Learning by Losing

A couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to get a game in against a reader of this blog by the name of Dave who contacted me after the first post. I normally don’t get weekday games in, so I was very happy to have someone who lived locally be willing to come over after work and play some Flames of War. I got crushed. Mauled. Stomped. Whipped. Annihilated. I mean, this was likely my worst loss in Flames of War. It was that bad. I also learned a ton during the game. It really made me think about how I, as a player, view my development as a player and what losses can teach us.

My game was the FoW version of this. Ouch.

 

Losing is tough. I’m not talking about the exceptionally close, “one die can make a difference” 4-3 game that is tense throughout. I’m talking about tabletop massacres where one side so thoroughly dominates the other that it’s almost sad. No one likes to see their army get wiped off the table, and during the game the feeling of helplessness as nothing works can make for a very frustrating experience. Sometimes the dice undermine a beautiful plan, and sometimes a beautiful plan really is a dog. In the worst of cases, terrible dice work together with your dog of a plan to create a truly god awful situation.

 

Look, it's one of my Panzer IVs

It is easy to write off a loss like that as a fluke or bad dice and try to suppress the memory of it. However, I think there can be a lot to be learned by reflecting and trying to figure out why the disaster happened. Flames of War has very few match-ups that are so stacked against one side as to make the game a foregone conclusion. If the game was one of those, fine, but for the vast majority of games there are areas where learning can happen.

If it was bad dice, why were those particular rolls that felt so damning so important.  Did every shot miss because they were easy and bad dice come in, or were you trying to hit on 6’s with every shot? Was that missed stormtrooper so nasty because you were hanging your troops out to dry and hoping to pass the skill check? Should your CiC have been in a better position to grant a re-roll, or did you waste him giving a failed platoon morale re-roll for a unit that really didn’t matter? I find that dice will go back and forth, and some games you’ll just have to be extremely redundant with your shooting and careful with your exposure.

 

I think these guys from Fury did better than my troops.

In the game, I was relying on low percentage shots and trained stormtroop roll to protect my boys. My opponent was saving his guns for high percentage shots. For example, his battery of 4 25pdrs were usually in a great position to direct fire at my Panzer IVs. However, I would be taking 2+ (AT9 vs. long range armor 7) saves. On one turn where he could have fired, he went to ground instead to protect his assets. His guns survived and were able to do damage to me later when they were in a higher percentage situation (New Zealand Time-on-target with the mike target re-roll is crazy good). This made me think about how I view aggressiveness in the game. I came from playing a lot of 40k, where firing is almost always better than not. There are few drawbacks to attacking and few benefits to hunkering down. Flames of War is not like that. The +1 difficulty to hit for gone to ground (assuming concealed) is huge, and the gun save rule makes it exceptionally important. A gun team gone to ground is a tough target to take out, more so when dug in. I really learned a lot about when to fire and when not to, and that I shouldn’t always blaze away hoping for kills.

 

Time on Target with Mike Target (at cheap UK arty prices) with AOP is insane. Lots of respect for NZ arty.

Having a general plan is extremely important. In my game against Dave, I didn’t have a plan. Random deployment created my plan for me, but once the toys were down I didn’t have much to work with. I wasn’t sure if I was trying to set up assaults, or if I would try to whittle him down. My artillery didn’t have an idea of what to take care of first, or if it would serve as smoke support. Basically, I tried to wing it and it blew up in my face.

While each bad game will have its own reasons, the key is to take advantage of situations like this to really examine your game. A win will often teach you nothing, but make sure that all games are reflected upon. The grand, high risk move that works against all odds and wins you the game is relatively useless to reflect on in the long run. If it works once in ten tries, your chance of recreating that glory as a standard tactic will likely result in failure. Instead, focus on the worst performances as the things that will build you game. Fix mistakes, fix lists and understand why you did poorly. When that happens, you’ll play a leaner, better game and hopefully suffer few 1-6 (or, god forbid, 0-7) losses.