I really appreciate this video, this is something that I struggle with. I don't mind losing, but I do hate when either I'm rolling really bad or my opponent is rolling really good. I know that I let myself get to deep into the game so it's hard for me to separate myself from it. These are very helpful strategies, thanks.
I don’t play competitively anymore. One tactic I use now is to view the game as an “experiment”. As in... “Is this unit a durable as I think it is?”, “Does this leader really work with this unit?”, or purposely taking a very “themed” list and seeing if I can make it work at all. If you just take the goal of winning away and replace it with a different goal you can avoid a lot of frustration.
Good points made all round. The only thing I would caution is in multiplayer games this mentality can cause issues. It's all well and good to sets yourself an extra objective for the match, but if you have multiple opponents, please don't make that objective something along the lines of "Target one opponent to ensure they don't win against all tactical sense". Nothing more frustrating than trying to play a friendly multiplayer game only to be told that one player has decided to ignore the premise of the match to make you lose.
Oh yeah! In that situation that would be pretty dastardly. I also do not recommend it in a multiplayer scenario unless it's the passive one of making sure one of your own units survive.
I've seen someone throw their general around because he lost. The poor miniature. In historical scenarios, I would usually try to initiate a withdrawal with as few losses as possible if the actual goal can no longer be achieved. ... to fight another day. This video is a good and important contribution. 👍
All great ideas that I’ve used before. I have a lot of units who “just had to make it back home for their kid”. Another that I’ve used in more competitive scenes is to just acknowledge with your opponent that it’s done, and ask if he’s willing to just shake hands and try again. Sometimes they want to play it out, and that’s okay. But sometimes it can lead into a good discussion about what to do differently.
Playing with a narrative focus is always an easy way to not take it to seriously. The game becomes a story good or bad. Play On Tabletop did a game of space marines investigating a tyranid force. The space marines were badly losing, but the objective became to eliminate the tyranid Norn Emissary. Last round he managed to kill it and it made for a good story. The other tip I heard from someone was celebrate your opponent's cool moments as you would your own. It makes the game fun for me no matter who's turn it is. It helps me stay grounded that at the end of the day, we are rolling dice and playing with plastic army men.
I here where you are coming from Sensei. Back in the day I gamed Orks and never won a competitive game for 3 years. Initially I was too invested in my boyz and would not take risky moves which actually was counter productive because there was no pressure on the opposition. I also was suckered by players who had drawn fairly long bows on rules interpretations. The worst one was a guy who would not let my son use his rule book when the lads had disappeared at the start of the game. I caught I caught the other guy out when I saw our sticker on the inside of the cover and we called the ref because this guy had nicked my son's rule book. I resolved never to be that guy. Learned the rules better and stood up for myself without being knarkey and engaged with my opponent during the game. I played in a three player tournament where I drew a guy who was only two months into the hobby. I shared rules interpretations because I found out how much better I had become. I won that game, lost the other two but made new friends.
Some of my favourite games were ones that I was either losing at or have lost. All of my close friends know that if I am laughing maniacally when I am losing, it means that I am literally having fun! And if they see me egging my bad luck to continue, it means that I have accepted defeat as a friend. (During 8th ed 40k, I once lost 8 Imperial Guard vehicles in the first 2 turns. Five of those vehicles exploded, and caused more damage to my army than opponent's shooting did for the entire game! XD) The best game I ever played was back in 5th ed 40k, when I fielded 180 hormagaunts and 2 tervigons vs a friend's Word Bearers army in a 1500 pt game. Not a single model got into close combat. For the entire game my opponent thought that my maniacal laughter was me losing my mind. I lost count of the number of times he apologised, and when the game ended he asked me if I was ok. My response: "Are you kidding? this was the best game I ever had! I literally built this army lose, and it exceeded my expectations!" XD When I'm playing games, I use one of three methods to ensure that I am having fun when I am losing: -- The first is when I use role play. (Thank you, Stephen, for those 10 wonderful years of playing DnD! XD) -- The second is when I decide to just start doing random things in the middle of the game. (I once spent a whole game chasing a single Eldar guardian with two chaos dreadnoughts! XD) -- And the third is when I switch my mind set to "Well, if I'm going down, I sure as hell will be taking your army down with me!" (This one tends to happen the most, as I literally turn the game into a battle of attrition.) For the record, while I've been writing this comment, I've been doing so with a cheesy grin on my face and lots of childish giggling from the fond memories of all those games where I literally had fun losing! XD
@@LetsTalkTabletop Oh, the battle involving the Guardian was hilarious! it was the sole survivor from a squad that was killed when the wave serpent they were embarked in blew up from my 2 dreadnoughts. In complete Benny Hill style, the Guardian fled into a bunker, only for the dreadnoughts to destroy it. The Guardian then fled to another bunker, only for that to get destroyed too! It then fled into the last remaining wave serpent and spend the rest of the game flying around trying to avoid getting shot and charged at by two dreadnoughts! (The dreadnoughts wiped out a whole squad of Plague marines from both going fire frenzy in the same turn!) My opponent thought I was crazy to waste over 200 pts on a 10 pt model. He was probably right! XD But he also said that he never met a gamer who embraced the spirit of the game and took it to heart! That praise alone was a victory to my heart! :)
Excellent ideas and a very healthy attitude to the game. One other thing I use is sometimes the dice just go against you: everyone’s played an opponent who just couldn’t fail a 5+ invulnerable save. Same when you can’t make a 3+ save or hit roll to save your life. The trick is to celebrate their success or laugh at your failures and see the cinematic hero moment in that. So don’t curse their good luck or your bad luck but turn it round and see that your opponent just had a miraculous run of luck
I do something like this. I just give myself another goal to achieve, whether it be hold one objective, hold a ruin, kill the tank... whatever. That makes it fun even when losing.
It's alright Warhammer is probably one of the most unbalanced games to ever exist it's still a surprise people try to be competitive with weaker factions.
I'll actually be doing a video on that soon! I have heard from many different people in the comments section that they've never won a game before. I've got multiple things you can try to get a win under your belt!
@@LetsTalkTabletop Oh, it's primarily I didn't get started till January, and most of the people I play with have played since like....3rd edition. Besides, I'm not actually complaining, I'm still having a blast with my World Eaters. After all, Khorne doesn't care where the blood comes from.
When I’m playing a game, I just like to try out units I haven’t played much, or see how units and combinations perform on the field. Winning or losing isn’t as important for me as I don’t have the free time to play a lot of games. So just trying things out is great. How durable is a unit, how well does it perform in a certain detachment, how does this stratagem work, would this list work against an army with tough vehicles/monsters, etc. Then I just play whatever I’m using and see how many points that army can score, were units useful, did I struggle to score a secondary. That’s my fun, the trials and fine tuning of an army. I don’t mind losing models or games. As long as I brought a reasonably balanced army and played against a friendly opponent.
@@LetsTalkTabletop That's the logic I use when telling an overly sore loser (or winner, for that matter) "Yo, you're too smart of a player to not expect this at least half the time. This is what we all signed up for." and if they're a repeat offender and also not a child, they need to get told by another adult that this isn't how adults act and to lighten the fuck up.
While I love doing the narrative tricks, another thing that works for me is picking a mechanic to focus on. So in my last game I decided I will use all my CP, as I somehow always end up with 5+CP in the bank. So I focus on stratagems and using all of them, and spending CP as fast as I earn it. In another game I simply focused on screening (which ties nicely to your narrative ideas) so my commander made the decision to keep his tanks alive at all costs. I've played games focusing on melee and charging everything (note: terrible idea for an Imperial Guard player) or staying out of combat and focusing on firing and manoeuvring. That way, I walk out of each loss with a bit more knowledge about the game itself.
I found myself not really enjoying the games and getting frustrated to the point that I didn't play for over a year. When I did eventually decide to pick up the minis again I decided I wasn't gonna focus on the winning/loosing anymore so I went with the "worst army available". You know the one. That army no one plays because it sucks. So going into a game my headspace is already gone into "I'm fucked I'm fucked I'm fucked..." so the natural thing to do became try to avoid fighting as much as possible and not give away more points than I had to. Trying to downgrade that "massacre" to a "minor loss" made it a completely different experience and little by little that bar started to shift towards "can I force a draw?" And eventually I got myself above the 50/50 win/loss with an army everyone including myself thought a complete joke army. Shifting from trying to win to a narrative helped reignite my excitement for the hobby, made me not get upset when I lost (because I already expected that outcome) and in the end made me a better player.
I don't find losing itself to be bad. I've had some incredible games where I walked away on the losing side, yet it was an interesting and exiting experience throughout. In that sense, winning and losing really doesn't matter. But then you have the completely one sided games where it's not determined by bad tactics, but the dice gods have stepped in and decided that one person is going to fail almost every single roll of the dice. It's not fun to win this way, or to lose. I find the best way to deal with this is to reset the board and start over (obviously, if you have the time).
You may not believe me, but the dice gods truly do decide that one person will suffer sometimes. I like to solo game quite a bit by myself, and even though I'm the one rolling all of the dice and I'm using the same dice for both sides, occasionally one side will just get all of the bad rolls and the other one will get all of the good rolls. In those cases I do just start over and then a lot of times it goes away. I know it sounds superstitious, but it happens.
I think it's not that easy to explain. It's not a problem when you lose/win from time to time. But it's frustrating when you're playing a year or two and you have zero-win rate.
Absolutely. But there could be many reasons behind that. Most likely a combo of these : opponents are too competitive for the player's skill, not enough terrain, or just natively bad strategy. And a bad strategist shouldn't feel bad about that, not everybody is good at strategy, I'm sure that person is good at other things in life. I have absolutely no ear for music, so I don't go joining a band.
Question...do you tell your opponent that you are trying to kill/protect x unit, so that they are in on the fun? Or are you both just playing different games at this point?
Personally, I let them know what I'm doing. I guess it really wouldn't matter either way if you didn't. But I prefer being open and honest with my opponents. I will actually say that I have no chance of winning the game, so I will change my goal for a moral victory. I've never once had anybody have a problem with it.
lol games are only fun when you win and when the winners tell you "its not about winning but it's about having fun." but yet if you keep track of your win's an loses and your losing 80% of the time then you need to stop playing 40K and go find something else that's easier for you to learn and understand.
If you really only have fun when you win then you need to find something else to play where you aren’t interacting with other people because both people at the table need to have fun and under your definition, every game you play one person isn’t having fun. I’d hate to think the person across from me wasn’t having fun. If you’re losing 80% of the time and still having a blast playing the game, then you don’t have a problem. When I was young I realised that I’d get more games and more regular opponents by making sure the game was fun, not the outcome. If things go south, that’s a great time to praise your opponents tactics and lament the fall of your great strategy in over the top fashion that shows you don’t have any problems with losing. Being a good winner and commiserating with your opponents bad dice rolls will go a long way too.
I really appreciate this video, this is something that I struggle with. I don't mind losing, but I do hate when either I'm rolling really bad or my opponent is rolling really good. I know that I let myself get to deep into the game so it's hard for me to separate myself from it. These are very helpful strategies, thanks.
No problem! Thank you for watching. I used to struggle with it too so I know first hand how you feel. And crappy dice rolls are always a sore spot!
I don’t play competitively anymore. One tactic I use now is to view the game as an “experiment”. As in... “Is this unit a durable as I think it is?”, “Does this leader really work with this unit?”, or purposely taking a very “themed” list and seeing if I can make it work at all. If you just take the goal of winning away and replace it with a different goal you can avoid a lot of frustration.
That's a good take! I never thought of that.
Good points made all round. The only thing I would caution is in multiplayer games this mentality can cause issues. It's all well and good to sets yourself an extra objective for the match, but if you have multiple opponents, please don't make that objective something along the lines of "Target one opponent to ensure they don't win against all tactical sense". Nothing more frustrating than trying to play a friendly multiplayer game only to be told that one player has decided to ignore the premise of the match to make you lose.
Oh yeah! In that situation that would be pretty dastardly. I also do not recommend it in a multiplayer scenario unless it's the passive one of making sure one of your own units survive.
I've seen someone throw their general around because he lost. The poor miniature. In historical scenarios, I would usually try to initiate a withdrawal with as few losses as possible if the actual goal can no longer be achieved. ... to fight another day.
This video is a good and important contribution. 👍
Thank you! Yeah I've seen a couple people like that too in my time. Totally unnecessary and immature
All great ideas that I’ve used before. I have a lot of units who “just had to make it back home for their kid”. Another that I’ve used in more competitive scenes is to just acknowledge with your opponent that it’s done, and ask if he’s willing to just shake hands and try again.
Sometimes they want to play it out, and that’s okay. But sometimes it can lead into a good discussion about what to do differently.
I usually always end a game by going over what I think were the good and bad moves we both made over the game. Good suggestion!
Playing with a narrative focus is always an easy way to not take it to seriously. The game becomes a story good or bad. Play On Tabletop did a game of space marines investigating a tyranid force. The space marines were badly losing, but the objective became to eliminate the tyranid Norn Emissary. Last round he managed to kill it and it made for a good story.
The other tip I heard from someone was celebrate your opponent's cool moments as you would your own. It makes the game fun for me no matter who's turn it is. It helps me stay grounded that at the end of the day, we are rolling dice and playing with plastic army men.
Great suggestion!
I here where you are coming from Sensei. Back in the day I gamed Orks and never won a competitive game for 3 years. Initially I was too invested in my boyz and would not take risky moves which actually was counter productive because there was no pressure on the opposition. I also was suckered by players who had drawn fairly long bows on rules interpretations. The worst one was a guy who would not let my son use his rule book when the lads had disappeared at the start of the game. I caught I caught the other guy out when I saw our sticker on the inside of the cover and we called the ref because this guy had nicked my son's rule book. I resolved never to be that guy. Learned the rules better and stood up for myself without being knarkey and engaged with my opponent during the game. I played in a three player tournament where I drew a guy who was only two months into the hobby. I shared rules interpretations because I found out how much better I had become. I won that game, lost the other two but made new friends.
Some of my favourite games were ones that I was either losing at or have lost.
All of my close friends know that if I am laughing maniacally when I am losing, it means that I am literally having fun! And if they see me egging my bad luck to continue, it means that I have accepted defeat as a friend. (During 8th ed 40k, I once lost 8 Imperial Guard vehicles in the first 2 turns. Five of those vehicles exploded, and caused more damage to my army than opponent's shooting did for the entire game! XD)
The best game I ever played was back in 5th ed 40k, when I fielded 180 hormagaunts and 2 tervigons vs a friend's Word Bearers army in a 1500 pt game. Not a single model got into close combat. For the entire game my opponent thought that my maniacal laughter was me losing my mind. I lost count of the number of times he apologised, and when the game ended he asked me if I was ok.
My response: "Are you kidding? this was the best game I ever had! I literally built this army lose, and it exceeded my expectations!" XD
When I'm playing games, I use one of three methods to ensure that I am having fun when I am losing:
-- The first is when I use role play. (Thank you, Stephen, for those 10 wonderful years of playing DnD! XD)
-- The second is when I decide to just start doing random things in the middle of the game. (I once spent a whole game chasing a single Eldar guardian with two chaos dreadnoughts! XD)
-- And the third is when I switch my mind set to "Well, if I'm going down, I sure as hell will be taking your army down with me!" (This one tends to happen the most, as I literally turn the game
into a battle of attrition.)
For the record, while I've been writing this comment, I've been doing so with a cheesy grin on my face and lots of childish giggling from the fond memories of all those games where I literally had fun losing! XD
Haha. All good points! Thank you for watching. I love the image of one terrified guardian being chased by dreadnaughts.
@@LetsTalkTabletop Oh, the battle involving the Guardian was hilarious! it was the sole survivor from a squad that was killed when the wave serpent they were embarked in blew up from my 2 dreadnoughts.
In complete Benny Hill style, the Guardian fled into a bunker, only for the dreadnoughts to destroy it. The Guardian then fled to another bunker, only for that to get destroyed too!
It then fled into the last remaining wave serpent and spend the rest of the game flying around trying to avoid getting shot and charged at by two dreadnoughts! (The dreadnoughts wiped out a whole squad of Plague marines from both going fire frenzy in the same turn!)
My opponent thought I was crazy to waste over 200 pts on a 10 pt model.
He was probably right! XD
But he also said that he never met a gamer who embraced the spirit of the game and took it to heart! That praise alone was a victory to my heart! :)
Excellent ideas and a very healthy attitude to the game. One other thing I use is sometimes the dice just go against you: everyone’s played an opponent who just couldn’t fail a 5+ invulnerable save. Same when you can’t make a 3+ save or hit roll to save your life. The trick is to celebrate their success or laugh at your failures and see the cinematic hero moment in that. So don’t curse their good luck or your bad luck but turn it round and see that your opponent just had a miraculous run of luck
Another good way to look at it!
Remember, it's only a game of toy soldiers. And the most entertaining stories come from epic losses. "Hey, remember that time when ..."
I do something like this. I just give myself another goal to achieve, whether it be hold one objective, hold a ruin, kill the tank... whatever. That makes it fun even when losing.
Well, I've never won a game, so i'm nailing this one.
It's alright Warhammer is probably one of the most unbalanced games to ever exist it's still a surprise people try to be competitive with weaker factions.
I'll actually be doing a video on that soon! I have heard from many different people in the comments section that they've never won a game before. I've got multiple things you can try to get a win under your belt!
@@LetsTalkTabletop Oh, it's primarily I didn't get started till January, and most of the people I play with have played since like....3rd edition. Besides, I'm not actually complaining, I'm still having a blast with my World Eaters. After all, Khorne doesn't care where the blood comes from.
That's the right attitude to have!
If you are playing with friends I recomend the winner buys the pizza afterwards. That way everyone is a winner.
When I’m playing a game, I just like to try out units I haven’t played much, or see how units and combinations perform on the field. Winning or losing isn’t as important for me as I don’t have the free time to play a lot of games. So just trying things out is great. How durable is a unit, how well does it perform in a certain detachment, how does this stratagem work, would this list work against an army with tough vehicles/monsters, etc. Then I just play whatever I’m using and see how many points that army can score, were units useful, did I struggle to score a secondary. That’s my fun, the trials and fine tuning of an army. I don’t mind losing models or games. As long as I brought a reasonably balanced army and played against a friendly opponent.
Well put!
When choosing to play a game, you're buying in to all possible outcomes, and agree to comminicated expectations (casual vs competitive).
Well what you say is completely true, a lot of people have a hard time wrapping their head around that. LOL
@@LetsTalkTabletop That's the logic I use when telling an overly sore loser (or winner, for that matter) "Yo, you're too smart of a player to not expect this at least half the time. This is what we all signed up for." and if they're a repeat offender and also not a child, they need to get told by another adult that this isn't how adults act and to lighten the fuck up.
Your last sentence is more or less what I just had to do to a college-age kid couple weeks ago, although I did it in private and gently.
While I love doing the narrative tricks, another thing that works for me is picking a mechanic to focus on. So in my last game I decided I will use all my CP, as I somehow always end up with 5+CP in the bank. So I focus on stratagems and using all of them, and spending CP as fast as I earn it. In another game I simply focused on screening (which ties nicely to your narrative ideas) so my commander made the decision to keep his tanks alive at all costs. I've played games focusing on melee and charging everything (note: terrible idea for an Imperial Guard player) or staying out of combat and focusing on firing and manoeuvring. That way, I walk out of each loss with a bit more knowledge about the game itself.
I found myself not really enjoying the games and getting frustrated to the point that I didn't play for over a year.
When I did eventually decide to pick up the minis again I decided I wasn't gonna focus on the winning/loosing anymore so I went with the "worst army available". You know the one. That army no one plays because it sucks.
So going into a game my headspace is already gone into "I'm fucked I'm fucked I'm fucked..." so the natural thing to do became try to avoid fighting as much as possible and not give away more points than I had to. Trying to downgrade that "massacre" to a "minor loss" made it a completely different experience and little by little that bar started to shift towards "can I force a draw?"
And eventually I got myself above the 50/50 win/loss with an army everyone including myself thought a complete joke army.
Shifting from trying to win to a narrative helped reignite my excitement for the hobby, made me not get upset when I lost (because I already expected that outcome) and in the end made me a better player.
What a great story!
I don't find losing itself to be bad. I've had some incredible games where I walked away on the losing side, yet it was an interesting and exiting experience throughout. In that sense, winning and losing really doesn't matter.
But then you have the completely one sided games where it's not determined by bad tactics, but the dice gods have stepped in and decided that one person is going to fail almost every single roll of the dice. It's not fun to win this way, or to lose.
I find the best way to deal with this is to reset the board and start over (obviously, if you have the time).
You may not believe me, but the dice gods truly do decide that one person will suffer sometimes. I like to solo game quite a bit by myself, and even though I'm the one rolling all of the dice and I'm using the same dice for both sides, occasionally one side will just get all of the bad rolls and the other one will get all of the good rolls. In those cases I do just start over and then a lot of times it goes away. I know it sounds superstitious, but it happens.
I think it's not that easy to explain. It's not a problem when you lose/win from time to time. But it's frustrating when you're playing a year or two and you have zero-win rate.
Absolutely. But there could be many reasons behind that. Most likely a combo of these : opponents are too competitive for the player's skill, not enough terrain, or just natively bad strategy. And a bad strategist shouldn't feel bad about that, not everybody is good at strategy, I'm sure that person is good at other things in life. I have absolutely no ear for music, so I don't go joining a band.
Then you have to seriously examine your play
Question...do you tell your opponent that you are trying to kill/protect x unit, so that they are in on the fun? Or are you both just playing different games at this point?
Personally, I let them know what I'm doing. I guess it really wouldn't matter either way if you didn't. But I prefer being open and honest with my opponents. I will actually say that I have no chance of winning the game, so I will change my goal for a moral victory. I've never once had anybody have a problem with it.
lol games are only fun when you win and when the winners tell you "its not about winning but it's about having fun." but yet if you keep track of your win's an loses and your losing 80% of the time then you need to stop playing 40K and go find something else that's easier for you to learn and understand.
This seems oddly specific. Can you explain? LOL
If you really only have fun when you win then you need to find something else to play where you aren’t interacting with other people because both people at the table need to have fun and under your definition, every game you play one person isn’t having fun. I’d hate to think the person across from me wasn’t having fun.
If you’re losing 80% of the time and still having a blast playing the game, then you don’t have a problem.
When I was young I realised that I’d get more games and more regular opponents by making sure the game was fun, not the outcome. If things go south, that’s a great time to praise your opponents tactics and lament the fall of your great strategy in over the top fashion that shows you don’t have any problems with losing. Being a good winner and commiserating with your opponents bad dice rolls will go a long way too.