The Road to...

Friday night I returned from holiday. A great one week break in Jordan seeing some historical sights. It was a nice opportunity to have this adventure before returning and diving into my next one.

Hadrian's Arch in Antioch

I left teaching in August to pursue a job in the gaming industry. I found one fairly quickly and spent two months as a Community and Content Manager, writing content about gaming and doing some marketing related activity for the company. Sadly, it was a short term contract and by November I was back to the job hunt. But with Christmas just around the corner, it was slow going (and I was a little down so struggling for motivation).

With the new year, I was reinvigorated. I applied for some more jobs, one of them was my dream role working on Age of Empires. I got an interview but sadly didn't get any further with that one but I received two other offers.

One was within the gaming industry, starting from the bottom but with a chance to progress for a really great company. The other was a return to teaching. My old school had some staffing issues and were keen on me returning with three potential roles in mind. So I negotiated. I was told that there was room to manoeuvre and so I have accepted three days a week.

It may feel odd to return to teaching so soon after leaving but I feel it makes sense. I have a baby arriving at the end of May, followed by moving to Australia in July. To start a brand new job with only 3 months before moving would be hard on me and a little unfair on the company to then need to replace me so soon after.

Why am I sharing this back story? Well, the idea of taking on three days a week of work is that it gives me Mondays and Fridays to focus on developing my skills within the gaming industry. I can work on content writing, video editing, presentation skills and creating my own content on those days (as well as the housework before I get in trouble with MrsBr).

And so the return from holiday has left me excited for this challenge. I've started with a weekend catching up on tournament sets. On Sunday evening, I played my first set of games with AC in the 2v2 AoELeague. We won our set, I was quite happy with my performance but there were mistakes.

I followed up by playing some ranked 1v1s to try to return to a bit of form. These didn't go so well. I'm sat writing this, knowing I played three games but I can only remember the losses.

JBR's ratings 7th March 2022

I know I lost on Arena with Britons vs Teutons. I tried to do little bits of multiple things. I built a monastery but knew I couldn't compete for the relics as I didn't have the Crossbow numbers to support this. So I tried to boom more. I was completely passive and ended up being up to Imperial Age later and while I think I had a stronger economy, it was imbalanced and I couldn't afford what I needed. Arena is something I definitely need to work on.

The other loss came on Nomad, a Spanish mirror. I'd left random on but clearly my opponent hadn't. I was quite happy with the early game, getting up to Castle Age just before my opponent (so I dropped a Castle on their base). This was fine, I was able to harass with Conquistadors, killing some Villagers, limiting their expansion space whilst developing my economy behind it. However, I was later to Feudal Age and therefore gave up mostly on water. They had complete freedom to fish boom and so had a strong enough economy (even in the limited space) to get to Imperial Age comfortably before me and push back with Trebuchets. Again, I had a strong economy but teching into the units I needed just took too long. I was overrun and knew it would snowball. Decision making let me down. I should have tried harder to come back on water in Feudal or Castle Age.

I still can't remember the win. But I am now committed to putting more time into content. I will be writing my own little rambling blog posts like this, news about the pro scene, making YouTube videos of my gameplay, high level casting and some other dedicated videos around tutorials or the game in general. I am looking to improve my own gameplay and so I am currently on 'The Road to 1600' but if things go to plan, that target will continue to shift upwards. I don't think of it as a specific target, I am looking to improve my overall play, not reach specific numbers.

I'm really keen to hear what people think about this and what content you'd like to see so feel free to join the Discord and let me know. https://discord.gg/VYf9RBFpuH

I'll also be live on Twitch on Monday and Tuesday each week (and hopefully most Sundays too). I hope to see you there.

JBR