Winning by Losing

Let's talk a little about losing. You know that feeling (and don't give me that stupid record at the bottom of your forum post that says your 50-1, we all know that's BS).

There is no one out there that hasn't lost, and if you haven't lost a decent amount in the past, your friends need to step up.

Now, saying that, when normally playing a game, I prefer to lose.

Sounds crazy, but it's true. When I win I walk away with a smile, knowing that my worldview is correct, I am the greatest! When I lose, everything is falling apart, my list is awful, it must be reworked, it must be changed, I must play with weapon options, uses, troll the internet to find new uses for units etc...

Basically losing makes me dive deeper into the hobby then winning does. When I win, I shrug and go back to painting, when I lose I take a hard look at my list and my tactics and try to understand why I lost, what I did wrong, and how I can fix it.

You just learn more my losing then you do by winning.

When you lose your game next time, talk to your opponent about it, find out two things. First, what could you have done differently to win the game. Did you set up wrong, deploy wrong, not use an ability (forget an ability). It may be that one single dice roll (or bad luck) is what killed your game, but generally I find that luck in 40K tends to average out. Last Wednesday I failed about 1/2 of my armor saves for my marines all game, but but my opponent hit my rhino one round with three Railguns and rolled 3 "1"s to penetrate.

Blame your dice last, blame yourself first. Responsibility for losing game rests on us.

If you come to the conclusion that there is nothing you could have done to win the game, then take a hard look at your list. Don't change things in your list radically each week if you can help it. Skill with a list is partially the list (if you take 33 vespid, not even God can save you) but once you have a good solid tournament ready list, learning how to play it in a myriad of circumstances is what helps you win games. Concerned against one of those Net lists? Get a friend to proxy it and play 10 games against it. You still may lose to it, but will know your best changes, and where the list is weak. Do the same for a null deployment 'Nid army, wolf cavalry (Goatboy style) list, or anything you believe you will have problems with.

I have been prepping for BoLScon for about six months now. I've been struggling with my marines, week after week and month after month. I've finally gotten to the point where I consider myself 'competent' with them. I'm playing as many games as I can these days with them with the same 'core' of the army. I'm now winning more finally, but actually feel that I am learning less, and it's sad a little.

So enjoy your losses my friends, because you can take away more that makes you a better player and tactician from that then you ever can from a game where you simply table your opponent.