Tournament Burnout

[John Danker]

It's time for my yearly reminder...for those of you who have seen me write about this theme before, please humor me, I feel it's an important topic.

The topic is tournament burnout. You may not be familiar with the terminology but I'm willing to bet that you know exactly what I'm talking about. Tournament burnout is what happens when gamers focus completely on tournament play and have forgotten what got them interested and the delight that brought them into the game to begin with.

Tournaments are great things. They provide a structured enviroment to be able to test youself and your deck against other highly skilled players, prizes and fame in our "little world" are on the line, bragging rights and perhaps your ego too.....but wait, after a couple of years of that, just like anything where the stakes keep rising and the pressure to win keeps building, you may very well find yourself in a rut and thinking, "Hey, you know what? I don't enjoy this game like I used to....what happened?

Well, things have changed, you're not playing the game for the same reasons you started playing it for. I've seen countless people get out of the game because they didn't enjoy it anymore and sell off nearly all of their collections....6-12 months later they show up again and I have to smile to myself, I know why but I always ask and the answer usually comes back something like this, "Well I was over at my friend's house and he had a his deck and a structure deck so I thought what the heck, I took 5 min. and modified the structure deck, changed out 5 cards....and we played for a couple of hours....I even managed to pull off the major combo in that deck a couple of times! Afterward we went and had a pizza and laughed about me clobbering him with monster X because he couldn't draw any monster destruction!

Oh YEAH! Now you remember what got you playing this game and loving it don't you? It wasn't the big tournaments and prizes. It wasn't traveling to GenCon or to regionals....it was sitting down with one of your good friends and playing on the spur of the moment and pulling off a great combo. It was the light hearted gaming, the laughing, and then going home and making a new deck to counter his...and then doing it all over again next week.

The whole point here is not to get lost in tournament play. Stop and think about when you actually have the most FUN playing. If you get feeling like you're not having fun with the game anymore then return to the point at which you were and what that included. "Refresh" yourself and don't forget to laugh!

 

[HorusMaster]

As for me, it was my boys that got me interested in playing the game but while they may have grown out of it somewhat, I still enjoy the local tourneys and seeing how my strategies play out against other players. I've noticed, that while there are young kids getting into the game because of the TV show, a lot of the players are in their late teens and young adulthood. There have been a lot of players recently at the last Regional in Ft. Worth, that were older adults like myself playing and enjoying the ability of the younger players. While we may have greater financial resources to buy cards we want to collect and/or use in a deck, it's nice to see the ability of the younger players using cards that most players wouldn't consider in their desire for a OTK deck. It's more enjoyable to play out a match over a period of time rather than having to deal with players going for the OTKs. As long as the game remains enjoyable and evenly playable for ALL players, I'll be around.

 

[John Danker]

Oh for certain playing the kids is great fun....judging them as well. Due to them playing with what their resources allow them to I'm often reminded of a long forgotten card that now, due to cards released since, have some pretty good synergy at this point. Such a scenario played out the other day as I saw a young man activate Inferno Fire Blast with Red-Eyes on the field. It hit me that with the recent addition of normal monster support cards Red-Eyes isn't hard to get out onto the field or to special summon any longer making Infermo Fire Blast a real threat!....and that's the kind of thing I was talking about in my original post, those really fun combos and playing against people where you never know what to expect....it equates to fun.

 

[babyarm]

That's why I judge VS and WOW...it keeps me from having to do one thing too many times in a row. It's like crop rotation for your brain.