My favourite wood elf team have been well and truly mauled today. I've played 3 games with them and lost 2, drawn 1 and suffered 8 badly hurt, 5 serious injuries and so many double 1s I've lost count.

Most of this was just the game we play. Sometimes nothing I do fails, sometimes nothing works. Today was a fail day.

But the point is this. Two of my opponents were fun, friendly and understanding - even the one who left three of my players with long-term injuries. I laughed at my own bad luck and wished them good luck in the future.

But my other opponent was less generous with his good luck, making every effort to destroy my team, blocking and stalling, fouling when I wouldn't get up, even when I was down to four prone players and nothing else.

Now, his actions are within the rules and I'm not complaining about that. He has the right to block me into next week and foul me into the week after that. I have the right to put him on my blacklist and refuse to play him ever again.

But should I still have said "thx for the game, good luck with the team" at the end of the match? Was it just sour grapes that made me refuse, or was it justified because of the way he played?

I try to mean the things I say in chat - even "gl & hf" is heartfelt before the match. I do want my opponents to have good luck, because I know from experience that being on the receiving end of an endless stream of ones and skulls is frustrating and depressing and not why we play.

But in this case I just couldn't be gracious and now I have to ask myself this...

Am I being stupid and precious? It's a game for goodness sake and the whole point is to bash the other team into bloody submission. If someone laughs and enjoys doing this to me I should just suck it up and get on with it.

or

Am I being too nice to an unpleasant opponent? I should have said what I thought there and then - if he's a nob, call him a nob and be done with. That way he could put me on his blacklist as well and go complain about stupid precious wood elf coaches in his blog.


In my view, spinelessness wins every time!

Thanks for the game. Good luck with the team.