So I spent the morning working on our current Warmachine/Hordes campaign, and planning for the next 6 months of events. I am really surprised at how well things have gone for the Warmachine and Hordes scene here locally. Last year at this time it was just a scant handful of players with most of them not playing very often. This year we have fourteen participating in the campaign and eighteen signed up for our next tournament (two are on a waiting list because we only have table space for sixteen players!). It certainly helps that Privateer Press provides so much support for organized play.

My campaign games this week were horrible, and then I topped it off with a stinker of a game on Friday, to make my record for the week 0-3. I get so frustrated with my play sometimes. Warmachine/Hordes is deep with tactics and strategy and can be very unforgiving to mistakes. When I am at the table my mind gets scrambled or something and I just don't seem to see the correct choices. I consider myself an intelligent person (maybe somewhat arrogantly) but at the table I feel like a bumbling idiot. I guess thats really the core of my anguish, my failure to play to my ability. Maybe I need to write up a short list of things I need to thoroughly think through on my turn, a checklist of priorities. On Tuesday I played a game where I forgot to allocate focus one round and in another round I placed one of my own guys right in front of my own charge lane, and not just any ol' charge lane, the charge lane that my entire plan for that round hinged upon. I tried to recover by killing my own model but by accident (with the same attack) I killed the model I was planning on charging, compounding my mistake. These are such easily avoided mental errors that I want to pull my hair out in shear anger at myself.

I would feel a bit better at my mistakes if I could blame them on my misunderstanding of my opponents force but unfortunately in almost every case my mistakes stem from getting ahead of myself, failing to know the limitations my own force, or just plain handing the game to my opponent. On Monday I played with my Trollbloods horde. I had my opponent on the run and felt like I was in a really good position to win the game. On the round I lost, I moved my warlock (Borka) up to try and threaten my opponents warcaster (Siege). I could have (and should have) sat on four fury to keep Borka difficult to kill (allowing me to transfer damage done to Borka to my Warbeasts). I had already slammed his cavalry with my Troll Impaler and had him basically against the ropes. But in a mad fit of complete insanity I spent all four fury on a spell that had less then a 30% chance of doing what I wanted and it failed. Even if it had succeeded my opponent probably could have still brought enough of his force to bear on my warlock to kill him because I had wasted my fury and would not be able to transfer the damage. My actions were completely foolish and equated to throwing the game into the open arms of my opponent. I look at it now and its perfectly clear how poor my decision was, but at the time it seemed like a great idea!

I did have one good thing happen this week; I got my report card from school. I got straight A's again and have maintained a perfect 4.0 GPA since returning to school. It feels good to have my hard work rewarded with great grades. I still have a lot of work to do to finish my schooling and I have a lot of school related goals that I have not completed, but it is encouraging to be on my way towards completing all of them.