Losing Loser

YOU COCKY COCK!!!

So I lost my Battlefleet Gothic game Wednesday night (12 vp’s to 7) and I lost my Memoir ’44 game Thursday night (5 medals to 3), the former being my first BFG game in about a year and the latter the start of the Normandy Campaign from the Memoir Campaign book.

The trend here is obviously about losing, not actually playing games two nights in a row, a different trend that is easily explained for the rarity it is: my whole family is on vacation without me. BFG is what it is but the Memoir loss is actually something like my 12th straight loss in a game that I’ve played regularly over the past few months.

It is easy to laugh off a Battlefleet victory that detonated like the reactor of my Carnage class cruiser, leaving only super-heated sadness and frozen chunks of hope burning up in the high atmosphere of my dreams.

But the Memoir’ loss cuts deep.

I’m so mad at the losing streak that I’ve started to ding the mechanics of the game I love, to growl about card distribution, random chance or even, God help me, the pathetic cry of the heartless gamer: I’m too stupid to play this game. Worst of all I thought, I now own every item of the game line except the breakthough map expansion. That’s a lot of loss on many levels, which equals a lot of regret, almost like realizing I didn't marry the girl of my dreams but I actually married a drag queen who carries a fast-wielding folding tanto and has both night terrors and narcolepsy. As ugly as that all is, I have to admit that it isn't working out and it isn't you baby, it's me.

So after the emotion has ebbed and the Maker’s Mark has been put away I sat and started looking at win/loss ratios, random chance and tactics to improve my game. Also, I reflected and realized that yes, my record is dismal. But many of those games I count have been teaching games and in effect I played myself through the majority of them (since many victories come down to who breaks a stalemate by making just one mistake.)

So this isn’t about making excuses about your play, your record or what the game owes me. This is about finding reasons for why my game went the way it did and what lessons the game taught me.

I’m still figuring that all out but the process is cathartic.

How do you handle losing streaks?

My Nurgle Daemonship noticed my Facebook status was changed to "single." Awkward!