Failure isn’t adequately addressed in games. The reality of failure, the immediacy and the high probability of failure in the real world is not well expressed in the games we play. We fail at a task and we have to return to a point earlier in time, from before our failure, and we have to then try to execute “properly”, avoiding the failure. It’s very artificial, we just hand-wave it away like a story whose details you can’t remember (literally this, in the case of a few games).

To some extent, I think this is why Dark Souls and Bloodborne have taken root in the collective “hardcore” gamer psyche. Failure is inevitable, frequent, and harsh, and for a lot of people I suspect it fills the void created by success without the threat of failure. There’s an interesting duality there: it is far more satisfying to succeed at a thing you thought impossible, and far more demoralizing to fail at something you know you’re capable of.

There’s a certain school of thought that latches onto this, and says that games should always be played at the highest difficulty setting, with the underlying though focusing on maximizing the former and minimizing the latter. I don’t ascribe to this particular point of view, because I don’t think that every game necessarily has “difficulty” as a relevant part of the experience, but I also don’t ascribe the opposing view that playing games on the highest difficulty is exclusively an expression of ego and machismo, a paean of the “hardcore”, as it were.

Failure is healthy for the psyche, much like change. We fear it, and avoid it, but it is in our failures that we learn and grow, and it is in continual assured victories that we stop progressing and stabilize. There are advantages to the latter; I had originally typed “stagnate” and “regress”, but I think that’s an overly harsh evaluation– there is value in stability and headlong, unceasing progression leaves little time for self-evaluation. Too much of anything is unhealthy, but especially with games it’s easy to fall into a state where you simply consume content without investment, accruing victory after victory without context.

Unfortunately, I don’t think games as a medium address failure well. Failure isn’t fun. This isn’t just a function of failure; failure can be incredibly fun, it just needs to be designed that way. I don’t think we’ve found a magic bullet for it, and we’ve created a paradigm in which even the slightest failure leads to an instantly reloaded save game.

I remember the old Hitman series, with limited saves (or no saves) on each level, forcing you to either play through a lengthy level from the start or to live with your mistakes. It’s that latter that I want to see more of. Games don’t let us live with our mistakes and attempt to right them; we either fail and GAME OVER or we fail and the game reminds us of it, but we cannot ever make things right.

Interestingly, I think the place where failure is best expressed is in the MMO space, where you can’t reload to a previous save but you can go back and right your mistakes. There’s a certain reality to that fantasy space that’s compelling to me, and I think why I spend so much time in MMOs compared to other games.

This month is my month for the Aggrochat GOTM, and I’m having some difficulty deciding on a game for everyone to play.

I really want a game that sparks discussion, particularly in our approaches. We’ve had games where we talk about our different takes on the experiences we had (Citizens of Earth, Trine 2), but we haven’t yet had a game where our approaches to playing it differ dramatically. I feel like that demands an RPG of some kind, but one that’s relatively consumable in the month allotted.

I’ve also waffled back and forth on whether I want to select a game that I’ve already played and know is good (to recommend to the rest of the group) or a game I haven’t played or have barely touched, so my experience is as fresh as everyone else’s.

There’s a tie here to an issue I have that comes up frequently when I deal with other people– I very much want to offer the best experience I can to other people, regardless of my own personal interests. It comes up a lot in certain social situations: I’m very reticent to introduce myself to someone I don’t know, because I generally feel like people don’t need to be bothered by me coming to take up their time and space. This extends to even my close friends– if I’m choosing the thing we do, I want to make sure it’s an enjoyable experience for everyone, no matter what my own personal interests are.

I have a game I would pick if I only cared about myself, and I’ve already eliminated it from the running because I know two other people wouldn’t really enjoy it, even though I think it would be a fascinating game for us all to play and share notes on. It’s just a game I crave spoiler-heavy discussion on, because I’ve had very little of it.

It’s an interesting conundrum, because I’m trying to be more aware of the underlying reasons behind the decisions I make. Do I choose something *I* really want to play, or do I try to pick something that I like less and that is less interesting for me to talk about because I think it’ll be more interesting for everyone else? Which of the two is a more arrogant decision, thinking I can get inside my friends’ heads or steamrolling their desires in order to get my way?

Difficult. I suppose tune in to Aggrochat this Sunday to find out what happened.

Last night, in FFXIV, we failed at winning our raid.

It was some of the most fun we’ve had raiding in a while. We were laughing and joking and while we didn’t win, we made progress. It was a stark difference from the last time we were in there, a few weeks ago. There’s been some various shakeups, what with people’s schedules being scattered, moving, etc, and so we haven’t had the team together to hit Turn 9 since the end of March. We’ve still raided every week, but haven’t quite gotten back to Turn 9.

The last time we were in there, the team was burned out. We pushed, and I think we more effectively reached later stages of the fight, but we shut down. We were more focused on perfect executions of various phases and we had irritation (though never outbursts– the team is way too good for that) at minor mistakes that led to us falling behind. The huge amount of adaptability that I think of when I think of our raid crew had given way to a steely focus on perfect execution, because we’d been working on execution for the last several weeks prior to that. Last night, by comparison, we were less focused on execution and more focused on just making it to the next phase. It’s the first significant progress we’ve made in the last 5-6 nights of fighting that boss.

I got to see the same in thing in action over this past weekend, in a much more rapid-fire scenario. The goal was to get 11 people up and over a 15-foot wall, and each of the 11 people could only help (read: make any physical contact with) a climber twice over the entire run. An “assist” was consumed only when a climber made it over the wall, but one assist was consumed for every person who helped. Some people get “bonus” assists based on height and weight, the concept being that those two factors affect how useful an assist might be– a very tall person with a lot of mass can boost someone up rather high, whereas a very short, light person isn’t going to be quite as effective at that.

On the surface, it looks like an optimization problem wherein you practice getting people up with a minimum number of assists– ideally no more than 2 per person. It’s tempting to work on this execution, trying to get people up and over the wall with fewer and fewer assists until you hit that optimum number. It’s a trap that (we were told) a lot of groups fall into, and indeed, caused some minor issues for the other group running in parallel with us (the morning team; we were the afternoon team).

Our group managed the wall in one run, simply by going and working out the details as we went. It was obvious to everyone that each person needed to go up with a minumum of assists, but it was equally obvious that fatigue was going to be a real factor. Given enough time and practice, a person might be able to get up over the wall with one or two assists, but by the time that was achieved that person might be exhausted, as will everyone else helping them. Better to use the assists when necessary and minimize fatigue, rather than becoming paralyzed trying to plan in advance and being inflexible, resetting when the “proper” execution isn’t achieved.

It’s left me considering making an executive decision for the raid, something I very rarely ever do: no more than two consecutive weeks focusing on a single boss– too much time on the same encounter and we shift from adapability and focus to tunnelvision and frustration, because we’re thinking about it too much. Rather than trying to perfect execution (a focus that led us to wipe for an entire night on the same transition of Turn 9), I want to keep us on our toes and flexible, used to working together and handling situations rather than trying to perfect a particular step-by-step process.

I’d rather get to 37% and wipe on a messy attempt than get to 47% perfectly and wipe repeatedly on the same transition because we can’t *quite* get our execution right.

It might wind up being an unpopular decision, and I can already think of a few people in the raid who are going to be tight-lipped at me about even the suggestion, we’ll see. What I know is that the last time we were in Turn 9 I was wondering when we would finish so I could do something fun, and this time I didn’t realize we were on our last attempt of the night until someone went “whoa, there’s only 11 minutes left”.

If I have any job as a team leader in a video game, it’s to do everything in my power to make every night like that latter, rather than the former.

Short post today, as it’s currently painful to type. I managed to mess up my shoulder over the weekend, climbing up suspended logs.

Injury aside, it was a pretty incredible weekend and offered a lot of really interesting hands-on insights into how teams form and leaders emerge, and what those terms even mean. I really wish it were feasible to bring the guild/raid through a course like this, I think it would be really awesome.

Short post today, before I head out to go dangle by ropes and hope that I’ve overcome my fear of heights in a week. I’ll leave you over the weekend with a question that’s been bouncing around in my head:

What experience do you most regret, and how did you improve afterwards? Would you change the experience and give up the improvement, if you could?

I realize this title sounds like my previous entry. I draw a really distinct line between “games I don’t like” and “games that aren’t fun”, and a conversation I had recently really put a stark light on that. First, though, I want to talk about fun.

Fun is absolutely subjective. It’s also the job of every game designer to “find the fun”. This is, as you might imagine, faintly maddening. I’ve mentioned this before, but part of the job of a game designer is to figure out what you don’t know you want, and build it. A game designer has to be able to know what you think is fun before you realize it’s fun. This is why the second game in a trilogy (if properly funded/given enough time) is often so good. The first game is gently prodding, seeing what people respond to, the second game tends to go nuts, showing off all of the bits that everyone loved, and by the third people are a bit tired and ready to move on. If you look at game series that have huge hits for their third or fourth entries, look for the ones that radically change parts of the game while sticking to a recognizable formula.

Anyway. Fun is subjective, and games try to find fun for as many people as possible, knowing full well that a lot of people will not find the fun in the game.

At this point, it’s really important to note that a “fun game” and a “good game” are not the same thing. There are plenty of good games that I don’t find fun (Halo, EvE Online) or that I used to find fun but don’t anymore (World of Warcraft), and there are plenty of bad games that I find fun (not naming games here).

There are a few important notes that I feel like people often forget here:

 

TAM’S RULES FOR FUN GAMES

1. A game can be good even if you don’t find it fun. You can find a bad game fun. THIS IS OKAY.
2. Your opinion can change. You can find a game fun and later not find it fun, and vice-versa. THIS IS OKAY.
3. Fun can surprise you, but it’s hard to force.

 

The first of these is the bane of forumgoers everywhere. It’s why I don’t self-identify as a “gamer” anymore. The reality of being a “gamer” is that you like and play games, which I’m fine with. The implication that comes up is that you are a connoisseur of them, which is where things get murky. By extension, this suggests that “better” gamers are more discerning and like (or perhaps only play) “good” games, often with a little rider of “more complex” games. This is why there are so many people gushing over Bloodborne, a game targeting a very niche audience. It’s an excellently crafted game that is very likely not fun for the majority of the game-playing audience. It is a good game that many won’t find fun. I’ve seen a depressing number of comments from people that boil down to, essentially, “if you like video games, play Bloodborne”. Not just forumgoers, not trolls, people I know personally who often have excellent taste in games, but have trouble separating “fun” and “good”.

When I was working as a game designer, I spend a lot of time playing good games as a learning experience, even if I didn’t find them fun. It’s not a practice I recommend to anyone who isn’t researching games to a specific end. I think a lot of the vitriol that gets thrown at Anita Sarkeesian is a result of her talking clinically about games, separating “good” and “fun”, and not really talking about fun at all. She’s not engaging on the “fun” axis, but because so many people conflate “good” and “fun”, her criticism feels like an attack, when it isn’t that at all.

The second rule (which is connected to the third) is another one that is hard to internalize, and took me a long time. For years, I loved World of Warcraft. I played a LOT of it, accomplished a ton of stuff, did every piece of content I could, and was incredibly heavily invested, to the point where some of my closest friends are people I met in that game. I would gush about how much fun it was to anyone who would listen, and got a lot of people playing who might not ever have touched it.

Over time, things changed for me. The game moved in a direction I didn’t enjoy as much, but I still had a lot of friends there and people around me who wanted to play, so I stuck with it. At this point, I probably gushed MORE about how much fun I was having, because I wasn’t having as much of it but wanted to keep up that image. “Person who has fun playing WoW” had become a part of my identity, and so admitting that I wasn’t having as much fun was uncomfortable.

Years passed, and the game continued to shift. My descriptions of the fun I was having became vehement, while I played less and less, talking more about the game I wasn’t playing than actually playing it. My comments took a distinct tone of “what I would change” and “how to make the game better”, a quasi-hopeful wishlist for the fun I wanted to be having.

Eventually, I realized I had come to hate the game. Not through any fault of the game, though I had difficulty articulating that at the time, but because I had tried to force fun out of something I wasn’t having fun with, and eventually burned out. It’s a good game that I simply wasn’t having fun with, and trying to force it made me bitter.

As a counter-example, when we all first started playing FFXIV, I dove hugely into it, played a ton of it, and started to get burned out. The grind I needed to do to keep up wasn’t fun for me, but I couldn’t progress further in the game without devoting myself to it. It stopped being fun, and after my WoW experience, I recognized it and stopped playing. I left the game feeling okay about it, but not wanting to play it. Flash forward several months and several patches, and I found myself back in the game and enjoying myself hugely. When I’ve started feeling burned out, I’ve put less playtime in, and I’ve intentionally avoided the grinds that would drive me to quit again. This means I miss out on some stuff, but that drive to squeeze every bit of juice out means I’m likely to be left with a dry, empty husk. I play a bit less until I’m excited to play again, then I delve back in.

I know a number of people who are like this in WoW, who only return for a little while for major expansions or patches, then leave again. Most of these people are happy with their WoW experience, and find the game fun still, versus the many I know who log in daily but are listless, not having fun but still playing.

You can’t force fun. If you aren’t having fun with something, a game in which you’re presumably investing your free time in order to get enjoyment, stop playing it. Give it a break, free yourself from the feeling that you NEED to jump in and play. When you no longer have to log in, you’ll get to see if you really miss it or not, and once you’ve realized that you’ll be in a better position to gauge whether it’s fun again. Your opinion can wax and wane, and that’s okay.

As for me, right now I’m not playing very much. I’m ensuring I don’t get burned out on Final Fantasy before the expansion, and I’m reading a bunch of books. I played through Persona 4 recently because it was fun, but I have Final Fantasy Type-0 and Pillars of Eternity that I haven’t gotten much into, but I will, eventually.

When they’re fun for me.

Here’s my guild, in FFXIV:

 

Some numerical statistics: Of the 135 members, 89 have been active within the last two weeks, and 63 have been online within the last 24 hours (stats taken on a Monday night). We’re also, this week, the 3rd highest ranked guild on the server.

I haven’t led a group this big since World of Warcraft, when I was co-leading LNR. I took the same stats for LNR at its peak at one point, while I was playing with various organizational addons. At its peak, LNR had about 85 active members, 65 of which had been on within two weeks of me checking, and usually about 50 of which had been on in the last 24 hours (though this varied heavily based on the day of the week). For a significant amount of time, LNR was competing for a slot in the 3rd-5th place for most advanced raiding group on the server.

FFXIV measures guild rank a bit differently. It’s not about how far you’ve progressed, it’s about how active you are. Almost any activity you do nets you guild credits (which can be spent on guildwide buffs), and ranking is by credits, weighted slightly. A guild where people only log in to hit the next progression raid is going to be ranked well below a guild that’s online, doing various things at all tiers of content. For us, our sub-level 20 players who are just puttering around doing quests are often contributing as much or more to the overall guild ranking than our top-level players who might just be sitting around chatting at the guild house.

At any given time, I can log in to about 10-15 people online. On weekends it’s rather more than that, and at severely off-hours (like 5AM Pacific), it’s less than that. It’s been weeks since I’ve been able to log in at a time when no other people are logged in, because in addition to having 135 members, we have a lot of international players.

As the guild leader, this is stressful for me. I’m ostensibly responsible for the happiness and well-being of more than a hundred people scattered across the globe, who want things to be organized and who want to be included in activities. As a point of comparison, the maximum group size for organized raid content is 8. For the most part, those 8-man raids are the things that people really want to be a part of.

Note the above stats: 63 people have been on within the last 24 hours. Managing to break down those members of the 63 people into discrete groups of 8, who have compatible schedules and who have the right gear/classes/etc to properly tackle the content in question is a nightmare.

In LNR, I handled this badly. What I did there was assume that nothing would get done without my involvement and spent a lot of time ensuring that things were working smoothly and that people were happy, or as happy as I could get them. I was studiously involved with layers upon layers of contingencies to make sure that everyone was getting a fair shot and that everything was as equitable as possible, down to spending hours poring over loot tables to ensure that things were distributed in a limited-but-reasonable way.

Now I take a different approach. After getting severely burned out and developing an interest in how to lead groups of people effectively without destroying myself, I’ve worked out a philosophy that’s served me fairly well thus far:

The highest aspiration of any leader should be to make themselves obsolete.

A well-run organization full of competent people will know what needs to be done and make those things happen. A leader’s role is to get people to that point, and then stop interfering. I make a few assumptions, that I hold to be true for all of my members until an individual proves otherwise to me:

1. My group members are competent.
2. My group members are trying to improve to a point where they are happy, and others around them are happy with them.
3. My group members are capable of identifying obstacles in their way and will attempt to overcome them.
4. My group members will come to me if they run into an obstacle they can’t overcome.

Pretty much everything I do as a guild leader (and as a leader in general) focuses on ensuring that the above four things are true, and if they aren’t, making changes until they are true. I only interfere when I need to course-correct, but otherwise I sit and watch to make sure the clock is ticking correctly without me manually moving the hand every second (because that’s exhausting and error-prone).

It’s a much healthier and much more effective means of leading a group than I had before, partly because it’s less busywork and more analysis on my part, and partly because I’m not micromanaging (and thus irritating) people. I lead one of the raid groups within the guild, and we’ve grown enough that a second one is spinning up. I have been keeping a close eye on it and making sure it has the resources it needs to form, but I’ve otherwise been hands-off. Another guild member has stepped up and is organizing and leading it, and other guild members are chipping in to help out. The clock is ticking nicely, and now that it’s rolling, I am not necessary to the process.

In Greysky Armada, I am largely obsolete, and the guild ticks along quite well. In there, at least, I think I’m succeeding as a leader.

The following happens to myself and people I know constantly: I have a game I want to play with people, that I think they’d enjoy, but they’ve never played it before. They need to learn how the game is played, from scratch. This is not easy to do.

Recently, I had a friend try to teach me a game he loves. It’s not a simple game by any stretch of the imagination, with relatively complex mechanics and even more complex strategy. It seems like an interesting game, but after 30 minutes of explanation, I couldn’t tell you how it’s played. Rather than criticizing, however, I want to try to lay out a basic plan for teaching games.

I’m going to use Infinity as my example. Here’s how to play Infinity, and what I’m doing with each step. You should be able to follow along with the images and the bolded sentences to get a picture of how to play Infinity.

STEP 1: THE PREMISE

We’ll start with the absolute basics. Infinity is a minis game about futuristic black ops, with agents and counter-agents trying to achieve objectives and shooting each other. Full stop. One sentence. Before I go any further, I want to communicate a really high-level picture of the game that’s concise and complete. Note that I didn’t stop at “futuristic minis game”, because that isn’t evocative. There are a lot of minis games, and they’re all different. Infinity isn’t a massed wargame, it’s got very small model counts and is extremely tactical– but I don’t need to say any of that explicitly right away.

It’s played on a dense table where you’re moving around and through a lot of scenery, hiding and taking cover. The tagline a lot of people use is “it’s always your turn”. Two more sentences, both communicate the REST of what I need to evoke– the kind of play you can expect. This is all of the big-picture stuff I need to say, but it should be enough to suggest to people whether it’s the kind of game they might like or not. A lot of people, particularly experienced ones, go into really detailed high-level strategy to talk about why the game is interesting. I think this is a mistake– it’s where you lose people, or get them thinking it’s “too complicated”. You want imaginations running wild, not an analysis of specific interactions. As an example of Doing It Wrong: “In Infinity, you can have your guy with smoke bombs make a screen so that your other guy who can see through the smoke can shoot at people who can’t– it’s brutal and awesome!” I’ve heard this sentence used to describe the game and I’ve watched as the listener starts tuning out. You should never talk about high-level strategy when teaching a game for the first time, particularly not when you’ve yet to set up a board and actually play.

STEP 2: FOUNDATIONS

At this point, you can go into the rules, in the simplest possible way. There is a concept in game design referred to as the “core gameplay loop”, which is the very basic way in which you interact with the game. It’s the actions you take in order to resolve uncertainty– where “uncertainty” is anything you do that isn’t guaranteed. If you say “I shoot this guy” and then roll some dice, that’s the core gameplay loop. It’s closely tied in with another concept called “resolution”– which is the actual set of dice you roll/cards you play/buttons you push and how they work. To go back to Infinity:

Infinity uses d20s, and a “blackjack” style of rolling, where you want to roll as high as you can without going over a target number. Higher numbers cancel lower numbers. It also uses “orders”, which are like action points, that you can spend to make models do things.

Super simple, super straightforward. I still haven’t needed to show off any game pieces yet, and you should be able to imagine both how the game feels conceptually as well as a vague sense of how it resolves mechanically. Next, we want to talk about how turns work.

Whenever it’s your turn, you get a number of orders equal to the number of models you have on the table that are still alive and functioning. You can spend orders as you like, on any model you have on the table. There is no limit to the number of orders that can be spent on a single model.

When you spend an order, you get two actions, like a turn in D&D. You get, essentially, a simple skill and a complex skill. Moving, looking around, climbing, those are all simple skills. Shooting, dodging, taking an objective, those are complex skills. You can downgrade a complex skill to a simple skill if you want to, say, move twice in one order, but you can’t go the other way and shoot twice in one order.

If it’s not your turn, your models don’t just stand there and get shot. Whenever your opponent spends an order on a model, and that model winds up in the line of sight of one of your models, you can react. This is called an ARO, or “automatic reactive order”. They’re free, and you can take one complex action in response. If your opponent shoots you, you can shoot back! AROs are declared after the first part of the active player’s order, before the second part is declared. There are downsides, but we’ll get to them later.

We’re drilling down slowly into details. We’ve covered a high level explanation, the core combat loop, and how turns and actions work.

The next step here, the next block in the foundation, is to provide context:

This is a unit. It’s got a bunch of stats and it’s got some equipment and weapons. I’ll go through it in order:

• MOV is short for “movement”: It’s how far the model can move, in inches, when it spends an Order. There are two numbers there, one for each “part” of an order, but I’ll get to that later. The specifics here aren’t relevant right now, and I want to stay focused on providing context to the stats. It’s tempting to completely cover every detail as it comes up, but you lose focus when you do.
• CC is short for “close combat”. It’s your base target number for hitting someone in melee.
• BS is short for “ballistic skill”. It’s your base target number for hitting someone with a ranged weapon.
• PH is short for “physical”. It’s used for dodging, how hard you hit in melee, and most things relating to your body.
• WIP is short for “willpower”. It’s used for taking objectives, hacking, being courageous, and most things relating to your mind.
• ARM is short for “armor”. It’s your level of protection against being shot or stabbed.
• BTS is short for “biotechnological shield”. It’s a complex name that really just means your level of protection against special attacks. I’m simplifying a nonintuitive game term here for ease of understanding.
• W is short for “wounds”. It’s how many hit points you have before you go unconscious. If you take a wound while unconscious, you’re dead. A little extra detail here, but an important one.
• S is short for “silhouette”. It’s a way of telling how big a unit is without relying on just the mini.
• AVA is short for “availability”. It’s how many you can take in your list, and “total” means there’s no limit.

Below the stats, you can see a line showing the name of the unit, what weapons it has, and an “SWC” and “C”– these are costs used for building a list.

On the left, near the unit icon, you can see a little green arrow. Most troops have that arrow, and it just means they’re “Regular”. It’s not important now, just remember that not every troop is Regular.

That is the simplest rundown of everything in a unit stat block. There’s one other bit of context:

You’ve seen a unit statline, here’s a weapon statline:

This is a combi rifle, what that Fusilier up there has.

• The colored bar is in increments of 8 or 16 inches, and shows the bonuses or penalties you get to your BS when shooting at those ranges. 
• Damage is the base damage of the weapon, it is reduced by the ARM of whatever it hits, and is the one weird roll in Infinity. When you get hit, you have to make an ARM roll. Reduce the damage of the weapon by your ARM, and then you have to roll ABOVE the resulting number. This is a little piece of resolution that we skipped before, but is complete now that we have all of the context. It’s also a weird roll in the game, and worth calling out specifically.
• B stands for “burst”, and it’s how many shots you take each time you shoot if it’s your turn. In ARO, your B drops to 1. The active player tends to have an advantage, here. A little bit of commentary here, just enough to paint a more complete picture of things.
• Ammunition has a variety of types, N stands for “normal”. If people ask, I’ll talk about the other types here, but otherwise I’ll keep going.
• Traits are special things about the weapon, we’re not going to worry about them for now. Keep it simple, because of what’s coming next.

STEP 3: AN EXAMPLE

We’ve covered some basics as well as providing context. We can now talk about an example.

My Fusilier is behind this building and wants to shoot yours. It’s my turn, I spend an order and use my first action to step around the corner, where we can see each other. You decide to ARO, and declare that you’re going shoot me. I wanted to shoot you anyway, so I declare that for the second part of my order I’m going to shoot you as well. Now we roll off.

We measure the distance between us, let’s say it’s 12 inches. That’s in the +3 range of our combi rifles, so we both add +3 to our BS when shooting. I’m the active player, so I use my full Burst (which is 3), and you have Burst 1. I’ll roll 3d20, looking for 15 or less, against your 1d20, also looking for 15 or less. This is called a face-to-face roll.

I roll a 17, a 12, and a 3. You roll a 10, which is a hit. My 17 misses, and my 12 and 3 hit. However, your 10 is higher than my 3, so it cancels the 3. My 12 cancels your 10. The net result is that I hit you once. Now you make an ARM roll. The combi rifle is Damage 13, and you have ARM 1, so you roll again, trying to get better than (13-1) 12. You rolled a 14, so you’re safe.

You might have survived being shot at, but anyone will flinch at a bullet pinging off of their armor, so you have to make what’s called a Guts check. You roll your WIP to see if you can stand your ground. Your WIP is 12, and you rolled a 16, so you have to duck into cover.

Now the order is done, and we’re onto the next order on my turn. I’ve covered a basic, straightforward example here, and now I’m going to slowly layer complexity onto that example.

I’m not happy with that outcome, so I’ll spend an order and declare that I’m shooting you again. You declare the same, feeling good about being in cover. I realize that you’re in cover and I’m not, so I’ll use the second part of my order to move back into cover myself. Everything in an order resolves at the same time, so when you shoot me, you’ll be shooting me while I’m out of cover. At the end of this order, I’ll be in cover, though, just like you. Layered complexity, and now we see how it affects things.

Once again, I have Burst 3 to your Burst 1. Like before, you’re shooting me and looking for a 15 or less– 12 BS plus 3 for range. However, now you’re in cover, which gives me a -3 penalty to shoot at you, and gives you +3 ARM. I get plus 3 for range but minus 3 for cover, so I’m just at my base 12 BS. 

I roll a 13, an 10, and a 9. You roll a 5. My 13 misses, and your 5 is lower than both my 10 and 9. You get hit twice, and have to make two ARM rolls. However, you’re in cover, so you get a +3 bonus to your ARM. Now, instead of rolling higher than 12, you only need to be higher than 9. You rolled a 10 and a 14, so once again, you’re fine. 

Because you successfully made an ARM save, you need to make another Guts roll. If you want, you can choose to automatically fail it instead of rolling, to get totally behind cover where I can’t shoot at you, but you’re feeling lucky, having survived three hits. You roll an 8 and stay in place.

It’s still my turn, and I have one more order. Now it’s personal. I spend my last order on my Fusilier, now in cover, and shoot you once more. You declare Shoot as your ARO as well, and now I can pick my second action. I don’t want to move and forfeit cover, so I’m just going to stay where I am. Now, you’re at a 12 to hit along with me, since we’re both in cover. Third example, reinforcing the basic loop and layering one additional bit of complexity.

I roll an 11, a 10, and a 3. Three hits! You roll a 12. Not only is your 12 better than my three shots, it’s also right on your target number. If you roll the exact number you need, that’s a critical hit. A crit cancels any non-crit rolls, even if they’re higher. It also means I take a wound automatically, without getting to make an ARM save. Fusiliers only have one Wound, so down he goes.

My Fusilier falls down, unconscious, and yours holds position.

An extended example in text, but this takes about two minutes to describe in person. When teaching the game, I often just lay out the dice in the numbers that illustrate my point the best, rather than rolling them. Actual randomness is likely to distract from what I’m trying to communicate.

Now, we’re onto the last step.

STEP 4: STOP. PLAY.

Here’s a quick game. You and I each have three Fusiliers, and there’s a computer in the middle of the board that we need to activate. Remember, it’s a WIP roll to activate it, at which point it’s under your control. Whoever controls it at the end of the fourth turn wins.

We have, at this point, covered enough of the rules of the game in order to play it. It will be a very simple game, with the most basic of rules, but the point here is that we’re giving the foundation time to set. Adding complexity here is a MISTAKE, and will only confuse people.

Yes, you’re going to be playing an extremely simple version of the game, but that’s why you’re teaching. There’s enough in just what I described to make the game playable, and it’ll be short and reasonably interesting. Experienced players will be able to pick up on more complexity more quickly, and you can ramp them up with the rest of the rules once you’ve got the foundation set, but until then you’re trying to get the core gameplay loop and basic resolution down.

You’ve also, at this point, invested about five minutes of exposition. Hands-on examples are really, really important at this point, or nothing will stick. Different games will require that you use different simplifications– make sure you boil things down to the core gameplay loop and establish a simple, understandable win condition.

It’s not important that the game be played perfectly accurately when you’re teaching it, those are rough edges that you can smooth out later. The important part is that the game is understood, at which point you can then build on the foundation you’ve created.

Very wordy post today, but I hope it was interesting and helpful. Did I do a good job teaching Infinity? Let me know!

**I wrote this a bit back on the Infinity forums, and some people found it useful, so I figured I’d preserve it here. If you don’t play Infinity, the listbuilding software is here and the rules are here, if you’re interested!**

Tam’s Tactica: ITS Listbuilding

I’m not the highest ranked player out there, but I do play every faction but one (sorry, CA players, but I’ve been reading through the CA army list for the purposes of this writeup) and have brought all of them except Ariadna to multiple tournaments at various times.

I view listbuilding as two broad categories: ITS listbuilding and non-ITS listbuilding. I make this separation because there’s a vastly different approach to successful listbuilding that occurs in an ITS scenario setting than in other types of formats, mainly centering around specialists. ITS also uses a two-list format, which can significantly affect listbuilding, which I want to address here.

Without further ado:

Listbuilding for ITS

I start every list I make with a basic checklist. If a list I create doesn’t check all the boxes, it’s doesn’t make the cut. Here’s the checklist:

1.) Do I have enough orders? Orders are gold, and vitally important, I want at least 10 in every 300pt list.

2.) Do I have enough specialists? Specialists win games, and a really strong ITS strategy is assassinating enemy specialists so that they can’t score points even if they table you. I want enough that if the opponent scalpels out a couple, I’m not out of luck. Generally, I like about 40% of the models in my list to be specialists. I’ll get to why that is later.

2a.) Do I have the RIGHT specialists? There are a lot of secret objectives, and relying on the HVT isn’t a good plan, because if your opponent can tell immediately that that’s your only good option for scoring secret objectives, they can make it difficult for you to accomplish that. Having a spread of possible options here is important.

3.) Do I have fewer points remaining than the cheapest model in my chosen army/sectorial? This is a question that comes down to efficiency. If I can still take the cheapest model possible, I should, even if that’s a lone irregular troop in its own combat group. If I can’t, but still have those points remaining, I’ve probably spent points inefficiently somewhere else and should reevaluate.

4.) Do I have answers to basic questions my opponent’s list might have? “Questions” are things like “how do I handle camo?”, “how do I handle an emplaced Total Reaction HMG?”, “how do I handle a TAG”, etc. Not every one of these need to be answered in a single list, because you get two in ITS, but it’s something to think about.

5.) Does this list have a plan for when it’s winning AND losing? A super-rambo list with a killer TAG and a super HI hacker and a bunch of mostly-useless cheerleaders will look amazing when it’s winning, but if you lose that TAG and HI in an unlucky firefight, the rest of your list looks sad. Similarly, a brick-breaking linkteam is awesome until the link leader gets Isolated and the link breaks, at which point you have to figure out what to do. A good way to tell is to choose two models at random to remove from the list and see if it can still score points. If the answer is “yes, but only if it’s not one or both of these models”, you’ve put too many eggs in one basket.

6.) Is it a legal list? This really goes without saying, but it’s got to have a Lt, has to be within SWC limits, etc.

These are the basic seven things I check for when looking to see if a list can succeed.

Success in ITS, for most scenarios, has very little to do with shooting your opponent. It is possible, albeit unlikely, to score full points in every mission except Annihilation without ever shooting anyone. This is a really important thing to keep in mind when building ITS missions. I’ve played games where I’ve literally been in retreat with a single surviving model, having not even wounded a single one of my opponent’s force, and won 10-2. In ITS, there are models that can shoot people really well, and there are models that win you the game, and they’re rarely the same.

I divide up the sections of my list very broadly, into four categories: Specialists, Offense, Tricks, and Support. I’ll go into each of them below.

First, Specialists.

Specialists are the most important part of your list. A lot of people will throw them in as an afterthought, adding them once they have their “core”. For me, specialists ARE the core; they’re what is winning you the game. If it were just you on the table for a scenario, 100% of your orders would be spent on specialists and you’d score all of the points. The only reason to spend orders on non-specialists is to remove obstacles in the specialists’ way without risking them. Specialists are the core, supported by everything else you’re bringing.

As mentioned above, I like about 40% of the models in my list to be specialists. This isn’t to say I want 40% of the points of my list to be spent on specialists, just that for every 10 models, I want 4 specialists, more or less. If I can get more, great, but I don’t push it. 3 is, for me, a bare minimum, and I’ve made lists that have 8 or 9 out of 10 models as specialists. The reason for this is threat saturation. That single rambo list I mentioned above? It paints a huge target on the rambo. Instead, if I have four slightly less deadly models, it forces my opponent to either ignore those threats or diffuse any offense across all four, increasing their chances of success. The more specialists you have, the more opportunities you have to win even through losses.

I also like efficiency in my specialists. I don’t want to have to run a single 4-2 model all over the table to score points. Like many, I favor infiltrating camo specialists, but not exclusively. A few things that get my attention when I’m looking at a specialist model:

–Does it infiltrate? This gets me up the board fast, scoring points with a minimum of orders spent.

–Is it well protected? Camo and HI specialists win big here, I want my specialists to live. Smoke is great if I can get it, because it means I can press buttons on consoles in peace.

–Is it fast? 4-4 is a minimum, unless it infiltrates. 6-4 is better. 8-6 is amazing.

–Is it efficient? I want to be getting a specialist that can do what I need it to without breaking the bank in terms of points, SWC, etc.

–Can it do other things? Hackers and Doctors win big here. Others provide link bonuses. Some lay mines, have Sensor, occasionally have a heavy weapon, and so on.

Many of the best specialists fulfill several of the above– an infiltrating camo hacker offers a lot of tools in a single package, and enables useful REMs. Sensor Remotes are fast, can reveal camo, and can score CPs. AD Hackers can sit safely off the table and drop right where I need them. The perfect specialist would be a TO Camo Infiltrating 2W HI on a motorcycle with an anti-materiel weapon, zero-V smoke, Minelayer, and D-Charges (and would obviously cost 100+ points and never happen). Knowing what makes a specialist good at their job, though, allows you to better pick from the specialists you have available.

In general, my priority when looking at specialists is Hacker/FO, Doctor, Chain of Command, Engineer, Specialist Troop, Paramedic. Hackers are versatile, FO is cheap and adds Flash Pulse, Doctors give me longevity, Chain of Command is highly valuable, Engineer is useful but specific, Specialist Troop is extremely cheap and no-frills but rare, and Paramedic generally feels overpriced compared to FO.

Once you have the Specialists, it’s time to think about the Support.

Support is what lets your specialists do their work. Often, this means they provide orders. Other times, they add smoke, help protect your specialists, or otherwise do their (often passive) part in securing your victory.

My approach to building a list for an unfamiliar faction (let’s do CA, since I never have!) is to look through the army list for the best specialists I can find (for CA, I like the Med-Tech Obsidon Medchanoid, the Charontid Hacker, the Malignos Observer or Hacker, and the Shrouded Observer or Hacker), then fill the rest of my 10 orders out with the cheapest units I can find, forming the very basic core of my list.

In the CA example, my list thus far looks like this:

Shrouded FO
Shrouded FO
Malignos Hacker
Charontid Hacker
Med-Tech
Imetron
Imetron
Ikadron Batroid
Ikadron Batroid
Unidron Batroid / Morat Vanguard Infantry / Daturazi

227|1

It’s not a great list, but it’s 10 orders and it could win games. I need to make it a legal list, and I’ve got 73 points and 5 SWC for other things, including making my list legal.

I like to have my list be at about 150 points or so once I’ve done this, if I can manage it. The Charontid in the above is pretty expensive, and I took two Shrouded FOs, so I’m a lot higher than I’d generally like. We may need to drop some stuff. The Charontid Hacker, however, can be my Lieutenant, which makes it really attractive. I still only have 8 models that can do anything, and no one has a weapon with long range. Now comes the fun part:

Offense
This is where things get fun. I want to replace models in the list I’ve made, one by one, to put some stopping power in my list and support my specialists. What works well here will change dramatically based on your choice of specialists and your particular favored flavor of combat. I like to have heavier weapons to cover every range, and to provide board control.

One of my go-tos is the humble Total Reaction HMG remote. It’s not fancy, but it will severely punish unwary opponents and requires that they put some effort into removing it.

I also really like Minelayers. It’s a cheap way to make sure my opponent can’t get too tricky early on, and forces them to deal with a potentially deadly obstacle. Since a lot of the infiltrating Camo specialists I like will frequently force me to pick between Minelayer and Specialist options, I’ll often bring one of each, sometimes downgrading a specialist in one place (Shrouded FO becomes Minelayer) and upgrading something else (Unidron Batroid becomes FO).

Backing things up with an HI with a decent gun is a good way to finalize things, or if I have a particularly aggressive force, a TO sniper or something that can take out a TAG (Noctifer with Spitfire or Missile Launcher does the trick here, or a Suryat or Sogarat with HMG).

Once I have a solid grasp of how I will remove problem targets, I want to hit the last point:

Tricks

Tricks are how I give my opponents fits. It’s the Smart Missile Launcher in an otherwise innocuous Nomad list, that suddenly makes all of those hackers and repeaters a serious problem. It’s the smoke-dropping Myrmidon that turns a Sophotect from a backline healer to a fast, highly effective objective stealer. It’s the question you ask if an opponent can handle and punish them severely if they can’t. Not every faction or list has these, but they’re nice if you can fit them in.

In this case, we’re going to go with a really simple question: Can you deal with an Impersonator? Here’s the list, after substitutions:

Shrouded Minelayer
Shrouded FO
Malignos Hacker
Charontid Hacker Lt
Med-Tech
Imetron (AI Beacon)
Unidron Batroid FO
Q-Drone (TR HMG)
Noctifer Missile Launcher
Speculo Killer

298|5

It’s a pretty solid list, overall, with 5 specialists covering four different types, some TAG-removal power, some board control, a very nasty Impersonator to tie up my opponent, and a lot of camo. It’s got a glaring weakness to enemy camo, since there are no visors in the list, and I’d really like the Med-Tech to have a helper. Even so, I’d probably run this list as-is.

This is the stage of listbuilding where I start tweaking. I only need one point to give the Med-Tech a helper, and I can easily get that point by dropping FO from either the Shrouded or the Unidron. This will bring me down to 4 specialists but will give my doctor/engineer a lot of flexibility. I’ll drop it from the Unidron, because it’s less likely to be in a good position, and get myself a helper for the doctor/engineer. I may find myself with enough points to nab another Imetron for orders, or an entire new unit, pushing me to 11 orders. In that case, I’d put the Q-Drone in Group 2, as the only model, allowing me to use its one order to reposition as needed but otherwise sitting and taking AROs, as it should, while not draining my primary order pool if it gets destroyed.

The lack of visors is kind of concerning, and if it really worries me I can replace the Noctifer with something that has a visor, either a Spitfire Yaogat or finding somewhere to free up a point for a Maakrep HMG. It’s not necessarily a huge concern, though, because I still have the second list.

The Second List

So, I’ve got one list, but this is ITS, which allows me to bring two. This is a thing I should always do.

I’m going to build the second list in the same kind of way as the first, but I want to focus on shoring up the weaknesses of the first list, and not being overly redundant with its strengths. This is also where I want to start looking at the scenarios and determining which my first list is good at and which it isn’t.

Looking at the first list:

Weaknesses

-No MSV, weak against camo
-Very little weight of fire
-Reliance on infiltrating camo specialists

Strengths

-Very strong specialists
-Well-rounded

For my second list, I want to start with those weaknesses. First, lack of visors. I really want a visor or two in the list, but there are relatively few options for me. I can take a Maakrep Tracker, a Yaogat, certain Charontid options, and Ko Dali. I also want greater weight of fire– more shots. That makes the Maakrep HMG and the Charontid HMG look pretty nice, as well as Ko Dali. Ko Dali also has D-Charges, which I can use to accomplish objectives. Charontid HMG Lt and Ko Dali it is.

I still need specialists in this list, and I want to be prepared in case my approach of infiltrating camo doesn’t work. I also want a hacker in here, for access to cheap troops. The Shrouded are still very nice and very useful, and the Zerat offers a nice cheap infiltrating hacker option, also allowing me to get more cheap troops. One Shrouded FO, one Zerat hacker.

Now I fill out my order pool. Four Unidron Batroid FOs, two Daturazi. The Daturazi offer me some fun smoke tricks with the nice visors I’ve got, and also let me put smoke on objectives to claim them more easily. Impetuous also gives me some more orders to work with on my turn.

I’ve now got a list that’s got a lot of okay specialists, a powerful core, and about 50 points left. I could start upgrading the Batroids to more powerful things, but that’s going to make it fairly similar to my original list, with some things swapped around. I want to ask my opponent some different questions.

Enter cheap warbands. My previous list was a very tight 10 orders of mostly-high-quality troops. This list is already a bunch of cheap troops supporting a couple of powerhouses. I’m going to skew the list even further and start a second combat group, containing an Oznat, two Pretas, a Gaki, and a pair of Imetrons for orders. This group is entirely expendable, and exists to put more smoke on the board and flood my opponent with dangers. Final list:

Group 1:

Ko Dali
Charontid HMG Lt
Zerat Hacker
Shrouded FO
Unidron Batroid FO
Unidron Batroid FO
Unidron Batroid FO
Unidron Batroid FO
Daturazi Chain Rifle
Daturazi Chain Rifle

Group 2:

Oznat
Preta
Preta
Gaki
Imetron
Imetron

300|2.5

I don’t use all of my SWC, but I don’t feel like I need to, because that’s not what the list is going for. This list is better for quadrant-control and kill-em-all style missions, just due to the abundance of cheap yet dangerous troops. It also still has 6 specialists (37.5% of troops) and another model that may be able to accomplish some secret objectives quite handily.

These same listbuilding concepts can be applied to any faction– I developed them while building Nomad and Neoterra lists, and before today had never put together a Combined Army list, but I would play either of the above lists reasonably confidently.

As you play lists, I recommend playing them in pairs. Refine one, and then refine the other to suit. You may find that one list with visors and one without doesn’t work for you, and having a more even split of visors is important. You may find that you need more hackers, or more FO, or some other specific thing. You might find that you favor one list over the other so much that you never play the secondary list, at which point you should reevaluate it and potentially scrap it and start over.

I want to close with another listbuilding example, using a sectorial:

ISS Listbuilding Example (with linkteams)

ISS is really strange to build lists with. I don’t have a ton of specialist options, so I have to rely on other things.

I’m still using the same philosophy– I want solid specialists as my core. Instead, however, in ISS I have an interesting option: the Wu Ming FO. It’s already pretty cheap HI, and has 4-4 MOV, but I need it to do something other than “be HI”. Lucky for me, it’s linkable.

Linkteams let me take a specialist and embed them in a team that’s made for offense, combining the two into a single cohesive unit. I’ve found I don’t much care for linkteams in ITS that don’t include at least one specialist. For the purposes of this ITS list, since I’m putting together a Wu Ming linkteam (that’s already going to be expensive), that link is going to be my core:

Wu Ming FO
Wu Ming FO
Wu Ming Boarding Shotgun + Tinbot
Wu Ming HMG
Wu Ming Light Rocket Launcher

Bam, nice combination of weapons, two specialists, and some hacking defense, all trucking around the board. The FOs both help me win and also make the HMG and LRL much nastier.

I’ve got the list’s core, but I still need specialists– two is insufficient. The Wu Ming will have to cross the field, so ideally we’ll use something that doesn’t. Bam, Ninja Hacker, the surprising go-to specialist for Yu Jing sectorials.

I also need a lieutenant, and in this case I want something that can help me leverage that killer linkteam I have. Sun Tze makes the cut.

Whoops, I only have 24 points left. I can still fill out my order pool with a Celestial Guard (with KSCD) and a pair of Kuang Shi.

Final list:

Wu Ming FO
Wu Ming FO
Wu Ming Boarding Shotgun + Tinbot
Wu Ming HMG
Wu Ming Light Rocket Launcher
Sun Tze Lt
Ninja Hacker
Celestial Guard KSCD
Kuang Shi
Kuang Shi

It’s a bit light on specialists, and very focused on the Wu Ming link, but it’s a really nasty link, and it’s easy to overlook Sun Tze as a flanker, not to mention the Kuang Shi pushing forward. I’d need to play it and tweak it, but it’s a list that hits all my points and should work well. I’d play it.

I hope this was valuable for someone, and/or an interesting read.

Not a lot in this one about games. Sorry. This one’s more for myself.

I spent a long time afraid of dogs. Like, really, really afraid of dogs. I would studiously avoid visiting friends in grade school if I knew they had a dog, and my first thought when visiting a new friend’s place was “I hope they don’t have a dog”. I would freeze up when seeing someone walking their dog on a leash 100m away in a park. It was a problem.

This lasted for about twenty years. Ed, a very good friend of mine, has two dogs who instantly recognized I was terrified of them, and stayed out of my way. Over the course of about nine months, wherein I hung out with Ed because he’s awesome and I didn’t want him realizing I was terrified of dogs (protip: he knew instantly), I got used to his beagle, who could not fathom a world in which a person existed that didn’t want to pet him.

This is River, my puppy. She’s the final stage of me getting over my dog-phobia, and it’s been really successful. She’s one of the first times I’ve faced a fear head-on, and the results have been great.

I’m a relentless planner– I work out what I’m going to do and how I’m going to approach situations almost ridiculously far in advance. Every single day I consider possible options– what if X person wants to do something this evening, what if Y event occurs, what will I do if Z happens? I have contingency plans within contingency plans, and as a result I’ve gotten really good at working out ways to avoid things I don’t want to deal with. Plausible excuses are my bread and butter, and I can hide my own inconvenience well enough that most people don’t notice when I’ve done something stupid like overbook myself.

Actually facing my fears or things I’m uncomfortable with is, as a result, rather difficult for me. It’s intentionally putting myself in a situation where I can’t plan out my reaction. It helps, *a lot*, to have friends willing to help out. Mostly, this means being a wall pressed up against my back to prevent me from backing down.

 

In the same year I got River, I tackled another fear of mine: needles. I have always had a problem with the idea of something being injected or withdrawn from under my skin. I used to donate blood regularly, and I’d see the needle, see spots, and pass out– this eventually led to them refusing to draw blood.

The answer to that one? A tattoo. I got my friend Jess to accompany me there, a calm, collected person who has an elaborate, impressive tattoo of her own on her back. She was there when I scheduled the appointment and worked her schedule around a bit so that she could come to the parlour with me, so there was no way I could back out. She’s also extremely supportive but has a low tolerance for cowardice, so I knew that I could count on her to be that wall.

End result:

It was done in two sessions, and while I was petrified during the first, I was perfectly fine for the second.

Now I’m working on an MBA, and one of the core classes I’m taking involves team-building at a ropes course– read: a place in which you climb up high places with a team. This is another of those things I’ve studiously avoided in the past– in undergrad, I actually signed up for a class for the sole purpose of creating a schedule conflict so that I had a good excuse not to go to a ropes course.

There’s not really any avoiding this one. Heights have been one of those things that I can avoid, and it’s a relatively recent (since college) fear of mine. It’s not hard to simply not go to high places… except now I’ve got a ropes course I can’t avoid. It would be easy for me to let the fear take control and just sit out of any events I don’t feel comfortable with– while I have to attend, the class syllabus specifically mentions (multiple times!) that while attendance is mandatory, participation isn’t.

Except, the whole point is to bond with my class– my cohort, who I’ll be with for most if not all of my core classes for this degree. Team-building is a skill, and it’s one I’m supposed to be developing. I’m bad with trusting people; I prefer to do the work myself and fully own both my successes and failures without worrying about whether or not I’m taking responsibility for someone else. When I do delegate, it’s because I’ve already come up with a contingency plan in which I swoop in and do the rest of the work myself.

My classmates are understanding, and I haven’t known them very long. I suspect they’re unlikely to care one way or another if someone they’ve only known for a few hours (two class sessions thus far) separates himself due to fear. It would be easy to plan a way to back out, but today we did trust-building exercises. Really simple stuff, the standard trust fall, that staple of team-building that often gets mocked. There was also the lift, like a trust fall except in a group, and when you’re at about 60 degrees, a few people pick your feet off the ground and then the whole group lifts you above their heads. This is enough to trip my fear of heights– I’m up high enough to hurt myself if I fall, unsupported by anything except a bunch of people’s hands, many of whom are smaller than I am.

But it was fine, I came out unscathed, and given my track record at facing fears head-on, I figure this is another one I can take on rather than hiding from. Now I’ve written it all down; I can’t back out now. Whoever’s reading this: thanks, you can be the wall for my back to be up against. We’ll see how I feel in a week.