Light at the End of the Tunnel Vision

The Good Game Theory

I am almost too ashamed to write that my 1st experience at the WSBG came to a brutal conclusion at the final table of Cascadia due to falling victim to the dreaded demon of tunnel vision.

‘So there I was,’ (as every great battle story begins), with a commanding lead on the plains & forests terrain fronts with a smooth salmon run down the middle. After a break in the action halfway into the game, my turn is up & I find another valuable salmon token to keep my run going. After carefully placing the token on its tile, by some force yet to be understood, the pink salmon became a blue eagle before my eyes.

I get it now, the eagle was never a salmon. I was just so hyper-locked on what I wanted it to be that it became all I could see. This error destroyed my synergistic board system. I never recovered, costing me the Cascadia ring.

This hyper-lock focus is more commonly known as tunnel-vision. Having too tight a mindset on a strategy can blind you to other possible winning possibilities, or in my case, can cause an optical illusion. However, there is an advantage to this phenomenon if you are aware of its presence. This light at the end of the tunnel vision gives you the focus to find & commit to a specific winning strategy when there are few to none left.

Locking in on this light illuminates a path to victory. Become Batista (Drax). Let nothing get over your head. This is the laser-focus that will make you a Champion.

The brutal blunder that resulted in me discarding the eagle token, forced me to pivot my whole gameplan halfway through, collecting enough bear tokens to max out that objective. I succeeded in this effort to an extent, breaking 100 points, a personal record for myself. Tragically, I still fell short by 3 points. A final table is still no place to be making rookie mistakes.