Out-Gamed By My Daughter!
Many parents have succumbed to the despair that comes from receiving a butt-whuppin' from their kids at videogames. That's understandable, especially videogames have, in the past, been a little alien to the older generation and thus they are taking on the kids on the kids' own turf. No biggie. That's changing a bit now as the Nintendo generation is spawning off some hard-playing tykes of their own. But still, the children have lots of time to practice that we, their parents, have trouble keeping up with.

I myself have been dealt a few merciless defeats at the hand of my eldest daughter in Soul Caliber II a few times. A member of the Atari generation myself and professional videogame developer, I always come back from defeat and can usually manage a 2-out-of-3 or 3-out-of-4 winning ratio against her. I don't throw games for my children - when they beat me, they earn it. Or at least, they get lucky, I often mumble to myself to console my wounded pride.

But when it comes to a wargame, or a "tactical combat" game, I feel I rightfully hold a safe level of superiority over the next generation by merit of the sheer number of hours I have put into practice.

Now, I would not consider myself a wargamer. But in a game of tactical strategy, something I feel I do have at least some level of experience. After all, I've played my share of RTS games, X-Com, Master of Orion, Civilization, Combat Mission, Close Combat, Empire, Empire II (the "wargame builder"), and plenty of turn-based RPGs. I've played strategic board games like Diplomacy and Supremacy. I played lots of Magic: The Gathering, and dabbled with the miniatures combat of Warhammer 40K a couple of times. . I've even played some honest-to-goodness tabletop wargames like Sniper!, Air War, Team Yankee, and Starship Troopers. And don't get me started on the number of hours I've spent playing D&D!

Those are many hours of training, there, kids! You can't beat me with a few extra hours of practice hitting button combos on the controller. No, you have to out-think me. And until you've put in some reasonable fraction of the time I've put into thinking through tactical puzzles, you ain't gonna be a contender. But I welcome you to try, because you need the practice. And it'll be fun. When it's over, I'll throw away a comment about how lucky I got and how challenging the game was for me to make you feel better.

Well, my very first game of D&D Miniatures was with my daughter, age 11. It was fun, and I was impressed that she actually considered tactics. She was playing a Chaotic Evil warband, pretty much heavy-hitting infighters. I was playing Chaotic Good, mainly archers. She figured out her best bet was to hang out around a corner and force me to come to her, rather than exposing herself to fire. Nice elementary tactics! The game ended up being rather close, in the end, but victory was - predictably - mine.

Months passed. My collection of D&D miniatures increased, primarily for use in our roleplaying game sessions. But I was anxious to try out the wargame some more (yes, grognards may balk at the fantasy combat game being called a wargame, but deal!). So last night, I asked my daughter if she wanted to play either Magic or D&D Minis with me. She wanted to play the miniatures game again. So we broke out the collection, decided on a map, and started playing again. I had to bone up on the rules again, whilst she remained ignorant of most of the intricities, relying on Daddy to remind her of the finer points.

One thing I was pleased to note was that the rules had been revised slightly from our last game, mainly with the removal of the rule limiting movement speed of a unit to 2 outside of command. That simplified things and sped up the game a bit.

Initially, everything was going my way. I used my higher mobility to capture the closest victory area - the common victory area common to both players as a goal. My daughter took a bit of time at the marshalling point trying to organize her units and keep them in command range, remembering the frustrations of the previous game when units fell out of command. Once she grasped that the "Speed 2" mechanic was no longer a limiting factor, she became more flexible, but still kept her warband massed pretty tightly, making a move for either the central victory area or the next closest.

I got a little greedy, and decided to use my higher mobility and area-effect attacks to exploit her tight formation. I flew in a blue wyrmling in front of her forces, and let fly with a lightning bolt, which nailed five of her eight units. At that point, it looked like I was winning. I'd drawn a pretty hefty amount of first blood, and had acquired an early lead in points.

In retrospect, I should have considered this a sacrifice play, and tried to move the wyrmling out the next round, accepting attacks of opportunity might kill it. But instead, I moved my other forces in to support it. After all, it was pretty good in melee, with three attacks per round if it didn't move...

I managed to lock down a bunch of her forces with my mind flayer, but it fell in a single round to an attack by her Vrock demon which was on the front line. After dishing out what few ranged attacks I could against her commander, I tried to bring a hell hound around from the rear to take him out, using a double move. Unfortunately for me, she'd kept a huge minotaur in reserve to counter it. Her minotaur landed a critical hit with a single hit, instantly killing the hell hound. The hell-spawned puppy went down with nary a whimper nor a single attack.

At that point, all my strategy crumbled. I tried to focus attacks against her Vrock to force it to route, but it's extended reach tended to clobber my medium-sized melee creatures as they tried to come in to attack. In the end, a nasty critical hit against my Bone Devil forced it to route, and with my commander toasted, there was no chance for a rally. Final score was something like 200 to 87.

I have been pwned. We need a rematch. Because, obviously, she got lucky, I mumble to myself.
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:09 AM (Permalink)