After 62 NAF tournaments and over 300 tournament games, I’ve finally cracked it.  The thing that stops me from being world class is that I get excited and make bad decisions.  I need a big sticker (or stick) that says “take a couple of minutes, analyse the situation and play on” rather than “things are looking good, this is AWESOME!”.

As an example, my vampires were playing against 20phoenix’s skaven.  He drove into my half, then all my gazes worked and I sacked the ball carrier, with my vampire catching the ball.  This was quickly followed by his lightning bolt failing.  Life was good.  The next turn was critical.  My two choices were to whack a load of rats and hope to get some of them off the pitch, thus consolidating my position and making life even more AWESOME!  This is what I chose, but it meant that I could not form an effective cage around the ball carrier.  The next turn, he half-diced my vamp with strip ball, and the ball popped loose.

The sensible and better choice (definitely with hindsight, and hopefully with foresight next time) would have been to think that it was my turn 2 and I have the ball on his drive, so there is no rush to get anywhere.  With this frame of mind I could have not worried about hurting more rats and just concentrated on clearing them out of base contact, in order to form a better cage.

Similarly, I can still remember at Eurobowl being in a tremendous position with my Necro against Wood Elves, and making exactly the wrong choice – leaving a possible (though unlikely) one die with Strip instead of a half-dice with nothing. Again, this was because I was in much the better position, and it clouded my judgement.

So the moral of the story?  Take a moment instead of acting like a crazy person.  That, and Strip Ball can do one.