As I approach 500 matches, I made the error of looking at my coach standing (2294) and wondering where that stood against the rest of the world.

Right now that puts me at 20 places off the very bottom. Now, happiness does not come from judging yourself against the achievements of others. You're never going to find yourself content if your goal is to have slightly more of a certain placeholder of value than other people are. But at the same time, there's that mental itch, the struggle to say well, I'm sure I'm not that bad. I'm a legend in my own mind, why can't reality catch up with me?

So with that in mind, I figured I'd just suffered from a lot of being picked against when I used to spend all my time in Ranked, the "beginner-friendly" division of Fumbbl where you definitely don't have people hunting out easy prey. Surely in Box, where the system was fairer, I'd be doing better?

Oh hubris, thy name is Cushtie, for while there's 20 people arguably doing worse than me overall, if we look at the depths of the Box standings then I'm just one place from bottom. And while he's on 129.01, that's off 71 games; I've put in 223 Box matches since I started and I've won only 4 more than he has.

Was it a constant diet of stunty matches that's making me dreadful? Imposter Syndrome does me no favours, although my hope is that in twenty or thirty games they might become threatening. But nope: third from bottom in box with Goblins, ninth from bottom with Ogres - I can't even claim I'm great with terrible tools.

I know I can hurt you: in Ranked I average 2.83 casualties per game vs 2.04 against. But bodycount alone doesn't dictate success, and perhaps that's because I learned to pick and choose a bit too.

So, what next? As I said to begin with, there's little point chasing numbers in the hope that one or two more pixels on the page will make you happier, but I started this journey on Fumbbl in the hope it would improve my tabletop game a little. It seems to indicate a bit of a waste of time if that hasn't happened.

I already have some other excuses lined up:

* I'm doing it for the fun of the game, so winning's not important (but if you're not even trying to win, that's a pointless attitude and somewhat insulting to your opponent
* I've kept teams for too long when they're broken to the point they should be left to die (those poor, unloved Tiny Nightmares)
* People who put Guard on players are just awful and should stop
* Nobody is in the Box in North American time zones so you can't get a game anyway

But those seem a bit weakminded. When I hit 500, I'm going to put some of these old, or bloated, or misguided teams away for a while, try a fresh start, and see if that makes a difference for the next 100. Where will we be at 600?