I'm an avid strategy gamer, starting with Settlers of Catan and Civilization II and playing more current games recently, like League of Legends. As a fan of Magic the Gathering, I was interested when a friend told me about a game called Elements - I played it, then forgot about it for about a year. When I remembered it on a bored night and played again, I started using the wiki to find decks, using it to create my first real deck (FFQ/Hope). From there, I entered the community, and was immediately entranced with the idea of joining BL. I knew nothing about the metagame, copied decks from the PvP Decks section of the forum and used them at random, and overall was pretty awful at PvP. Jenkar played a huge role in helping me understand what the heck it was I was supposed to be doing, and around this time one of my best friends on the forum, regen2k9, entered. We had a friendly rivalry, and in response to his use of the popular mono-light deck with SoSac and SoD, I created TLS. My first original competitive deck, I dominated with it, dropping games only to Jenkar and Odii Odsen. Though I ended up fourth in that season, losing third by a single point, I began to ache for a win. I entered PvP events from Grid to Budo without success, and used my participation in those events to enter War on Team Death with ralouf. While War was fun, I soon learned the immense amount of effort that had to be put into such an event. As War went on, some members stopped showing up, others had computer issues, and, down to just a few people, I shamefully started shying away from doing War work - it began to feel like more of a burden than a game.
After that War had ended, I vowed that I would never again let my team lose because I didn't put in enough effort. I participated in Brawl #1 on Team Air, and found it to be more work than fun. I then fought in Trials #5, narrowly losing a place in the final to Oa with him having one more point than me. In War, I joined Oa's Time team. I had learned my lesson from the last War and wouldn't let a lack of effort on my part be the reason Team Time lost. Unfortunately, I was about to learn another lesson about activity and team composition. Because our team was mostly made up of inexperienced, cheaper players, the burden was on PlayerOa and I to do most of the strategizing and deckbuilding. With PlayerOa dealing with real life, I was stuck with a huge amount of work, and ended up doing almost all of the work for the first five rounds - the exception being a single deck for round 5 that was created by McSod. Though burnt out, I continued to do approximately 50% of the work for the rest of the War, even subbing our last match. The lesson I learned from the second War I participated in was that you need other experienced and reliable players alongside you to prevent burnout. It's not fun and it's not enough to do all of the work yourself - the quality of your work will be worse and you will feel worse emotionally. Throughout this time, I had been competing in BL - earning second place in both the 2/2012 and 3/2012 seasons. Tired of BL after three seasons, I became an LO to help out with the thing that kept me on the forums in the first place.
I'm now fighting in Trials having learned my lesson from previous wars, and I can assure a few things. First, if I make it to the final battle, I will give it all of the practice and attention it deserves and more. Secondly, if I become Master, I will be a large Time presence on these forums - something that 10 men wasn't. Finally, I will General for the best Time team, and perhaps the best War team, that has ever graced the Elements forums. Because I know how to win, I know my element, and I am more determined to win than anyone else on the forum.
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