The term "competitive" gets tossed around a lot lately on the various blogs, comments and forums. However, it seems to me that those using it the most often do not understand what it means to be "competitive."
In Part, I address the difference between being the type of person who has the desire to excel at any endeavor, and the type that uses wargaming as a means of "proving" something.
I argue that the former is the type that practices a skill, and is interested in a good game more than beating their opponent in a lopsided match. The latter is the type that enjoys 'clubbing baby seals,' to use the cliche.
Funny thing though, if one player is dominating the game to that degree, can they really say that they have proven their skill, or have they merely proven their opponent's lack of skill?
last week there was an article that stated that it was defending comp score s in tournaments. Overwhelmingly the responses were negative, ranging from the usual chest beating" thog smash weak player" type responses to " why are you trying to destroy my game' type. All of them failed to address that the comp scores were adding competition, not removing competition.
I say adding simply because it adds more things to be the best at. With painting being a scored event, that means that you have to not only be able to win games, but also paint well. With them saying that your list will be penalized if you min-max, or take "power builds" while you will be rewarded for taking "fluffy" lists, that means than you not only have to be able to win, look good while doing so, you also have to win with a list that a general from your faction would be likely to have, as opposed to the one he/she/it would wish they had.
To look at the other side for a moment, there are arguments about "it's my army" Ishould be able to do what I want, or ' why be forced to take a "weak" list, or "some of us don't enjoy painting," or the best one of all "I just want to win." My problem with all of these arguments is that they are childish in the extreme, and the invalidate the claim that the person making them is "competitive."
These people do not want competition. if they had competition, with rules and measures taken to prevent 'gaming the system," they would not get to beat their opponents in a landslide, but would have to settle for merely taking one more objective, if possible. From the hyper aggressive mentality they display, i think these players have not grown past their high school days, and are looking for a means of continuing to be a bully.
To summarize, For those of us that want to compete, and by compete, I mean pit ourselves against others that participate in our hobby, and see who is the best, we need to see that scoring the attractiveness of an army, how well it conforms to how their codex is structured, and other "soft" scores are legitimate parts of a tournament. they add new dimensions of competition, and make it so that a thog with a netlist cannot possibly win by simply min-maxing a horde of unpainted, half assembled models.
