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Que sera, sera....

By Jon Blyth

When I was just a little boy,
I asked my mother, what will I be?
Will I be handsome, will I be rich?
Here's what she said to me...

STOP THAT BLOODY SINGING YOU LITTLE BASTARD OR IT'S BACK IN THE COAL BUNKER YOU GO!!

What is occupying my mind this month is the puzzling aspect of fate, and the effect belief has on it.

Take my Great Uncle Hooty for example. There he was a conscientious objector in 1939 London, shunned by society and cast out by the family. So he decides to up stakes and go to where avoiding a war is not only accepted but is national policy - Switzerland. Unfortunately, having a command of the French language that ran out at "Unos beer Monsewer", he took a wrong turn at Calais and ended up in Germany. Not that Hooty was deterred, far from it. To make a long story short, by 1942 he was an Uber-und-unterleutnant aboard a U-boat on the Dresden run reporting directly to Rommel. He was decorated twice for inconspicuous gallantry and managed to escape to South America at the end of the war to run his very own mouse plantation in Auckland.

That true story (as told to me by Uncy Hoot himself when I were a lad) is a perfect example of how one man's beliefs shaped his fate. In Wargaming, events fated to happen are easily spotted.

You know the feeling; you're looking at your units as the battle ebbs and flows and you suddenly spot a point where your whole strategy could go tits-up. It will all come down to one roll of the dice - and you KNOW what you're going to get. The dice bounce across the table, spin and come to rest. Sure enough, your opponent whoops with glee as his army can now go on to grind yours into the dust.

The same principle stands if any unit, when first placed on the table, is greeted with hoots of derision from all onlookers. That unit will go on to perform miracles in battle, and even turn the tide to ensure a win.

Some other situations to think about:

  • Well-painted armies usually lose to motley rag-tag bunches of figures.
  • One player rolling exceptionally lucky dice rolls is matched by the other player having foul luck.
  • Your favourite unit is doomed while the unit you put in to make up the numbers turns out to be a roaring success - until the next battle where it performs miserably for no apparent reason.
  • Potentially battle-winning special abilities that some of your troops possess are usually forgotten about until halfway through every battle.
  • Rules that your have seen hundreds of times mysteriously disappear from rulebooks at the crucial moment, only to appear on the very page that the book falls open on the next time it is picked up.
  • Figures that were gathering dust for years suddenly become essential; just after you got rid of them.

Events like these appear with a frequency that defies the law of probability. My thought is whether our Wargaming beliefs have begun to alter that law, and instead we are making our own fate. Not to any great extent, just a little nudge here and there away from the random and towards what is expected.

If this is the case, then is it possible to influence fate to our advantage?

Is it a simple case of believing hard enough to get the desired result?

Not just a token wanting to succeed but a cast-iron faith that winning is what happens to you, and losing is the fate of the other bozo.

To win, just BELIEVE (did I hear a hallelujah from the back row?)...

This has been a presentation of behalf of the South Minnesota Church of Inspirational Wargaming.

Please send any donations to the Rev. Billy-Bob Clampett and his lovely wife Tammy-Sue, c/o U.S Correctional Facilities - Department 6A.