The Alliance Tournament starts next weekend and normally, by this time, these pages would be filled with propaganda images and posts about practices and me talking endlessly about our team. You might have noticed this isn't happening this year. There is a very simple reason for this. For the first time in almost a decade I'm not the Captain of the ABA team, nor am I involved in the creation of comps, strategies, or tactics. This year I decided to step back, way back, and let others run the team. And while my name is still on the roster and I may end up flying in matches - this year I am just another pilot.
It should be obvious why I decided to do this. Now that the board game development news is public. I've been knee deep in that project since February and it has taken up a lot of my time. Plus I have the Rixx Store to manage and create art for (and yes, it will be back soon I promise), not to mention all my other projects. On top of those reasons, to be honest I just really needed a break. Running an AT team for nine years straight is a lot of work. Even with lots of help, a tremendous amount of responsibilities tend to land squarely on the Captain's broad shoulders.
It was also time. While I am extremely proud of our Alliance Tournament history and the incredible matches that we've both won and lost - we have been rather terrible since the Alliance Open. The last two AT's we've lost both of our matches. In both of those years we brought the wrong comp on the wrong day and got rather owned and owned hard. No sense in sugar coating it. In hindsight I think it is obvious, at least to me, that my heart wasn't in it. I probably should have taken a break after the Alliance Open when we went 2-2. But sometimes those things are not as obvious to us in the moment.
Smudge and Devlin are running the team this year and I have every confidence in them. Both have the experience needed and both have been an important and integral part of our past teams. So there is no drop off in experience or anything. As for me I'm more of a back-up pilot this year and I've been in practices, not all of them, and stand ready to fly should I be needed. But it is, I must admit, nice to sit back and watch and not feel the stress for once.
We face Goonswarm in our first match on Saturday. Should be a great match-up and I look forward to it. If I'm flying in the match or not.
Even more now, we remain the underdog. And that is where we like it.
Go ABA!!