by Travis Roberts
Hello Apex Insiders and welcome to another edition of the Players Pulse, as always I am Ares Edge. Today’s Players Pulse is more of an overall feeling that I have for the game, and it’s something that even I had to get used to. Spoiler Alert….I hate losing, at anything!! It was something that my father tried to pass down to me and his father passed down to him and so on and so forth. “ You did a good job don’t hang your head!” That was a phrase that I heard growing up and it’s something I didn’t pay much attention to when I should have. It wasn’t until I had a son of my own that I finally got it. Everyone to this day still does it and if you say you don’t you’re a liar! “My dice just went cold”, “You know you only beat me because of a roll off”, “If I hadn’t made so many mistakes I would have won”, You just got lucky, your dice were hot”. These are just a few examples of the way that our community discredit one another’s success.
My son grew up around the game of Heroclix so you could understand how excited I was when he started to take an interest in the game. Again another shocker….I talk a lot of “smack” when I play the game, nothing that I would do when playing my son, but he did grow up watching my friends and I play. Well one day during a casual day of playing my buddy J Nuts ( yea that is his nickname for some reason ) was standing with me and made the comment “ Damn you can tell he’s your kid!” I looked at him puzzled not really knowing exactly what he meant until I went over to watch him play my brother. He knew the rules, he knew how the powers interacted, I wasn’t seeing what he meant until he rolled his first attack. “Boom that hits for 4 straight through take it!” I literally laughed out loud and so did my brother, we knew that he was picking up on our bad behaviors and we knew that we were going to have to correct this. It was just friends and family playing and so we exchanged with the trash talk and ended up with some fun games that night.
The next week was the Rhode Island ROC State Championship and he wanted to go to watch but didn’t want to compete which I was fine with. Of course I get paired up with the guy I traveled with, which always sucks. My son sat across the room playing on my phone it wasn’t until the second match he came over and wanted to watch the game. I told him sure but he was going to have to be quiet and just observe and not say anything. I was luckily playing against an old army vet that I had played many times before up in Massachusetts, and he enjoyed playing his SHIELD teams. He had a main force Balls of Fury team with no sideline. Right from the first turn the action starts and it is not in favor of the SHIELD team, after a big attack that was certainly going to seal my win my son went to jump up and celebrate, I put my hand out and had him sit back down, which he did. The army Vet and I finished the game early and shook hands and had a conversation on what he could have done differently with his team. No one had really taken the time to show him what ID cards could do and how they could have helped his team so I broke it down for him. We had some laughs he complemented me on having a well behaved son and I thanked him as he put his stuff away and went to go look around the shop.
My son went to apologize and I just shook my head, “ You have no reason to apologize, this is a life lesson that I 
haven’t taught you yet and one of the reasons I was very excited to have you come with me today.” Now my son wasn’t big into sports at the time, and all he knew was the smack talking game play with the family basically. “ This is what you call winning with class and losing with class Zach”, I expressed to him. “ This is one of those environments that even though I knew I beat him easily I didn’t rub it in his face. Instead we talked battle strategy, I told him things about the game that he didn’t know.” He listened and nodded as I continued, “ But did you also notice that when he lost he didn’t blame it on dice, or pout or sulk over it either? He took the loss knowing that his force did have a chance but it was a slim one, He lost with class and didn’t make any excuses about it.” My son nodded and understood where I was coming from. We got up and walked around watching the other matches where a kid about his age was playing and getting beaten. He wasn’t taking the loss very well and was openly pouting and complaining about dice rolls and so on and so forth. My son looked at me and nodded, at that moment he understood what I was trying to get across to him.
The day continued and as the wins piled up I could see him getting excited and he took each win like I did with a smile and a hand shake and some fun conversations afterwards. The championship match was a nail biter and he sat their silently on the edge of his seat and when last action was called he nervously watched me roll twice to hit an 8 which I did on the last roll. Everyone jumped up in shock as my opponent shook my hand and my son gave me the biggest high five ever. That day going forward he knew what winning with class and losing with class meant. Since then I have seen him become a teenager, he still doesn’t like it when his old man beats up on him playing clix and we still talk smack all the time but he knows where that line is now. I watch as he plays football in high school and when he makes a big run or a big tackle, he reaches a hand out to help the other players up and there is that mutual respect shown. It was a life lesson that I passed down to him though a game that I have loved for a very long time.
People lose focus of that sometimes, that this is a game and it does involve some chance and battle strategy. Everyone is going to make mistakes, maybe your “dice will go cold”, and yea maybe sometimes the team that shouldn’t win on paper will win! But the big picture here, especially with worlds right around the corner, win with class and lose with class. And hell you never know when a simple game may or may not help you down the road teaching life lessons to your kids. As always I am the one and only Ares Edge, I will see you all at Worlds, and may all of your rolls be critical hits.
