So after then NOVA open (when I had time to reflect on my games) I noticed a trend in all but one of my losses. The trend I noticed was that I felt that I was winning the game. Now you may ask why that is a trend that matters but the more I thought about it the more it kind of bothered me. How had I lost 3 games that I felt confident that I had the upper hand? Why did I not notice the plays that gave the wins to my opponents? Why did I make silly, unnecessary mistakes? Think about this I came up with 3 things.
1.) I play too fast. This is not really a problem when I am losing or when I am crushing my opponent (tabling them effectively). I had 2 games in during the NOVA which required no thought at all on my point after about turn 2 as I was so thoroughly beating my opponent anything shy of a miracle would have been needed for my opponents to pull out a win.(One I seized and crippled my opponent turn 1, the second my opponents dice were the worst dice I had ever seen, for the entire game, and he could not offset his poor dice). Also when I am losing I tend to take more care as any bad play can cost me. I feel that I really need to slow down and take a breath at the beginning of the latter turns (4+) and try to work out why my opponent is making the moves that he is, and is there any thing that I am missing.
2.) I make mistakes. Following up my fast play, when I am confident I have the advantage I make more mistakes. I aim to press my advantage, and I carry out “my plan” with little regard to what moves my opponent is making. After all, “my plan” is working, I’m winning and I don’t see anyway for my opponent to comeback from this. This has often been a bad habit of mine, even from back in my Chess playing days, when I am dominating my opponent I seem far more likely to let them make checkmate moves, simply because I fail to see them as I press my advantage. When I am losing I tend to be fine playing fast as I often have only one choice, and it is to be aggressive to try to get back to even. I also know that I absolutely cannot make mistakes so I do a better job with my moves and my target priority. Not that I am bad at these things in games I am winning, but when I am losing I don’t fail to notice slight changes in my opponents plans. Maybe this is because I need everything to go right for me to even have a chance.
3.) I get greedy. My last bad habit when I am winning a game is that I get greedy. I have a solid win locked up on the tertiary objective, but that is not good enough I push for the win on Primary and it costs me. Or I am winning on Kill points so I press to get more instead of protecting my lead. I multi-assault to kill 2 units when 1 would be just fine. This results in me being out of position to achieve objectives, leaves me vulnerable to counter attacks, and generally does me in. When I’m losing I’m more likely to be stingy and do just what I need to in order to win, no more no less.
Does anyone else have bad habits like this? Acknowledging this going forward I am going to attempt to work on it as I don’t feel like I was outplayed in any game at the NOVA, and yet in most of my close games (all save 1) I lost, and in 3 of those 4 games I felt that I had the advantage.
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