I've been hassling Joe Knapper (AKA spider AKA the Michael Jordan of Heroscape) for the last couple years to write an article about what sort of preparation and skills are really important for going home with a trophy or 20 dollars worth of stuff you already have.

But he never does. Truth is, he probably doesn't enjoy writing as much as I do, and I finally won a tournament again, beating him along the way no less. I liken it to when MJ came back after baseball and tried to jump right into the playoffs and wasn't even able to wear his own jersey right away. He'll be back, just like the terminator he was.

All right, that's enough analogies. On to the advice, in semi-chronological order. The even shorter version of this is to be confident without being overconfident.

1. Don't stress about your army build.

Nine times out of ten, I may come up with thirty different builds, but the one I actually end up playing is one of the first...