What to do with a Loss: The Tricky Web of Losing in MCP

Man has it been a while dear reader! I apologize for the lack of content, but the real world has been calling me and work has demanded my time. In today’s article, I wanted to take a step back from MCP tactics and talk more about an inevitable aspect of the game: loss. We all lose sometimes, no matter how good we are there will always be loss. Sometimes the loss comes from a lack of sleep or poor decision making during a game, sometimes it comes down to whether your opponent was just better than you, and sometimes RNGesus did not bless your dice. These things all happen, and I wanted to write a short article to get our heads back in the game after a loss and how to move forward.

Now, all of this is from my perspective. Of course, I am not a trained professional in this area, just a nerd who likes to express his opinion and help others. Any of this is use or lose of course, but I would love for you to approach this with an open mind if you choose to continue reading.

Understanding the Loss Itself

The very first thing that you have to do is analyze and reflect on what happened in the game itself. This however, requires something of us - to be honest. Honesty with oneself is key to growth through analysis. It is easy to blame the dice in a dice based game, because, honestly, sometimes they do leave us hanging from time to time. However, I also find that when our dice fail us it is not the only thing that went wrong in that game.

A good example of this was one of my earlier fights in the TTS Season 8 League against A-Force. My dice were, for a lack of a better word, horrendous. Amazing Spider-Man (ASM) was actually taking damage, Miles, who has been an oddly heavy hitter for me, was dealing no damage, and I was just taking a beating all over the place. It was, for a lack of a better word, horrendous. It was also frustrating. My defensive force was just taking damage like no tomorrow and there wasn’t much I could do about it. That was what I was thinking while playing.

Except, I was wrong.

I had to take a day before really coming back to the match, and, after looking over what actually happened, I realized that the actual gameplay on my end was not there. Why didn’t I utilize ASM’s ability to move quickly around the field (I think he is the fastest unit in the game outside of a fully powered Juggernaut)? Why didn’t I utilize Gwen’s ability to save lives a bit better? Angela could keep up with ASM, but She Hulk couldn’t, so why did I stay and fight instead of force other engagements? These were all questions I had to answer in order to get to the meat and potatoes of it and I realized that part of the issue was I put too much faith into ASM’s defensive tech and put him into positions that were not well suited to his skill set. I got flustered when Angela picked up two cubes early before I could and it made me desperate to get things back, even when I saw he had a She Hulk coming in to consistently bodyguard his Angela. I didn’t utilize the stagger ability of my Black Cat enough to limit his options with She Hulk. It was a mess of a game on my end and I can honestly say that I deserved to lose it.

But that realization only came after some serious self-reflection and analysis of the game that I played. I find that sometimes in the moment we don’t want to say that we are the problem and that instead it was RNGesus sending us to proverbial Hell. Or, if only they hadn’t played that broken model I would have taken them out. Honesty in self-reflection can be tough because it requires that we actually admit to some faults in what we have done in our strategy. Now, there are times when we can look at dice and say that they definitely were the problem. I hit a Ghost Rider for 6 damage on a builder with Fury Sr. and it bent the game hard in my favor last night and in that game I had Sentinels dealing 5-6 damage per Suppression Protocols. That was a game where I can definitively say that dice spikes in my favor were the winning factor there and that there wasn’t much my opponent could do about it. Unfortunately, in those kinds of games, it’s just better to move on and accept the loss since we cannot change anything about it. You cannot grow from poor dice performance if everything else was done to the best of your abilities. It should not, however, be your go-to answer for loss because I find it breeds contempt for the game and your performance.

Look at Loss as a Chance for Growth

I annoy the hell out of my regular sparring partner Kuyo over at the Black Order Podcast and Youtube Channel(hey buddy!) with my consistent after match looksies and talks. I sometimes go back to games a few weeks ago because I have thought of something new or have been overthinking it. I get my backside spanked often and I don’t even have to pay for it. But to me this is a good thing. It gives me areas where-in-which I can grow and reflect on what I have done. I have grown to be able to pinpoint key areas where I really messed up in the game and the moments where the tide turned in my opponent’s favor.

I know I am not the best MCP player. But, I want to be. Just like all the guys on the top 100 players and beyond for this game, we all want to be the best, or at the very least the best we can be. So I look at loss as an inevitability, and it is up to me as to what I do with it when it comes. I always reflect and analyze my losses, but the earlier step means nothing if you are not willing to grow from it. Pin-pointing where tactics failed doesn’t make you better if you don’t come up with a plan to change those actions. It isn’t always immediate. I, myself, have stuck the proverbial fork in the wall socket several times before I learned my lesson (when I first started, I got my key pieces Thanos kidnapped so many times it hurt). So everytime I lose, I look at it as an opportunity to up my game. I find that as long as I am growing from my losses that I actually don’t mind losing as much anymore. It is when I can’t figure out what happened or where it went wrong that I get frustrated. That is when I rely on the next couple of concepts.

Don’t Over Rely on Statistics

Statistics are fantastic when utilized properly. They give us a metric of what to expect when we play and how things will probably play out. You will notice that I said probably and not should. It is a key difference in how we see and perceive the game and one I notice quite often when I talk with opponents after a win or a loss. For perspective, statistically, you will never win the lottery, and yet, someone inevitably does. For that person they beat the stats machine and were able to acquire financial prosperity for a few months before they inevitably (statistically speaking) squander it all on email scams and mansions.

Many players look at statistics as a holy grail of what should happen in a game. All D5 attacks should result in 3-4 hits. All D3 defenses should result in 1-2 blocks. If this is the only way you look at the game it will result in frustration and anger at the end of the day.

Even though I utilize statistics often when making articles and looking at the game, I understand that those stats are not solid. They are rough estimations of how things would, on average, work. Looking past the “would” and looking directly and the now for me is the best option when playing the game and I have found it severely limits my frustration factor.

Be Cool

At the end of the day, MCP is a game where we make plastic versions of spandex wearing weirdos punch each other in the face while flying or swinging around a map. It is a game where a man in star-spangled underwear can fight alongside a giant bear while hoping to defeat a man wearing a tin can teamed up with a furry (10 points below to who guesses who this is correctly). We should look at the game as such.


At the end of the day we get together to have fun, meet new people, and have a laugh with our friends. If we are getting tilted while we do it then it isn’t fun for anyone. I know that for me, when I have an angry opponent, I feel bad about the game in general, even if I am the one winning. I want everyone to have a good time with it, but those good times have to come from both sides. We will win, we will lose, but the flow of fun is where the true magic of Marvel Crisis Protocol comes in.


I think that the other end of things would be to look at it this way: what does anger do for you? I find that “getting tilted”, as the kids say, only inhibits my ability to move forward. I get stuck on things, imagining how they could be different or should be different and it limits my analytical skill. In the moment, it's tough, but taking a few deep breaths and recentering myself always helps. But the more you allow anger in, the less you are able to focus on the things in front of you. I feel like those who strive to those greatest heights are those that keep calm and carry on in games like this.

Don’t Play Against Malekith

I kid I kid. But, he is a tough cookie to fight sometimes.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, I love this game and I want everyone to have a good time with it. I hope this little change of pace was nice. I will try to get back to writing tactics articles in the near future and I appreciate all of my readers. Have a great day!


Till next time Webslingers