Tuesday, April 30, 2013

AdeptiCon, part III - the car ride home

Driving out of Chicago was much better than the drive in.  For starters, while I was sleep-deprived, the rain was not coming down in buckets - and I had an ample supply of caffeine.  But it is a fair drive, some three hours or so, and rather than listen to the radio, we talked about the weekend, Warmachine, etc.

The first, and most important, thing, is that we all decided to come back to AdeptiCon next year.  We had lots of fun, and played a lot of games.  Next year, however, we plan on staying on-site - the half-mile drive was just long enough to be annoying, and we'd like to avoid that.  Plus, we'll be bringing some fermented grain products of our own.

Second, we talked about the possibility of entering the team tourney.  We have another player who may be coming next year, which would give us possibly two teams, and so we had a discussion on the possible display boards, the team composition, why we should have custom made shirts - the whole nine yards.  (Among them - a Cryx/Legion team board could be a ghost pirate ship towing either a dead whale, with Legion beasts feasting on it, or a blighted whale, with spikes and carapace growths.  Either sound fun.)

Lastly, we talked about why I lose so often.  Part of it is dice - people who have watched me stare in awe (or horror) at successive strings of snake-eyes, or events where my average 2d6 roll is 5.  I know that it is a poor craftsman who blames his tools, so while dice is indeed a part of it, I rarely plan my turns on the basis of anything beyond "I need 5s to hit, and do dice minus 4, so I should be able to kill this solo with 3 attacks."  I presume that I will have sub-average dice, and try to plan accordingly.

No, the real problem, I think, it is that somehow, when I took the black and became a press ganger, I decided that I was supposed to lose.  Not just at demos, but pretty much every game.  I know my units reasonably well, but I seem to avoid doing some of the synergies that move my game from meh to decent..  I don't practice a list, or play nearly as many games as I need to, and I tend to flit from army to army, ostensibly to give people practice playing against as many different things as possible.  In other words, I am trying to help make my meta better, but it means that I lose a lot, and in such a way that it does not actually make me a better player.  I need to stop taking a back seat on the open play days, and allowing others to play (when there is an odd number) instead of claiming a table for myself.

Now, being aware of the problem and fixing it are two different matters.  I'm going to goof off for the next couple of months, painting whatever I feel like (for the 5-pt/month challenge), and playing whatever I feel like.  And then, once I have the Convergence book in my hands, I am going to look at it, and at all the armies, and settle on something.  I have to play some eMorghoul games for that challenge, but I am going to pick something in July and concentrate on it until AdeptiCon next year.  I won't get in 10,000 hours, but I plan on doing a lot better next year than I did this year.

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