If there’s a thing I could change about competitive gaming, particularly games that combine elements of strategy and chance (Imperial Assault, for example), it would be to imbue it with a culture of humility regarding losses.

We are not very good at recognizing that we can't control every aspect of the game. I can’t control what lists I play against. I can’t control what command cards I draw. I can’t control what I roll for dice results or what my opponent rolls. These are all elements that I can't directly influence. Sometimes these elements will help you and other times they will harm you. In either case, it is important to recognize that this will alter success in a competitive game.

However, we all know there's more to the game than that. The reason these games are compelling is because even though I subject myself to some random elements, there are many elements in my control, such as my list, my command cards, and my choices during the game. Primarily, this is what I’m most interested in and where I believe humility is the most important. I think we’d all like to believe that we are infallible, or at least have the potential to be infallible when playing a competitive game. When we lose, we face the fact that maybe our list wasn’t as efficient or our decisions weren’t as strategic as we thought. It’s an unpleasant truth, but one that I believe we should revel, instead of lament.

For myself, it is important to recognize that sometimes I will not have the cognitive tools to beat my opponent. Sometimes I will bring a list that isn’t very good. I will play command cards at the wrong times. I will make mistakes out of inexperience. While these moments may hurt my pride, these moments are also why I find the game interesting. For Imperial Assault to thrive, the optimal choices can’t be obvious. It can’t and shouldn’t be apparent what the best choice will be. If it were, everyone would make the optimal choice, the game would be formulaic, and many of us wouldn’t be playing it at all.

This is where my desire for humility has its roots - losing is not only part of competitive gaming, it's the best part. Losing gives us the gift of getting to learn. We get to reassess, study our mistakes, and consider what we can do to improve. Losing let's us know that there's progress to be made. The next game is a chance to test our new ideas. However, to enjoy that aspect, we need to get past our lost pride from losing and therefore have humility about our play.

Hence, I’d like to spend the rest of this post discussing the two losses I experienced at the Regional Championship. I debated discussing every game, but ultimately decided that there just wasn’t a lot to say about my wins. However, I made some mistakes during my losses that I believe have some value to that would like to win games in the future, including myself. Enjoy.

Loss 1

Prior to this tournament, I spent a significant amount of time conversing with one of our local players about the list I planned on bringing. Perhaps to his annoyance, he listened to me mull the pros and cons over a multi-week period. There probably wasn’t a strategy or command card that I hadn’t run by him over that time. He watched the list evolve and helped me establish what it would ultimately become. So, I suppose it was serendipitous that he and I would be matched up in the first round of the tournament. In addition to my lack of experience, I knew I was at a disadvantage as he literally knew everything about my list. Yet, I was still excited to show him that I had learned a lot from his advice.

I hadn't. I hadn't learned very much at all it turned out.

This game was played on Anchorhead Cantina (known as Anchorhead Bar in the glory days) (there's an image of the map below) and the mission was Line of Fire (bring the blue crates to the extraction point). I started in the red deployment zone and my opponent in the blue. My opponent was running Devious Scheme, so I started with initiative. Note how far my deployment zone is from the crates, as this is something I should have noticed myself when I deployed. My opponent played the following list (I left out Temporary Alliance so I could have an even amount of cards):