Preface: this is a Warhammer-free post.

I’m writing this because a few  of people tagged me on Facebook for Derby Syphillis or something. To quote the activity, “Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals that roller derby has added to your life.”  I’m also writing this as a reminder to myself of how far I’ve come, and to freshmeat skaters of how far they can go.

Look in the back - that's me running on my toestops. Courtesy of Anthony Canada

I’m going to preface all of this by saying that unlike other gals I happened to benchmark with, I am not a natural skater. For the longest time I was afraid of falling, afraid of the speed, afraid of skating too close to other people and pretty much afraid of my own shadow on skates.

I’ve said it on this blog before (albeit in a different context): it is in adverse situations that you improve.

This is a post about success, and how the path to it is riddled with moments that feel like  failure.

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The more I involve myself in roller derby, the more I realize that 40K and derby aren’t all that different.

For one, each has an overall metagame. And regional metagames. Bouts in Alberta WILL look very different from those in Quebec, for example. Strategies and playstyles differ from league to league, and team to team. For example, RDRDA’s Nightshades, for example are a team of amazing blockers who can control the pace of the game, whereas Med Hat’s Gas City Rollers are a team of fast as hell jammers.

And in roller derby, just like 40K, people who want to win are constantly trying to break the game.

Take, for instance, the “no start”. It’s the derby equivalent of the slow play stall tactic douches use during tournaments, or leafblower lists.

Observe:

Yes, that was 2 minutes of standing around.  The jam went on without the jammers getting whistled on (which happens with the last gal in the pack crosses the pivot line –  a whole 30 feet from where the jammers start.

How does this relate to anything GW? I mean other than the obvious bootie-short wearing, of course.
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My beloved league, Red Deer RollerDerby Association, hosted Operation Skate and Destroy  over the last weekend. I had such an amazing time!

Here’s a breakdown of my weekend:

Saturday – Bootcamp:  5 different coaches providing skill and skill building insights. RDRDA’s own Team Canada skater TAZ started the morning off by kicking my ass with off-skate dynamic movements (and in the same manner destroyed my plan to “save” my legs for benchmarking the next day). I got some great pack skill and strategy techniques from Coach Lime, learned some interesting agility drills from Tye Die. Also had the privilege of learning the finer points of hitting and jamming from RDRDA’s Hollywood Homicide and Razor.

Saturday evening – Nightshades Bout: Worked the door for the first half of the bout, but got to see how FAST the pack was moving to keep RDRDA Alum Spaz in check. RDRDA features some of the BEST blockers and it was amazing to see how good the Nightshades were able to control the pace of the bout in the 2nd half and come back to victory!

Sunday morning – Benchmarks: I had the most serious nerves. For those who don’t know, benchmarking is a minimum skills assessment that basically ensures you’re capable of playing the physically demanding sport of derby. Well – I did it! This was a HUGE milestone for me, and there are so many people whose efforts have helped me along the way to get to this point.  I won’t list them all, but pretty much anyone who as seen me on skates has had a hand in both improving my skills and enabling me to skate.

Which brings me to the point of the whole weekend for me – my Bout:

Yes. That’s me. Laying a hit onto Adoll Hitter. And she did go down, if I recall correctly. Next time I’ll be hitting with my eyes open, so I’ll be able to SEE what I’m hitting. Lesson to all: CHECK YOUR BLIND SPOTS.

I barely remember it. Super thanks to Anthony Canada (who shot the photo above) for creating a record of the fact that I actually played and didn’t dream the whole thing up.

Monday –  Bangover. Given I skated for HOURS and I was skating pretty hard throughout that time, it wasn’t particularly surprising that I had a REALLY hard time walking the next day.  Tendons in my knee were inflamed. Stairs were the enemy.

The point of this whole story is that I’m REALLY looking forward to doing it all again. E-Ville Beaver Bash, here I come!

Yes, I'm using a Starcraft II screen cap to illustrate my point.

In the Jaded Gamercast Facebook Group, I recently expressed my disdain for cookie cutter, power-build armies.

Actually, it was this:

What ever happened to wanting to play a fun army that’s fun to play against? Or a fluff army whose victories are unassured but looks AMAZING.

Or how about an army that should, on paper, lose games like frigging crazy but because its both unorthodox and you’ve become skilled with it, you wreck face?

I get that guys like to win, but aren’t people getting sick of cookie cutter armies? I think that THAT is part of the reason why there is so much ennui with 40K right now.

To which one of the pundits of the group, Tim of Douchebag Anonymous, asked:

Those are some of the ways to play, Teri, but not all of them. You don’t really think anyone not doing it in one of the ways listed above is having fun wrong, do you?

To clarify, the people he’s alluding to are the ones I’m also alluding to: the players get to their powergaming phase – the place where taking better units and optimized builds helps compensate for their lack of adaptive skill as a general – and instead of progressing to appreciate the hobby in all its aspects instead of just the game, they stop there. (I’ve talked about this myself on this blog before- I’ve been there as both a 40K player and as roller derby freshmeat.)

My  short answer to Tim is yes. Yes, they’re having fun wrong.

The long answer is this: If their fun comes strictly from winning, they’re kneecapping themselves for wins in the short term but heavy losses over the long term (and possibly even a loss of love for the game thereafter.)

Players become better generals in adverse situations – unbalanced game scenarios, unorthodox army builds, and outside the box strategies all throw wrenches into a player’s gaming experience which forces them to think creatively, use their army differently and understand off-the-wall gaming approaches.  Simply put, generals learn from their defeats (or near defeats), not from their easy victories.

It’s called a learning curve. The problem with these power gaming types gravitating towards the cookie-cutter optimized lists is that the list compensates for their lack of skill. (I’ve written about this before, but in the context of buying 700 roller skates to make me a better derby skater.)

Here’s a video game analogy: by playing these highly-optimized, cookie-cutter lists, players are essentially turning down the game’s difficulty setting.  It’s great when you’re starting out, gives you that hit of dopamine that gamblers get when they strike lucky, but in reality, by being loss averse, players aren’t actually improving as generals as well as they could be with a list built knowing their list has a clear and obvious weakness.

Ultimately, if the amount of fun a player has is related to how much he wins, then playing to master the game should be the means to that goal. That may mean more losses in the shorter term, but far more wins over time.

Players who choose to take the short term gains will suffer some pretty brutal losses when the experience scale goes up – a large tournament setting, for example.  They may be the big fish in their small pond at their local gaming venue, thanks to the power of their list, but when the stakes are raised along with the experience in the room, those same guys may find themselves struggling.

There’s only so many tournaments in a year, so if the ONLY place you can learn (lose) to play the game is tournament, you’ll be behind the curve. If you play games every week outside the tournament setting, playing an underpowered list against lesser generals with BETTER lists will make you a better general, instead of feeding your ego.

If your “fun” is to win, you probably want to also win at big events. You probably want to win when swimming with the sharks. If you choose to play locally and make every game outside that big event setting make you a better general, play for mastery. Don’t play for the win when the wins don’t count.

And, well, if you’re the kind of guy who likes to show up and play games JUST to win and you are uninterested in becoming a better general and your idea of fun is crushing kids at the local GW, well, you’re also having fun the wrong way. I’m not going to elaborate as to why.

I know, it's obvious. But seriously - you go Google Image search "winning" and see if you come up with an image NOT of Charlie Sheen. This was actually the best one. (Photo credit: Alex Pardee)

There’s this thing out there called winning well. There’s also this thing out there called winning poorly.

I was inspired to write this post after hearing harrowing tales of my husband slapping his Jaded Gamercast co-host in the face after beating him in a game of Warhammer Fantasy.  (Just so you know, that’s winning poorly.)

I’m told Lange was being quite a sore loser (a topic I’ll likely write about in the future) but since I always choose my husband first, I thought I’d tackle how to earn sportsmanship points when you’ve won a game.  Winning games and being a fun opponent aren’t mutually exclusive, but I thought I’d throw out a few tips to help you guys to who can’t stop beating face to salvage some of those points.

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This weekend, I had planned to occupy my time by attending the Calgary Roller Derby Bootcamp. The camp included all-star coaches like Pauly, Bonnie D Stoir and Smarty Pants.

But it seems like the stuff that really tied that whole experience together was spending a sunny afternoon at a beautiful park with my daughter.

That grimace is actually her "photo smile". I know she's happy when she puts it on for me when I point a camera at her.

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So instead of bitching (as we in the hobby are so apt to do) I’ve decided to highlight some pretty awesome upcoming events in the Alberta Area:

It Came from OOTB 2011 -Edmonton AB – Canada Day Long Weekend:
In less than 5 days, the OOTB club will be running their much lauded annual event. As per usual, the event will be supporting the University of Alberta’s Campus Foodbank (which is just plain awesome, since the majority of return foodbank users are those who actually WORK for the university, as opposed to students). What’s new is they’re RAFFLING OFF trips to LAS VEGAS. Having just been there, I can say this is a prize definitely worth winning. A paltry $50 gets you your games, lunch on Saturday, some swag (I think its shirts this year) and a chance at the great prizes. Details can be found on their website: Out of the Basement Gaming or Painting Legend Dan Byer’s blog, Immaterium Press

WARHAMMER’D -Calgary AB –  July 16 & 17

It turns out that alcohol + wargaming = amazeballs! Mostly filled with Fantasy gamers (with a few spots for 40K) WARHAMMER’D just sounds like a good time. There’s 5 games, 2 mini games and 2 drink tickets that comes with your $80 entry. Also: PRIZES! For more info, check out the WARHAMMER’D Facebook event invite.

(A virtually identical version of this article has been posted to Blood of Kittens, but comments have been turned off . I’ll post it here if people want to flame me in my own house.)

I spent last weekend in Las Vegas. In a room with about 200 men and less than a dozen women (a couple of whom, I found out, were working gals).

For me, it was an amazing weekend of gaming and one of the funnest tournaments I’ve ever been a part of.  I rarely get a chance to play and to be able to play 5 players whom I have never played from all corners of North America was a true pleasure.

It was well run.  Food was delicious and plentiful (as those who know me know that my event mantra is that low-blood sugar is the devil to fun games). It was as fun and relaxed as any event in Vegas hosted would be (I showed up to watch the awards presentation in my bathing suit because I was hanging out in the pool as they were tabulating results).

It was an exceptionally fun time.

That doesn’t mean I don’t have my own criticisms – read on…

As I’ve stated previously, power gamer me so happens to be roller derby me. I have to admit, power gamer me is a little scary.  Teri Fying, one might say.

Looks like you'd have to freehand the fishnets on these minis.

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Fifteeen  minutes can mean the world, particularly if it’s the last turn of a game. That last fifteen usually determines the outcome of the game, and that last 15 should be yours to control.

I say it over and over to people who play 40K: elect to go second whenever possible  (exception being that you’re facing an army you’re sure you’ll table by turn 3 but if that’s you, shame on you for playing a leafblower, Goatboy.)

Why?

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