30 - I'm Terribly Sorry Sir. I'm Afraid You Are Mistaken.

In this episode of the "Grown Men Playing With Toys" podcast, Erik and Steve do one of the most uncomfortable things in 40K — they turn the camera on themselves and ask the question: what kind of mistakes do I actually make, and why do I keep making them?

Erik spent the downtime between episodes doing what any self-respecting 40K nerd would do — combing through every battle report he's ever posted and building a full scouting report on himself. What he found wasn't pretty. Steve, meanwhile, discovers that he's been living inside his own set of mistakes without ever naming them. Together they explore:

• The macro strategy mistake — why building the "meta list" can be the worst thing you do if it fights your natural play style
• The micro strategy mistake — why the most exciting moment in your turn might also be the one that costs you the game
• The emotional tells that every player has — and why knowing yours is half the battle
• Rules mistakes — why they're inevitable, why they sting differently than every other kind, and why the community sometimes loses its mind over them
• Whether there's ever a good way to resolve a rules dispute when it's just you, your opponent, and a barn full of painted plastic

Whether you've ever rage-rolled into a Repulsor Executioner, burned your entire CP budget on a unit that was already going to win the fight, or found yourself in a tense standoff over whether a rule means what you think it means — this one's for you.

Check out our other content: https://gmpwt.blog/ https://www.youtube.com/@GrownMenPlayingWithToys

Transcript

Intro

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So first turn, I rock up. I'm like, oh, there's a repulsor executioner and a ballistic dreadnought in my sights. I'll just inch these guys out, point their guns out. Okay, cool. Bye bye. Here you go. Roll the dice three ones. No re-rolls, just three ones.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

We're your hosts, Eric and Steve. Eric, how are we feeling today?

SPEAKER_00 1:01

We're feeling flawed. Flawed. Flawed. I like it. Flawed, imperfect, mistaken. And as an emperor's children, that one hurts to say. I think I'm pretty perfect. I don't know. I your mom thinks you're the coolest, most handsome guy in the classroom.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

Oh, 100%. She approves of everything. She's so proud. Um no. So flawed. Why wait, why are we feeling flawed? What what did I miss?

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Alright, so well, all right, first one, elephant in the room. We're a couple days late on this. Work has been a thing lately, and it's been eating your lunch. Um, so I used the time to probably be one of the biggest nerds on the planet. I went back through all the battle reports that I've been posting to our blog, and I tried to do a neutral party assessment of them, and I spent the time that I would usually dedicate to us podcasting middle of last week, basically combing through those and looking at what do I think I do well, what do I think I do poorly as a player, kind of like a scouting analysis of myself. And I came up with a list of the areas where I think I could improve and and things where I'm seeing routine mistakes get made. So I'm feeling flawed because those battle reports don't reveal that I'm the most perfectest player that ever did play with 40k, and that one hurts a little bit to read.

SPEAKER_02 2:38

Wait, so hold on, time out. So we have to go back to one week formats, not not just because we miss talking to each other or for or 40k topics, but also because dude, I'm a little scared that when when we don't have a structure, structured time to talk, you just spiral down into this infinite, like inner, I don't know, ref retrospective of nerddom. That I I'm a little nervous what could come out of that if we let you go too long. So okay, all right. So you're telling us, and I love this, that you know, you're not perfect, and that's uh awesome. So so but why flawed? What came out of that that that you want to talk about that that you would consider you know flawed being the way that you're feeling?

SPEAKER_00 3:32

I mean, yeah, yeah, I'm hamming it up a little bit, but I think it's I came away with there were some consistent things that I think I do reasonably well. I got a very clear picture of what armies I play better than others. Um, but I also noticed there were some trends on things that I it's like everything else. It's like a scouting report in in baseball. It I have tendencies as a player. And there are some areas where not that it's all about playing optimally, but if you're trying to play optimally, there's some areas where some of my tendencies aren't optimal, or there's just some areas where I'm making straight up mistakes, either macro strategy mistakes with my list building and with my win condition, micro strategy mistakes, getting rules and interactions wrong, or making the wrong tactical play at the wrong time, or or just you know, mistakes of of passion, I'll call it, where I get so excited about this one thing that I I spend my resources at the wrong place during the the game. And some of them are you know more forgivable than others. Other ones I can see clearly that you know they've cost me the game. So it I'm not really sure where to go with the the discussion, other than I thought it was really cool to take a look back and just say, hey, there's some trends here, and I'm excited to talk to Steve about them because maybe he'll help me make sense of them.

SPEAKER_02 5:01

Tag me in, tag me in. Okay, so we're gonna have a mistakes episode because this, and I'm getting excited, so you yeah, yeah, I'm all right, calm down. Take it down, notch. Great. This is a part of 40k that I don't think people talk about enough, actually, at all, right? How often do we hear of all the right things that you have to do? Here's all the things that your armies do perfectly, here's the way to perfectly go execute and optimize this, that, the other, right? Guess what? There's a whole other side to that, which is here's how you can screw things up royally, and what that can do to your game, and and what does that do to all kinds of things? How do you feel about the game, right? I made mistakes, now I have a certain way that I'm you know emoting about the way I'm playing, right? Or mistakes cause something to go in your favor, right? So you you may be able to benefit from them, right? And there's a certain aspect of that. I think that when you're playing 40k and and you know you're you're into this, you know, three hour, four-hour session, right? It's really hard to not make a mistake, it's a part of the game, it is going to happen. I find it really interesting that you went back through all your battle reports and you said, What are all the mistakes that I made? I I think that one, I'm just gonna make a generic statement here. After every time you play a game, you should talk about the mistakes you made, period. So kudos on you for going back through your battle reports to go figure out what are your you know common mistakes, if you will. Um, but I think this is a really cool topic. I think there's a lot here to to talk about. Um so I'm gonna interview you a little bit here on since you went back, you did this retrospective. So when when you looked at your common mistakes, I I would say what type of a trend stood out most to you? And what I'm getting at is was it like mistakes with rules? Was it mistakes with movements? Was it mistakes just overall strategy? Like you talked about micro and macro strategy. What what was the big common hitter for you?

3 Categories of Mistakes

SPEAKER_00 7:21

I think they fell into three categories. I think there were macro level mistakes, which mostly followed the pattern of me crafting a list based off of what I'd been hearing from the the influencer class or the meta class of this is the optimal way to play a detachment that fought my natural playstyle. And a perfect example of that is I I'm now either two or three games deep on Necron's Cursed Legion. And there's some pretty good Necron players who, when it came out, were very vocal of, you know, it looks like a melee detachment, but the best way is actually to play it with all your locust heavy destroyers and locust destroyers, and it's a shooting detachment in disguise. And so I built a list that way. And I haven't played it overly well because that's fighting how I prefer to play the game, and it's actually causing me to play a unit that in theory should be very dangerous in my hands, which is the the new Necrosor Avatar model, who's a melee beat stick, he's got fights first. You know, the joke is he's the best demon prince in the game, even though he's not a demon prince. And he has been my one of my worst performing Necron units over probably the past three months since he came out. And it's because I even though it might be optimal in the hands of other people, it's not optimal in my hands. So there's a macro level strategy mistake there of how I'm approaching the game, how I built the list that that keeps popping up, and it's not consistent across a bunch, but the Necron's Cursed Legion is the biggest one where it's just, oh man, I just can't make this thing work because I'm trying to fit you know myself the square peg into a round hole, and that's just not how my brain tells me to play the game. So I need to align the strat the macro strategy of the list to my macro strategy or my tendencies as a player. So that's a a macro mistake. Um, second category would be micro mistakes, and this would be typically they follow a pattern of I'll get really excited about a unit and I'll have it do something too aggressively, and so either I'll hang it out to dry early in the game and it'll die for not a good trade in return, or I'll have it overswing by buffing too many combos on top of it and I'll burn through my CP through too quickly. And so that I'll call those micro strategy mistakes of excitement and of emotion and of not managing my own emotions. Uh, and then the third category, which I think is the one that actually is the the biggest hot button within the community, is micro-strat or micro rules mistakes, where I will just I'll mess up a rules interaction and you know, hot take for anyone listening. Oh boy, does it go well when you post that on the internet for other people to find for you?

SPEAKER_02 10:39

Yeah, I mean like when you put together a battle report that everybody can go and read through your actual, you know, every movement. Um that's yeah, definitely can can can understand that. I mean, so it's interesting because when you were talking through like your common themes, right? I'm sitting here and I'm going, wait a sec, when Codex Votan came out, I went through exactly what Eric just described. Like I had this like real like this real issue with you know trying to jam a square peg in a round hole. Um and you know, it's it it's a real thing. I mean, I that can that can that type of a mistake, I think, at a macro level can really, really be frustrating as a player. Um because there's not really it everything just feels wrong, right? When you're on the table, everything just doesn't feel good. Like you don't feel like you're winning. You I've been in games where I'm actually winning, but it didn't feel that way. And I think you and I had an argument over one of these games, and I'm like, no, I don't care. I'm I I don't feel like I'm winning because this just feels wrong. I don't care if what the what you know the score says or or what the mission is, like this just feels like it shouldn't work. And I I think that that I mean that type of a mistake, I think just right off the bat, those types of things can really, really, really be frustrating for a player. And um overcoming those types of things, I truly I I I don't think there in the moment is a way to overcome that. I think in the moment you just kind of gotta feel through it and and try to retro and learn from it.

Macro-Strategy Mistakes

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Yeah, it's so it strikes me of the kind of the three cat three categories of mistakes that I just brought up. There's different levels of feels bad, and there's different who feels bad in those. So, like part of what you're describing, and it's if I use myself as an example, so that there were a couple of of trends to back up. So let's let's break them down one at a time. Let's start with the first category, which is the the I'll call it the macro strategy mismatch mistake. And that one showed up several times in the battle reports for me, and then there was one exception of me doing it well that kind of became the exception to prove the rule. And even then, I I did it by kind of doing a classic Steve move of I didn't play the list the way all the the meta class told me to. I actually inverted it and played it in a way that my brain told me to. So the the classic examples of that led me to this being the first takeaway is so like Necron Cursed Legion. I've struggled with that real hard because you know all that the experts broke it down and said this is a great way to play, you know, your shooting destroyer cult, and that's the best way to play it because you you can buff your units like crazy with the Necrosaur, you get access to sustained, you can put a chronomancer in there for move, shoot, move. It's the only way to get rerolls. And so I tried that. I've played a couple games with it, and I found it just had wild spikes in its damage output, but more importantly, it was a very passive play pattern. There's a lot of hanging back and waiting, and I just I wasn't playing it really well, and it reminded me a lot of, and this was the other one I noticed. So, like when I play Space Marines and I play Iron Storm, outside of like the one game at the very beginning of 10th when I played it first U, I don't want to talk about that. I'm pretty sure every other game I played with Ironstorm has been a loss. And it's because you're building a gun line.

SPEAKER_02 14:37

And I find that to be a very passive play pattern, and I I unless you're playing against the Votan gunline and then gunline for gunline, it's not a comparison.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

But I'm not hurt. I I think that was a mistake of terrain and laying out the board wrong, if I'm being honest. And that was just us us not knowing any better at the time. But it's I don't know. It's like both of those, one of my tells is I'm not the world's most disciplined, nuanced, and patient gunline army player, and I tend to fight it because I want to get into the midboard and I want to I want to play aggressively in melee. And the exception that kind of proved it to me was I played really well with Ultramarine's Blade of Ultramar last week, ironically, stomped the crap out of Necron Cursed Legion. And I inverted it by like classic wisdom there is you play it with two big bricks of Vitrix Honor Guard, you put the Vitrix Honor Guard out first, and then your opponent has to bring a bunch of stuff to the midfield to counter the Vitrix guard, and then when they come out, then you shoot them to death and lol, you win the game. I inverted it and did it the other way. I pushed all my tanks to the center and said, you have to deal with all these vehicles now, and then when you come out to deal with the vehicles, I'm gonna charge you with my vitrix guard. And basically had like a a round three Vitrix honor guard charge of the what was it, charge of the night not the nightbringers, but the the light brigade moment where they just came out and wiped all the necrons off the board. So I don't know, it it struck me going through all of that, and it it reminded me when you said it of you struggling with the Votan Codex when it came out, like there's a long time with this stuff where I'm like everyone out there says this is the way to play it, and that this is really good, and that this is meta, and I can't make it work. What's wrong with me? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:38

I I felt that I mean you can go back through our podcasts, right? And you can hear me going through that because I'm like, man, everybody says how great this is, but it's just not it's just not working. And I I think at that level, and it's kind of neat that you're seeing this coming out in a thread with you know, you going back and looking through your battle reports of you know, a mistake that you can make at a macro level is just you know going against your natural playstyle and trying to force something to fit. I think the the way that this game makes you make decisions, the way that this game you're always on a knife's edge, you're always choosing a path, and most of the time neither one of them is gonna be a great path, like they're gonna hurt, but it's a matter of trying to choose the one that doesn't hurt the most, right? And when you're also internally fighting, like uh, hey, I don't want to do this with this unit, but everything says I should do this with this unit, like now you're adding a level of confusion on top, or well, probably frustration, which leads to confusion on top of how hard it is, you know, to to deal with all the decisions you have to make. So it's kind of interesting that that that was your first big takeaway was you know just the macro level aspect of you know, from the jump you could make a mistake of you know choosing uh a detachment, choosing an army, um, you know, potentially that is going to, you know, not not fit your playstyle.

SPEAKER_00 18:15

I think we see this all the time. The trap is the how much when something wins, is it because of the list or because of the player? And I think part of the assumption, and you know, we we see this with all a lot of the the the social media and and the folks producing content, like there's a you get a lot of tr a lot of views and a lot of reaction by posting a good list. But there's a big difference between the list being good and the list being good in the hands of a player who plays that way. And and it it just struck me as I was going through a lot of this, like the what feels bad with that is the when you are trying to play a list that the internet has told you is good and it's not getting the results in your hands that that it sounds like it is in other people's. And it I had to give myself the grace with going through this of just You know, that this is not my this isn't the way my brain tells me to play the game, and I need to adjust the list to match the way that I want to play the game and the way that my skills work when I play the game.

SPEAKER_02 19:39

Oh, you're hitting on something. So so a couple episodes ago when we talked about list hammer versus math hammer versus actual war hammer, right? Um in list hammer, yeah, you can see the value of it, right? But when you add in and math hammer, maybe even, right? Even so, like you could even justify it in your head, right? And I wonder if this is maybe a little bit of what you're struggling with is you know, in these games, list hammer-wise, hey, this is the list that the everybody's saying this this is the thing, right? Math hammer-wise, you're looking at your matchup and you're going, yeah, this thing should this should play out pretty well for it. But then there's all of those other variables that come with Warhammer on the actual tabletop that once you put all that concoction together, right? Now, now you see kind of you know what the actual outcome's gonna be, and that's where those potential adding in those additional factors may come across as a mistake. Um and and this is not to say like don't try something new, don't try what other people are doing. That's not what I'm trying to say here. But when you go back and you look at it, like if I go back and look at when 10th Voton first came out and I I tried playing it, man, I was making mistakes all over the place because it just I wasn't fitting, I wasn't fitting, right? So I don't know, it's really interesting that like you're you're taking that whole aspect of hey, I took it from Listhammer, got the list from the internet, thought it was really good. I saw this thing's supposed to be really meta. I put my math together, want to have a really good matchup, everything should be really cool. Crap, I got it on the table. Why why didn't this work out? Why why didn't this go the way that I thought it was gonna go? Um, and it's it's I don't know, it's kind of cool to see that kind of play out in in real time. Something that we kind of came up with on the fly here.

SPEAKER_00 21:48

I mean, you're describing the big takeaway from the last game I played with Necron's Curse Legion because it's and it I don't think I'm ever purely a netless person, but you know, I I was definitely influenced by. How people were saying is the way to play it. So I built a list. I'm like, oh man, like I've got a couple great combos. I'm gonna have six low or three locust heavy destroyers standing next to the Necrosaur, so they get lethal and sustains, and I'll put a Locust Lord in there so they get crits on fives. And in my math hammer, I'm like, all right, and it's flat six damage, and they're anti-vehicle with high AP. So, you know, three shots, crits on fives with sustained and lethal. Oh man, like I should I should comfortably pop a repulser executioner, and I may even be able to split fire to do half damage to something else. And then, you know, so first turn, I rock up, I'm like, oh, there's a repulsor executioner and a ballistic dreadnought in my sights. I'll just inch these guys out, point their guns out. Okay, cool. Bye-bye. Here you go. Roll the dice three ones. No re-rolls, just three ones. That kind of makes me feel good, actually. And then I'm like, oh, it's okay. Like I accounted for this in list hammer. I've got a backup squad of Locust Heavy Destroyers. I've got three more guys, they won't get crits on fives, but you know, I can get spend one CP, I can give them sustained two ones and a two.

SPEAKER_02 23:22

The dice god said, yes, yes. Bring us your list, bring us your math, show us your plans, and we'll laugh in your face.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

And then, you know, come around to turn three and like so then next turn, just bolt those locust squads, eat a full space marine shooting activation, one of them with oath of moment, the other two with two ballistic dreadnoughts, so they're gone. And so I'm like, all right, so turn three, I position the Catan Shard of the Nightbringer. I'm like, oh, there's a a red repulser executioner tank on the center objective. That's just a big juicy target. Crack off a nine-inch charge. I'm feeling great about this. Alright, cool. You know, six, I think it was six hits or something like that. Roll it out, three ones to hit. No CP for any rerolls. All right, now that's fine. I've still got three more. Like, I'm gonna be wounding on threes, and I just need one or two of these to go. I just need two of these to go through, roll them out, two twos and a three. Like, oh god damn it.

SPEAKER_02 24:24

Yeah, that sounds rough, dude. That that sounds I mean, but that's that's the thing, right? The list can add up, the math can add up, the game is gonna do what the game's gonna do. It's still a dice game in the end, and so that's really interesting. But But potentially, like, you can't control those things, right? You can't control how the dice are gonna go. I mean, you can, but that involves, you know, a baking sheet and an oven and you doing some really not nice things.

SPEAKER_00 24:53

Um but playing a playing a detachment, and I think this is so the difference between the Blade of Ultramar Space Marines list that I played, which was a gun line, and the Necron Cursed Legion list, which I played, which was also like they were both evenly matched as far as range versus melee. I controlled for the range shooting spikes with Space Marines with Oath of Moment. They could re-roll if I had a not a guarantee, but a pretty close to guaranteed if I need to make one bad unit go away per turn, Oath of Moment, re-roll all hits into that. Now I can control the variance.

SPEAKER_02 25:34

Well, you had like a focus fire, right? You could you could focus on that thing, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:39

The Necrons list didn't have that. And I hadn't accounted for that in my play style. Whereas typically I account for that much better when I play melee charging armies. So I I think that's where I got into the like the mistake was one not building enough dice control or variance control into my list when I was list hammering, and then two, it's just when I play range shooting lists, I I struggle with that because I'm much better at controlling for that variance when I play melee focused lists.

SPEAKER_02 26:18

With the feeling, man, you just gotta go, you gotta go with the flow, dude. You gotta you gotta feel the vibe of the army and roll with it. Yep. So okay. So so macro, right? I think we kind of beat that one to death, but I I I I find that I make a lot of mistakes in that one just because I get very excited, as we talked about multiple times in this podcast. I get very excited about things that are not necessarily going to help me at that macro level, so I tend to ignore them because it's got a cool model, or I don't know, I really like the army or the lore or something silly. Um so I tend to make a lot of mistakes

Micro-Strategy Mistakes

SPEAKER_02 26:59

there. Micro, right? You called that out. So help me understand what you mean by mistakes at the micro level first. The rules mistakes or the micro mistakes of excitement. No, no, no. We're I know you want to get to the rules mistakes, but we're saving that for the grand finale. The the the micro excitement level.

SPEAKER_00 27:21

Alright, so I mean this one is easy, and the masters were on this weekend, so I will give you an analogy to explain what kind of mistakes I make with this one, which is and you're a better golfer than I am, it's a golf analogy. You ever walk up to a T box on like a long par four or a par five, and you go, you know, it's kind of a narrow fairway, it's a bit of a dog leg. The safe play here is to put like a nice five-iron into the middle of the fairway. And as you're thinking that, you're pulling the driver out of the bag, and then you walk up to the T-box and you're like, You gotta let the big dog eek, and you just swing from your heels as hard as you can, and then you act all surprised when the ball goes flying off into the woods.

SPEAKER_02 28:08

Everybody who knows me knows I'm never taking the five iron out in that situation.

SPEAKER_00 28:14

You gotta let the shaft out, man. So the the mistake that I make, that the micro strategy one, is I do have a tell, which is it, and it's kind of two flavors. One is I will overspend my CP when I've got a melee smash unit that I'm really excited about, because I just want to happy Gilmore, whatever it touches, off the board, and like through three walls behind the table. And so I will overkill things, spend more command points and more resources than I need to doing something silly like taking my Smash Captain and you know blowing your Eldari Rangers that cost 50 points into the next stratosphere. Just because I think it's really funny to do that. And so it there was a pretty consistent of, and like most of the time I get away with it, but there are some times where I don't, like I had one where the orcs were playing the Emperor's Children, and I brought Gaz out, and Gaz charged Fulgram, and I dumped three CP into Gaz to make sure that he stayed alive, because Fulgrim had fights first up, to make sure that he stayed alive, could fight on death, like all these things. Fulgrim kills like five of the 20 boys that are with Gaz, and then Gaz punts Fulgrim into the next, you know, galaxy, and then we go around to the next turn, and I have zero CP to protect any of the orc units I just exposed, and the Emperor's children basically tabled the orcs. Because I I blew all my resources from a CP perspective to get Gaz to do something he was already gonna do, anyways.

SPEAKER_02 30:10

So I struggle with this one too. Um, and I mean I've unloaded an entire guard shooting phase into you know, um necron spiders. Um just because I hate them. Scarabs. Yep. I hate scarabs so much. I just, you know, want to eradicate them. And I and and sadly, uh I didn't hit real well, but you know, um I I get it. I I get it. I I have an issue, a mistake that I make quite often is somebody will put something on the board and I go, ooh, I really want to kill that. And then I'll go, ah, screw the mission, screw all this stuff. I'm just gonna kill that thing, because in my head, internally, I'm winning a small victory for myself because my my one goal is just I want to kill that thing, right? To your point, right? Um uh I mean anytime someone puts anything big on the board, it becomes like this big shiny object that I can't look away from. Um Folgrum, right? I mean, you kited me with him for what two turns before because I just chased it around because I wanted to shoot it. Um, you know, with with the cousin Josh playing the katan the other day, like I I really wanted to kill them. And the Nightbringer was the one I really wanted to kill, even though I didn't. Um, yeah, I I get I I guess I I get lured into kite mode where it's like, hey, that thing's really big and shiny, and I just fall for the carn effects aspect of it. And you know, oh well, it it is a probably if we went back and looked at all of my things, we could definitely attribute that to 99% of my mistakes. Um but but I think it is a mistake when people do I I I've seen this, right? Not just with your game or with my game, but other games we've watched, where I think finding a way to balance your focus becomes really tough sometimes. Um, you know, especially when you've worked so hard to like set up, I don't know, uh, you know, this move that's taking you like two turns and everything kind of had to go your way, and like you, you know, you got yourself into the right position, and they then become so super focused on doing that that maybe they they miss what's happening on their flank or they they didn't, in my case, realize that something could, you know, deep strike into your backfield six inches instead of nine. You know, things like that happen, right? And I think it's a I think it's a focus thing. I think like I was saying before, this game requires you to it requires you to be on focus for three to four hours, which is really, really hard to do. I mean, really hard to do. Um so it just opens up opportunity for these kinds of mistakes, I think.

SPEAKER_00 33:09

Yeah, and there's there's also as a part of that focus, there's some things that like the the amount of discipline that's required sometimes. So like the what seems to be the pattern for me is the in I'm passing this judgment, so maybe I'm I'm assessing it a little bit favorably to myself, but nine times out of ten, I go after the right target, but I overswing into it, and that that results in one of two things that happens the follow-on turn. One, I've I've consumed too many CP, and now I don't have a way to use defensive C T C P to protect myself from a crackback the next turn. Yeah. Or, and this is the one that's counterintuitive, even though I can acknowledge that it's it's probably next level skill at playing Warhammer, is the like, boy, does it feel good in the monkey brain to just you know run in, charge something, annihilate it, and blow away the unit. Sometimes it's better to kill four out of five models in the unit, because then they're not going to hurt you that bad back, and also you stay in engagement range of them, so you can't be shot next turn. And that's where I struggle, is I will I will completely kill something that I probably should just neuter, and then it leaves my big hammer unit exposed to you know what is oftentimes a crackback, either because I don't have enough CP or more often I'm wow out in the open now because I couldn't get back behind terrain or something, and so the unit is out in the open to get shot. Whereas if I had had a little bit more restraint, I could have left one or two models on the opponent's unit up, they wouldn't have hurt me that bad in return, and then I'm protected from being shot.

SPEAKER_02 35:06

I don't know why, but this reminded me of this meme that I saw like this weekend. And it was essentially it was like a guardsman, and they were like, hey, I heard that it takes, you know, uh averagely on one turn, Fulgrim can take out 30 guardsmen and you know, guard infantry, right? And so then the guy turns around and he goes, Wait, so you're saying that we could tie up Fulgrim for an entire game just by sending 180 guard at him? Let's do this. Like, that's that's essentially like that level of thought, like that level of process, right? Um, you know, it gets past the binary I go after X and hit it hard as I want to and try to remove it, right? There's more levels to that of like maybe you don't want to remove it waiter way. And I I think you feel these when you're in the game too. Like you feel these mistakes because I know I do, right? When I go and I Martarian is a good one for me that does this to me all the time. It's like I'm so excited for him to just wipe something off of the board, and then I'm like, ooh. I probably didn't want to over wipe that one off of the board because then I could get these guys to slingshot in, and now I have more now. I can get a slow army moving up the board faster. And that happens quite a lot. That happened the last game I played with with Death Guard, come to think of it. Um yeah, it's another level to it. So, like I guess that would be like a micro mistake would be, you know, just getting excited about the fact that you're gonna hit the crap out of something, um, rather than thinking about the the micro strategy of do I really want to hit the crap out of this? Maybe I just want to hurt this thing hard enough so that you know it's not gonna hurt me back. Um, that type of inaction. But I don't know. That's that's a really interesting way to think about that from a mistake perspective, not something that gets talked about, I think, quite enough because there's a good strategy in there and and something you should be thinking about in your turn.

SPEAKER_00 37:13

Oh, it it's the biggest emotional roller coaster that I've experienced in the game. Because you go from like my turn, pounds chest, look at me. My unit is so strong. I just did this thing, I annihilated your thing next turn. What do you mean the unit I was all excited about just got deleted because I left it exposed? Like you you go from the highest of highs to the to a what do you mean that was a mistake? And so I don't know, it it was and it I've got to tell of the kind of unit that I tend to make that mistake with too, which is the the go fast smash things. Like I'm I'm pretty good when it's just a five-man unit that does that, like you know, a a chaos lord with five legionaries are chosen. Like, I'm I'm pretty good with that. If I build a 10-man hammer unit, like the most common place this kept showing up was when I played Blood Angels with 10 Death Company with Lamardis, or when I play Raven Guard with 10 jump pack intercessors and K-Von Shrike, and I'm just like, I got 11 guys with jump packs that are moving fast and coming to kick your butt, and I will throw them away for the first target that gets put in front of me. So I'm out.

SPEAKER_02 38:40

Do you think that they named him K-Von because they were naming him after Kevin? And they were like, we need to make this more flashy. Let's name him K-Von.

SPEAKER_00 38:48

I mean, that kind of fits because Raven Guard's the emo Space Marine Detachment.

SPEAKER_02 38:52

So this is this is where my brain goes, folks.

SPEAKER_00 38:56

I don't know what to say, but he gave that name to his to himself, and every time his mom talks to him, she's like, now Kevin, he's like, Mom, I told you it's K-Von. God.

SPEAKER_02 39:06

Definitely. That definitely happened in his head.

SPEAKER_00 39:09

And then he flips his hair out of his eyes.

SPEAKER_02 39:14

Emo, it wasn't a phase, it was a lifestyle. Yep. All right, anyway. Okay. So micro mistakes. I mean, that's pretty cool that that you know the trends are starting to show up. It's kind of interesting because I I think I I I love this idea that we always get to with this like micro macro thing with like strategy. I love that it also applies to mistakes. Um, I think that's pretty cool. I don't know. Now I'm gonna now I'm gonna be like looking at my situations on the board differently. Um, and I think that's a good thing, actually. I think I think this is causing me to go, hey, what's the macro strategy here? What's the micro strategy here? What you know, I don't know. I'm pretty excited about kind of applying some of this.

SPEAKER_00 40:02

Um I I also think that there's a tell all of us have, and it's probably different by player, of the micro mistakes might be a like my hypothesis is there's something in there where we we either create these micro mistakes because a something that is our favorite part of the game is about to happen and we're just excited to see it happen, or B, we're overcompensating for something that we're afraid is gonna happen. Like, I know for me, the and and they both come from both of those, is I'm constantly scared that I'm not gonna put my hammer unit out and get to use it. Yeah. So first chance I get to, boom, it's coming out. Because my nightmare is I finish a game, it didn't go my way, and I'm sit there looking at my hammer unit, going, It's cause this thing didn't get in action. Like it that there are players in my LGS who their favorite part of micro strategy is stacking all of the and then abilities on top of each other. Their nightmare is well, I'm gonna forget one of those.

SPEAKER_02 41:13

Yeah. Or I didn't get to use it, right? Or, you know, I did all this stacking and then that guy just stood there in the corner and like had his thumb up his rear.

SPEAKER_00 41:24

Yeah. So it's but yeah, it I I do think it's cool how it fit nice and neat into the micro and macro, and it's you just made me think of think of think of the one that I do.

SPEAKER_02 41:36

That probably is my big tell. I am so afraid that I'm gonna get like swarmed, like overwhelmed, that I have to fight on multiple fronts. Like, that's my biggest fear anytime I go into a game. And I I know that I make mistakes because of this because sometimes I won't let my backfield get taken, which just wow. I please, dude, we can edit that sexual innuendo out of this. Um, but anyway, we can't but we won't. Yeah, that's gonna be that is gonna show up in oh god, I can't believe it. We have our next YouTube short. There we go. I hate that I just said that. Oh man.

unknown 42:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 42:24

Anyway, I don't want somebody to get into the backfield of my position. And I don't want to get flanked, so I'm constantly sometimes spreading myself out thin so that so that that doesn't happen. And um yeah, it's definitely.

SPEAKER_00 42:49

So you're saying in a week you really want the Eagles to draft a tight end.

SPEAKER_02 42:54

I hate you. This this this episode went downhill real fast.

SPEAKER_00 43:01

No, I alright, I'll rescue you from your misery. I actually think you have a different tell. Okay. And it it's something we covered in a prior episode when we when we were talking about goal setting and whatnot, which is you are so afraid of losing flexibility and about getting locked into a predictable play pattern that you won't you're almost like, don't tell me all the micro strategy options. I don't want to know them, because then I'll get locked in decision paralysis and I'll become predictable because you're gonna assume that I'm gonna do the one that is optimally stacking them. Also, don't even tell me what's on the data sheet, just let me just let me play it the way my instincts tell me to. And so that what that causes from a micro mistake is you You don't need to stack up all the and thens, but you never get past the first and because you don't. Want to get locked into now. I feel like I have to do that thing. Because we and I see this on the Reddit comments with my battle reports, like we'll get people saying, like, well, you didn't play that list right, and it's because I didn't use all you know, I didn't use the big wombo combo. And it's because well, you built it, you had it in your list hammer, the math hammer says it's optimal, and you didn't use it, therefore you didn't play it right. It's like, but but I won the game. Yeah by a lot.

SPEAKER_02 44:30

You're not wrong. I I yeah, it's I don't know if I qualified that one as a mistake. I just think that yeah, I don't I don't know, maybe that is a mistake. I don't man, now I gotta go back and retro on my own self here after this one. Um all right, everybody else out there, think about your mistakes now.

Rules Mistakes

SPEAKER_02 44:54

Um so we got one big one hanging up for us here at the end that I know you're dying to talk about. It's the mistakes that come along when you screw up a rule or don't understand a rule or don't remember a rule, or so on and so on and so on, rules-based mistakes. What what did you learn about I'm gonna pick on you? What did you learn about in your retrospective of your games about rules-based mistakes?

SPEAKER_00 45:25

So interestingly enough, this is not the one I wanted to talk about the most. The one I wanted to talk about the most was the one we just finished talking about, and not just because I got you to talk about people deep striking into your rear end for a while. But like the the rules one, I think it just it happens. Like I have yet I've yet to see anyone play a perfect game of 40k from a rules perspective. And what I've noticed is you know, there there are a couple battle reports where like you're never gonna get it 100% right. And you know, like so an example is CSM Renegade Raiders. I forget the exact name of the stratum, but they have a stratagem you can use to if your unit was eligible to fight this turn, you can make a move at the end of the fight phase. And first couple times I played it, I glossed right over the whole if they were eligible to fight this turn. And you know, so one, like, that's not playing it correctly. That is bank error in my favor, giving myself an unfair advantage with the CSM list. So there's a feels bad there. There's some embarrassment there of I'm taking the time to write this stuff out and to put it out there for folks to see, and I'm not getting it right. You know, and I'm not saying most people like this, but you do attract the the couple of people who get their jollies on Reddit by proving other people wrong and pointing out all the mistakes and pointing out how much smarter they are than you because they knew it and you didn't, who will come out and go, Oh, though, that was a mistake, and you were a cheater. He's a dirty cheater. He's what you know, that family guy mean where the guy's just pointing at Peter saying he's a cheater or he's a liar. And so my takeaway there is it's a part of the game. I hate when I make these kind of mistakes. I always feel horrible about it. Like I feel horrible when I'm the one who makes the mistake in the game. I feel even worse if I get some advantage as a result of it. And and I've also noticed, interestingly enough, like it's one where people act the weirdest. And what I mean by that is, you know, you'll get the again, you know, my the the example of my CSM mistake. People who immediately jump to the conclusion that the CSM player in my battle report was cheating. It's me playing versus myself. If I'm cheating against myself, I have way bigger problems going on than I know about. But the second one. I probably do. But it's but if the if one of them is cheating against the other, like, man, I'm into a level at split personality that's scary. You might want to see somebody about that. But like it's uh another example of of how it can get weird. I had a game in my LGS in my Crusade League where like I've played enough against you with your Votan that I have a decent idea of their rules. Yeah. And I was playing against a Votan player, and he's he progressed from what was it like hostile acquisition to fortified takeover. So he progressed to fortified takeover. I'm like, okay, cool. So I I go to attack him and he's like, Oh, I'm minus one to wound. I'm like, but you're not on an objective. It's like doesn't matter. Like, and my gun, my gun isn't stronger than you are tough. He's like, doesn't matter, it's flat minus one to wound. Like, you know, I don't I don't think that's right. Can we look at your codex? And he got real angry with me. And then, you know, later on in the game, I I went to do something into Beery, and I'm like, I'm gonna chuck a grenade at Beery. He's like, All right, Beery surge moves into you. I'm like, I'm pretty sure the data sheet says it's only if I shoot him. He's like, Nope, it's if he takes damage. I'm like, can we check it? And he again, he got real angry. So there's like this weird thing when when you feel like the other person is calling you out for making a rules mistake, it just it seemed to strike this weird chord with a lot of people where we all it we all have this visceral emotional reaction, and you you've actually pointed this out, even though I've pushed back on you in the past, like it's where we'll get sucked into these black holes when we play Barnhammer, where we'll just start bickering about this obscure rules interaction, and everyone's ego and feelings and everything else get caught up in it, and you'll be over there just pulling your hair out, going, guys, who cares?

SPEAKER_02 50:43

Yeah, I So I think it's I when you make when you have mistakes made with rules, I think this is an area where you know everybody always wants to be the first one to be like, hey, I saw that first, right? Like it doesn't matter what it is. It doesn't it doesn't matter if it's rules, it doesn't matter if it was like a famous person or the person who said this or the they always want to be the first person to do something, right? Whether that's Reddit, whether that's in person, whether whatever, right? It's like this this expert power, right, that gets gets given to that person because they were the first person to notice that this rule is read or done that way, right? And I think that that aspect, right, can carry over into the mistakes a little bit of like, aha, I knew it. That rule was supposed to be this way, right? And it's like, okay, golf clap, congratulations, like you knew the rule, uh, they didn't, or like there was a mistake made. Like, how do you go back from that, right? Um, and I just think that that's what that's what sometimes can be weird about mistakes with rules. I just think that people, one, people take immense pride in knowing their rules. Yep. Even if they don't know their rules, they still take immense pride in knowing their rules. And then you have on top of that people that take immense pride at being like connoisseurs of the game's rules in general, right? And I think that when you start to add those things together, it does it does create this weird situation, especially when you know you're you're making a mistake, and and generally, I I think you're you said something about this earlier. Like when you make a mistake in in rules, 99% of the time it's gonna be in your favor. So then you start to get into the like you were saying, he's cheating, right? Sometimes it's just a mistake, guys. Sometimes it's just an error. And on the other end, if somebody says to you, hey, can we look at that rule? That shouldn't be a hey, you jerk, like you're trying to get one over on me, or like, hey, you're stupid because you don't know this rule. Like, it's just a it's a game that's built on rules, it's rule-based, the whole game is. So there's gonna be aspects where mistakes are gonna be made. And I don't know, that's a that's a tough one, man. With your with your uh LGS stuff, like I I'm sorry that that person you were playing against didn't didn't see the value in in making sure that the rule was accurate. But at the same time, I can understand why if they if they have pride in what they're doing and they really are passionate about it, I I can understand why somebody does get their their hair up a little bit when somebody's calling them out on their rules. It's just a weird situation, but it's one that we have to deal with in this game all the time. And unfortunately, I don't know, there's like there's no good, there's no good mechanism in this for that, right? Like, so I've played competitive card games for a long time, right? There's a good mechanism in that where you can call for a judge. Now it sucks, right? If somebody calls a judge on you, one, it's a weird tense situation, right? And I know you can do that in 40k, but it's a little hard to call a judge when it's you and your buddy in your basement and you're you know playing 40k against it. What are you gonna do? Call your mom in, call your dad in, call your cousin or your uncle or you know your neighbor or whoever, right? Like you don't have that option, right? So it is it can get really tense, it can get a little weird. Um, I don't know. That that's man, it's an interesting, it's an interesting thought.

SPEAKER_00 54:54

I I think you hit it right on the head with the the asymmetry of this. So six plus plus did uh an episode a a couple weeks back where they they had an announcer from competitive esports on who also plays 40k, and they were talking about you know what what would be needed to really professionalize competitive 40k. And he he had similar takeaways to what you just had, which is he said, you know, one at its heart come 40k is different from most esports games and different from card games in that it requires a level of collaboration between both players to play effectively. And you just don't see that in the other ones, because that it's it's much more of a black and white game, it's a shorter interaction, there's not as much nuance going on and not as much gray area. But then the other thing he brought up is he said, you know, he he made he was basically issuing a call for if they're ever going to do that, they should not have massive cash prizes. And instead, any additional revenue that gets generated as a result of competitive 40k should go into having active judging at as many tables as possible. So think about it from a sports perspective, like baseball. How many umpires are there judging the game all the time? Like you're not depending on the catcher to call strikes, you have an umpire behind them. 40k, we're relying on the batter and the catcher to agree what's a strike and what's a ball. And then we get surprised when arguments break out about you know whether or not something nicked the edge of the plate or was just outside the strike zone.

SPEAKER_02 56:36

My god, could you imagine this community if they introduced AI as a way of refereeing games? Oh my god, that would be amazing. Like baseball with the strike zone now, like the computers telling you whether or not it was a strike. Oh god, that would be an epic meltdown. Um, not I'm not condoning that for all those that are gonna yell at us. I'm not, I don't want that. I'm just I don't know, just based off of what you were just saying, that that's kind of crazy.

SPEAKER_00 57:08

Well, it it's I don't know, it strikes me, but basically what they're pointing out is that one, you need active judging, and then two, you need active judging as a way of controlling for the fact that with these kind of rules mistakes, and it's not a uniform rule, but more often than not, the person who makes a rules mistake is making it in their favor, and my experience with my battle reports a hundred percent proves that out, and so that that results in the person who didn't make the mistake eating the basically eating the penalty because there was no punishment to the person who made the mistake. You make a strategic macro mistake or a macro strategy mistake, you're eating that that consequence yourself because you messed something up. You make a strategic uh micro strategy mistake, you're eating that consequence. You know, there's a natural consequence to your mistake. The other person doesn't have a feel bad. A rules mistake, there's an asymmetry there where if I get one of my rules wrong, and more often than not, I'm gonna get it wrong in my favor, well, you're the one eating that consequence, and I benefit.

SPEAKER_02 58:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:18

And I think that's where a lot of the the feelings come from. The other thing that I really like that you said that I hadn't thought about, because we've we've tried to implement a version of this when we play in your barn when there's a a big group of us. I've seen the folks try and implement this at my LGS, and it never works. Is the you ask a neutral third party to to come and act as a pseudo, you know, active judge. And I ran into this this past weekend. I had a game and I'm playing Crusades, so there's an aspect where you you know you you have random demons spawning in the game, and and every now and again we we need someone to to act on behalf of the demons or to make a judgment call on some of the rules. And so we we had a couple other players in the store. The store owner was busy, so it asked the guy who's playing, I'm like, hey, that other guy who was over there is playing, I've played him, he really knows the rules. Do you want to just have him be our neutral third party? He's like, Yeah, that sounds about right. So then the the guy comes over and says, Here's a scenario, here's what we're wondering what to do. You know, in this case, the rules said you're you're demon when they spawn in, they need to move and charge the closest, nearest thing. And we were virtually identically far away from the demon, so it could go either way. So the neutral party comes over and he's like, Well, I think we need to move this way. And the other guy starts arguing with him. Like, well, we just agreed we're going to empower this guy to be a neutral party and to be a judge, and now you're saying you know better than him. Like, what are we doing here? And we so it it strikes me that this is a of all the mistakes we've talked through, this is the thorniest one to solve. And I know it's the one that drives you absolutely crazy because it can it can change the mood in the barn on instantly.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:17

I just think that it derails the game, it derails the flow of the game. I I don't know, when you were talking, I I I just had this thought in my head of like kind of how cool would it be if each table in a tournament had like a referee assigned to it, like like in like a a boxing match or a ref or like a wrestling match, like and it's before you start the game, both parties come up and then you know he's like, All right, I want a clean fight, I want nothing below the belt, I don't want any, you know, eye gouging and biting and whatever else that you know goes along with it, right? But in 40k, it is something where I mean you could establish that, right? Like, listen, if there's a rules thing, uh as the referee, I'm gonna make a decision. That decision's final. This is how we're gonna go with it. You know, this is the the tempo that we're gonna play at. We're you know, these are you know how we're gonna do it. You you could you could establish that. Um, and I think I mean we're talking competitive at this point, right? We're talking, you know, having that level of interaction, obviously, would be something that could maybe take some of the thorny night out of like a tournament, right? When you have those types of decisions. Because I know I've seen them, I know you've seen them, where sometimes some of the stuff that can happen in a tournament when you know everybody's baked out, they've been there for two days straight, you know, and they're tired and cranky and frustrated, and there's a lot of pressure, and then next thing you know, it boils out of hand. I mean, the whole point of some of these tournaments having a you know who was the most sportsman-like type, you know, interaction value um is because of these things. So now in your barn, can you do that? I don't really know. I personally, and maybe this is biased because it's my barn, but at the end of the day, like go by host rules. Like if you're playing at someone's house and and you know, set up the rules ahead of time. Like, here's how we're gonna decide these things. Like, I don't know, my neighbor's gonna come over and he's gonna say this, and and he's gonna make a decision, and that's gonna be it, you know, something along those lines. Or like if you can establish a neutral third party, um, you know, just establish it up front. I think that's that's the only way you can really get around that. Otherwise, like you were saying, mistakes from a rules perspective, they really can they can get everybody's ego involved, they can get everybody's feelings involved, and they can sway a game big time. And it can it can become something that turns a really positive experience into a negative one really fast.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:09

Yeah, and it's they're always gonna happen, is my takeaway. Like it, I and I try very hard when I put these battle reports out to make sure I am getting all of the rules interactions 100% correct. But it's not gonna happen. Like I it, you know, I'm gonna there are gonna be mistakes that sneak through.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:32

And and I don't know, it it so to I think a little bit of this, and I don't do this on this podcast ever, but you're kind of hitting on something. I think that's on GW a little bit too, right? Like the nature of the way that rules are with inside of this game, sometimes the language that they use, they try to get cutesy and fancy with the way that they talk about something. Like, write the freaking rule plain as day. Like, write it as best you can, plain English, for everybody. Maybe your language isn't English, so not necessarily just English, but plain in the language that everybody can understand and take away some of the made-up verbiage that goes along with some of their rules, and it's like, you know, then then too that can help, you know, alleviate some of the confusion around this because I I think there's an aspect of when you get to list hammering, right? There's there's a part of looking at those rules, and then you start playing the mistakes to your favor. And I think that that's something that that is abundant um in this game. Everybody is you know, that's a part of the optimization aspect. Like I'm tying a lot of things here together into this this last aspect here because I think that this is where a lot of that kind of feel-bad-esque stuff comes from.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:06

I mean, you're describing what is up there in the top three of triggers for me, which is the part of how I, as a player, am going to show everyone how good I am at this game, is I'm going to list hammer in a way that exploits all the loopholes and all the gray area. Because I agree with you, GW has a long way to go in properly expressing their intent in the rules as they're written. And I I agree with you, there's a whole subculture of I'm gonna show you how good I am at this game because I know the rules so good, I'm gonna build a list to exploit all the gray area and all the loopholes in them, and I'm gonna beat you by doing that because I'm that's how good I am at this game. And oh boy, does that one frustrate me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:58

Yeah. That laser just down. The rabbit hole of gotchas, which again, it just you know, we say it all the time like this this game is about having fun, it's about an experience that you're sharing with everybody that's involved on the tabletop. And if you're doing that, you're taking away from that. And so I don't know, we we kind of diverged from mistakes, but I think I think it's in understanding that the rules mistakes can cause these like trickle effects that we're talking about now. I think uh honestly, I think that that's why I thought you would want to talk about rules mistakes more because I know I know that in some of this is where you start to get yourself frustrated. And and I know you you enjoy playing um, you know, in things like the Crusade League and stuff like that that you've you've been a part of, but I also know talking with you that this is this is something that's rampant and that you experience um through those games too. And and I don't know, it's it's definitely a topic worth thinking about. I think mistakes in general probably don't get talked about enough in 40k. And and I don't know. It's exciting for us to have a podcast wrapped around it because I feel like I have a lot of feelings on this subject.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:13

Yeah, I I mean I think you summarized my position really well, which is at the end of the day, like part of why I love this hobby so much is the ability to talk about and grow from mistakes the way we talked about the first two, the the macro strategy and the micro strategy. Because there's some real tangible things we talked about to get better and to to constantly be working at improving as a player, as a person, and that's the kind of stuff I just eat up. Like I I love that. And you and I have gotten a ton out of you know, this podcast came from us trying to figure out how to get better at things and ways to have more fun with this hobby because we don't get to play it as much as we would like. So there's an aspect of that that I think part of my frustration is the let's focus on those first two and focus less on the third one, because it's gonna happen, and then let's get over it. Like it reminds me of, and I tell my kids this all the time, because they both play sports yeah, the refs or the umpires or the judges or whoever they're gonna blow a couple calls. Let's not fixate on that. Let's let's focus on the stuff we can control. And and let's let's invest our energy there. And I think you you kind of beat around the bush, and I I'm just foot stomping it of the that's what I I'm way more interested in, is focusing on the things that I as a player can control. And it's improving my knowledge and of the rules so that I make less of those mistakes and cause less positions for those kind of blowouts to occur. And then really I'm I'm excited to keep working at the micro and macro strategy side of things.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:00

Yeah, I I love that. I love the idea that you know focus less on the rules aspect, focus more on micro and macro, you know, mistakes and and how to improve on

Conclusion and Outro

SPEAKER_02 1:09:12

them. Um I think there's to to kind of sum up my thoughts on the the rules mistakes aspect. I I think part of the cool part about this game is giving enough grace to make those mistakes and then learning from them and understanding them. Um it's very hard for people uh sometimes to be able to just read a rule and understand the intent. Sometimes you have to see it play out on the table. I'm one of these people, right? Um, I first of all, I'm dyslexic. Um, and so for me to read all the rules and memorize them, I'm memorizing a lot of them backwards. Um, so there's that. Um, so it's tough. Um, and so sometimes I have to see a rule play out on the board for me to be able to really understand it. Or maybe I think it's one thing and then I see it on the board, and because of the situation on the board, I realize that's not what it was, right? And and so the intent is something that I have to get from war hammering. I have to get from that experiential learning aspect of the game. And um, you know, it's it's it's it's actually something that I I find very rewarding um when I do learn something and I do understand it and I can figure it out a little bit better, and it it makes the game just that much more exciting for me that I get to go and apply that next time in a different way. Um, and to your point, I don't want to feel like I'm leveraging something, you know, that gives me an advantage. It's not about that. It's more about getting that experience of playing it, even if it's wrong, even if I made a mistake, getting that experience, learning from it, understanding it from somebody else's perspective, which often helps me really to generate the intent, which is something that I really need sometimes from a context perspective of memorizing something. Um and so, you know, just to just to kind of give a different perspective of you know what what it what it means to make a mistake when it comes to rules-based games and how hard that can be. Um you know, it's it's something that that uh that I don't know. I find very interesting. Uh, you know, I it's it's kind of a tough thing for me to talk about actually a little bit because it is a part of this game and it's something that you know I struggle with a little bit. But there's an aspect of that where give grace in in those moments, you know, you don't always know what the other person on the other side of the board is dealing with, and you know, it could be a situation like mine. Um, but how cool would it be if you took that in stride and instead of that person getting really upset about you questioning, hey, that rule, I don't really know if I understand it. Can we go over it? What if they took that time instead of saying, oh well, I I'm an expert on my rules and I I never make mistakes, and they said, Yeah, let's look at it together. Yeah, that's just a different situation, and you can get a lot from it. So I don't know. It's uh probably took that one down a tangent. I didn't know I was gonna go down today, but but yeah, it's it's definitely a thing when you're thinking about you know the rules mistakes.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:55

So I have two wrap-up points. One, I think it's really funny as much as you teased me about being the one who wanted to talk about rules mistakes. I think that hit a nerve with you more than it hit with me. That's fair. And two, do you know what is never a mistake, Steve? What's that? Oh god. Playing Emperor's Children.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:18

Oh my god. All right, everybody. I this this one this one's going long enough. Wait. Thank you, everyone. We're back on our one week schedule. I promise I won't work so much next time, so we'll get our releases out on time, but appreciate you all listening. Have a good night. Take care, everyone.