Recently, I had the pleasure of receiving a near tabling on Dash28 Live from the former Master himself, Mr. Alex Chaves. Alex has a long history of stomping my teeth in on the tabletop, but every time I thoroughly enjoy myself, a real testament to Alex’s tabletop manners. However, I’m not here to sing Alex’s praises, but rather to talk about a unique opportunity that re-watching my match, presented.
Before I go further, I will share the video recording my match, filled with excellent commentary from a stellar cast of hosts. You can find that here.
Losing it All
I am no stranger to losing games of Kings of War, in my dozens of KoW GTs, I have had the pleasure to have my butt handed to me by some of the best and brightest generals in the game. I even occasionally hand out some whoopings of my own.
Inevitably, once a game has settled, and the dust clear, the defeated begin to process this loss.
Why did this happen? What went wrong? Was this inevitable? What could I have done differently?
And then…
Blame the Dice
Nearly inevitably, the conversation turns to when the dice turned on you. In my game versus Alex, I lost an Archfiend to a rerolled 10, I failed to kill a horde at a crucial moment due to Snake Eyes, and I missed with all but 4 shots on 12 blood boil against an important horde of Ratkin Wretches.
I knew I had made mistakes, but these and other moments of poor luck felt like the real culprits.
While I tried not to focus too much on these batches of bad luck, they certainly felt like the main culprit to my loss.
Then I watched the recording of the game. That, paired with commentators pointing out mistakes, made several things clear to me.
I made three crucial errors, which gave Alex, an amazing player, the edge he needed to nearly table me. First, I forgot my Succubus hero was not Mighty, and didn’t properly block a horde of Wretches. I could have, all I needed to do was charge them, but I didn’t.
Second, In a vital turn, rather than doubling up against an enemy, I didn’t charge my Archfiend alongside support, instead, I sent it in alone. It probably should have been fine even without breaking its target (at least this is what I told myself), but it wasn’t, and I needlessly put it into the position for a lucky roll off the board.
Finally, I placed a Fiend too close to a friendly unit, stopping it from supporting on my crumbling flank when it needed to. To a lesser degree I didn’t keep the Fiends together, nor did I really need to screen them, but you get the point, mistakes were made.
Against most players errors like this can cost you the game, against good players like Alex they WILL cost you the game.
Another thing I noticed in re-watching was Alex also had spats of poor luck, bad charges, bad Nerve checks; however, he was never in a position where this ended his chances of the game. When I play Mr. Elf Rage himself, Keith Randall, he always mentions when his dice are going bad it will come back around. It doesn’t always, but its an attitude that I have always admired, as it leaves him calm and collected, and lets him find those shatter points in game to dominate.
Being able to look back and watch this game has hammered home lessons I already knew, but are always worth revisiting.
Stop Blaming Luck
The number one thing this experience has reinforced is that gamers must stop blaming luck if they want to play better. Blaming dice is a nice shot of delusion in the moment. It takes the fault from yourself, and puts it on the dice. It may make you feel better in the moment, but leaves you blind to the choices made in the game.
Yes, poor luck can turn a close game to a landslide, but frequently that game probably wasn’t as close as initial thought. I have found that when I feel like my luck was particularly bad it was when I was gambling with charges, often needlessly. Did my Archfiend need to charge in solo? No! But I got tunnel vision and didn’t consider the other options.
On the flip side, when a game is going well even poor luck will often not cause that much of a bump. Alex rolled Snake Eyes on a horde of Abyssal Ghouls I had holding an objective, but he merely shrugged and killed them next turn, because he hadn’t taken a needless gamble to need to break them that turn.
Once we stop blaming luck, we can stop howling at our dice, and start playing smarter.
This also has the bonus of making you a better sportsman. No one wants to win a game, and then hear how it was only luck that gave them the victory, even in the rare instances this is true. Trying to hold in the rage against the dice gods will make you a more enjoyable person to play with, and probably better at taking losses with a positive attitude.
Reflect on Those Losses
We don’t all have the luxury to have a recording of our game, with a trio of generals critiquing our every move. But we do all have an opponent we are playing, if you know them, ask what went wrong. If you think your opponent is comfortable with it, talk with them where the game went wrong, what decisions may have cost you. What decisions were clever?
Almost all the best player have a small cadre of players they regularly play against. These players form a brain trust that can give honest discussion post game.
With your brain trust you can ask what worked, what didn’t, why did you do that, why not this, ect. walking though the post game, play by play, probably over some food or drinks. This honest dissection can create a great environment to create better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of your army, and hopefully give you better understanding of other armies.
It can give you an honest sounding board to run ideas past, and continue to grow together with. In the perfect situation, this brain trust could even form the basis for a game club!
Figure out what were the shatter points in your game, where victory and defeat were decided. For mine and Alex’s game this was when I didn’t combo charge with my Archfiend.
It’s important to note, identifying these shatter points doesn’t mean if only you did X then you win, after all, your opponent would play differently if your own moves were different. But smarter moves create more opportunities for victory, and less openings to have exploited.
Play the Same List
One of my biggest mistakes came in part due to inexperience with my list. Yes, I should obviously know my Succubi hero isn’t Mighty, but with a few more games under my belt that would never have been a mistake I made.
Frequently, after a loss, we blame dice, and then begin to tweak our list. What didn’t work in the list? What needs to go? Usually small changes rapidly creates a drastically different army, to the point where our past experience almost doesn’t matter.
However, it is often mistakes, rather then poor lists, that cause losses. If you immediately begin swapping units around you never really get to learn from your previous experience.
I highly recommend sticking with the same exact army list, despite losses, till you have at least 10 game under your belt. If you truly feel something isn’t working, try tweaking small things like items, or one character for another. This will allow you to build and learn from your losses, rather then immediately starting from square one after each loss.
Onwards and Upwards
Finally, and I think most importantly, try to keep in context for every game, win or lose, this is a hobby, its supposed to be fun. Most of us want to play better. But most importantly, enjoy your games! You will make mistakes, just as you will exploit mistakes your opponent makes. If you put too much pressure on yourself the game will become less enjoyable, and then what is the point.
After all, yelling at small cubes of plastic gets old pretty fast!
Once you stop blaming luck, and start reflecting on your choices that led you to defeat, I legitimately believe the game, win or lose, becomes infinitely more enjoyable.
Learn from your games, but most importantly, enjoy them. Have fun you nerd!
