On January 29, 2010, I went to my first hard core card driven war game convention "WAM" or the Winter Activation Meeting in Maryland. The website about the tournament seemed inviting. The cover had a picture of Dr. Strangelove.
And it advertised the " World's top ranked strategy players, starlets, game designers, a few groupies, no euroweenies, one geek and the worlds best BBQ".
http://www.wamconvention.com/index.html
The official tournaments were Hannibal, Twilight Struggles, Paths of Glory and Combat Commander. This sounded great. I own Hannibal, Twilight Struggles and Combat Commander and I'd like to learn how to play Paths of Glory sometime soon and I like BBQ and no euroweenies.
I thought I was ready for this. I've been on a hot streak. I've won 3 straight games of Hannibal and 6 out 7 games of Hold the Line. And I'm the top ranked Caylus player in world.
Well "I came, I saw, I got my ass kicked" It's one thing playing Twilight Struggle with a friend who's just as clueless as you are but it is another thing to play "World's top ranked strategy players"
I started the day playing Hannibal and I did pretty good despite rolling 6 x 1's and 2 x 3's on the Siege table and I got Scipio killed on the first turn he entered the game. Going into the last round I was winning 10 - 8 but drew crappy cards, I made some amateur mistakes and the Carthage player took Sicily on the last card to pull a 9-9 tie or Carthage victory. I hit the bar for a couple of beers after that loss.
The rest of the night went down hill. I played Twilight Struggle and I lost in like 2 turns. I should have known I had no chance playing against a guy who flew in from California to play Twilight Struggles at this tournament. The guy was a pretty cool. He even drank bourbon out of a flask. We set up the game again and he gave me some pointers and lessons on how to play better at Twilight Struggles. I was thinking Twilight Struggles was a pretty easy game until I played this guy who was playing on a different level.
I decided to go back to play Hannibal. My luck hadn't changed from earlier in the day and I couldn't roll, I could pick good Roman generals and I drew crappy battle and strategy cards. So I ended up getting destroyed and Hannibal sacked Rome on turn 5.
Than I came home and found out Justin destroyed me in the online Successors game. What a fraking brutal day of war gaming. I'm kind of feeling a little shell shocked. There is no way I'm ready for Paths of Glory. I think I've got post traumatic shock or something. I might even have to sleep with my Caylus box tonight.