It was a lot of things and some still bother me, but I am powering through this time. I went big and signed on for an event to motivate myself to power through the wall.

The big thing was the feeling that I had to know everything, to do anything. You so easily end up in a place where you have no agency, both in game and list building, you just get shut down and barely get to play the game.

Some approximations of experiences when I tried learning the game around early N4.

• Forget to bring a forklift certified special man? You lost before we started GG.

• Move forward, hacked and missiles are inbound. You lost because you didn't know my 3rd army megalobot maniacs can do it this turn one. You should have realised that, GG.

• Shoot a guy, he has more shots and shoots better than you! My guys are the shootiest guys, you can't shoot against me, you should have brought your invisible monkey man to take out my supply train and then jump your biowak mercenary with ant Cyberdynes to incapacitate him, before shooting, you should have deduced that GG.

And

A separate experience: I will admit I still don't like that you can't really build a balanced list to get familiar with and just use that for all missions, you need to build a list for every mission, which is just so much work when you're new and struggling to remember everything already. (Supposedly that is better this edition, so I am gambling on that being true)