Mephisto

I just read your long form post from a link you left in 6 Nation Takeaways thread and I just wanted to commend you. I'd reply there but I sort of retroactively read it and didn't want to resurrect or rehash the discussion about winning/competition in AOS.

I mean, I disagree with the Pittsburgh point - Packers/Bucks/Brewers fan here  - but overall liked your take. I especially liked the plea at the end, "don’t ask them to abandon the ship of truth..." 

My main point is that by facilitating good rules and a healthy competitive circuit, GW in no way stops others who are less competitive from having their fun. It's actually the opposite. If Noncompetitivegai wants to "just have fun and not try to win" they can do that as easily with or without rules and are not compelled in anyway to ever enter a tournament. Similar to how Paintgai can just buy paints and models and never put his hobby pieces on a table. I'd posit, however, that once they do put models on a table to push them around, they engage in the most minimum of social contracts that I'm probably going to try to win against them. That's not to say that I only have fun when winning or that I'm asserting it's the the only way to have fun. Hell, I may do something reckless or silly but that's because the excitement of the gamble or the hilarity of the joke outweighs the potential to win in that moment but I do that despite the truth of the matter that games have rules and this game has rules where two people put models down with constraints that will name one the victor.