I'm not E-famous. I don't have a massive following of people. I don't have any GT wins under my belt and have never even attended one. I drank too much and overslept before the Ard Boys qualifiers. Both days. I've only been playing since mid to late January.

But I win 99% of all the games I play, and not by any close margin. By tabling people. Do I play little kids at my local GW? Sure, I won't turn them down when they ask. I do my best to teach them what to do and where to do it with what they have. They like me, and some of the less loud ones are alright. Now my store's 10 year olds regularly stomp the older guys that come in on weekends to find easy wins against them. But I also play with a group of friends at a local club, who I am under the opinion are some of the best group of players in our area. They've played much longer than I have, and we play at some of the little tournaments that we can go to. We're just getting into this tournament circuit thing, and Ard' Boys was the first major thing we'd attended. (Well, I missed the prelims, and was moral support for the semis).

What we had expected was a bunch of players playing at the level of competition that is so far competitive it has lost any attempt holding back. The kind of game where your main game plan is to win on turn one and finish tabling by turn 4. What I saw was a bunch of people playing lists I saw as outright bad, badly. I saw competitive play on maybe 3 tables out of just under 40. Out of 80 people, 6 or so of them looked like they had shown up to the right place.

In the final round I saw two players who's names I don't know, but even If I did would not post them, play the most infuriatingly obtuse game of Warhammer 40k I have ever seen played. Including the ones where little kids cheat each-other. They were apparently good, blooded and smart players.

The finals we're today/yesterday. I don't know how that friend did yet, or if the competition there was more... competitive.

A few days later I made this blog, but suppressed the urge to stand on the soap box a little longer.

I read forums, like Bolter and Chainsword and Bell of Lost Soul. Occasionally, I even try to help people on B&C. I'm careful to avoid threads that don't have "Competitive" in them. Because that's the way I play, and it is not everyone cup of tea. That said, I don't know anyone who plays this game to lose. I don't think anyone does, at all. I know a great deal of people play as hard as they can until the moment they can't win, and then act like they were playing for fun the whole time. Its the nature of people you tend to find in any environment saturated with ego and abysmally devoid of talent.

Most people who play seem to be woefully unaware that min-max, hammer-anvil and death star playing is not how to play to win. I guess its some hangover from some old edition I've never played. You can win playing like that, but you'll win by a larger margin by playing efficiently. Both in the moment, while playing, and prior while building your list.

It was today, while reading about an "uber" competitive list for Blood Angels that had scouts with a heavy bolter in it that was getting positive replies, I realized I would actually write things for this blog. Both in spite, and in an actual plea to the 40k community on the Internet.

I'm still not entirely sure what I'm going to write about. Count on it being Poorly Worded.