So yesterday I played one of the best games in a while. What made this game so good? That my opponent was fuming afterwards and I couldn't stop laughing.

Now wait a minute, isn't it cheap and terrible if you're drawing your own amusement from someone else's misery? In principle yes, especially if that's your original aim. However, the setup was a tad differently.

The game offer was Chaos Dwarves against my Dark Elves. The Darkies were preparing for the Warpstone open and since I love team building, I should have declined the match by all conventional cherry-picking and elfballing wisdom. However, I don't like running all the time and since the match seemed balanced I accepted. I did say the words "I probably should freeze the team now for the warpstone open, but since I never knew when to quit - why the hell not, let's play!"

The Chaos Dwarves had 3 DPs and were not afraid to use them. This resulted in one of my linemen getting a niggling injury. Ouch, 70k down the drain. So much for team building. Oh well, it's still a nice game.

I decide to score in round 8, doing the usual Dark Elf business of running around slow opponents, bashing and all the while passing the ball for quick spps. My opponent then set up and DP fouled another player of mine to a permanent injury. This was in his round 8. I had enough reserves so that the outcome of the foul wouldn't have made any difference to the game. The only result was that my enjoyment of the game, which lies in team building, is diminished by a cheap and unnecessary foul.

Instead of whining about it, I decided to change the approach, though: Instead of both of us being miserable - me, because I am losing players, him because he can't do the usual 2-1 stall shuffle, I decided that it's time to bring the fun back.

How did I do this? At the expense of the other guy - given the choice of his fun vs mine, I'd rather take mine, sorry. I stole the ball from him when he forgot to close the cage and once it became apparent that he couldn't get it back, I mercilessly started taunting him about it. He still kept fouling and tried to bash. In round 7 of the second half, I inflicted a niggling injury with a block on his +AG dwarf. The apo failed and I said "Yeah! Awesome!", which probably angered him even more.

The other guy said he'd blacklist me for smack talking and since I had already won the game and a +ST +AG dwarf was prone, I started asking myself "What would paulhicks do?"

Sadly, the dwarf got away with a stun, but at least I got a PM after the game saying "Wow how lame - u are".

The moral of this little anecdote is - be a friendly person and don't play at the expense of other people's fun. However, once other people start playing at the expense of your fun, give them back in kind.