A few years ago, I rambled about a game I used to play on my cell phone, Clash of Clans. My nephews had gotten me started on it, and I stuck with it; we were in a “family clan,” and it was a way to interact with them. Over time, we all basically stopped playing the game. It got old. In some ways, it was a passive game; when you were battling someone, it was your troops going up against their preset defenses. There was no other person actively playing against you, not even a computer. That may be why the company that created the game created a spin-off version, as play of the original, at one time the highest grossing game in the iTunes App Store, began to trail off.
Their successor game, using many of the same ideas and figures, is Clash Royale. Unlike its older brother, CR is a live action game. Each player builds a battle deck of eight cards. You might choose to have wizards, giants, goblins, barbarians, Valkyries, dragons, and a host of other options; there are more than ninety cards available. Each card costs a certain amount to play, they have unique ranges on the board and have varying degrees of speed, strength, and durability. The object is to destroy more of your opponent’s castles than they destroy of yours. You start with three, and if someone gets all three, they win. Oh, and you only have three minutes per game to win.
Without going into all the details, (there are too many to do so here), this is a fast-paced game of strategy. It’s like chess on steroids. You have to know what each of your cards can do and try to anticipate how your opponent will play theirs. You can only see four of your cards at a time, and they rotate through as you use them. There are combination plays that can be very effective, but every attack meets an equally effective defense at some point. I love playing the game. It’s addictive, and it hasn’t gotten old the way the predecessor game did, and it shows in the level of play through the app. The global participation is as much as 100 million at the moment. The game’s creators have created a gold mine. At the end of last year, it was reported that they were making over $1 million per DAY.
I’ve been playing the game to some degree since it launched, so I’ve gotten pretty good at it. I win more matches than I lose and I tend to float near the top of my “clan” even though I don’t play nearly as much as some others. Some folks play it throughout the day, all day long. I can’t do that. At any rate, for all that I know my cards and their abilities, for all my experience in seeing all sorts of combinations and decks, sometimes it all comes down to luck. Sometimes the cards don’t come in the “right” order, meaning that whatever I play, my opponent seems to have predicted and counters right away. Or, whatever they play, I can’t seem to defend because the card I need hasn’t rotated up yet. It’s frustrating to know what needs to be played, yet I’m unable to play it. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes the cards come perfectly timed to dominate a match, but of course, in those moments I’m more apt to chalk it up to my prowess than luck. Naturally, right?
Well, darn if life isn’t like that. We tend to take credit for the things that go well; it couldn’t possibly be luck when things go our way. It’s because we’re talented, hard-working, and attractive. Right? It’s like living in Lake Woebegone, where everyone is above average.
But on the other hand, no matter how skilled we are, no matter how well we’ve tried to plan, sometimes the cards just fall the wrong way, and we lose. We may look to God and complain, or we might internalize it and blame ourselves for our failures. Rarely are either an appropriate explanation. Not that we don’t make mistakes, but life is just full of surprises we can do nothing about.
Most of us have been at this life thing for a while. I think many of us win more than we lose, fortunately. But we do face some losses. They are annoying and frustrating, and painful, but there it is. Most of them are relatively minor losses, and we take whatever cards we have and make do as we move ahead. Other losses are more impactful and can cause us to change direction entirely. My only hope is to remind us that sometimes life just happens, and we won’t benefit from trying to assign too much meaning to it, divine or otherwise. The name of the game is adaptation, graceful learning, faithful effort, and daring adventure. If we can embrace those things, we’ll always win in the end.
Tom+
Almighty God, Father of all mercies, we thank thee for all thou hast given and for all thou hast forgiven; for thy hidden blessings and for those which in our negligence we have passed over: for every gift of nature or of grace: for our power of loving: for all which thou has yet in store for us: for everything, whether joy or sorrow, whereby thou art drawing us to thyself through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.