I Can't Stop

Today's article is brought to you by McDubstep. I'm wubbin' it!


My wife and I have been playing Android: Netrunner a few times each week. In short it's a strategy card game where you have one person on offense (the Runner) trying to steal special cards from the defender (Corporation) who is trying to hold on to the cards until he can score them. The game has a lot of tricks on each side, and managing your resources is huge if you want to be successful.

As we've been playing, I've been reminded of my biggest weakness when it comes to gaming. I am practically incapable of holding something back until just the right time. In Magic I always failed at blue control decks because I'd want to use all the tricks I had in my hand right away. Thinking back to Warmachine games I think I always play everything up as far as it can go. Everything is a frontline unit, and "second wave" units are a myth to my playstyle.

In Netrunner, the Corporation has special tools called "Ice" that they can use to protect themselves. The runner then tries to attack his deck, hand, or special areas called "remote servers" which the Corporation uses to score their cards. Whenever we play I just throw my Ice down willy-nilly because I can, rather than slowing down and looking at the long-term goal of keeping the Runner away from me.

As a result, we found ourself in a do-or-die situation last night. I loaded up one server with Ice, and I had 1 turn before I was going to win. My wife instead looked at the Ice I had protecting my hand (two), and knew that she could win if I had a scoring card in my hand. So she ran at my hand, blew through my weak defenses, and succeeded in her 1 in 5 chance to win the game. It was awesome and I'm always proud when she beats me, but I was really trying to win that game!

Throughout the whole game I knew I needed to protect my hand, but I really wanted to plow ahead and play my scoring cards. That meant they needed to be protected, so I decided to build an impenetrable wall of Ice protecting one server. That meant I could win the game as long as I could score enough cards before she could steal more from my hand or deck.

Despite knowing this weakness of mine, I hate trying to work against it. Holding things back and going at a slower pace gives my opponent too much time to think, and allows to much of the unknown to enter my game. When I'm playing a game, I like to use my cool stuff as soon as I get it. In my Magic Burn deck, I love shooting my opponent with fire spells as soon as I draw them. In Warmachine I love charging an opponent, simply because it's fun to do. These things usually put me in a bad situation, but it can also put my opponent on the ropes and force him to respond to my actions.

As I write this, it's pretty obvious that my strategy doesn't work. History, plus the sheer "duh" of my previous paragraph are good indicators that I should work on this. I've got a buddy giving me subtle death threats for not playing Warmachine lately, so maybe it's time to try to slow it down and take control of the game.

I'm curious to hear your strategic weaknesses (especially the guys in my group!) Is there anything you do in almost every game that you know puts you at a disadvantage, but you just can't stop? Maybe it's playing fun-but-bad models, or going too fast and making wrong plays. Let me know!


See you tomorrow!

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