Control: A Crazy Person at a Strategy Game

I, Dalton Lewis, am losing almost every game at Warhammer 40k, the strategy game I play with wargaming miniatures. I don’t know if it’s mental illness or just stupidity that is wrong with me. I played two weeks ago at a tournament in St. Louis. I took an uber to Philip’s place of work in order to ride with him for four and a half hours to St. Louis. He picked me up and found cheap dinner and chips and soda for the car for the ride. Three hours in he started to complain.

Driving six hours — it was six hours and not four and a half — was crippling to him. He started to have trouble with his OCD and began to complain about the drive. We stopped for me to go to the bathroom and he began to lose it, to complain and to have trouble with the drive. He said that we might have to get a hotel before we made it to St. Louis. We finally made it to the hotel and he said that he never wanted to drive to one of these again. We rested for the night, and then I had to do what was most difficult to me: wake up in the morning. I managed it, eating a quick breakfast at Panera — which was called St. Louis Bread Company for some reason — and then went to the tournament.

Round one I played against a dark eldar opponent with a lot of high-powered shooting. I couldn’t get past his venoms to his high-powered ravagers in the backfield, and I had positioned my dreadnoughts wrong so I couldn’t shoot at them. I lost the game pretty handily. I was playing with deathwatch — a good army, I thought. I had a lot of veterans with storm shields and storm bolters and thought that a lot of shots would really help me. I didn’t win the game.

Game two I played against a dark angels player. I knew dark angels and their tactics and knew to attack the person giving everyone else bonuses to their cover. Then I knew to attack the powerful hellblasters, which were capable of fearsome damage. I managed to win the game and felt better about myself.

Games three, four, and five were unmitigated disasters in which I played worse and worse. I should have won some of those games but didn’t play well enough to win anything. When we were done with the tournament on Sunday afternoon Philip was dejected by the idea of driving six more hours but wanted to leave as soon as possible so as to make it home before too late. We made the drive home, discussing what to do to improve our armies and compete at the game more effectively. I decided to add some ad mech to my army in order to do more long-range damage and help the army compete more effectively. We had another tournament the following weekend, this one in Rockford. Rockford was only ninety minutes from us, but driving back and forth still felt like a long time.

I spent the week building and painting ad mech tanks and rangers and enginseers for my army so that they would improve my army of wargaming miniatures and help me win some more games. I arrived at the local gaming store and began to build tanks that had lots of shots and did a lot of damage and were, well, a little survivable. I put them together and painted them on Thursday and prepared for the tournament on Saturday. Saturday arrived, and I woke up at seven am in order to get an uber to Philip and have him drive me ninety minutes to the tournament.

I arrived just as the tournament started to play against someone who had astra militarum, space wolves, and blood angels. I couldn’t do enough damage with my shooting, and his saves were too good. I lost game one and was bummed. We went for lunch to Culver’s, which wouldn’t help my quest to lose weight, but I was mad at life and wanted fattening food. I ate a delicious burger and some cheese curds and could feel myself getting fatter.

After lunch game two was also a bad matchup — I played against knights, the big war machines that are an army by themselves. I played and did some damage but couldn’t win the game. I felt disgusted by myself heading into the third game of the day in last place. I played against another deathwatch player, someone playing an army as poorly as me. I played against a player who had also lost two games.

I lost. I didn’t play very well and lost another game. I don’t know why. In real life everyone doesn’t win the big game or get the biggest prize. Sometimes, in real life, we get our asses kicked. Well, in this case, in reality, I got my ass kicked. I don’t know how or why, but I will try to get better.

Thanks, and take care, friends.