Getting my daughter into Age of Sigmar
Fear of losing
For this game my daughter had three evocators, three sequitors with stormsmite greatmaces and a unit of five castigators. I had 20 chainrasp horde and four grimghast reapers.
I went first a kindly ran everything forward into firing range of the castigators. The chainrasp horde suffered a few casualties as a result.
In turn two my grimghast reapers charged the sequitors and the chainrasp horde charged the castigators. I managed to kill a single sequitor for my trouble and in return lost half the grimghast reapers and several of the chainrasp horde.
It was at this point that my daughter began to sulk. I think she was upset that her ranged unit had been engaged in melee and the game was therefore not going as expected. I had to spend about ten minutes convincing her to continue. I think there are several underlying reasons for this. One was that we always play in the evening when her little sister is asleep. Unfortunately this means my daughter is tired and prone to getting upset when we play. Also my daughter wants to give up as soon as she thinks she can’t win. I’m hoping to teach her to have a more positive attitude to games and competition by getting her to play more. Finally she has no grasp to how a game is going so starts to sulk even when she’s doing really well!
One we started playing again the sequitors and evocators charged the remaining chainrasp horde and wiped them out very quickly.
During today’s game we were able to practice, the one, two, and three times tables as well as addition and subtraction. Tomorrow I plan to visit my local store and might buy something for our games.
Maybe introducing some story and narrative into the games will help her with the fear of losing.
This may not be of help unless you can keep this up for quite some time, but if your daughter has other experiences of learning from challenges, you might reference them. e.g. If she’s learned to ride a bike and will remember having the stabilisers removed, she may appreciate that ‘it’s difficult at first (i.e. to lose) but rewarding when you master something new’.
Thanks for the ideas guys. Today I bought the Blasted Hallowhearth terrain set. Originally it was just so we could stop playing on the carpet but now I also plan to use it to make the games more narrative. I’m also talking to by daughter about taking time to learn skills and that things aren’t always about winning.