus on getting better.

Goals

Let’s try and keep this as simple as possible:

+ become a consistent 4:1 player with a shot at 5:0

In the mid-term, there are a few minor goals that I think will help me get towards that aim:

+ make less mistakes

+ be more consistent

+ be the best Australian AoS Player in Germany

+ get another 3-0 or two

Ok, the last one is jsut a gimme as I’m the only one on the tournament circuit… but I might be in trouble if another one turns up!

Now, I’m not expecting this to happen tomorrow (maybe it doesn’t even happen at all), so in the meantime, I’m going to keep my eyes out for iterative improvement as I go along.

The Path to Glory

I’d say I’m pretty in touch with the AoS community in general and I consume a fair amount of competitive podcasts, articles, and videos so I’m not inventing this out of thin air but just sort of collecting different recommendations here and reflecting on how I’m going to get towards those goals.

Getting in more games

This looks to be the most obvious way to get better… simply playing more. I had a bit of a slow start with the beginning of 4th as I was a bit distracted by Spearhead and getting my KO ready. Now, the focus will be on getting more games and with a pretty lively AoS community in Bremen at the moment, that should help!

Getting reps with my army / list

Is this the same as the previous point? Feels pretty much the same for me… as generally I stick to a list and play it over and over until I feel like I’ve mastered it. At the end of 3rd, I hit 40 reps with the same list which meant that a lot of playing with the army became second nature and this really helped me focus. For now, I’m going to stick with my Nighthaunt because there I have the biggest collection and that means I can focus a bit on playing rather than hobbying up a new army (or otherwise acquiring one).

Getting in games with other armies

So I’ve been looking at getting in some games with different armies, bringing my KO back out, digging my Skaven out from the bottom of the shelves, or even finishing off my Soulblight. I’ll probably dust off the KO if I can get a good day or two of painting in and finish up a new list to try out but I’m also chatting with some friends about swapping armies just to practice with different options. Really though, the easiest option for this is getting into TTS and just throwing different armies down on the virtual tabletop. So this is something I’ll be trying to learn and get some games in on and I’ll get back on how that goes.

Start looking at other armies

Don’t we all love to do this? I daydream a lot about playing other armies and I sit and write lists for all sorts of armies I don’t have and probably never will (OBR proxied with Tomb Kings… hmmmm). So yeah, this is a bit meta-chasey but I’m not too worried about that. I don’t want to jump armies every three months but would be happy to have some more options on my shelf at home (or to borrow from friends) so that I can switch over when I would be pushing the metaphorical boulder up the hill by sticking with Nighthaunt.

Heading into tournaments to win

So although I’ve talked about myself as being competitive and I try to win when I play… I still tend to gravitate towards wacky lists with my Nighthaunt (or my doomed pure Skryre Skaven army :D). So this one keys into some of the stuff above. It also links over to something I’ve focussed on in the past which was trying my best to give my opponent a good game. Now, I will shift that focus a little to try and get the best result out of each game (whilst still being a good opponent, don’t worry about that).

Changing my mindset about scoring

I’ve always tended to say that I play to win but I don’t care about the score… as I started to see top tables at the end of 3rd, I realised this was affecting my placings so this has to change. I mentioned it a little about changing my mindset going into tournaments… sometimes I would just ride out the game when I knew I had won without crushing my opponent. Now, I have already started to change this… prior to the teams torunament, I was trying to practice focussing on the score. This will help me in the placings but will also help in those close games where I might have been losing by a couple of points.

Coaching

Most of the stuff in this list is jsut thinking differently or playing more… well, this is the next big step. I’d always thought I’d rather put my hobby money into more models but I made the decision to join the the Onwards AoS Patreon which I’d been eyeing for quite a long time. I’ll go into the coaching in a later article covering whether I think it is worth it for me and what sort of difference it makes.

Baby steps

I ended up deciding to start down this road by thinking about what sort of player I am and what sort of player I want to be. By no means am I finished with this… I really do like my Nighthaunt and my wacky lists but if I really want to win then I’m going to have to start challenging that mindset. I definteily feel ready to chase those Ws.

So I’ve fallen a bit for the idea of Gargants and their slightly easier play on the table so that I can focus on the tactics of the game and my opponents moves so I’m working on them as an army now as I teasered in one of my other articles.

I’ve started to learn my way around TTS and I’m going to try and get a first game in over the next week or two now.

I’ve got 2 one dayer tournaments locked in over the next month so we’ll see what that starts to look like and if I can start putting some of this into practice.

Will this work? I don’t know… but I hope I’ll be back to report on more success and if nothing else, maybe you can all learn something from my efforts 😉 Come chat on the Discord server if you’ve got any other tips for me!