I'm Not a Competitive Wargamer Anymore

Transcript

How many games do you play in a year? For me, I’m not at a point in my life where I can play a lot. I’m not where I’d consider myself a competitive tournament player. Maybe next year—I’m hoping—but this year the kids are just still too young, and I still need to be here a lot to wrangle them all.

The Math Doesn’t Add Up

Say I play a game a week. That’s 52 games. Take out weekends with birthdays—with who’s in this house plus parents, grandparents, and kids’ friends, that 52 games easily drops into the 40s. Then you’re going to be sick on a weekend. I’ve already missed games this year. So you can get to the 30s very quickly.

At 30 games, you’re probably just scratching the surface of getting good. Especially with something new like what I’m doing, at 30 games you’re maybe just figuring out the caster you like. You definitely have everything memorized, and you’re just getting into the groove competitively. But 30 reps in a year is not a lot. You’re not going to get super good.

The Mentality Shift

If 30 games doesn’t really matter, then trying to be competitive doesn’t really matter. I’m wasting all this time thinking about competitive armies and being competitive when I’m just not a competitive player anymore. And that’s a hard mentality to break.

Even back before I stopped playing Warhammer, I had functionally stopped playing way before I admitted it to myself. The way I “played” was reading articles on Goonhammer and making lists in BattleScribe. That was what the hobby became, way before I realized I wasn’t actually playing anymore.

It seems so simple, but to me it’s pretty groundbreaking. I’ve been fighting the natural flow of it. I no longer see myself as a competitive wargamer—I’m a hobbyist now. Which I was always way more of a hobbyist than a gamer anyway. But now that I’ve given up on this notion of being a competitive wargamer, maybe I can actually enjoy it.

What This Means for My Collection

Looking through my Warmachine stuff, there are models I genuinely want to paint—Beast 09, Ruin, an extreme Juggernaut, the extreme Punisher I’m converting. Those are the four coolest warjacks in the game that I have to paint. I’m extremely excited about them. I’ve been wasting so much time thinking about lists when I’m not really going to play enough for the lists to matter. What matters is the painting and showing up.

Same with Crucible Guard. I was bummed about the nerfs, but I’m having fun painting those colors. They’ll probably never see the tabletop from me. At 1,000 subscribers, I’ll give away the whole painted Crucible Guard army—official announcement.

A lot of these sculpts would be amazing for D&D and RPG encounters too. A whole campaign setting is sitting right here on my table.

Accepting It

I’m adapting to the fact that I’m not really a Warmachine player—I’m a Warmachine painter. And that’s cool too. I’ll maybe get 20 games in outside the house. War Table will be competitive since I can get a lot of those games in digitally. But I’m going to leave the army builder app alone, stop wasting time looking at lists, and just paint these models because they’re cool. And I’m going to tell myself that’s okay.

Infinity Commission

This week is Infinity week. I’ve got to finish this commission—about 10 figures total. This guy’s going to be the most time-consuming. He’s definitely the biggest with the most going on. Base coating is actually going to be a two-day job because everything’s so small. See you tomorrow.