Blackwind is an order on bungie.net, Bungie's free online service for Myth II. There are eight of us. Everybody dies in Myth, usually all at once and usually because somebody was standing too close to somebody else, so we decided early on to have a sense of humor about it.

I go by Sexton. Out here I'm Adam, I'm 24, and I'm a third-year apprentice electrician in Boise, Idaho, which means I spend my days pulling wire through other people's attics and my nights getting my archers blown up. I started the order in February, about six weeks after I bought the game, when I noticed the same seven guys kept ending up on my team in the public rooms and none of them ever quit when it went bad. That's the whole entrance exam, really. Don't quit when it goes bad.

We play team games, four on four most nights, ranked when we feel brave and unranked when we want to try something stupid. Our order is not famous. It is, at the moment, on a nine-game ranked winning streak, and I would like that on the record before something happens to it.

Order nights are Tuesday and Thursday, 9 p.m. Mountain. If you're looking for us, we're the ones in the corner of the room arguing about dwarves.

Saturday, September 25, 1999. Nine straight. Thursday night we beat Saltmarsh at Last Man on the Hill, ranked, with about forty seconds on the clock and four units left between all of us. Crowbait's thrall were still standing on the hill when the time ran out, because thrall don't know when they're beaten, and neither does Crowbait. That's nine ranked wins in a row going back to July 20. Full results are in the Ledger. Please don't say anything about it in the room. We're superstitious.

Sunday, September 12, 1999. We regret to report that Blackwind has lost a man. Tallow was taken from us on Friday, September 3, by an eight-pound, one-ounce boy. Mother and son are doing fine. Tallow was last seen on bungie.net at 4:10 in the morning on the 8th, for one game of Body Count, which he lost one-handed while holding a bottle. We are keeping his spot on the roster and his archers in reserve. The order sent a card. Lantern picked it out, so it has a duck on it.

Tuesday, August 31, 1999. Six straight. Beat Bitter Root at King of the Hill tonight, and nobody blew up anybody on our own side, which is a record of a different kind. Marrow wants it noted that his dwarves had nothing to do with it. They didn't. He was lagging and they stood there the whole game.

Thursday, August 19, 1999. Lost to the Tin Crows at Steal the Bacon. It was unranked, so it does not count against the streak, and we will not be discussing it further.

Monday, August 2, 1999. Two new rules, see below. Both of them are because of Harrow.

1. No quitting a ranked game. Ever. If it's lost, it's lost. You stay in, you keep your last two warriors alive as long as you can, and you die with the rest of us like a gentleman. Quitting a ranked game is the one thing that gets you thrown out without a vote.
2. Unit trades are settled before the start. Do your trading in the pregame, agree on it out loud, and then that's that. Nobody gets to say "wait, I wanted the berserks" with the clock running. (New in August. See Harrow.)
3. The captain hands out units. Whoever's captain that game splits up the army in the first few seconds, and you take what you get. Complain afterward, in the order channel, at length, like the rest of us.
4. Say "gg" when it's over. Win or lose. Even if they spent the whole game typing things.
5. Show up on order nights, or say so. Tuesday and Thursday. If you can't make it, e-mail me. We have jobs and lives and, as of September, at least one baby.
6. Nobody brings a new player into a ranked order game without asking. (Also new in August. Also Harrow. He meant well. His cousin had played twice.)
7. What happens to your units is your own fault. We'll tell you what you did wrong. We'll tell you more than once. That's what an order is for.

Myth is not a game where you build a base and pile up an army. You start with what you've got and you never get any more. Every unit you lose is gone. So the whole game comes down to one thing: losing your men slower than the other guy loses his. Here is how we try to do that.

1. Never bunch up. This is the first rule and the last rule and most of the ones in between. Everything that hurts in Myth hurts an area, not a man. A dwarf's bomb, an exploding wight, a bad arrow volley. Ten warriors standing shoulder to shoulder is one target. Ten warriors spread out across a hillside is ten targets, and the other guy only has so many bombs. When something lands in the middle of your group, you'll know, because there won't be a group anymore. Learn the scatter command. Use it before you need it.

2. Spread out against dwarves. See rule 1, but louder. If the other team has dwarves, assume every clump of your men is going to get a present. Also remember dwarves are slow and short and don't like company. Send something fast at them. A dwarf who has to throw at a man standing right next to him is about as dangerous to himself as he is to you, and that isn't your problem.

3. Archers go behind the warriors. Archers can't take a hit. Warriors can. So the warriors go in front and hold the line, and the archers stand behind them and shoot over their heads. Give your archers the high ground if there is any. And watch your angles, because an arrow doesn't care whose back it lands in. Ours have hit more of our own warriors than I want to count.

4. Keep journeymen alive, and keep them busy. Journeymen heal. They're slow, they're no good in a fight, and they can only heal so many times, so don't waste a heal on a man who's going to be dead in four seconds anyway. Keep them behind the line, one per side, and heal the guys who are about to be useful again. A journeyman who gets caught up front is a journeyman who's going to be a ghost.

5. Thrall make a good wall. If you're Dark and you've got thrall, use them for what they're good for. They're slow, cheap, and hard to kill, so put them out in front and let them soak up the arrows while your real damage gets into place behind them. Nobody ever remembers the thrall. That's the point.

6. Look at the whole field. Pull the camera back. Check the overhead map. The thing that kills you is never the thing you're looking at.

7. Kill the healer. If they've got a journeyman behind their line, that's who your archers are looking at. Every heal he doesn't get to use is a man of theirs who stays dead.

8. Count your units before you commit. If you have six left and they have eleven, the brave move is to go stand on the hill and stall. Myth rewards patience more than it rewards nerve.

The rest you learn the way we did, by dying a lot. For how we play each kind of game, see How We Play.