Moving the Goal Post

So I want to make this clear before starting this post: I am not advocating for you to lose on purpose or not try to win at all. I’ve been playing this game for over a decade, and I can promise you that Weiss Schwarz isn’t a game where you’re expected to have a general slightly above run-of-the-mill win rate. What I mean by that is that you’re expected to lose and not by a small margin; you are expected to lose a lot and repeatedly.

You’ve probably heard this story or experienced this one countless times. You roll up to the shop with your new deck ready to rumble. You play your cards as best as you can, minimizing mistakes, managing your resources, clearing your opponent’s board, and then, you try out your flashy powerful endgame combo only for your opponent to just narrowly make it out alive. Or even worse, an unfortunate reality of our times, you just get sniped from level two and die before even getting a chance to employ your finishing endgame.

The bottom line is: you did what you could and still lost. You can replay the same game over and over in your head and consider the multiple variables that happened. Maybe you should have sided a certain character at one point or crashed in another. But given the number of random variables in Weiss Schwarz, it’s hard to exactly pinpoint any single play as the root cause of your loss. And given the powerful endgame of most modern decks, it’s even harder to determine the outcome given the increasing number of damage instances and overall damage.

There are those who believe that the ultimate result of a game can be changed due to the butterfly effect. I’m no psychology major, so I won’t go too deep into the logic here, but they say that each little play that you perform, minuscule or not, may have dramatic effects that ultimately culminate in determining your win or loss. There’s another group who believe that your win or loss was already predetermined by fate the moment you opened your hand. Regardless of which, I’m not exactly here to debate psychological theories. There are far too many decisions and choices that are made throughout a single game; pinpointing and breaking down every single decision and result will inevitably tire you out.

People also tend to call Weiss Schwarz the RNG game where results are arbitrary and effects are completely random, making decisions nondeterministic. I don’t agree fully with this school of thought. I will argue that Weiss does have somewhat large amounts of variable points within its gameplay. But this isn’t exactly foreign to card games as a whole. Arguably, I am of the mind to embrace the chaos, enjoying the lack of certainty and appreciate the entropy that comes with the mishmash of card effects combining together. I think there’s this grand appeal to the randomness that is associated with Weiss Schwarz that keeps myself involved with the game.

And I do understand that it can be frustrating. There’s so many times where I wanted to pack up my deck and just chill out in the corner after going x-10 after opening four or five climaxes each game and then eating two levels by turn three. And I think this frustration comes from the fact that the player rarely feels rewarded for the actions and decisions they perform in the game. The fact that the damage system is entirely RNG dependent only adds to frustration as you spend all your accumulated resources during the final turn to watch your opponent just casually flip cancels for every single damage instance. It’s gotten to the point where I often jokingly call Weiss the “Mari* Party” card game version.

So where am I going with this? I feel players should just learn to accept the game for what it is and just enjoy the goofiness that comes with playing the game. I am not saying that you shouldn’t improve your skills or seek to win. I am trying to persuade you to just learn to enjoy the game and accept that losses do happen which may or may not be a result of your own choices. It’s frustrating. I can understand that.

And given that official events are all best-of-ones with no sideboard make it increasingly difficult to argue for and fight about competitive viability. It’s unfortunate when you spend hours to days practising and playing only to come up short at a large event and lose the first round to a bad opening hand post mulligan. You have full right to be upset. But that is unfortunately the nature of these tournaments and how Bushiroad chooses to run these events as I’ve experienced for over a decade myself.

I want to add that, as a stranger point I think keeps players hooked on Weiss, is its silliness in terms of its card effects. Powercreep is inevitable and a part of game design. Cards just have to eventually eclipse one another. But what makes Weiss incredibly interesting is that, unlike many other card games, it isn’t entirely impossible for an older deck to have a shot against even the newest powercreeped sets. That is because of the RNG element. It’s silly and frustrating; I get it, but I just find it a bit hilarious since the old tale of open five, discard hand, mulligan, eat three levels, and shake your opponent’s hand is still just as relevant of a tale as it was when I first started regardless of how powerful a deck can become.

So, what now? Well, I can’t cure that feeling of emptiness or saltiness that comes from a loss, but I can provide some other ways to maybe lighten the mood. First and foremost, if you’re going through a chain of bad games, maybe it’s a honest time to sit back and try another game. Sometimes Lady Luck hates your guts, so maybe just have some fun doing something else you know. Go for a walk. Go play badminton. Finish the stack of reports that is due on your desk the following Monday morning (don’t shame me).

Secondly, maybe just play casually and take a break from that competitive edge. Perhaps its time to pull out your old favourites from back in 2016 and find a close friend to brawl with. And I mean, try to balance the decks of course so that you both have a bit more of a fairer time.

Ultimately, what I want to share here is that maybe the goal post could be shifted just slightly downwards. Once again, I am not asking you to give up competitively on the game or throw away that competitive mindset entirely. I’m just saying that I think players should remember this is a game first foremost and that means that your enjoyment is definitely a priority.