I firmly believe that the strategies we use in games tell us a lot about ourselves. Well, this past weekend, my friend and I put on a huge battle (in the Battletech universe) and it was an eye opener for me. I have become complacent and forgotten my own rules.
I have spent the past few months teaching and re-teaching the game to my kid and my friends. I was getting pretty cocky, since I moved my Grand Dragon into a field with 3 Assault Mechs and walked out. When you face off against a near peer adversary though, it is an entirely different world, and your cockiness gets put in check real fast.
To be clear, the match was a draw. I controlled 3/4s of the territory, and was concentrating my fire on his biggest units. I had lost a few light scout mechs, and we both had put down significant damage on each other. That being said, there are definitely things I could have done better.
I had a recon lance (A lance is a group of 4 mechs) that realistically should have been taken up by 4 other mechs instead. They were too small and light to do much good. They were just out of place. They performed as well as they could, but honestly, when battle was joined, I was often stumped at what to do with them. They were too fast to advance with the rest of my troops, and since they have wimpy baby armour, they need to keep running to survive.
Which brings us to the second observation. I used to be a master of group cohesiveness. Making sure that every unit matched each other to bring maximum firepower to the battlefield. That recon lance absolutely did not gel with my assault lance, which was much slower, and brought huge amounts of firepower to bear. But, while one was way forward ahead, the other was sluggishly bringing up the behind. In military terms, that opens you up for “Defeat in detail” where you single out individual units and knock them out. I usually implement that strategy. It was sobering to react to it.
My opponent figured out my strategy, which, to be honest, I wasn’t hiding it. I was going to use smoke rounds to force him into mismatched situations, and try to dictate the conflict towards my strengths. However, my recon lance forced me to move forward of my own smoke, trying to be too aggressive when he was trying to breach my barrier.
What does this tell me about myself?
Over the past year, I have encountered a lot of obstacles that other people cannot deal with. I have used finesse and brute force to counter them. My plan involved both finesse and brute force. But, I lost patience, which is unlike me in person, and I didn’t allow them to come to me. I tried to force things to happen, just like in real life, I’m going for the jugular vein on some pretty big targets. The lesson is to be patient, and let things come to me.
That patience is absolutely vital. Just like in the game, aggressive maneuvering with my scout lance showed its fundamental weakness, in real life, while I know all the buzz words and the people to go to, there are sometimes I can get caught with little more than bluster. And then I am exposed, with no real idea what to do next.
A strategy is great, but you have to stick to it. I had even wargamed out what my friend would do, and my predictions were mostly correct. In real life, you can’t do that, because every interaction is different. You might get a happy helpful person one interaction, and a grumpy one the next (No judgement, everyone is human) The ways they will react are completely different depending on your message. That is a vital life lesson. You can’t predict people, because every day is different.
Most importantly, it taught me to be humble. While I am a world beater playing against learners, against a peer, I am equal to them. The same with these service personnel (Customer Service or government) – its a peer environment. You’re not always going to get your way. Be humble, be patient.
My ultimate trick with a potentially hostile agent has always been to switch the conversation – instead of getting them to tell me what they can’t do, I ask them what they can do for me. Its a game changer, when done right. Their first answer might not be pleasant, but usually there is something within their power, even if its just transferring you to someone else. Just like in the game, I should have held my recon units back behind the smoke, because that was something they could do, as opposed to charging them forward, which did not fit their abilities. Be conscious of what is possible, and what is not.
Above all, have fun with it all! I’m just navel gazing because its late, I can’t sleep, and this amusing thought entered my mind. I hope you enjoyed it!
Don’t forget to check out my books at: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B07J587RC5?_encoding=UTF8&node=618073011&offset=0&pageSize=12&searchAlias=stripbooks&sort=author-sidecar-rank&page=1&langFilter=default#formatSelectorHeader
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