WARMACHINE & HORDES players, gather ’round the table so we may share tales of bad luck and worse decisions!

Ever had a moment of victory slip away from you due to unlucky dice rolls? Ever forgotten a specific and incredibly important rule that cost you the game? Ever had a game where you felt like every action you took, every die roll you made, it was all part of an uphill battle you were inevitably going to lose? Have things ever gone so unpredictably awful, so inexplicably wrong that you became…tilted?

Tilted, or being on tilt, is a state of mental frustration (often due to unlucky or unlikely results during gameplay) in which a player begins making hasty or aggressive decisions, potentially even forfeiting the game, entirely out of anger. If you play WARMACHINE & HORDES competitively, you’re familiar with this term, and you’ve likely either experienced being on tilt or encountered someone experiencing it during a tournament.

So, what do you do if you get tilted? I mean, no one wants to be frustrated or have a terrible time while playing a game. Games are meant to be fun! Not only is it no fun for the player who gets tilted, but that tilted player’s opponent typically isn’t having a great time, either. Watching someone experience mental distress while you continue to try to win the game puts you in a very uncomfortable situation. You can’t give up just because your opponent is frustrated, but you also know every successful action you take is only making it worse.

The thing is, there’s no silver bullet answer for what all players should do when they go on tilt. We’re all different people, with different emotions, and we’re going to react to things in different ways. However you deal with it, the one thing we should all strive to do is at least be aware when we’ve become tilted. Self-awareness is incredibly important in a game as social as WARMACHINE & HORDES—if you can recognize you’re becoming increasingly angry at the results of the game, then you at least have a better chance to adjust your attitude before it goes too far.

While the concept of tilting is common among competitive players, there isn’t a common term for the act of un-tilting. What would it even be called? Balancing, rectifying, correcting? Whatever its name, being self-aware gives you a better chance to achieve it. So, let’s all gather ’round the table and share our tales of bad luck and worse decisions, but let’s wait until the games are over and share our sorrows with a smirk on our faces, because in the end, win or lose, good luck or bad, we’re all here for one common purpose, to have fun playing games with each other across the table.