Something I constantly do at my day job is setting SMART goals for me, the team and the company. I also teach the others how to write SMART goals.
When you've set those goals it's also important to define the actual steps you'll take towards this goal.
What has this to do with MCP? A lot if you want to and nothing if you don't.
When you want to play this game more competitively than strictly for fun (which is totally fine) you should think about what your actual goal is and there are a lot of possible goals here. Some are easier to realize; some will take loads and loads of work.
Let's start with an easier one:
Getting a Longshanks Badge for 10 games with a single Affiliation.
Now you set yourself a time limit: for example two months.
The goal now reads:
In two months time I have the 10 games Badge for [insert your favorite Affiliation here].
This now needs concrete plans:
- Building a roster of the chosen Affiliation
- Maybe building, painting or even buying the required models for that roster if not done before
- scheduling 10 games over the next two months where the list can be played.
Goals like these are pretty straightforward as they have very little randomness involved and the "cost" of not reaching them is pretty low. The involved risks here would be: not getting the necessary models done for a scheduled game and not finding enough opponents or the time to schedule (and play) enough games in the time frame. And another would be playing a few games and realizing, that you don't enjoy the faction.
It's important to have a fixed date where you check the progress. In the two months time frame as we've set for ourselves here doing that after one month makes the most sense.
If everything runs exactly as planned and hoped just continue the way you're going.
If you can't finish your models in time and/or can't find enough games but want to continue extend your time frame.
If you found that you didn't enjoy the affiliation you can either stop the pursuit of the goal entirely or see if and what you can change in the list to make it more enjoyable.
A much less straightforward goal would be:
Improve as a player.
And that is already not a SMART goal there at all. You'd need to define for yourself what exactly marks improvement?
So you should find a way to set a goal for yourself that's clearly defined and measurable.
An example here would be:
After my next 30 games I have tracked all the stats and written a comment about one thing I've learned from the game.
This way you've set a time frame (30 games) and have something you can measure (tracking the stats and most importantly write the note about what you've learned).
How does that help you improve? You're forcing yourself to learn from defeats and also wins by having to think about the game afterwards. You could also note down: one thing you did wrong and one you did right during the game.
Is win rate not the way to measure improvement? Not really. Win rate as so many variables that it's hard to use as an evidence of improvement. Sure people with very high win rates are probably also pretty good at the game but let's say you had a win rate of 40% in your last 10 games. Improving the next month to 60% in also 10 games makes the numbers look very big and different but in the end it can mean that in two games the deciding dice roll went your way while in the last month it didn't. It's also heavily dependent on your opponents.
Rational vs. Irrational Goals
My irrational Goals is to be featured on a Danger Room Christmas episode.
It would be an honor to do it but why is it irrational?
Because of the steps it needs to be achieved:
- Picking a faction and staying with it to achieve a high rating to even be recognized as a good player of that faction when it's already very hard to me to focus on a single Affiliation at all. Chances would be much higher with a niche and or new affiliation. Like X-Factor. But we'll also have a German team at WTC next year and I should focus on that instead.
- Mike needs to pick me for that faction and we'd need to be able to make the schedule work with such a time difference
- Mike might not even do these next year at all
So while it definitely is still something that would be awesome to achieve, it's not something I should actively pursue as it involves too many variables out of my control.
A rational goal is something I can control the steps to achievement.
We'll talk about mine for 2026 after Christmas.
The most important part about goals in this game is: they should further and definitely not hinder your enjoyment of the game. If you feel like setting goals and working towards them makes playing less fun abandon them right then and there and just do whatever makes you happy.
Something else that somewhat has to do with the topic today is this:
Being the Creator vs. Being the Executer
This has something to do with goals as you have to make sure you aim for one or the other or actually both. But what do those terms even mean for me?
It's something that has been floating around my (highly unfocused) mind for a while now. A Creator in this context for me is someone who innovates a completely new list, or variation there off. A very unique and new idea that proves to have some legs. But the typical Creator will not usually win events. S/He will often have a pretty average, sometimes slightly positive record with it. Because they know the idea of the list is good or they have found some magic in a synergy no one else saw so far, but they are usual not Executors themselves.
An Executer on the other hand is someone that takes an existing list or general list idea and plays it to it's maximum effect. I would describe many of the absolute top players as Executors. They have the ability to see and understand a list and take advantage of the concepts laid out. Executors also often value objective power level over individuality, which is of course the right call if your goal is to win events. The route to victory right now is just easier if you play Servants of the Apocalypse or Inhumans rather than trying to make a Sin Cabal list work.
What I think is very rare are people who are both Creators and Executors. Creating an unknown list and winning an event with it is the dream for many of us I guess.
Circling back to setting goals you have to make sure you know what your actual aim is between the two. If you want to be an Executor you should find out what the currently popular builds for the top factions are, understand their game plan and maybe fixed plays and then play a lot of games with that to get as good as you can with the build.
Wanting to be a Creator is less straightforward as creativity is harder to train and sometimes finding a cool synergy is just a happy accident. The most important part here is trying stuff out. Having a cool roster idea buried on your Jarvis Protocol account but never having played it will not really help you here. Be prepared to lose some games until you are comfortable with what you created or if it's not fun or the synergy you'd imagined isn't really there try something else.
I hope this all had some value for you so thanks for reading until the end!
Cheers from Germany 🍻
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