"My Girlfriend Won't Play Against My Necrons Anymore"

I had to blog on this.  It was such a striking statement on another forum that I thought it worth a few moments of thought.

So you have a girlfriend willing to indulge and even play your silly game with plastic and pewter little army men.  She enjoys playing Eldar or something because it looks cool.  And she's now faced the new Necron codex and essentially been steam rolled.

"I'm not playing your Necrons anymore" she exclaims, crossing her arms and showing her independence defiantly.  You've simply gone too far and beaten her so roundly that she thinks its the codex that did it.  Magically, somehow, the Codex built and painted its models, carefully concocted the cocktail of elements into a list and then used terrain, timing and a little lady luck to screw your girlfriend.  Of course, that's absurd.

...But that's how she feels about it, isn't it?  No amount of "being right" is going to get in the way of her emotional reaction to this.  She's just going to feel the way she wants to feel because let's face it, her ego is hurt.  Yes, despite the rumors, women do have one.  Shocking isn't it?

There's probably a few of you reading who've got girlfriends just like this poor guy on another forum does.  Of course in your case the girlfriend will as often as not look a lot more male than his and perhaps just not be acting like one at the moment they utter the words:  "I'm not playing your Necrons anymore".  =)

I would encourage those who have this reaction to the Necron codex to visit a few forums and see how common this reaction is to EVERY new codex!  It's like an American institution for us to play the victim.  We just love to feel self righteous anger that can be used to replace the real emotion of abject embarrassment.  We hate being embarrassed and so we lash out and blame something.

The reality is simpler:  no one gets embarrassed when they lose, unless they already cared about losing way too much.

So the moral of the story I suppose, if there even is one, is to tell your girlfriend to PLAY your Necrons and you'll play her army.  When she loses, you can tell her how broken her codex is.

Alternatively, you could just both agree that there is going to be an adjustment period ANY time people start using a new codex, and to stop panicking, Figure it out, adjust your list and more importantly, your strategy accordingly.  I suspect it will be less truculent than going back and forth about broken codex's.

You know:  between you and your girlfriend that is...