"Did we win?"
"No, but if we move real fast, we might be able to live long enough to lie about it."
--Conversation in Spaced Invaders.

Nobody likes to lose, especially we wargamers. However, the simple fact of life is that upon completion of a game someone is usually told he lost and someone he won. (Ignoring for the sake of simplicity the result of "draw.") Many games never get to the bean counting stage of victory determinationone player either throws in the towel quietly (or, with great drama, in over-turning the table and stamping away!) The games that do get decided in the end by the victory points of the game leave me cold.

Ty Bomba once mentioned that the enjoyment of games comes from what he termed "closure" which was the act of finishing the game and seeing who won. That has not been my experience, I enjoy games for the process of play. Turn by turn I enjoy myself in putting together what seems to be the right thing to do-my next big attack, a defense he'll never get through, or counterattacking his offensive just when he thought he had it in the bag. Rarely did a game end up in that final bean counting stage to see who won-we would either stop playing if the game lost its interest, or one (or both!) players would decide they had been beaten and quit.

Either way, to use some magical formula at the bitter end of the game to tell me how I'd done seems pretty moot-given the many hours of up and down record of playthe dumb moves I made and the brilliant over the course of the entire game. I was too busy having fun to worry about the final bean count in any but the most limited ways. Players who shoot a recon company into a forgotten city hex on the last turn in order to win the game and then claim to have "won" based on the one or two victory points thus garnered, regardless of their poor showing to that point, are not players I want to play with. If you feel otherwise, we have a friendly difference of opinion-you play your way, I'll play mine, and we'll both have fun.

Attitudes

That said, I'd like to talk about the different attitudes of players as they determine that they have lost.

1. The first category are the "manly men" who acknowledge they were beaten fair and square. They look for nothing to whine about-they take their lumps and come up smiling. Our own "Sticky" Combs is just this sort of man. It is a pleasure to play against such mature individuals.

2. The next type is the rationalizer. You know this one (we all do it at one time or another), this is the player who decides he lost based on an "analysis" of his performance that he "blew it on turn 5..." Rarely is a single move so important that the entire game's outcome is decided upon it. Since I view a game's enjoyment on the process of play, this sort of argument may be used as to who won or lost-but certainly not as a determination of who had fun.

3. Then we get to the "blamer." We all know one or more of these types. I divided them into two subphyla: Metaphysical and physical.

Metaphysical blamers are everywhere. The primary belief of theses guys is that the dice are against them. We all have bad dice rolls at critical moments and have runs of good or bad luck. I've seen it and so have you. The problem occurs when a player determines that nothing he can do will affect the game because the dice will destroy his efforts. Sorry guys, dice are inanimate objects and if you rattacks habitually fail when rolled, I suggest the attacks might be pretty dumb and the dice just are refusing to give you the 1 in 12 roll you need for each attack you make. This is a dose of reality meeting with ineffective game play. If a player relies heavily on poor odds attacks which may turn out if a roll of 11 or 12 is made on two dice, simple probability is going to slap him in the face.

Physical blamers use the game itself to justify their loss and why they had "no" chance. These are guys decide that they should be able use the world's dumbest plan and carry the day. When their master plan disintegrates in the blistering light of reality- they announce the game system is wrong and proceed to quit the game. Other blamers of this type decide their force was weaker (had worse units, whatever) and that is why they lost. Never mind the fact that their "weak" force went onto the attack on turn 1 and never stopped.

This all leads to a short discussion on victory conditions. The above is not intended to mean that we don't care about victory conditions and just "slap any ole' thing in." On the contrary, we spend an inordinate amount of time deciding on victory conditions-inordinate in that I still believe the fun ofthe game is in the playing, not in a post-game bean count which "determines" who won or lost. What messes some players up is that our victory conditions are based not only on how players did in the game, but what was expected of them in real life and the effect their "victory" or "defeat" would have on events after the time of the game.

Let me use Stalingrad Pocket as a case in point. In SP, victory conditions are rated against two essentially opposite German concerns--the military and political effects of the campaign. Militarily, the Germans are attempting to save what is left of the flower of the German army for operations in 1943. Politically, they must hold onto Stalingrad for its symbolic value. In game play, players want to ditch Stalingrad at the first opportunity in order to save the army. This is a plan the actual German commanders had little or no choice in-they had to balance the military and political demands of the situation. They could not afford to "tell Adolf to stuff it" as most game players would want to. BUT, I didn't want players hamstrung into holding Stalingrad whether they like it or not. In SP, players must attempt to fulfill both sets of conditions as best they can-a task which is by no means easy. To earn the best level of victory, the Germans must hold onto most of Stalingrad (which must keep an overland connection to the west) and keep losses to an acceptable level. Players can ditch Stalingrad if they wish, but must then keep losses to a very low level to make up for it. Holding Stalingrad and taking excessive losses is not acceptable. Ditching Stalingrad and taking those losses is even worse. In the design of these victory conditions, we (myself and the two primary playtesters) discussed at length the requirements of the military situation--setting the stage for 1943 and the short-term situation in the post-game period--and that political influences and requirements could not be successfully ignored. The result are victory conditions that I believe satisfactorily blend the two opposing requirements placed on the player and the actual leaders who fought the campaign.

It's not whether you win or lose--it's how you play the game

That about sums it up. I have my fun along they way to my victory of bitter defeat. As long as I feel their is something I can do to influence the outcome, I'll have a blast regardless of the end result. I prefer to win, but a loss against a capable opponent is nothing to be angry or ashamed of. Besides, he had all the good rolls...