Keeping your cool when all is lost (Part 1)

So, In the first of what I hope to be a series of articles actually using my psychology skills I would like to start on the the most important aspect of the game.. Keeping your head when things are going wrong.

First you have to ask yourself this, What is causing me to lose my cool over a miniature game. Several factors come into play.

Factor 1: Your opponent is a big toolbag.

We've all had that opponent or co-worker, the "I'm better than you because I'm awesome and can do no wrong". The type that will not only steal your girlfriend but do it right infront of you and then kick sand in your eyes while your down. The type that finds a way to make WAAC gamers look like bunnies.  He argues with every little rule that you say about your own army, argues that the guys that you said have shields don't all have shields therefor your unit is illegal even tho 99% of the unit has shields.. you know, THAT GUY!

This is the hardest factor to try and remain your cool on, especially if your playing under a strict time limit. You want to just punch them in the face but you know that you can't because not only would that get you kicked out of the event that your playing in, but you might also get legal action put on you.
Now, how do you keep your cool when this is your opponent. Well, the simplest way is to calmly walk over to a judge and explain the situation and ask that he watch over the game. I know that in most tournaments judges are in over their heads, trying to get rules called for 30-50 games but at the very least you have brought it up to their attention on their actions. If that doesn't work, use a little ploy that I have had used on me to cause me to lose a very important game at the top table in a tournament I went to a few years ago. I'm not advocating doing this to win you the game as my opponent was already slow playing at the time to begin with. Tell your opponent that your going to use the rest room real fast and take a mentle picture of how the board looks. Then go out, use the rest room, and grab some water from the near by fountain and just drink til you calm down. This could take a good 10-20 minutes off of your game, but at least you won't go back into the game wanting to shove your bloodthirster down your opponents throat.  Warning: This might drop you in sportsmanship score, but the fact of the matter is this, your opponent was already going to screw you over in your sportsmanship for not letting him play the game his way.
If you do this in conjunction with telling the judge, I'm sure that a normal, sensible judge would know of the situation and ignore his sportsmanship knockdown and give you the full points for having to deal with him.



Factor 2: The dice decide to forsake you.

We've all been there, we get these important charges lined up to where we can't possibly fail, Throw our uber beatstick unit into a unit that we expect to crush the living hell out of, only to have the dice decide that it's going to come up nothing but what you don't need it to and your uber unit gets obliterated by something as silly as a grot poking you with a stick.

This is the factor that I mostly deal with to be honest, and I have managed to remain calm in this situation, more recently when not only was my opponent a big douchebag, but he also didn't allow me to have a charge reaction with a hellpit abomination when clearly in the rules it states that the person being "charged" by the hellpit can get a charge reaction as normal. I managed to do a wound onto the hellpit but he managed to get one of the special attacks off that ignore my armor, which I proceeded to fail my ward save and die in one blow because my opponent got really lucky, rolling the 33% chance of my lord dying in one blow. I felt the anger rising inside of me because of this course of events. My general, who was one of my only ways of dealing with the beast, died like a little punk because my opponent defied the laws of statistics. 33% chance to get that result, then 33% chance to do 3 wounds after I failed my 1/6th chance ward save.. He was also cheering about it which caused me to be even more pissed off.

My solution to that was, I stood there for a second, and just analyzed the situation. I told a joke to myself, stared briefly at the tv that was playing and forgot about it, causing me to calm down. I ended up losing that game on turn 8 because the dice decided to forsake me and always roll 1 under what I needed to end the game with me controlling the watchtower, which is the mission he decided on by the way.

Now, what do you do if you don't have a tv in front of you. If your in a tournament setting and your friends/ club mates are close by, you can walk over to one, and then try and laugh off the situation. Your club mates/friends will understand and sympathize with you. They might even try and lift up your spirits which is what club mates/friends are suppose to do.
What if you decide to go to an event by yourself tho, what then?  Well, in this era of smart phones most of us have music or access to an internet radio station like Slacker,, Iheart,Spotify,Pandora etc. Put your favorite station on and just get into the music. This should calm you down so that you can proceed to try and salvage the game.


Now that you know two of the important factors and the solutions on how to keep your cool, hopefully you can identify when the situation is affecting you and the solution and hopefully make your games more enjoyable. There will be another part to this series in the next coming days.