What makes a good player better than the rest of us?

- Looted from Oz Gamers – someone called Reids take on this

Without claiming any particular skill or expertise myself - I guess what I can comment on is what I've seen some of the really great players do that I've played against over the years (particularly some of the generals that I used to play Ancients with)....

1. All of them are pretty bright - cognitively speaking. And that's probably the case for wargamers in general  - they are a pretty cerebral bunch. Certainly some of the better gamers I've met have exceptional cognitive skills allowing them a couple of key advantages: they can process information very quickly, their analysis of the information they take in tends to be of a higher standard (helps to make less mistakes) and they are fast / efficient at learning - in other words, probably won't make the same mistake twice, will pick up more on what others are doing and apply that to their own situation rather than just learning from their own experiences.

2. They have a good sense of the rules - but certainly don't need to be rules-lawyers. Good tactics will invariably prevail over knowledge of the fine print in the rules used with bad tactics. In other words, I don't care what rules you know about, if I can put a unit with 5US into your flank, your empire spearmen are going home in a bag.

3. They have a 'basic' plan - in other words they aren't going to be entirely responsive to what their opponent does - at the start of the game they are thinking, right, I know this guy has a "chaos" army, so against "chaos" my basic plan is x, y, z.  BUT, they are smart enough to make adjustments as things unfold. Sothey aren't too 'pre-programmed'.

4. They use all the tactical advantages they can - key ones are usually deployment and terrain. For me, the really classy gamers use deployment and terrain as much as they would for instance dominance in the shooting or magic phases to get an advantage.

5. They try and seize and then hold the initiative - so in the end you only feel like you're responding to what they do rather than the other way around. In other words, most of the really top gamers pick 'offensive' rather than 'defensive' armies, knowing that if you can dictate terms (i.e. maintain the initiative) then assuming armies of relatively equal potency, you will probably win. Its certainly pretty hard to remember the last time a 'passive' sit on the baseline type army won.

6. They avoid taking 'extreme' armies - in other words, their armies are usually well balanced - so in some games they might strike armies better suited to the terrain etc, but over the weekend, they have an army can that perform well against a variety of opponents / armies / battlefields. I think the other really important factor with a balanced army is that no opponent will look at what you're fielding and think right, you've got a big blind spot that I can exploit – in other words, a balanced army is never a 'gimme' - so on that basis, you're going to get some VP - and on the 3k table, if you get some VP you won't be massacred - so a balanced army will invariably pick up some VP even if they lose.

7. Innovation - I don't think as important, but can sometimes can make a difference - in other words coming up with a combo of troops (or sometimes a style of play) that is quite different to what you're expecting (e.g. in Oz, for a while this was Paul Naco using an all ghoul Strigoi army, or Bish with his all night gobbo foot army).

8. Practice - Finally, this is a bit of an adage from the sports world - but I think practice or play testing for us - is critical. The classic example is 2 guys from Wellington who played each other a dozen times before Natcon that was held in Orkland 5? Years ago. They arrived in Auckland with 2 very finely honed killing machines and basically wiped the floor with what was a very strong WHFB field, and played each other in the final. Admittedly they had both based their armies around the very clever (and up until that point not seen before) use of the Book of Secrets rather than any startling tactics. And I don't rate them as better players necessarily than the rest of us – but they certainly highlighted what good thorough play testing can achieve