You don’t just play this game. It’s fun, yes, everybody battling peacefully united, but this is more than that and deadly serious. Focus. If you want to win you have to immerse. You live in this game. Make the game is an extension of your body and after you are gone they will find the game board intermingled with your ashes.
Decide which of you is going to be the eorl with the þegns and who wants to be the attacking sæmanum coming from the four corners to take el jefe in the middle, but don’t let that happen. That’s not going to happen. Not on your watch. The boss holds it all together and you will fight with everything you have to defend him. Ok. You’ve chosen. You’ve got the center ground.
There’s more attackers than you, You’ve got somebody important and powerful right in your very center, but they’ve got strength in numbers. You have strength too, remember that, built right in. Let the square you’ve made with your bodies be a walled city, protecting the goods inside. Keep your guard up and be patient. Don’t be too patient or they’ll surround you right there up close, chipping away, starving you out. Be careful. You have to move your eorl, but you don’t have to move fast.
Now play. Be unpredictable. Go on instinct, don’t overthink. If your opponent plays mind games, keep your head out of it or you’ve become an attacker too, but of your own self. Be unfazed. Let your gaze across the board be blissful, benign. Take a sip of your drink. Look peaceful and react to nothing. Give them nothing. Nothing is more unnerving to your opponent than nothing.
