Tilting Towards a Loss

If there's one thing I've always struggled with, it's playing a good game while being on tilt. In poker, a player is on tilt when something throws them off their game and they respond by playing overly aggressive. They abandon their normal strategy and turn in to the Hulk with a powerful desire to mindlessly smash.

That's me when a plan goes awry. Using a strategy requiring finesse usually requires you to set up a lot of moving parts that, when working properly, are nearly unbeatable. See combo decks in Magic where losing a single card can render your deck impotent; or combos in Mortal Kombat where hitting the wrong button can leave you painfully exposed; or any video game with a class/character that is seen as requiring the "most skill," where messing up a rotation or using an ability at the wrong time sends you from being a powerhouse to a dragon's snack.


That, of course, is the excitement to those sorts of strategies. When things go well, they go really well, and you can be nearly unbeatable because your opponent just can't get the upper hand. But when you're juggling a bunch of plates in the air it becomes very easy for the slightest disruption to send everything crashing down. I can usually deal with minor inconveniences, and in games like Magic you should always have a Plan B should your opponent try to remove a key component to your strategy. But when my opponent really just hoses me over, I don't know what to do and I lose the game.

The problem, of course, is that my opponent hasn't beaten me yet. My plan is ruined, so I give up trying to make it work and instead just go on the aggressive. Despite the fact that most strategies requiring skill don't have a single powerful component that can win a game, that seems like the only option I have left, even though I know that doing so is impossible.

Let me give you an example. When playing Circle Orboros with a friend, the only powerful piece I'd packed was a Warpwolf Stalker, which is basically a giant werewolf with a big sword. The idea was to use my army's movement shenanigans to send him right at my opponent's warcaster when he wasn't able to shrug off most of the damage. My plan required two units of shifting stones (which were used for teleporting), and a unit of Druids who could move enemies around the field and give me a place to teleport my Warpwolf. The biggest problem is that a unit of Stones can only use teleport if all 3 models are alive, so the turn before I was ready to go for the kill, a stone died to some accidental (though very fortunate) blast damage.

What could I do? I could have repositioned my models to make it work next turn, or perhaps adjust the strategy and take out a key piece of his army. Instead my eyes darted frantically across the board, my brain lost all ability to reason, and I threw all my models against his wall of more powerful models, hoping to stall until I could figure out another plan. While my Stalker did a number on his target, the rest of my average models found themselves flailing about helplessly as I tried to make them kill in a way they weren't designed for.

Away from the table, the reaction seems silly. But when you're working through a strategy while trying to counter your opponent, and everything seems to come undone, all I see is red. Finesse goes out the window and I just my things in to their things because it seems like the only thing left to do. Sure, sometimes it may honestly be the only thing left to do, but most competitive games won't be so imbalanced that a single loss will be the end of the game. Clear, rational thinking can turn the game back in your favor, and it almost always leads to a good story later. But I can't do it... I mess up, Hulk out, and there goes the game.

How do you guys do it? How do you respond to an opponent pulling a wire in your intricate machine, making it useless in its current form? How do you keep a cool head when everything looks hopeless? At the age of 27, I still don't know how to recover from a dizzying punch like that, but I think it's time I learned.


See you tomorrow!

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