Unsatisfying games

[Alarantalara]

This isn't much of a battle report, but it makes more sense here than anywhere else and touches on some things others have been discussing recently.

So, I got to play another game today and it was terrible.

But first, something nice. When I was creating my army list, I decided I didn't want to go all in on magic and actually use some other characters, but realized that my opponent was likely to put up what amounted to an impenetrable defense as historically I've played with a lot more spellcasting. I didn't want to have no spellcasters either though, since that would just obviate everything my opponent had likely taken. So, we had a bit of a negotiation, and I ended up with my 2 level 2 sorceresses and my opponent swapped a runesmith with 2 dispel runes for a thane and a bolt thrower, leaving the army with only one runesmith. This worked out really well; I was able to successfully cast about 1 spell per turn and my opponent was able to stop anything that seemed especially worrying.

Now the bad part, and why this game is just a summary.
Dwarfs go first. This is mostly to indicate that everything from here on essentially happens at the first possible moment it could have.
Turn 1, dwarf shooting phase: flame cannon explodes. Okay, a bit unlucky, but these things happen, let's continue.
Turn 3, start of dwarf's turn: a hydra that had been moving up behind a forest just came within 6" of an intact unit of 20 dwarf warriors. They fail their terror test and end up running nearly adjacent to a unit of dark riders. The dark riders charge and there is no roll that would let them escape the 18" charge range. The unit is wiped out.
Turn 4, start of dwarf's turn: the hydra is now adjacent to a unit of 20 ironbreakers led by the general. They fail their terror test and run off the board. If they had not run, then there was another unit of dark riders in place to finish them off too.

Meanwhile, the rest of the game has been a shooting match, in which two units of thunderers and three bolt throwers have been killed through a combination of shooting, magic and cavalry charges, in exchange for a unit of cold one knights and accompanying general. This is slightly in my favour, but not much given the death of my general. However, when combined with the three unfortunate events above, it's crippling: at the end of turn 4 the dwarfs are outnumbered 3:1 in points and there hasn't been a single round of close combat that included a unit with ranks. So, we call the game because it's no longer worth playing.

So, here's a game that has 1 in 1000 odds or longer for being poor luck for one player. If we were playing a game every week, it probably wouldn't matter that much, but we're not. So there's a greater need for each individual game to be satisfying. Sure, if we'd ignored the result of the dice and kept units around it would be more even, but even isn't the same as fun. The whole point of war machines and terror-causing units is that they can produce swingy results. If there were no risk to taking a flame cannon, it wouldn't be as interesting. Similarly, making units immune to terror just because other bad things happened devalues the terror-causing unit. Also, just ignoring a bad result devalues any victory. There's a memorable moment in the book A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold that points out that "victories can't be gifts" (there's a lot more context, but that would spoil one of the most important scenes in the novel) but must be fought for, and changing the results betrays that idea.

All this leaves me at a loss as to how to resolve the problem of games that fall apart from luck though. Without this randomness, some of the best stories get lost. Having the first roll of the game being your flame cannon exploding and then winning anyway or even just slightly losing is the kind of game that both players can enjoy. Having everything run from terror because you only brought night goblins is also fine, because you went into the game knowing the army would do things like that. This...

The thane stood silently; waiting, hoping, for another Dwarf to appear. He had run, had betrayed all under his command when he saw the hydra approaching, had seen its fiery breath burn the Dwarfs beside him. There was no choice but to face his shame, to take the oath of the slayer. The next time the black ships appeared, he would not run.

It's a nice way to generate an origin story for a character, but it's pretty firmly on the depressing side.

Anyway, enough meandering. Does anyone have an idea of something that can be done to avoid this sort of thing without changing dice rolls to make things "fair"?

[Just Tony]

I wish I could come up with something other than "This is what makes 6th Ed. 6th Ed.", but that's the sum of it. Attitude is more of a factor to enjoyment than any other modifiers you might houserule in. I'm not sure where it happened for me personally, but anymore I can shrug off pretty much any piss poor performance on my part. More often than not I have an idea of what units could potentially underperform or what stuff will fall victim to the "fresh paint curse" or my dice superstitions. I go in knowing that things could go sideways and I have back up "moral victory" conditions set up where I consider the game not to be a complete wash because I accomplished X or Y before Z exploded.

That's pretty much all I got. Sorry.

[mattyfenby]

I’m curious what the terrain was like during this matchup. Did the Bolt Throwers ever target the Hydra?

I’m sorry that the game felt unsatisfying. I agree with your points about how thats the way war machines and terror were designed and how victories are earned.

Your question regarding how to fix an outlying game breaking event while keeping things fun and fair- one idea that comes to mind is maybe giving each player just one one-use-only ‘mulligan’ re roll?

From my perspective, the game is satisfying if we are having fun hanging out and if we manage not to forget or screw up any rules. If I win or lose certainly matters to me and its frustrating when I blow a game, especially due to luck, but I think approaching the game thinking ‘since I dont play each week I need to get x value out of each game’ will end up sucking some of the fun out of it for you. Its wacky that Dwarfs would blow both Terror rolls, but it sounds like the opponent was a real great opponent to have who was willing to tweak their list to allow for a fun game. The good sportsmanship and the fact that you remembered to take those psych tests could be enough to be satisfying if you change your perspective towards it, which of course is a lot easier said than done and could be insane advice to give.

[Alarantalara]

I don't have any photos, but it's simple to create a rough mockup of movement for the first couple turns (3 turns for the cold one knights and far left dark riders). Basically a large clear area in the middle with large forests and swamps near the edge. My opponent set up the terrain and decided to be symmetrical. I think he might also have been trying to create a situation that maximized the strengths of the dwarfs by allowing them to march forward with forests anchoring both flanks trying to force a a close combat battle in the middle of the table with no flanks. I've included the movement of the interesting units from the earlier description.

overview.png (108.42 KiB) Viewed 3583 times

There wasn't any real opportunity to shoot the hydra turn 1 (only the leftmost bolt thrower had line of sight) and on turns 2 and 3 the cold one knights were threatening the centre and targeted by nearly everything since they were seemingly a more immediate threat. I had significantly more units and my opponent deployed first, so my opponent had finished deploying before the hydra was placed, so there was no difficulty in finding a good hiding place.

From my perspective, the game is satisfying if we are having fun hanging out and if we manage not to forget or screw up any rules. If I win or lose certainly matters to me and its frustrating when I blow a game, especially due to luck, but I think approaching the game thinking ‘since I dont play each week I need to get x value out of each game’ will end up sucking some of the fun out of it for you. Its wacky that Dwarfs would blow both Terror rolls, but it sounds like the opponent was a real great opponent to have who was willing to tweak their list to allow for a fun game. The good sportsmanship and the fact that you remembered to take those psych tests could be enough to be satisfying if you change your perspective towards it, which of course is a lot easier said than done and could be insane advice to give.

It's not that I need to get value out of the game, it's that with relatively few games played, each one stands out more. When I was playing Warhammer 40K during 3rd edition, there were enough players that I was playing weekly, and while one game felt worse than this one (for a different reason), the game from the week before was fun and I could easily look forward to the next one and set the bad one aside.

I wish I could come up with something other than "This is what makes 6th Ed. 6th Ed.", but that's the sum of it. Attitude is more of a factor to enjoyment than any other modifiers you might houserule in. I'm not sure where it happened for me personally, but anymore I can shrug off pretty much any piss poor performance on my part. More often than not I have an idea of what units could potentially underperform or what stuff will fall victim to the "fresh paint curse" or my dice superstitions. I go in knowing that things could go sideways and I have back up "moral victory" conditions set up where I consider the game not to be a complete wash because I accomplished X or Y before Z exploded.

That's pretty much all I got. Sorry.

You mention piss poor performance, and I think that might be where the problem was with this game. There wasn't much performance, good or poor. Almost 3/4ths of my opponent's army by points didn't do anything but move forward a bit and run from terror tests. More than 3/4ths if you count blowing up turn one as doing nothing. Most of my army did something, but a quarter of it didn't do anything beyond moving forward either. See all the units that don't have arrows in the diagram above? They either didn't move, or their movement had no meaningful effect on the game.

I think that expresses it. We played a game and there was a winner, but it didn't feel to me me like a game was played. It feels like we started to play and then it was just over.

[Just Tony]

As I go through and repost all my batreps I've come across one where I failed a ridiculous number of break/psychology tests and I got absolutely bodied in that game. I definitely see what you mean, and I definitely sympathize, but the only real advice I have is basically that you'll have other chances to make up for it. It's like the one time I ate at Don Pablo's. It was so bad that I lost my appetite for the rest of the day. But thankfully I managed to have some Carlos O'Kelly's later that week which renewed my appreciation for Mexican food. Your next game will hopefully be Chipotle Cheese Crisp.