Control: Person Focus: Terry

Terry is an avid wargamer and friend of mine. He loves Oklahoma, the Minnesota Vikings, Warhammer 40k, and his family. He treats everyone the way he thinks they deserve to be treated. He is nice until provoked, and you don’t want to provoke him.

We gathered in Terry’s backyard not too long ago. We brought our packages, our big boxes with stuff in them. Then we opened our boxes and brought out our wargaming miniatures.

“How’s it going, my brother?” Terry said. He gave me a fist pump. He brought out his tyranids.

“Tyranids, huh?” I asked.

“Yup,” he said. “When you focus on a group that you have played for a long time, you can do pretty well. I’ve been playing tyranids for four editions and ten years or so. I know them pretty well.”

I got out my chaos knights.

“Why no ad mech?” Terry asked.

“I didn’t bring them because I know chaos knights; I know their strategies, their tactics. I brought them because they’re easier for me to play well.”

“Okay,” he said. “You’re playing against the knights player first.”

I played an hour against the knight player and lost but got a decent number of points for my score. The knights player looked at Terry.

“We have extra time before game two,” the knights player said.

“Bring it,” Terry said. He got out his tyranids and they played. Terry killed a knight first turn with smite spam and shooting from under cover. He clearly knew how to play his army perfectly. He won the game.

Terry was in the Navy for twenty years, some of them as a drill instructor. He takes no bullshit. He actively raises two sons who are responsible, dutiful young men, in shape and working hard at school. One of them cooked hot dogs and brauts for lunch, which also had veggies and chips and dip. I ate maybe too many chips and several hot dogs and a braut. After that I played game two and lost again, this time to a nurgle player, a very good player who had a few drinks and still beat me.

“How’d you do?” Terry asked.

“As expected, I lost the first two games, we’ll see what happens in game three,” I said.

“Keep on trying,” he said. “I’ve been playing for ten years and can barely ever catch up to the top guys, but we’ve got to keep on trying.”

“I do,” I said. “I will.”

Hanging out in Terry’s backyard was fun. We wore masks if we went inside. I walked over to the donut store to grab soda for myself and got a decent walk in during that afternoon. Everyone drank a full carton of waters during that day — the eight of us. Philip didn’t make it — something about Corona being a problem or something.

An ad mech player won the tournament. Terry got out a huge trophy and said that the winner’s name would be engraved on it each year and that we would do this each year going forward.

Terry is that guy, a good man, who defended his country from foreign threats and traveled the world.