In February 2013 I decided to Google ‘free online Blood Bowl’. It brought me here. Little did I know that within a short space of time I would be thrown into an addictive world of online gaming. I played TT for a good while back in the day but the rules had changed and there were more teams, etc.

I took my first game without reading any of the rules to begin with. Cancelling out of my first game without really understanding the consequences, I guess the vets on the site will 'get' the more limited understanding of n00bs! My first games were abysmal, absolutely dreadful. I stuck with it as I enjoyed it.

One thing lead to another and I was playing lots of matches daily, sometimes to the detriment of my personal life and relationships. This continued for some time. I joined leagues, I stayed clear of Box (there was a lot of hype about it at the time), I picked and was picked. It began to take over a little. Developing team rosters at work became a normal habit.

This continued to the extent that I had played over 1000 games in just over a year.

Recently, I have stepped back. I wanted to give back to the community that made me feel welcome and improved my play. Hence contributing to the GLN, making logos for people, trying to come up with a symbol for Pact and Underworld.

I began to develop logos for my teams. Never having used software like GIMP or Inkscape it took time to get my head around it. I am not a computer genius by a long shot, but I got by. I started to get into the fluff of stuff more, too.

Long and short of it is that stepping back and appreciating the community and what it is about really opened my eyes to what we have in front of us. Yes we can play games till our eyes bleed and I am not saying there is anything wrong with that. Man, without that we wouldn't have Brasky or cdassak (no offence Bill and cdassak)!

I spend time speccing now too, watching replays, improving my game. That is the biggest help ever. Watch coaches better than you, learn from them.

I play a lot less now and those games are thought about (mostly). I even made it to the final of a minor, so there is hope for everyone! So I know I have improved. Before when I was streaming through games it turned into point and click. I’d strop about bad dice when in actual fact they were silly risks, etc. Although I never whined too much.

The point of this article?

Take time to take a step back and appreciate what a great free resource we have. Look through the forums, donate, contribute, spectate, blog, create fluff, design logos, start pm threads with coaches you get with, join a league, start a league, set yourself challenges (see Harad for a good example of this). There is so much more to FUMBBL when you start looking.