'Ard Boyz Semi-Finals aka: Screw this shit!

The last couple years have seen a definitive decline of the quality of ‘Ard Boyz, which was had a tenuous claim to any sort of quality in the first place. Prize support has gone down and down, while costs have gone up and up.

Hosting locations are fewer, the missions…while never very good or balanced have gotten worse…and now we don’t even get them on the traditional ‘Ard Boyz stationary. Talk about a dump.

I elected to participate in the preliminary round of ‘Ard Boyz solely to get a bit of practice in before the Nova Open. Attending ‘Ard Boyz required a 2.5 hour drive to my nearest store…and having acquired my pass to the semi-finals, I look to my accumulated experience and seriously wonder if I should even contemplate going.

The nearest semi-final location is in Dallas, Texas – which is a 5-6 hour drive depending on traffic. That means I’ll have to get a hotel Friday and Saturday night, shoot my whole weekend…all for three games of 40k. Last year I made several extended trips to travel outside of reasonable expectation to attend the Atlanta Circuit tournaments – I made the first trip because I could coincide visiting in-laws (making the wife happy) with meeting new players and playing 40k (making me happy). After attending 4 such one day tournaments, driving 6-8 hours to GET to the in-laws followed by a 2 hour morning commute the morning of the tournament….I realized that I had no wish to repeat that kind of tournament experience. There’s got to be a limit of how far you’ll drive for a one day tournament.

For me…I decided that would be 2.5 hours in one direction – which leaves two game stores within driving distance of where I live now.
So….here’s an opportunity to win a 2500 point army. The amount of effort required to contend for that army seems astronomically out of proportion with the potential rewards. And at this point in my career…I wouldn’t even value that army. I have unknown thousands of dollars of models at home in the closet unassembled, mostly sealed in shrink-wrapped boxes. Visiting Dallas would be nice – they have a Medieval Times…which I’m a huge fan of. But we would get there too late on Friday to attend, and be gaming too late on Saturday to attend.

I don’t really feel the need to prove myself anymore either. For a long time, I felt like the best course of action to having my advice accepted was to have a ridiculous 40k resume to back it up – which is why I made it my goal to travel everywhere and win everything, or do as well as I could. Well I have that now, but my altruism is mostly dead, which is why I’ve migrated here. While I have to deal with fuckfarts giving all my comments “thumbs down” and delete a comment here and there (I’m sure no one else has any interest in reading speculation of me choking on my own dick and it’s contents), I’m happier to be less in the public eye. It’s a shame that our hobby is as full of spiteful assholes as it is.

Anyway…put those three things together (increasingly bad format, lack of interest in prize or prestige, travel time)….and I don’t see myself going.

I’m open to being talked into it; if I don’t go I’m going to sit at home that weekend and play video games happily. I just can’t think of a good reason to attend.