Winning isn’t everything.
Thinking back on my Age of Sigmar tournament, something struck me. It was more pointed out by my friends but I really had a high sportsmanship award for the event with 3 out of 5 players voting me as their favourite player. What makes it better was that I was running Tzeentch, a top-tier army that gets a lot of flack. Either way, it was tied for my highest sportsmanship with my Nids from a few years ago at a previous Throne of Skulls.
So what does this all have to do with Shadespire then? Well it’s more due to a whole combination of factors that revolve around the game. Firstly, the sportsmanship from the Shadespire community is top-notch and kinda almost unseen for a GW game when compared to their 2 main gaming systems (AoS and 40k). Secondly my gaming club HATE and my regular playmates from the club have rubbed off on me as well because sportsmanship has always been their priority for whatever gaming system their members play.
All these factors have kinda seeped into me and how I play. A good example is how in Shadespire tournaments that players will often allow you to go back on certain actions/mistakes made (within reason) and would rather beat you because they outplayed you and didn’t rely on exploiting mistakes. In comparison to 40k/AoS, players generally do the opposite and won’t correct you on errors like forgetting to move a unit or that you’re within buff range of an effect. Now this isn’t the norm but I was guilty of doing this back when I played 40k/AoS more heavily in tournaments, not out of spite but because it’s kinda the players fault if they forget to remember stuff. Yet at the last tournament I was just happily reminding people about forgetting to move units, their buff effects, etc and I’d like to think it was mainly due to the Shadespire community and my gaming club.
Now there’s nothing right or wrong about allowing someone to correct a minor mistake they’ve made but I think it’s one of the greatest things about the Shadespire community that, generally, people are very sporting which is especially great when you consider that this is a competitive game. It was something highlighted during the last Grand Clash I attended at the UK Game Expo by the TO and head designer of the game.
When I first started out in the game, me and my friends all had the fear that everyone would be out to only win at all costs with no sportsmanship at all. These fears were crushed when we attended the first Warhammer World Grand Clash due to how amazing all the players were. It’s great to see now how the community has only gotten stronger over the past few months and something we should all really be proud of.
I hope it continues to grow stronger as the Shadespire community gets bigger with time. Some people even say only the most sporting players roll crits frequently…
Can You Roll A Crit? 
Years ago I was playing 40k during a pickup game at the shop so I didn’t know the guy I was playing. I had to make 4 saves for my unit and rolled all sixes. I thought wow cool. Next he shot the unit again and again I rolled all sixes. He was slightly irritated, but not mad. He shot them again and yes, again I rolled all sixes. He was starting to get upset so I said I’ll do whatever you want man, you want me to roll different dice? I did and again I rolled all sixes. I started to apologize profusely as I’ve never done that before and never seen nor heard of it. I was hoping I’d start rolling ones and twos
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