It’s Tuesday night and I’m starting to panic a bit about what I should be taking to the Chaos Cup in Chicago. So far it’s:
- Three sets of block dice (my Fumbbl ones that are easy to read, my Skaven ones because they’re official GW ones, and another set)
- Four NAF D6s, a D8 and a D16
- Two poker chips to use as ball tokens, three Bromley Blood Bowl League bottle caps for reroll markers, a bribe token, a Argue The Call token, and two more bottle caps (one for a random reroll, one as a turn marker)
- A (cleaned) jar of peanut butter that is my lucky dice cup and also transports all those other things I’ve just listed
- Two Blood Bowl teams (one for the main event, one for the Sevens tournament on the Friday night)
- The rulebook (and Death Zone, the supplement that’s as big as the rulebook)
- Ten custom D6 from my Sevens At The Seaside Tournament from 2020. They’re to give away in pairs to opponents that I enjoyed playing against – I wish I had 6 pairs, to give one to every coach I play in the main tournament, but these are the last of these dice I possess, so I guess if I have 6 great opponents, I buy the last one two beers, and if I don’t, then That Guy doesn’t get any dice. [This is one of the nice, not mandatory, customs around tournaments – if you can’t beat your opponent, you can at least give them something to remember you by…]
I’m not taking my pitch (because I’ve ordered the official Chaos Cup 2021 pitch, so that should be waiting for me on arrival. One less thing to lose. I’m debating taking my range ruler, if only because I painted it very nicely and it’s something to show off. And I need to find my pen, a notepad, and probably a spare pair of spectacles.
More importantly is to take the right attitude. And to remember not to drink red wine on the Friday night and have to grapple with a hangover all of the Saturday. Back in 2019, I took my Skaven, and drank more red wine than necessary on the Friday, and the Saturday I felt obliterated; devoid of joy, taking bad dice personally, and getting on tilt so much that a few games I might have stolen a draw from, I lay back while somebody put a knife to my throat. On the Sunday I had a Klondike bar to eat and the sugary goodness restored my joie de vivre, so my last match was an enjoyable slugfest – this time I’m either starting early on the ice cream as a prophylactic, or it’s a celebration every time things go right.
So this year I’m going to try to win as much as I can (at least in the main tournament – I think my Sevens build may be more for carnage than success) but I’m not going in expecting to be able to have wins handed to me on a plate, and (if possible) I’m not going to be whining and complaining when it doesn’t go my way. You’ve got to treat winning as important (because otherwise you’re wasting somebody else’s precious time) but you can’t treat it as more important than anything else in the world…
Check back on Monday to see if I stuck to this resolution…