Successes in Wargaming (And lack thereof)

Hello, all, it's Jaybie here again, to talk about my recent lack of gaming success, and how I aim to rectify it.

Okay, so, at the dawn of 5th edition, when I fist started playing warhammer 40k, I got a bunch of friends to start it too, and we were off. For the first year or so, I don't want to say my Chaos was undefeatable, but it was pretty close. Victory followed victory, and I was feeling pretty good about myself. (Yes, this is all going somewhere)

Then the great advent happened, that is, Kasrkar and, later, his brother joining our little group of gamers. The first two games I played against Kasrkar I, believe it or not, won. The fist time was his first real game ever, and I mercilessly crushed his 4th edition guard, and the second was with him using Black Templars, and I had exactly 5 models still standing, but I managed to hold onto my objective, and contest his.

Then Kasrkar got ahold of the 5th edition IG codex, and I haven't beat him since. I realized then that what my army needed was something better, something more. And that's when I discovered the Internet. Sure, I dabbled with a lash/plague/oblit spam army, but I eventually decided to do what I should have done from the beginning: Test. Test units in games, try using them differently, learn their limitations, etc. And even though I still wasn't beating Kasrkar, I was having success against less competitive players.

So the testing continued, and I think that for about 10 games in a row I didn't use the same army twice. Units came and went, and some didn't make the cut, notably Thousand Sons, Raptors, and Vindicators. But a lot did, and they are now my most dependable units, that perform well in every game, the best example being Khorne Berzerkers.

But then, just recently, I've started losing a lot more than I win. Why is this? Well, 2 reasons:

1) Playing against really good players (Kasrkar, his brother, Grandpa Rhino, etc.)

2) Overconfidence.

The 2nd one is perhaps hurting me a little more than the first. For instance, about a month ago I played a good friend of mine's Blood Angels, and he's just recently returned to the hobby, so I was thinking "Yeah, I can beat him." Well, bottom of turn 5, all my models were dead, and I hadn't killed that much of his army. What really hammered it home was my slightly sad performance at my first tournament a few weeks ago.

Which I guess narrows it all down to, similarly, 2 solutions:

1) Respect your opponent

2) Kill things!

The second one might seem a little obvious, but it bears repeating. Over the course of the tournament I racked up an astounding victory point total of just over 700, while Kasrkar, who got 2nd, got near 2500.

So, that's it for today, any questions or comments are much appreciated!