Stories That Almost Make You Believe in Karma

[unixknight]

So for many years, my gaming club had what we called NerdFest… A 2 - 3 day New Year's celebration party where we would gather for gaming, movies, food and more gaming.  We did LAN parties, Dungeons & Dragons, collectible card games, tabletop wargames, board games... name it.  

One year, the featured game was a Star Trek: Attack Wing scenario.  Star Trek: Attack Wing is a game where you maneuver miniature starships around a table, with different game scenarios sometimes inspired by events from Trek TV episodes or movies.  For this event, I had acquired a miniature of Deep Space 9, (The model is over a foot in diameter!) along with pre-published rules for a scenario in which the players each represent a fleet of starships trying to capture the station.  My (at the time) 7-year-old daughter and I were on one team (playing the Federation) and 2 of my buddies were on the Klingon side.  

Now a quick word about one of those buddies.  He's a great guy.  One of the best people I know.  He's one of those people I'd trust with my life - my family's lives even.  He's a person you want in your corner if things get bad.  In gaming, however, he's ruthless and very, very talented as a strategist.  He's a tough opponent in any game, and he pulls no punches.  I respect that, but on this day he wasn't pulling any punches against my daughter, either.

Now, I generally feel that when playing against kids, you shouldn't just let them win, but you also shouldn't go max power against them.  You have to throttle the challenge to keep them interested and developing their skills.  

So, seeing what was happening, I used my starship to take the brunt of the Klingon assault while my daughter moved her starship (a Galaxy class ship, as I recall) to Deep Space 9 and beamed an away team aboard to secure the station.  At about this time, my starship exploded.  I did take one of the Klingon ships with me, though.

So here was my daughter, alone.  She still had her starship but she'd beamed her best personnel onto DS9 which reduced the effectiveness of her ship.  The Klingons quickly moved in and destroyed her starship, leaving her away team stranded on the station.  At this point, my buddy beamed his own team of Klingons onto the station to eliminate the Starfleet crew and capture the station - winning the game.

It was at this point that something unexpected happened.

Inside the station, his Klingon boarding party engaged the Starfleet away team in combat, and lost.  The look of stunned confusion on my friend's face was... satisfying, as I was mildly annoyed with him at how aggressively he'd gone after my daughter's ship even after it wasn't a threat.  He asked to look at the rules, presumably because he either thought I was explaining the "Capturing the station" rules wrong, or perhaps he was looking for a rule that would allow him to turn the tide.  I don't know.  In either case, he'd lost the boarding action fair and square.  After several minutes of studying the rules intensely, he had no choice but to concede that his mighty Klingon warriors had been beaten by a Starfleet team controlled by a little girl.  I think what happened was that my daughter had used more of her resources in getting a good Starfleet crew for her ship, while my buddy had spent most of his on his ship and its equipment.  Once it was my daughter's good personnel against the mediocre Klingon options on the station, she had the clear advantage.  Yes, moving the good characters onto the station meant sacrificing her ship, but it was worth it to gain control of the station.  She definitely made the right call and it won her the game because...

On the next turn, the Starfleet away team successfully gained control over Deep Space 9's main systems.  That included weapons control.  The Klingon battlecruiser lasted precisely 1 more game round before being blasted to atoms by a merciless volley of phasers and photon torpedoes from the Deep Space 9 model.

Got any favorite karma stories to share?

[NeuroTypical]

Qapla'!