Dealing with losses: Eurobowl 2024

Yesterday I realized it's been exactly a month since my friends and I boarded our flight from sunny Athens to a less sunny London.

Earlier in the year, I was asked whether I wanted to attend Eurobowl/Europen 2024 - one of the highlights of the competitive Blood Bowl calendar.

The bonus was: it was in Greece. Sunshine, beers, and halloumi are too good to pass up, so I immediately jumped on it.

Fast forward to late September and I was sitting in the departures lounge at Gatwick airport, trying not to think too much about being locked in a rattling tin can, 35,000 feet in the air - I'm not a keen flyer.

I've been to a lot of domestic tournaments all over the UK, but nothing of this scale. None of us anticipated doing particularly well - I knew, in the back of my mind that the skill threshold of the players would be somewhat higher, but I severely underestimated just how high it would be.

Competition aside - there is absolutely nothing better than bouncing about with your mates, eating great food, drinking cheap beers, and playing dice in the evenings and, when we got to Friday night, I definitely felt like the Blood Bowl part of the trip was an add-on rather than the sole reason for us being there.

Reality Check

When we sat down for our first game I was pretty nervous but quietly confident. I've done tournaments before, so this was no different, right? We already knew the teams we matched up against and spent the previous night talking about some strategies and practicing setups - I was fairly nonchalant about this.

I ran Orks - a team I knew I could do well with and was paired against Vampires, which wasn't a great matchup for me. At this point, I didn't realize that the dumpster fire of crushing defeat started way before I even got to Greece.

Those who know me know I prefer playing the Sevens format of Blood Bowl. I run my own Sevens league and spend the vast majority of my time in that format so it's fair to say that at the point of departure abroad, I hadn't played a game of regular (11's) Blood Bowl for at least 10 months.

Granted, I did do a short 6-game stint at UKTC this year, but that was with Snotlings and I was there for a good time, not a winning time, so it's hard to call that an attempt to be competitive.

... and this is where the fundamental issue was - I did absolutely no preparation for the tournament. I had a great run with Orks the year before at UKTC '23, so why should I bother, right?

I'm hearing a lot of murmuring and criticism in the hobby circles, most prominently in Blood Bowl, using the term "try hard". It's easy to throw it out as a derogatory term - I've done it before countless times, most often to cover up my own shortfalls and redirecting the anger and disappointment I felt at myself to someone else. It's easier to blame something outside of yourself than to be able to stomach the fact you did badly.

But, if your game is being a competitive player, regardless of the system or format, a certain degree of try hard-ism is required, logically.

I had a short-lived affair with American Football, and one of the things that my coach always used to say was: "If you do as much as the guy ahead of you, he stays ahead of you". I didn't. I did far less than the guy ahead of me.

So, the wheels fell off...

Day 1

To say I was destroyed in my first game would be an understatement.

Boy, was I humbled.

My opponent was dominating from the first dice roll; the Vampires were turning off my players left and right with the Hypnotic Gaze ability, and I felt myself getting into my own head with every turn which, inevitably, made me play worse.

It ended up a 4-0 loss which, in Blood Bowl terms, is an absolute massacre. Combined with an off-hand remark from my opponent (who, I suspect, was just trying to be funny at the time), I had to take a short break outside to stop myself from imploding and being escorted out for assaulting a man with his own dice cup.

Nobody likes losing, and some people handle it better than others. I've struggled with being outplayed for a long time, and at an event in which individual performances add up to the team's result, losses suck extra hard.

Fortunately, I had a really good bunch of guys around me, and it was much easier to snap out of my toddler fit when everyone was laughing and having a good time. This is just as well because that was the narrative of the first day - 3 losses out of 3 games: a rough start if there ever was one.

The thing about Blood Bowl, at least for me, is that it's much more enjoyable when the person in front of you is having a good time. In our last game, we came up against a team from Madrid (big shoutout to you guys) and it's not often that I end up cheering for my opponent to win, which is a testament to how much of a sound bunch of guys they were - I'd happily lose to them again any day of the week.

Day 2

This started off a little better - I managed to pull a draw against another Ork team which, at least, meant it wasn't going to be a 0-0-6 kind of tournament.

Followed by another draw and an auto-win (my round 5 opponent didn't show), it meant a semi-respectable 1-2-3 finish - it could have been much worse.

It's fair to say the whole weekend was a learning experience. As it was pointed out to me, bottom tables on a European stage are certainly not the same as bottom tables back home.

As obvious as it sounds, to do well, you have to put some effort in - and that includes doing more than a casual game every 3 weeks.

When I was circling the drain on day 1, I had a brief moment when I thought to myself "If I sack all 6 games, I might give Blood Bowl up for a while, until I cool off", which sounds ridiculous. I wound myself up to a point where I was ready to suspend the thing I dedicate most of my time, attention, and money to, purely because I couldn't handle my ego.

And at that point, I felt like I was at a fork in the road. I could either cave in, sack the game off, and (probably) never come back to it, because I'd associated some crappy feelings with it, or I could go the other way, and take the hits of the weekend on the chin, go home and get better - and that's exactly what I did.

The day after I got back, I started reading more about tactics, and watching videos on team breakdowns, strategies and play concepts - I started doing more than the guy ahead of me.

The thing is that no one is inherently born great at something. Sure, some people have a greater genetic predisposition for certain things but natural gifts alone won't carry you. So, all talk about "sweats" and "try hards" aside - I realized if I wanted to roll with the big boys, I had some work to do, and I had to get good.

This whole experience though, was a minor blip in an incredible weekend that I got to spend with some truly great friends. Having said that, as minor as it was, it taught me a lot - not just in terms of Blood Bowl; sure I came away a better player, but I feel like it also made me a more rounded, emotionally intelligent human so, 2-for-1 on that one. If anything, I accepted that it's okay to feel angry, disappointed, and downright shitty when it comes to failing at something you really care about. That's exactly why you feel like that.

And, I also understood that there's always a choice. You can either fold and walk away from it, or do something about it - the choice is very situational and personal so it's hard to say whether one is better than the other, but I know which way I went and what it did for me.

Well, that turned deep and personal! But, I hope you enjoyed the read, I certainly enjoyed the trip.

I'll be back in a week or so to talk about my local league's Autumn Cup.

I'll catch ya later x

DS