So I've known people like this. I suppose they're considered TFG but this is generally a more extreme level of that. I've maybe been around at least 5 regulars like this in 12 and a half years of tabletop gaming.
One of which is just the biggest sore loser even when he wins. If something annoys him he will complain for offering the least amount of resistance in-game. Not to mention said guy cheats by giving himself an extra 500 to 1000 points in a 40k game. I heard he was losing one game that he threw a fit so bad he just packed up and left mid-game but this time possibly for good (to which I say good riddance). He throws these fits often when he's losing and this is even with his cheating. Not only does he have these issues but he did tease people a bit. Oddly not the worst person to talk to but not the nicest one either and seemingly thin skinned despite being a bit of a jerk.
There's about 3 more that follow the same pattern so i'll label them all here. These are mainly people that are negative or generally mean to me even when I give them next to no attention. They'll just strike up an insult even when I interact with other people and generally aside from a few friends they tend to hate everybody which is fine because I feel like most people hate them in return. In general these people are just jerks and awful to be around.
The last one I've known was an employee for a game store and easily he was the worst employee I've seen at any game store by a long shot (possibly worst of any store). He was awful to customers he didn't like and made the place uncomfortable for those people when they were around. He'd throw insults and once acted like he was gonna throw and possibly break one of my models (all of that done for no reason but to get a rise out of me and laugh at me). At one point when the game store he worked for was closing down in the mall the one good thing I figured was that he'd never work for the next game store and he was the one transfer to the new store. At the announcement from the hobby shop manager it was the most silent audience I heard and I think it was an announcement meant to have clapping (keep in mind the store was packed as a going away party). Eventually years down the road at the new store with him treating people like crap someone supposedly was reduced to tears by this employee and called up GWHQ and they changed management with the previous management supposedly allowing more elitist and clique atmospheres in the game store. Basically if you weren't in the 'in' crowd of hobbyists you were treated worse.
I just want to make a point I don't think I call out awful behavior as much as some. I don't mind offensive jokes, people teasing each other playfully, annoying/gross people (body odor or talking a lot), mild forms of gamer rage, smug gamers, competitive gamers and other small things. I mean I even know a dude that makes 9/11 jokes that I don't mind that bad. Keep it in mind that if I am this light with people then the people I mention must be really bad because they are. I also want to acknowledge I can be a bit of a sore loser but it's something I think I've had to work on and sometimes get better at. Also my models aren't transported well and so are broken a bit and aren't WYSIWYG. That said i'm comfortable showing you my list and various rules, agreeing on things before they are rolled for and asking if it's ok and similar. I just want to say i'm by no means the most perfect and most enjoyable person to play against. However i'm not like these people and if you don't game against me my worst behaviors and manners tend to go away.
I used to hang out at an LGS and did Warmachine mostly. A few folks were fine, especially a couple of the regulars, but there were also just enough folks that were intolerable in various ways: thin-skinned WAAC players, annoying backseat generals, paint-snobs (oddly, more on the "why do you paint your models?" kind of thing; vast majority of people played bare metal/plastic), super poor social skills leading to offensive behavior in a very mixed store in general, etc.
And it wasn't just the Warmachine players. There were plenty of Magic snobs, RPG snobs, 40k, WHFB, Infinity (god those guys never put the terrain away when they were done and just left a mess all over the tables), Malifaux WAACers, etc. So, basically, after pretty much only ever playing with friends who organized to come down same night with me--I stopped doing random pick up games entirely--I decided it was stupid to go since I had a big table I built at the house and a bunch of terrain, so I just have my chosen buddies come over and we don't have to deal with anyone we don't want to.
You want to talk about awful hobbyists, you should go back to when Age of Sigmar first launched and say the game is pretty good and doesn't need points. I'd rather watch a four hour argument about The Last Jedi than deal with that again.
My issue is more people that just treat others like crap and not in a teasing manner. Basically they're always negative and just awful to be around even for people they like. I go to a game store for fun and if I could avoid those people I would at any opportunity. I don't get bothered by too many people but there's usually some jerk wherever you go.
In the case of age of sigmar I enjoyed whfb and was pissed when it was killed off. That said people on both sides took it too far and gw sorta set the community up for a split. I'm not mad at aos players or most gw employees. I blame Kirby for what happened and being super out of touch with the players. Old gw wasn't exactly customer friendly or fan site friendly and copyright was huge with them. Anyway aos has developed into it's own thing and people should be able to get into it. Honestly if aos hadn't had to live off the death of fantasy I wouldn't have minded. This is all irrelevant now considering old world is coming back too.
Mine was a dude that was super nice and fine to be around out of the game. However, he wanted to win a little too much so he only shuffled his list around enough to prevent hard-counters making for kinda boring games since they were the same games depending on what he brought. He would take advantage of the group's leniency while being super strict if the same situation worked against him. Push come to shove, he also performed actions that weren't always expressly forbidden by the rules, but felt super gamey that no one else would do. If the game started turning against him he also became more and more irritable (never an out right jerk though) and sucked the fun right out the game.
Occasionally after much ribbing by the rest of the group, he would run casual lists around the strength everyone usually played and get creamed by the rest of the group, so he explained that was why he ran tournament lists. I only beat his tournament list once by actually running the distance and damage numbers in my head (which I am usually loathe to do for fun). I only did that because it was a smaller point game where it wasn't as taxing. Doing that I did catch him moving a little extra since I actually went to the trouble of running the distance numbers in my head to constantly be at least 0.5" out of range. I don't think he was purposely cheating, he just over measured or something got bumped a bit in where typically no one was that precise in ranging anyways except him when it was against him. Ultimately, I found it better just to build a list that would lose as quickly as possible while not looking like I was trying to lose when it was my turn to have to play him in the rotation.
What made it tough was he fine to be around out of the game. So no one wanted ever decline a game with him especially since the group wasn't that big. However, in game he had cutthroat/try-hard attitude and took advantage of the way the group played while not returning that in kind and was a poor fit made worst by the fact that not running an OP list he didn't do very well.
I only encountered that kind of crap when I was a young teenager in the very early 90s - y'know, back in school, and that was only in the really rough establishments.
I miss the lads I played with in slightly later days because we only gave a crap about having each others company and acting like jokers and fools. I'd paint their miniatures, they'd laugh their arses off at my feeble skills and we'd substitute class objects for scenery. If we screwed up a rule the rest would comically object in the most outraged fashion possible - and fall about laughing.
Unless playing in an official tournament for big money - I would find it totally embarrassing if a grown man started having a tantrum about a game "not being fair". There comes a point in life where we have to grow up and develop a sense of humour.
Sqorgar wrote: You want to talk about awful hobbyists, you should go back to when Age of Sigmar first launched and say the game is pretty good and doesn't need points. I'd rather watch a four hour argument about The Last Jedi than deal with that again.
Strangely enough, people can enjoy things in a different way from you. Shocking i know.
Sqorgar wrote: You want to talk about awful hobbyists, you should go back to when Age of Sigmar first launched and say the game is pretty good and doesn't need points. I'd rather watch a four hour argument about The Last Jedi than deal with that again.
Strangely enough, people can enjoy things in a different way from you. Shocking i know.
Reread what he wrote. Then read what you wrote. Then ...edit what you wrote?
Oh gawd, do we need to go around about THIS again?
I recall terrible games while playing in the LGS that mostly derived from people with poor social skills and/or that viewed the game as some sort of nationally recognized sporting event with huge stakes. At our local FLGS on W40K night, there were no stakes. Goes to show that the lower the stakes, the more petty people can get.
I never play in stores anymore. No need to. Even when I moved, I didn't waste my time with THAT experience again.
Ran into a Boobmarine guy once. You know the type; every model has suddenly sprouted DD breasts, uses alternate models for more titty exposure, and can't help but talking about their twin loves of the game and hentai throughout most of the game. I mean, I know everyone has to have a hobby, but some people really need to develop a second facet to their personality.
Also once ran into a guy with a serious case of dice superstition. Accused every opponent in the tournament of using crooked dice (Those secret, invisible air bubbles you know) except for the TO, which used Casino dice. I actually invested in metal machined dice after that just to avoid any future accusations. Didn't make me leave, but it wasn't a positive experience by a long shot
Usually it's the staff that make me never want to go back. I think I've been in maybe one where they made me feel like they cared about me as a customer.
ChargerIIC wrote: Ran into a Boobmarine guy once. You know the type; every model has suddenly sprouted DD breasts, uses alternate models for more titty exposure, and can't help but talking about their twin loves of the game and hentai throughout most of the game. I mean, I know everyone has to have a hobby, but some people really need to develop a second facet to their personality.
Doesn't sound like this guy did anything wrong. More like you are just overly judgmental.
It seems like there are two type of awful hobbyists - those who do things we don't like, and those who are things we don't like. Neither are innately wrong or bad. For instance, I'd find it annoying to play against someone who autistically recounts the entire plot to multiple episodes of the Golden Girls, and I'd go to great lengths to avoid doing that ever again. But I don't begrudge the guy his passions or hobbies - I just don't share them. And that's okay, because it would be boring if everybody liked the same things in the same ways.
ChargerIIC wrote: Ran into a Boobmarine guy once. You know the type; every model has suddenly sprouted DD breasts, uses alternate models for more titty exposure, and can't help but talking about their twin loves of the game and hentai throughout most of the game. I mean, I know everyone has to have a hobby, but some people really need to develop a second facet to their personality.
Doesn't sound like this guy did anything wrong. More like you are just overly judgmental.
It seems like there are two type of awful hobbyists - those who do things we don't like, and those who are things we don't like. Neither are innately wrong or bad. For instance, I'd find it annoying to play against someone who autistically recounts the entire plot to multiple episodes of the Golden Girls, and I'd go to great lengths to avoid doing that ever again. But I don't begrudge the guy his passions or hobbies - I just don't share them. And that's okay, because it would be boring if everybody liked the same things in the same ways.
There's having a fandom or obsession, then there's taking it to the point you let it be the only thing that defines you. Then there's pushing it on everyone else. The line was somewhere before those last two stops.
#1: Had a local Stanker that smelled absolutely VILE.
I don't mean 'he would come in and buy stuff' and stunk; the guy would hang out at the store from open to close, eat two or three fast food meals there, and handle merch and terrain and sit in all the chairs and on the sofa. I could describe the stench, but let me summarize it for you: Any way you're thinking something could stink, what something could smell like- YES, that was what it smelled like. All of it. And yet, he managed to afford $200 in models every week.
Yes, all means were exhausted. We politely asked if he should be spending nearly a thousand dollars a month on models and books. We asked if everything was all right at home. We did everything we could do to find out if there was some kind of problem there, and .... nothing. So, we had a polite conversation in private, just two guys that were really polite... and nothing. He just didn't care, at all.
The owner finally was able to get online reviews, and it took being publicly embarassed by those review comments for him to realize there was a problem- but it was too little, too late. When we approached the owner after the confrontation went poorly, he threatened to ban us for 'bullying' a 'good customer'. The stanker finally got banned from all gaming establishments until he cleaned up (he... kinda did. Sort of.)
#2: Paper Crown Princess stirred drama at a store, the only complaint she couldn't be blamed for was the GW Prices.
We had a girl show up that was a gamer. Which, of course, isn't really abnormal (most of us had girlfriends, wives, sisters, and other women that played for years coming to the store). However, this princess seemed to think it was abnormal and she was some unique and majestic creature. Of course, the reality of it was demonstrably against her belief that she was a rare diamond in the rough... she she set about trying to make it be exactly like that.
She badmouthed every girl in the store, to a point where she was making claims that X gal was flirting with Y dude when X gal's husband was away or something. And then she would corral all the guys together, and the weaker-willed thirsters would side with her and enable this drama. She was flirty, and ... yeah, you were in trouble if you didn't gawk and blush when she flirted with you.
I'm not peculiar about how a girl dresses, but the ONE THING the shop did do that helped was call her out once her attire went from being 'actual clothing' to 'stripper's stage outfit'. The place had a dress code, and she violated it brazenly (and yes, it's the same for men and women).
Basically she formed a little cult of thirsty incels that would lash out at everyone that she didn't like, they'd spend hundreds of dollars on anything she wanted, praise her for he most trivial things (I'm pretty sure they praised her for tying her own shoes), etc. She then kicked things up a notch by trying to stir drama with every guy that didn't worship her...
And then she got herself a boyfriend, abandoned the shop entirely, and didn't even bother to pick up a huge box of models that these losers bought for her. The guys working at the store had finally caught on to her antics by then, but none of them had the guts to ban her.
#3: That guy that ruins everything by being WAACAF
A shop catered to competitive players, almost exclusively. Which meant the places was a beacon for all the dudes that you never wanted to play with. Guys that threw down their beastmode broken netlists against anything- even that 12 year old that's still got the glue drying on his first box of Space Marines. And then they'd gloat about it.
But that's not the store I'm talking about... we had a guy start haunting the more casual stores.
...he literally couldn't play a game without rubbing his wins in your face and gloating about it. He would talk trash about your army, and tell everyone that walked through the door how he beat the crap out of you. If he asked you to try a new game, it was because he was on the internet researching it and found a broken combo or rule and already bought everything he needed... and he'd STILL talk about beating you (even though it was the first time you tried the game).
And the store kept him around because he generated interest. It's just that... they never noticed that after people played him, their interest might still be in the game but it damned sure wasn't in playing him. This was in the store where I work weekends, so after this was brought to my attention... I barred him from doing demo games and asked him to cool it. He had been warned about this before, but I finally squashed it. He's now pissed off to go play at the WAAC club on the other side of town.
ChargerIIC wrote: Ran into a Boobmarine guy once. You know the type; every model has suddenly sprouted DD breasts, uses alternate models for more titty exposure, and can't help but talking about their twin loves of the game and hentai throughout most of the game. I mean, I know everyone has to have a hobby, but some people really need to develop a second facet to their personality.
Doesn't sound like this guy did anything wrong. More like you are just overly judgmental.
It seems like there are two type of awful hobbyists - those who do things we don't like, and those who are things we don't like. Neither are innately wrong or bad. For instance, I'd find it annoying to play against someone who autistically recounts the entire plot to multiple episodes of the Golden Girls, and I'd go to great lengths to avoid doing that ever again. But I don't begrudge the guy his passions or hobbies - I just don't share them. And that's okay, because it would be boring if everybody liked the same things in the same ways.
There's having a fandom or obsession, then there's taking it to the point you let it be the only thing that defines you. Then there's pushing it on everyone else. The line was somewhere before those last two stops.
It's fairly presumptuous to simply assume you got the full measure of a person over a single game of 40K and accurately gauged their personality. Far more likely you're committing the several logical fallacies that we all commit when we wrestle with the inner-thoughts of others.
I'd wager you'd label me a 'boobmarine' guy. My Daemons are an overt tribute to kink. 100%. Given half a chance, I'll talk about the conversions I've made and likely what inspired them.
My Daemons don't represent my totality as a person, even if I spend a whole THREE! hours talking about whips.
Excommunicatus wrote: My Daemons don't represent my totality as a person, even if I spend a whole THREE! hours talking about whips.
Up front, I don't think any of this makes you a bad person. But that's just the kind of mentality that I have, and not everyone agrees.
However-
You do have to understand that a first impression lasts a long, long time- and it really sticks. And it's honestly understandable, because if you meet someone for the first time and what you present to them is tiddy models and a conversation about whips in the bedroom... well, unless it's an establishment or environment for that- you're going to give the impression that you're a pervert or some kind of sex fiend. And it's really hard to blame the other person, because that's what you gave them to work with. At the end of the day, YOU chose what to present to another person, and it's not on that person to go do a deep dive on your personality and see if they can dig up something else.
If you show up to a first date dressed like a slob in dirty clothes, and won't pay for your date's dinner... she's going to think you're a cheap slob, no matter what else you have going out. It's on you to decide what to present to other people, it's not on them to try and mine the more appealing parts of your character out.
I am both of the things you allege in your first paragraph. Neither is the totality of my personality, nor is it fair to assume it is after knowing me for three hours in the context of a game of toy soldiers.
I have a R&H force with is an obvious parody of the Stalinist Red Army. I write silly little stories about them featuring a Mary-Sue that is obviously partly based on Stalin. I'm not a Stalinist.
I'm not arguing it's on you to soul-bond with your opponent, move to Greece and open a taverna with them, I'm saying it's unfair (and presumptuous) to make a judgment about the sort of person someone is because of one thing presented for a short time, largely in context.
EDIT - Also, I obviously don't ever talk about whips for three hours. Exaggeration for effect.
Excommunicatus wrote: I am both of the things you allege in your first paragraph. Neither is the totality of my personality, nor is it fair to assume it is after knowing me for three hours in the context of a game of toy soldiers.
I have a R&H force with is an obvious parody of the Stalinist Red Army. I write silly little stories about them featuring a Mary-Sue that is obviously partly based on Stalin. I'm not a Stalinist.
I'm not arguing it's on you to soul-bond with your opponent, move to Greece and open a taverna with them, I'm saying it's unfair (and presumptuous) to make a judgment about the sort of person someone is because of one thing presented for a short time, largely in context.
EDIT - Also, I obviously don't ever talk about whips for three hours. Exaggeration for effect.
Let's put it this way, I get it. I know that all people are pretty layered and complex individuals. However, at a certain point you make the decision to decide what foot you're going to put forward. YOU made that call, and you decided that impression was the one you wanted to make. Of all the components of your personality, you chose (hypothetically) "Sex Fiend and Pervert". That was your call, and it's not some passive feature or instinct like blinking or breathing, nor is it a disability. YOU made a choice in how you presented yourself.
I work with what people give me, and that's not something that you just can't help. It's a conscious choice, a form of communication in itself, and it's only natural to go off that. And quite honestly, it says a lot about a person when they choose a certain thing to 'lead in' with.
It's even more unfair for you to expect people to look past the first thing you present them with, with intense passion and expect them to say "let me do the work here and find out more about this person" if the first things bother them or repulse them.
I make a judgement about someone in a short time because that's all I'm usually spending with someone- a short time. If, in that period of time, you present yourself as repulsive- then I want nothing to do with you. You may later get a shot at showing otherwise, but it's going to take some work- YOUR work. Not mine. I've neither the time, nor the obligation to sit and chip away layers of a person after they've elected to present themselves to me in a way I dislike. And if that bothers them, and they think it's 'unfair'- well, good. Maybe they'll help me out and not approach me again, so now we can at least work toward the same goal- which is "me not being around this person".
Racerguy180 wrote: There is always that one person that is; abrasive, excessively inappropriate(sexist, racist, whatever), generally obnoxious, etc...
I feel this way about the socially awkward dude who talks about his anime porn while Pokemon League is being run ten feet away and attended by a dozen kids. And this was after the store management asked the DnD crew to tone down the cursing cause a parent complained about having to explain what "feth" meant. We are cursed to attract the socially clueless.
TBH if someone shows up with his models converted to have giant boobs and spends the entire time talking about Hentai then yes that IS disturbing, at the very least I'd think most people would know it inapproperate.
Let's not mince words, Hentai is the Japanese word for Perverted, it's ANIMATED PORN.
Some anime fanatics yeah make it out to somehow be superior somehow (I once knew someone who claimed anime was inheriantly superior to anything produced in the west, to the point where they tried to seriously argue Pokemon was better then Star Wars) but at the end of the day Hentai is porn.
Now maybe I'm just old fashioned but I don't belive it's approperate to strike up a conversation about that porn movie you where watching with someone you bumped into at a game store.
I'm honestly baffled by anyone who talks about porn in public unprompted. Doing it in a games store where minors are a frequent thing, and they're standing ten feet away, is how you get the entire room staring at you with that "what the feth is wrong with you" face.
LordofHats wrote: I feel this way about the socially awkward dude who talks about his anime porn while Pokemon League is being run ten feet away and attended by a dozen kids. And this was after the store management asked the DnD crew to tone down the cursing cause a parent complained about having to explain what "feth" meant. We are cursed to attract the socially clueless.
You can present this as a 'socially decent' issue if you like, as someone who actually works in a FLGS and has seen several of them come and go in my lifetime... let me tell you one thing tht you should never, ever forget:
The wrath of a bored Boomer Karen with Social Media and the ability to do a Google Review can absolutely ruin a business. Even if it's trivial and petty. I've seen this stuff get so out of hand, it had to involve police running Karens off the property and outright restraining orders.
Now, I am 100% in favor of the rule "Don't expect everyone else to be your kid's parent/babysitter", so I am tolerant to some degree of people speaking their minds and being themselves without walking on eggshells. The FLGS isn't a babysitting service, and I firmly believe there's something wrong if you're going to leave an unattended child (not necessarily a teenager) at the FLGS with a bunch of strangers.
However, I believe that if you wouldn't say it in front of a prospective girlfriend's parents, then you should probably stow it... or at least be keenly aware of your audience.
No part of what I'm saying is arguing in favour of loudly and discussing porn, fetish, anything like that unsolicited in obviously inappropriate settings.
For clarity.
And yeah, Adeptus Doritos, I mis-spoke earlier. I meant to say it's not fair (and presumptuous) to make a judgment about the totality of the person based on one thing presented for a short time, largely in context.
Obviously it's completely fair to make a judgment about what the Daemons mean about me as a person.
#4: This dude that really, REALLY needed to hire a babysitter.
I don't have the energy to go into this guy's situation, but I get it... it's hard to be a dad and a hobby gamer. But the guy's kids were out of control. Now, I was told (or rather, overheard him bellowing it angrily at someone else) that the kids had autism or something- I'm not a doctor, I don't know, I'm just some guy that wanted to play games without screeching and screaming. Oh, and then they'd get mad and one would hit the other and then the wailing would start. And he must have mastered some kind of Zen mindset, because he wouldn't even acknowledge it or turn away from his game. He kept on without skipping a beat.
It wasn't really the kids, it was the dad. He didn't seem to understand that he was putting a lot of burden on other people who were just trying to play. Shop owner tried to talk to him, but the idea that his children were being a disturbance to other people was completely irrelevant to him, or lost on him.
This one DID have me leave. A lot of people would leave, if this guy showed up with his screaming kids. There was never any other problem with anyone else's kids, just these two.
He told the shop owner that kicking the children out was discrimination against their disability, and he could get a lawyer. So he said the children were welcome at any time with their mother or another adult guardian, he banned the dad for not paying attention to the children.
#5 The reason Yu-Gi-Oh cards had to be stored behind the counter.
A store I frequented a long while back had a massive number of card players, Yu-Gi-Oh mostly. The kids weren't doing anything 'wrong', I suppose... they just SWARMED the store, so you couldn't really do anything. And there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to it. If you were trying to play a game at a table, they would be all over you...
...but things kept going missing. And lo and behold, you'd find out some kid had swiped something of yours. A hat, a pack of smokes from your coat on the back of your chair, crafting tools, an entire model, a bag of dice, your book... stuff that none of these kids even seemed to care about, they'd get caught swiping it and trying to sell it to their friends- fortunately, they also loved snitching on each other.
The store would be swarmed with kids, shoulder to shoulder, and they simply would not do anything to mitigate this crowd. Wargame nights? Magic night? D&D Night? Demo Night? Not if the Yugioh kids showed. But they spent money, so the manager tolerated it... until they were the only ones spending money, and Yugioh alone ain't payin' the bills.
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Excommunicatus wrote: And yeah, Adeptus Doritos, I mis-spoke earlier. I meant to say it's not fair (and presumptuous) to make a judgment about the totality of the person based on one thing presented for a short time, largely in context.
Well, that's just it. No one is judging the totality of the person.
What's being judged is the manner in which this person chooses to present himself to a stranger, where their time together is limited. I'm not walking away from you saying, "Wow, he's a terrible person to the core and his soul is made of doodoo, there is nothing good about him at all!"
I'm walking away from you and saying, "Yeah, if that's the way he wants to present himself and behave around me to play a game, I'd rather just not spend my time dealing with that."
Adeptus Doritos wrote: What's being judged is the manner in which this person chooses to present himself to a stranger, where their time together is limited.
Not to be rude, but you are talking about playing Warhammer - I'm pretty sure that most strangers are judging you and your friends rather unkindly as well. There was a time when playing DnD would get you labeled as a devil worshipper. Nerds have to stick together because only other nerds can understand that deliciously awkward combination of obsession and cringe. Yeah, this guy is not totally appropriate in his obsession - but you know that. You understand it. That awkwardness is familiar. Because it is in you, whether you know it or not (I mean, you say you actually work at a FLGS). And yet you won't yield for it while expecting others to yield for your Warhammer? You think Boomer Karen with Social Media isn't rolling her eyes all the way back into her head while you try to patiently help her buy Pokemon cards for a birthday party her nine year old is attending?
The nerd world is too small for nerds to be criticizing other nerds on behalf of Boomer Karens and their Twitter feeds.
Sqorgar wrote: Not to be rude, but you are talking about playing Warhammer - I'm pretty sure that most strangers are judging you and your friends rather unkindly as well.
Well, if they were the kind of people I was really concerned about being friends with, then I'd probably have noticed their absence. I haven't, so I guess they're doing us both a favor.
Strg Alt wrote: Nerds have to stick together because only other nerds can understand that deliciously awkward combination of obsession and cringe.
No, we need to not do this by default. We need to be mature, socially functional adults and hold ourselves to that standard. Just 'sticking together' is why FLGS' still stink like unwashed ass and armpit, because people circled the wagons and 'stuck together' instead of being mature adults and dealing with the issue.
Strg Alt wrote: nd yet you won't yield for it while expecting others to yield for your Warhammer? You think Boomer Karen with Social Media isn't rolling her eyes all the way back into her head while you try to patiently help her buy Pokemon cards for a birthday party her nine year old is attending?
Boomer Karen's opinion of me isn't valuable. You know what is? Her money. That's all I want from her. And she's welcome to judge me, out loud if she likes. Because then her money becomes less important, and she's the one that's got to deal with her bratty screecher when he doesn't get his cardboard Japanese doodle critter.
Strg Alt wrote: The nerd world is too small for nerds to be criticizing other nerds on behalf of Boomer Karens and their Twitter feeds.
And it stays small, because too many of you lack the intestinal fortitude to hold each other to a respectable adult standard. No amount of female miniatures is going to make women want to play with you if you can't be a mature, well-adjusted adult that takes care of themselves.
Adeptus Doritos wrote: What's being judged is the manner in which this person chooses to present himself to a stranger, where their time together is limited.
Not to be rude, but you are talking about playing Warhammer - I'm pretty sure that most strangers are judging you and your friends rather unkindly as well. There was a time when playing DnD would get you labeled as a devil worshipper. Nerds have to stick together because only other nerds can understand that deliciously awkward combination of obsession and cringe. Yeah, this guy is not totally appropriate in his obsession - but you know that. You understand it. That awkwardness is familiar. Because it is in you, whether you know it or not (I mean, you say you actually work at a FLGS). And yet you won't yield for it while expecting others to yield for your Warhammer? You think Boomer Karen with Social Media isn't rolling her eyes all the way back into her head while you try to patiently help her buy Pokemon cards for a birthday party her nine year old is attending?
The nerd world is too small for nerds to be criticizing other nerds on behalf of Boomer Karens and their Twitter feeds.
I think he's talking first impressions generally... Like from a human relations perspective. And he's right.
If you're playing Warhammer with another nerd you have that incommon obviously... But if the other nerd seems really really weird/awful during your game it doesn't matter that you're both into the same thing. You aint going to want to spend time with them again (play them again) and certainly have to approach any issues in a mature way. Why should you enable people to do things that take away from collective experiences.
I don't think anyone ever made me want to leave the FLC but one of the guys in my WHRPG campaign is really rubbing me the wrong way. Always has to have the last word, being overbearing and really forcing his character into everything and getting snarky with less experienced players. Certainly makes me want to finish the sessions faster. Not going to not participate and let anyone have that much power over me so its just something I got to deal with it.
I've seen some stores be rather clique-y with the regulars, other than that though no real bad experiences. I always play with the same people every time though, if I was going into stores doing pickup games with strangers i'm sure i'd have more stories by now.
Argive wrote: I don't think anyone ever made me want to leave the FLC but one of the guys in my WHRPG campaign is really rubbing me the wrong way. Always has to have the last word, being overbearing and really forcing his character into everything and getting snarky with less experienced players. Certainly makes me want to finish the sessions faster. Not going to not participate and let anyone have that much power over me so its just something I got to deal with it.
OOF. Had one of these. Here's how you can deal with him:
Let him. Let him have the last word, let him do as he pleases, let him do whatever he wants with zero resistance. Let him have center stage, as much of it as he wants. Give it all to him, in excess, and just sit back and let it happen. Don't try to do anything, just let him have the spotlight and don't even bother showing any interest in sharing it with him.
He'll realize he's just playing with himself (literally and metaphorically) and get bored, then piss off.
The message that this sends is that he is just wasting his time, and then when he realizes it you can tell him that it's how everyone else feels when they play with him.
Yea for the most part I've noticed few of the other guys have been largerly taking a similar approach now and not engaging as much. I think he's picking up the cues...I hope he's going to change his attitude. He doesn't seem like a bad guy intentionally.
We have been mostly dealing with the minutia of urban life and questing... He's a smart ass merchant character with no combat skills and we're now in a dungeon. So I'm planning on asking him to take point and talk his way away from the next monster or stfu
Thargrim wrote: I've seen some stores be rather clique-y with the regulars, other than that though no real bad experiences. I always play with the same people every time though, if I was going into stores doing pickup games with strangers i'm sure i'd have more stories by now.
This is literally the metaphorical FLGS cancer.
All the new stores around here seem to follow this curve of being welcoming to begin with then slowly becoming less of a store and more a hangout for the same 5-15 people who treat it like an extension of home, typically with 1-2 of them working for free but then not really working.
Adeptus Doritos wrote: What's being judged is the manner in which this person chooses to present himself to a stranger, where their time together is limited.
Not to be rude, but you are talking about playing Warhammer - I'm pretty sure that most strangers are judging you and your friends rather unkindly as well. There was a time when playing DnD would get you labeled as a devil worshipper. Nerds have to stick together because only other nerds can understand that deliciously awkward combination of obsession and cringe. Yeah, this guy is not totally appropriate in his obsession - but you know that. You understand it. That awkwardness is familiar. Because it is in you, whether you know it or not (I mean, you say you actually work at a FLGS). And yet you won't yield for it while expecting others to yield for your Warhammer? You think Boomer Karen with Social Media isn't rolling her eyes all the way back into her head while you try to patiently help her buy Pokemon cards for a birthday party her nine year old is attending?
The nerd world is too small for nerds to be criticizing other nerds on behalf of Boomer Karens and their Twitter feeds.
dude that;s complete bs.
plenty of nerds are capable of understanding what is and isn't socially acceptable (I have ASPERGER'S and I'm saying he was out of line) the folks who'd call me a devil worshipper for D&D? well first of all I'm an atheist myself so they'll call me a devil worshipper anyway, secondly those people haven't been relevant in 30 years.
let's look at today?
top movie of 2019 (ohh and all time) Avengers Endgame, A COMIC BOOK MOVIE. current top movie in the movie theatre? A STAR WARS MOVIE.
(if you look at the movies in the "billion plus" club a full half are what I'd call "geek movies")
Apparently throughout december the most streamed shows where the Mandalorian (Star Wars) and the Witcher (a fantasy series based off a polish book made famous by a video game) then there was game of thrones, a fantasy series and one of the biggest TV phenomia of all time...
what I'm getting at is that the idea that Nerds are a rare commodity etc is dated. We ARE mainstream
Thought I'd dive in on this topic, as I recently had a odd moment relating to this, but in a way I've not heard of before.
Now, mercifully, this is only kinda my local games store, as I was only dropping in as I was visiting my old home town. I don't go often, nor do I rely on it for supplies etc.
Their newest member of staff is a guy I went to school with. To gloss over some details, involving being chased with sticks, rumor spreading and fake social media accounts, the person in question, and their friends, was involved with making a significant portion of my middle school life pretty miserable, and, to an extent, I hold them accountable for a number of insecurities that I really only recently overcame. (Anyone familiar with my posts about my private life will have a notion of this)
While it was certainly gratifying to watch the person in question fumble
Spoiler:
charmlessly with extremely basic customer interaction, as CLEARLY the weakest member of staff was slightly gratifying, as I paid for my purchase with money I earned from a career I worked hard to get into, and I find rewarding, and find myself valued and popular in
(rant over ) the presence of said person made me genuinely unwilling to spend time in the store, and I re-scheduled plans to game as a result of it. I wouldn't be able to relax around said person, and frankly I don't care to have them anywhere close to my life.
Playing with strangers in a shop has never really been my style. I always played in clubs, even when we played at a shop we did so as a club.
So I only had one of these stories and it was pretty banal. I was playing in a GW store after moving to a new country, I figured it might be a good way to meet new hobbyists. This was back in 8th edition. I ended up playing against a guy who gave me a slightly uneasy vibe, a bit overeager and not really interested in chit chat. I deployed my fully painted night goblins, he threw down his unpainted and poorly assembled daemons.
Proceeded to obliterate my army in a turn or two with vortex spells spammed down my battle line, so after spending ages setting up and waiting for a game I pretty much just packed my models back up again. He was kind of unpleasant in how he acted, calling his friends over and cackling a lot, and I just didn't enjoy the experience at all. I figured there were better ways to spend time and didn't go back to that shop again. Might sound like a sore loser, but I don't mind losing, I just don't like not actually geting to play the game. I think that was a combination of 8th edition poor balance and a WAAC type player going up against me with a fairly tame, generalist Night Goblin list.
Another experience, after moving to Germany. I was shopping in the local store, and on my way in I noticed they had a sticker from an anti immigrant party on the door. Being an immigrant to the country, I felt pretty put off. Then inside the place was super disorganised, everything stacked haphazardly, coated in dust. Sometimes you would be looking around on the shelves and find like a fossilised sandwich or something in there, long forgotten. The owner was unfriendly and had a little ratty dog that liked to bark at people.
They had a decent selection of OOP stock, because they never bothered to tidy up or anything, and some of it was pretty cheap because they never updated their prices, so I did enjoy going in there on little treasure hunts to see what I could find, but I was much happier giving my money to the friendly old hippy with the clean shop down the road, even though he had a smaller selection.
Theres always a guy with obscenely long fingernails, with dirt under them. I dont care if you wanna wear a leather trenchcoat and new rock boots, and grow your hair down to your arse, but buy a pair of damn clippers.
The wrath of a bored Boomer Karen with Social Media and the ability to do a Google Review can absolutely ruin a business. Even if it's trivial and petty. I've seen this stuff get so out of hand, it had to involve police running Karens off the property and outright restraining orders.
This man is speaking the abrasive truth. I have also run into it in the small business world.
One of the reasons a small business has a 95% failure rate before 5 years is because the business owner gets sick to death of always be treated like garbage by their entitled customers! Doesn't really make you want to keep going, unless you run on spite. That's why I managed to go beyond 5 years.....
Anyway..... stores are a public space, let's all act like we are in public. Seems like a pretty universal rule?
Adeptus Doritos wrote: What's being judged is the manner in which this person chooses to present himself to a stranger, where their time together is limited.
Not to be rude, but you are talking about playing Warhammer - I'm pretty sure that most strangers are judging you and your friends rather unkindly as well. There was a time when playing DnD would get you labeled as a devil worshipper. Nerds have to stick together because only other nerds can understand that deliciously awkward combination of obsession and cringe. Yeah, this guy is not totally appropriate in his obsession - but you know that. You understand it. That awkwardness is familiar. Because it is in you, whether you know it or not (I mean, you say you actually work at a FLGS). And yet you won't yield for it while expecting others to yield for your Warhammer? You think Boomer Karen with Social Media isn't rolling her eyes all the way back into her head while you try to patiently help her buy Pokemon cards for a birthday party her nine year old is attending?
The nerd world is too small for nerds to be criticizing other nerds on behalf of Boomer Karens and their Twitter feeds.
Honestly, the worst thing about being a Nerd is dealing with other Nerds. I say this with love and a huge helping of entitled elitism.
It can be a real chore bringing my family (wife and daughter) to the local shops. They both like to engage casually with the hobby, but they definitely do not feel welcome or included in the fun with a lot of the shop locals. I don't even play there, just go in shopping and it can get real awkward......
.... again, I say this with love. The shop is not your personal hang-out.
never had an issue at FLGS, did have a minor issue at a GW decades back though. Bratty kid gamed there, his parents spent a fortune though so the staff humoured him.
they asked if I didn't mind losing to him, got a few bits from the discount bin in the sale a month or so later though.
BrianDavion wrote:the folks who'd call me a devil worshipper for D&D? well first of all I'm an atheist myself so they'll call me a devil worshipper anyway, secondly those people haven't been relevant in 30 years.
You'd think so, but no.
Prosecutors still bring up the whole "D&D = satanism" bit today. Trey Gowdy does it in an episode of Forensic Files, he ended up being elected to the House of Representatives and was largely responsible for the Benghazi 'Inquiry' nonsense.
My FLGS has a gaming room you have to pay to use, so it might have nasty regulars and I’d never know it. The shop itself feels like a porno shop: every customer is quiet, focused, and really hesitant to touch anything, the only chit chat is from people who came in together, and a sense of guilty shame hangs over everything.
Excommunicatus wrote: Prosecutors still bring up the whole "D&D = satanism" bit today. Trey Gowdy does it in an episode of Forensic Files, he ended up being elected to the House of Representatives and was largely responsible for the Benghazi 'Inquiry' nonsense.
"Nonsense" that resulted in dead Americans. As you can see, that's no longer tolerated. People tend to miss their flights for that now.
Also, I was among the many that scoffed at the 'satanism' in D&D...
But there's no shortage of wannabe edgelords trying to be Satanic on some of the D&D nights. It's not something that'll make you dangerous in a 'deliberately evil' sort of way, but very much so in a 'stupid enough to actually do it' kind of way if you get in with some of the weirdos I've seen. Also, they all tend to smell bad.
My old FLGS haunt had to ban the Book of Vile Darkness and the Book of Erotic Fantasy from the same group of stankers. I'll let you picture it.
EDIT: This wasn't neccessarily a popular decision- not because people thought it should be openly played in the store, but because the guy had no problem having it out on a shelf, out of the plastic, in plain view after we repeatedly warned him about the content. It only became a problem when a bunch of smelly dudes started using it.
That's kind of tragihumorous, since the Book of Vile Darkness is so immature and silly, its target audience is clearly not primarily adults. So much of it is the kind of edgelord stuff that 15-16 year old (primarily) dudes find cool, like having a magic nipple clamp that gives you buffs.
Excommunicatus wrote: Prosecutors still bring up the whole "D&D = satanism" bit today. Trey Gowdy does it in an episode of Forensic Files, he ended up being elected to the House of Representatives and was largely responsible for the Benghazi 'Inquiry' nonsense.
"Nonsense" that resulted in dead Americans.
You really need to read more carefully. I'm not talking about the Benghazi incident itself.
There's currently a particular form of human disease man making the rounds in my greater metro area who has found a new way to irritate me.
Basicallly, any time a new smallish game is being tried out, this guy turns up, ostensibly to participate in a decently enthusiastic manner. He gets into the rules, chats happily about theorycrafting, starts building his miniatures, and the only warning sign you get is that he loves to compare the new game you're trying out very favorably to The Bad Mainstream Games. Usually 40k and WMH, talking about how much better this system or this mechanic is than the stuff braindead GW and PP uses for their stupid dumb games for dumb people.
And then...he plays a few games, and the first time he loses, he mysteriously figures out that the thing he lost to is so unsolvably, irrevocably broken that it completely ruins this game.
But fear not! For Game Killer Mccancerman has the solution! And the solution is this NEW game he has discovered! Usually, a game system that is either brand new, or hasn't come out yet and he's invested into on Kickstarter. What if we took this game club and everyone just started playing this new game? Wouldn't that be great??? He then starts relentlessly posting on any social media group you're trying to use bitching about the current games balance, and arguing that the club should be made more generic so people who want to try "other games" can use it too.
Then as soon as the group goes dead and stops meeting regularly, and mysteriously the fledgeling playerbase doesn't want to shack up with this toxic abrasive donkey-cave, he goes back to bitching that nobody plays anything but 40k, the dumbest game for dumb-dumbs.
This guy drives me ABSOLUTELY NUTS. He's tanked fledgeling groups that I've either run or participated in trying to start up
-Shadow War Armageddon
-Necromunda
-Age of Sigmar
-Infinity
-Blood Bowl
-marvel superhero game thingy, whatever it is, the new one (didn't join that group but heard he tanked it)
-Gorkamorka
-Kill Team at a different store
-Second Necromunda group at a different store
After messing with groups I was running twice, I told him I was sick of his gak and didn't want to see him joining any group I was forming in the future, so info I have on his current exploits is secondhand. He dumpstered my attempt to get a Necromunda campaign going (new Kill Team is going to be sooo much better and deeper and more balanced you guys, and we can use miniatures we already HAVE! We have got to try it, just make the group into a Warhammer Skirmish group!!) and my Blood Bowl league (BB is a game for babies! Guild Ball is so much better balanced! Look at these cool miniatures I painted!) and he's currently in his larval infiltration/cuckoo chick stage in a Necromunda group at a nearby store.
I'm kind of torn on this. I feel like things get blown out of proportion online especially...
However, I did recently experience a store manager making an un-self-aware racist comment (the kind that isn't explicit, but would only ever be said by someone who has no exposure to someone from the culture they're referring to, and definitely wouldn't be said in the presence of someone from that culture).
I was pretty down about this, having just moved to the area and hoping to use that store as my local. Thought about getting him in trouble with the owner, etc but felt that also might be a bit vindictive, since he clearly didn't Mean to offend...
But in the end, although I thought about it (like in the thread title!) I've decided it's better for me to continue to engage with that community, rather than leave over one bad apple (even if he is an employee).
Appreciate this thread as an opportunity to put down some thoughts about it!
Reminds me of the guy who works the tabletop games area at Pegasus Hobbies. He would say things so racist and crazy that I never knew if he was serious or not. Many of the regulars were members of minority groups the guy slurred against, and they all seemed to think he was funny, so I assumed there's probably a history there I wasn't privy to. Not the best situation to walk into as a new customer, though.
But fear not! For Game Killer Mccancerman has the solution! And the solution is this NEW game he has discovered! Usually, a game system that is either brand new, or hasn't come out yet and he's invested into on Kickstarter. What if we took this game club and everyone just started playing this new game? Wouldn't that be great??? He then starts relentlessly posting on any social media group you're trying to use bitching about the current games balance, and arguing that the club should be made more generic so people who want to try "other games" can use it too.
.
We've got one of those too, ignoring them above and beyond my usual lack of social skills works most of the time
Never been run out of a store by a player before. I get the occasional smelly individual but I just smile and try to hold my breath when possible or breathe through my mouth instead.
I have stopped going to my local FLGS due to terrible customer service and rude behavior by the owner. I think my locale area is cursed or something. Hobby stores never last long around here and every time one opens its run by someone who has no clue how to run a successful business and give good customer service.
the_scotsman wrote: There's currently a particular form of human disease man making the rounds in my greater metro area who has found a new way to irritate me.
Basicallly, any time a new smallish game is being tried out, this guy turns up, ostensibly to participate in a decently enthusiastic manner. He gets into the rules, chats happily about theorycrafting, starts building his miniatures, and the only warning sign you get is that he loves to compare the new game you're trying out very favorably to The Bad Mainstream Games. Usually 40k and WMH, talking about how much better this system or this mechanic is than the stuff braindead GW and PP uses for their stupid dumb games for dumb people.
And then...he plays a few games, and the first time he loses, he mysteriously figures out that the thing he lost to is so unsolvably, irrevocably broken that it completely ruins this game.
But fear not! For Game Killer Mccancerman has the solution! And the solution is this NEW game he has discovered! Usually, a game system that is either brand new, or hasn't come out yet and he's invested into on Kickstarter. What if we took this game club and everyone just started playing this new game? Wouldn't that be great??? He then starts relentlessly posting on any social media group you're trying to use bitching about the current games balance, and arguing that the club should be made more generic so people who want to try "other games" can use it too.
Then as soon as the group goes dead and stops meeting regularly, and mysteriously the fledgeling playerbase doesn't want to shack up with this toxic abrasive donkey-cave, he goes back to bitching that nobody plays anything but 40k, the dumbest game for dumb-dumbs.
This guy drives me ABSOLUTELY NUTS. He's tanked fledgeling groups that I've either run or participated in trying to start up
-Shadow War Armageddon
-Necromunda
-Age of Sigmar
-Infinity
-Blood Bowl
-marvel superhero game thingy, whatever it is, the new one (didn't join that group but heard he tanked it)
-Gorkamorka
-Kill Team at a different store
-Second Necromunda group at a different store
After messing with groups I was running twice, I told him I was sick of his gak and didn't want to see him joining any group I was forming in the future, so info I have on his current exploits is secondhand. He dumpstered my attempt to get a Necromunda campaign going (new Kill Team is going to be sooo much better and deeper and more balanced you guys, and we can use miniatures we already HAVE! We have got to try it, just make the group into a Warhammer Skirmish group!!) and my Blood Bowl league (BB is a game for babies! Guild Ball is so much better balanced! Look at these cool miniatures I painted!) and he's currently in his larval infiltration/cuckoo chick stage in a Necromunda group at a nearby store.
ohh god THESE GUYS, I've never encountered them in a table top enviroment but they're a PLAGUE in online game enviroments. they'll join a brand new MMO, join a guild and after a month or two of the new MMO decide this MMO is crap and how this new one thats not even out yet is going to be "so much better" and they hop from MMO to MMO apparently seeking, I dunno.. perfection?
There's currently a particular form of human disease man making the rounds in my greater metro area who has found a new way to irritate me.
Basicallly, any time a new smallish game is being tried out, this guy turns up, ostensibly to participate in a decently enthusiastic manner. He gets into the rules, chats happily about theorycrafting, starts building his miniatures, and the only warning sign you get is that he loves to compare the new game you're trying out very favorably to The Bad Mainstream Games. Usually 40k and WMH, talking about how much better this system or this mechanic is than the stuff braindead GW and PP uses for their stupid dumb games for dumb people.
And then...he plays a few games, and the first time he loses, he mysteriously figures out that the thing he lost to is so unsolvably, irrevocably broken that it completely ruins this game.
But fear not! For Game Killer Mccancerman has the solution! And the solution is this NEW game he has discovered! Usually, a game system that is either brand new, or hasn't come out yet and he's invested into on Kickstarter. What if we took this game club and everyone just started playing this new game? Wouldn't that be great??? He then starts relentlessly posting on any social media group you're trying to use bitching about the current games balance, and arguing that the club should be made more generic so people who want to try "other games" can use it too.
Then as soon as the group goes dead and stops meeting regularly, and mysteriously the fledgeling playerbase doesn't want to shack up with this toxic abrasive donkey-cave, he goes back to bitching that nobody plays anything but 40k, the dumbest game for dumb-dumbs.
This guy drives me ABSOLUTELY NUTS. He's tanked fledgeling groups that I've either run or participated in trying to start up
-Shadow War Armageddon
-Necromunda
-Age of Sigmar
-Infinity
-Blood Bowl
-marvel superhero game thingy, whatever it is, the new one (didn't join that group but heard he tanked it)
-Gorkamorka
-Kill Team at a different store
-Second Necromunda group at a different store
After messing with groups I was running twice, I told him I was sick of his gak and didn't want to see him joining any group I was forming in the future, so info I have on his current exploits is secondhand. He dumpstered my attempt to get a Necromunda campaign going (new Kill Team is going to be sooo much better and deeper and more balanced you guys, and we can use miniatures we already HAVE! We have got to try it, just make the group into a Warhammer Skirmish group!!) and my Blood Bowl league (BB is a game for babies! Guild Ball is so much better balanced! Look at these cool miniatures I painted!) and he's currently in his larval infiltration/cuckoo chick stage in a Necromunda group at a nearby store.
Ever read one of those things from someone on the internet and get that chill? That feeling that 'oh God this person lives near me' feeling for a moment? I did.
#3: That guy that ruins everything by being WAACAF
A shop catered to competitive players, almost exclusively. Which meant the places was a beacon for all the dudes that you never wanted to play with. Guys that threw down their beastmode broken netlists against anything- even that 12 year old that's still got the glue drying on his first box of Space Marines. And then they'd gloat about it.
But that's not the store I'm talking about... we had a guy start haunting the more casual stores.
...he literally couldn't play a game without rubbing his wins in your face and gloating about it. He would talk trash about your army, and tell everyone that walked through the door how he beat the crap out of you. If he asked you to try a new game, it was because he was on the internet researching it and found a broken combo or rule and already bought everything he needed... and he'd STILL talk about beating you (even though it was the first time you tried the game).
And the store kept him around because he generated interest. It's just that... they never noticed that after people played him, their interest might still be in the game but it damned sure wasn't in playing him. This was in the store where I work weekends, so after this was brought to my attention... I barred him from doing demo games and asked him to cool it. He had been warned about this before, but I finally squashed it. He's now pissed off to go play at the WAAC club on the other side of town.
And you mentioned having the issue with the guy opening up new gaming groups when you start an event? Yeah, that exact issue was a problem. He was the worst at bringing in a new game, and then once he'd realize he wasn't the best at it or his broken combo wasn't as broken as one someone else discovered, or (more often) he was wrong about the rules... the game was 'trash' and 'dying'... even when, to the contrary, it was picking up popularity when he stepped away from it.
When I hosted my N17 "Cult Insurrection" game (A single Chaos Marine + cultists with some hilarious rules, like the CSM using cultists as meat shields and beating a cultist senseless after a loss) he tried to derail it because he HATES chaos and refuses to play anything that isn't IG-related. He tried to go around my back and schedule his own Necromunda thing on the same night and draw people away from my event... but it didn't work so well since the guy whose books he intended to 'borrow' wanted in on what I was doing. And, well, he's known to 'borrow' things and doesn't so much 'give them back afterward' as 'begrudgingly gets up to find them in all of his junk when you show up at his front door an demand your stuff back after asking for weeks'.
Also:
#6: The Weirdest Flex that went wrong
Dude was actually pathetically hilarious. He would throw obscene money at games, powergame, and gloat just as bad as the other guy I mentioned. There was no way to play a game other than 'competitive'. His longest time in a RPG group was 3 sessions, because he powergamed and rules-lawyered his way through it. He gloated about how much he paid for his 'studio quality' painted miniatures- obscene amounts of money. He gloated about how many armies he owned for AoS, 40k, etc.
He made the mistake of bringing his girlfriend. Now, of course he did this to show off how good he was at 'wrecking the scrubs' at the FLGS, but also to show the scummy nerds how awesome he was for having a hot girlfriend.
...I've never seen a more bored and disinterested woman in my life, and trust me- I've paid attention to some of them when I have had sex with them, so I know what bored and disinterested looks like.
I said this was a mistake, though- and I meant it. Me and a few of my friends were painting and doing Necromunda conversions and terrain. She stuck her head in and asked what we were doing. I explained, friends showed her what they were working on, and I have sprues for damn near every Necromunda gang tucked into a box, so I told her she was more than welcome to use some of my tools and do what she liked with whatever sprue she wanted.
She played, got chatty, seemed like a nice enough sort. Her fella was a piece of garbage, got all assy because she wasn't fawning over his ultimate victory and was instead hanging with the 'filthy casuals'. I don't think it's my place to discuss the specifics of what went down after they left, due to me being close to this gal now... but let's just say we 'lost' him as a customer because she was going to the FLGS on the weekends to hang out and he couldn't stand to be around his ex (she never badmouths him, to her credit).
She's absolutely great, and I'm glad I met her. That was... almost a year ago now, and yeah... I think the results are easy to infer. I mean, I -have- been nicer...
Eh, no, this guy is 100% more of a scrub than a powergamer. He chooses a faction, then generally spends his whole time theorycrafting ways his faction CANNOT POSSIBLY have any solutions (solutions that don't involve surrendering himself completely to the Cheap and the Anti-Fun mechanics, anyway) to counter some other, generally fairly casual and middle of the road army.
He picked Goliaths in necromunda and the first time we played, we were basically just figuring out the rules and I took a shot with an autogun and took out one of his gangers who was standing right in the open. Rolled a skull on the injury roll, just right out of the game. Little bit of luck for me.
He immediately proceeded to just run his guys straight forward, totally ignoring cover and attempting to shoot anything, and he got mad when his now 1/3 strength gang still lost when they got into melee. He decided that the escher's poison mechanic was the most broken thing in the entire game, there was no counter to it, and the game would never be balanced as long as it existed. Stupid tiny knives should not be able to beat big muscly guys! It just makes NO SENSE!
I've just never mastered the art of explaining to a grown-ass adult that, you lost, of course you lost, you very clearly lost on purpose so that you can be mad about it. I've seen people do that to me several times in various game systems, and I just don't know how to approach that particular situation with someone over the age of 5.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Reminds me of the guy who works the tabletop games area at Pegasus Hobbies. He would say things so racist and crazy that I never knew if he was serious or not. Many of the regulars were members of minority groups the guy slurred against, and they all seemed to think he was funny, so I assumed there's probably a history there I wasn't privy to. Not the best situation to walk into as a new customer, though.
Yeah, that's definitely possible, and actually turned out to be the case with another person at the store (who was just a regular, not an employee) who made even more inappropriate remarks . Still, that's not really my jam, since in this case the people being made fun of are Not present...
It turned out that the same day I posted the previous post above, I got pointed to another local store that actually plays my main game (warmachine / hordes). I checked it out that same night and it's an awesome venue!! So, problem solved . Still planning to keep in touch with the several folks I befriended at the first store, but my regular game night will be at the new venue. Pretty stoked with how it worked out
Right now I'm going through another situation. There's sort of a clique atmosphere going on at the painting table. A bunch of players that always sit there seem to enjoy very specific people but dislike others. I wish they weren't the usual crowd. It's sad because there's a lot of good people there but the awful ones are more regular customers. I might actually consider another store and I usually stick to the same store. It's the local gw so I may see what another game store is like.
1. Most of the really good painters in my local area are really cliquish, and mostly concerned with winning a painting award at a local con. But if you ask them to help you improve your painting skills while not being in that clique, heaven help you.
2. Most of the local LGSes are extremely cliquish and if you're not in the crowd then you might as well not exist. At one of the stores it's so bad that people don't feel welcome there.
This also includes most of the LGS employee's behavior.
Thankfully I just found a store that's not like that at all and I really hope it stays that way.
3. One of our local WM players, who was also a PG would routinely make sexual advances to any female with a pulse in the store. He ended up chasing away about a half dozen women with those antics.
4. A few of the local Infinity players stole some prizes from the group at a bigger tourney. I called them on it repeatedly and while I took a hiatus from that group they decided to ban me from that group over it.
5. I've asked around to several people to check out a few games and the last few times I've been blown off.
I'll add to the discussion here with a few gems of my own. Full disclosure, I work at the FLGS part time and have for almost three years. I only work there around 15 to 20 hours a week, as I have a 40+ hour full time job/career that keeps me fairly busy. I see the full spectrum of cringe in every element of most any FLGS frequenters from MTG, Pokemon, Yu Gi Oh, Tabletop, RPG, etc. etc.
Each sub sect has their own stand outs, but I'll limit this to the Warhammer crowd.
First, we've got the two worst offenders.
Neither of them come to the store any longer to speak of, and not because I personally ran them off. Their own toxic behavior saw fit to ensure they no longer could get a game in with anyone but unfortunate newbies to the hobby whom, after we told them what to look for, realized they were being cheated or jerked around in general.
Offender 1 I met before the current FLGS opened, and is the kind of guy that, after interacting with him for a while, you just want to punch. I'm not speaking in hyperbolic terms. He's a smarmy, self aggrandizing, know-it-all who thinks he's smarter than everyone he meets and has zero issue trying to 'pull one over' on a potential opponent. Case in point: our first game at another, less popular game store in the area (the FLGS I work at had not yet opened). While coordinating with him I specified I did not own a Lord of War model and that I would appreciate it if he didn't bring a Lord of War to our 2000 point game. Beyond that, I didn't ask him what he was playing, though he asked me, to which I replied I'd be bringing Marines (my Blood Angels) but didn't elaborate further. We get to the store and set up, get things ready and I see him set out a storm trooper guard army. I notice it looks a little small for 2k points and ask him if he's bringing in another allied force, to which he proudly plops a Knight on the table with a 'Gotcha!' look on his face. I give him a rather incredulous look, eyes narrowed, and remind him of our gentleman's agreement to not bring lords of war to the game, as I didn't own one at the time. He then smiles wider and he says he didn't bring it with a Lord of War slot, but brought it into the game another way that I don't recall (This might have been late 7th edition, I've slept a lot since then and specific details on his army and the rules in use are a tad fuzzy). I just stared at him for a long moment and reiterated that it's *still* a LoW model. He shrugged and said he didn't have any other models with him (Also a lie I'm pretty sure, as he had at least two good size cases of models and what he had set out on the table would have fit in just one of them) and make out to try and make me feel like I was being the bad guy for possibly turning the game down after we'd both made the trip, gotten the table ready, and I'd set my army out. I told him I'd play his list, but that he was not starting out our game on a good foot and that if he wanted to use his LoW model, all he had to do was tell me ahead of time and I'd have happily played against it, even with the same list I was planning on using that day. It wasn't about playing the LoW, but pulling a fast one on someone he never met by going against the one thing we both agreed not to do. He seemed to understand and to his dim credit, did apologize for doing it.
I managed to win the game, which was deliciously satisfying I'll admit, though he made the game just... not fun at all. His attitude, know-it-all remarks, and general demeanor just soured the entire experience starting at the jump with his attempt to 'Gotcha!' and every single person who had any interaction with him just echoed this sentiment. It's sad, honestly, and I can't help but pity him for how he literally ran himself out of the hobby.
Offender 2 I met afterward, and actually invested some time and effort into bringing into the community much to my chagrin. He wound up being a massive cheater, and even more massive poor sport despite sinking thousands of dollars into the hobby and time to get at least one army fully painted. If a game even started to look like it was not going his way, he would turn into a giant man-baby and just start picking his models up (Space marines, mind you) without even taking their saves when they were wounded on an enemy turn. If he was winning, he was up beat and happy to be playing. If he was losing, he literally made the entire room know it and was just a horrible person to be around. In one tournament that comes to mind, he was playing another friend of mine and after a particularly bad turn for him, he sat down at the table, pulled a Nintendo switch out and plugged earphones in before starting to playing it, instead of engaging with his opponent. No more conversation, wouldn't roll dice, just picked up models without rolling saves and didn't move or shoot on his turn. It was sad. He just checked out of the game, and gave up in the middle of the match. He didn't get many invitations for games after that stunt. Again, I felt bad for him, but he put himself into the situation he wound up in.
The icing on the cake was when I tried to help him and give him the feedback from the rest of the community (along with the store owner, as I was employed at the FLGS I mentioned above when I met him and we both wanted him to be a part of the community if he wanted to be), he flat told us he wouldn't apologize for his behavior and that it was just how he was and if people didn't like it, that was their problem. It got so bad that he refused to even speak with me after a time, telling the store owner that he was "afraid of me". I'd never done anything to the guy beyond try to help him and while I'm no small guy (6' tall), he made me look small by comparison with his height and girth. He doesn't come around the store anymore that I've seen, though I only work 3 days a week, it's possible he's up there when I'm not. C'est-la-vie.
The ole adage, good riddance to bad rubbish springs to mind.
We have a few other less bad offenders in the shop, though I'll save those for another post.
The wrath of a bored Boomer Karen with Social Media and the ability to do a Google Review can absolutely ruin a business. Even if it's trivial and petty. I've seen this stuff get so out of hand, it had to involve police running Karens off the property and outright restraining orders.
are there many pensioners posting scathing reviews on Google in your area? Surely it’s more likely the parents of the kids in the shop - millennials - who’d be doing that?
My parents are “boomers”, and all they’ve had is a rather amused tolerance at the sort of things I wasted my time on.
I’m not sure if the OP means leaving the shop in terms of being a customer or in terms of being part of the gaming community there. I don’t play games in shops, but an unfriendly atmosphere from the staff means I’m unlikely to go back to a shop. Thankfully the old cliché of a hobby shop being a dark, dusty hole run by a grumpy old man has mostly died away.
The wrath of a bored Boomer Karen with Social Media and the ability to do a Google Review can absolutely ruin a business. Even if it's trivial and petty. I've seen this stuff get so out of hand, it had to involve police running Karens off the property and outright restraining orders.
are there many pensioners posting scathing reviews on Google in your area? Surely it’s more likely the parents of the kids in the shop - millennials - who’d be doing that?
My parents are “boomers”, and all they’ve had is a rather amused tolerance at the sort of things I wasted my time on.
You must have missed the mad mothers back in the eighties. In St. Louis they protested the broadcast of Robotech during afternoon cartoon hours, because people got killed! But G.I. Joe was just fine...
Mad mothers reading Jack Chick material kept trying to get game stores banned.
And then there's the mad mothers demanding a rating system for music much like was in force for movies. Of course, that backfired on them...
While the bad social media reviews are most likely to be a late GenXer or a Millennial, they're just following in the path they were taught by their own Boomer mothers.
The wrath of a bored Boomer Karen with Social Media and the ability to do a Google Review can absolutely ruin a business. Even if it's trivial and petty. I've seen this stuff get so out of hand, it had to involve police running Karens off the property and outright restraining orders.
are there many pensioners posting scathing reviews on Google in your area? Surely it’s more likely the parents of the kids in the shop - millennials - who’d be doing that?
My parents are “boomers”, and all they’ve had is a rather amused tolerance at the sort of things I wasted my time on.
You must have missed the mad mothers back in the eighties. In St. Louis they protested the broadcast of Robotech during afternoon cartoon hours, because people got killed! But G.I. Joe was just fine...
Mad mothers reading Jack Chick material kept trying to get game stores banned.
And then there's the mad mothers demanding a rating system for music much like was in force for movies. Of course, that backfired on them...
While the bad social media reviews are most likely to be a late GenXer or a Millennial, they're just following in the path they were taught by their own Boomer mothers.
dont get me started on the damn self-righteous mad moms. My Mom made fun of them but had a problem with my playing D&D.
I've been exposed to them in a professional capacity and it took all of my composure not to tell her straight to the face that she was a complete fething moron and to get the feth out of my store(not game related).
FWIW, my dad alleged I was a Satanist 'cause I got a taped copy of Slippery When Wet, which is an album by Bon Jovi for all of you whose back doesn't hurt.
So...
-----------------------------------------------
I spent the early hours of this morning reading about Marty and Luke. I am lucky enough to have never met anything like the sort.
Excommunicatus wrote: FWIW, my dad alleged I was a Satanist 'cause I got a taped copy of Slippery When Wet, which is an album by Bon Jovi for all of you whose back doesn't hurt.
So...
-----------------------------------------------
I spent the early hours of this morning reading about Marty and Luke. I am lucky enough to have never met anything like the sort.
Wow. That album was pretty tame even by the standards of the day! Your dad would have had a real fit if you'd gotten a copy of something by, say, Black Sabbath or ManO'War or Iron Maiden...
So I had someone ask for a casual game specifically, which I always tend to oblige because I love bringing out my weird models. My list here is an eldar list with storm guardians, an on-foot warlock conclave, an avatar of khaine, a wraithlord, and 1 of each aspect warrior squad except for Spiders all as old metal models with an allied patrol of harlequins, basically 1 foot troupe 1 shadowseer 1 solitaire and some skyweaver bikes with haywire.
The guy I'm playing against has a primaris ultramarines list with intercessors, hellblasters, dakka aggressors, one repulsor and some of the deep striking guys, all standing around the new Calgar, the shoot when you die banner, Tigurius, and a lieutenant in a big ball.
OK. it happens. My opponent came with a way more competitive army than I did, thinking it was more casual than it was. I'm a grown up and I know how to lose while not throwing a tantrum, especially around a new face I haven't seen around before, so I'll just explain to him after the game that we've got a bunch of folks with super old 20 year collections so casual means SUPER casual, nbd.
So we start the game, he goes first, kills quite a bit of stuff in shooting. Basically doesn't move from the deployment zone. I've got my Harlequins mostly hidden behind a building, my solitaire sitting behind a rock, and my bikers all clustered behind several buildings.
So on my turn he makes the aggressors -1 to hit so I decide to dedicate all anti-tank weaponry to the repulsor and use the harlequin warptime power and the saim-hann strat to get the troupe and shining spears into combat.The repulsor goes down to a bunch of mortal wounds and dark reaper rockets, and the shining spears charge the hellblasters.
My opponent says "ok, I'm gonna overcharge." He then rolls - and rerolls, a ton of dice individually for each dude in rapid fire range, and 4/10 of the hellblasters blow themselves up. The one wound they do cause just takes 2/3 of the exarch's wounds, and then they get in and kill 3 more with the lances.
So he just quits the game. I offer to let him take back the overcharging, I'll just set my wounds to 1/3 and he can put the guys back on the table. He says no, it was his mistake but basically the game's over now, so, he's done.
This was my first time experiencing not just a sore loser, but a sore first casualties-er.
I arranged a 2000p 40k game a few weeks ago. Play infantry guard. He plays Smurfs.
We set up on the table, he comments that my army isn't exactly "fluff" since I have painted them to look like the troops from Spaceballs, the movie.
I manage to seize initiative, stealing the first turn. He throws a fit.
I use a 2CP stratagem, "preliminary bombardment", managing to inflict 7 Mortal wounds on his army. He throws a fit.
I Move my 5 scout sentinels, 2x 9 inches, as per their scout move. He throws a fit.
I start my shooting faze, expecting him to throw a fit.
I manage to destroy his predator, his stormraven and four marines in the first round of shooting. He throws an EPIC fit, throwing his models into his case and storms out of the club, leaving everyone in there speechless.
I just stood there thinking "Parents of the year in that home..."
I've never been a pick-up game kinda guy, but I remember the last time I played a back-then good friend of mine.
It was one of our first times of playing 2000 points back in 4th edition. We had pretty much started playing a year ago. I played Black Templars back then, he had Guard. I had saved the money for my army over the course of months while his parents bought him about 4000 points worth of guard stuff which I built and painted for him. So, in essence, he was a massively spoilt kid and that fact had strained out friendship to the point of breaking, as he made other people feel that they were inferior to him.
Back to the game. We were about 14 back then, did not have any real experience in playing 40k aside from moving towards the enemy, shooting at anything that moved or trying to get into melee. So, tactical depth was pretty much inexistent.
I dont remember the game in detail (over 12 years ago, goodness gracious). I just know that I had the first turn and pretty much moved my peeps up and maybe shot a handful of guardsmen, so no real damage at all. His first turn, he did not move at all, prefering to shoot. Fair enough and he managed to do quite some damage as he rolled a lot of sixes, but unfortunately they were all behind the buildings in the middle of the battlefield. I was not interested in having an argument and went ahead. The tipping point for me was him trying to shoot a hunter-killer missile from one of his Leman Russ at one of my tanks. The thing is, his target was not visible to him. Like, not at all. 2 buildings in the way. But he went ahead, threw the to hit roll while I looked at him in disbelieve.
"Uh, you cannot see my tank."
"Yes I can."
"No you can't. It is behind two buildings."
"Oh, I can still shoot the missile at it."
"A HKM is a heavy weapon and cannot fire indirectly."
"But it has indefinite range, so it can curve!"
That was too much for me. All the crooked dice throws, him inventing new rules/altering existing rules to his liking (something like consolidating guardsmen squads that took damage to one one squad that has full strength midgame)/outright cheating when it comes to armybuilding (he claimed his Leman Russ with Lascannon, Plasma Cannons, HKM, Storm Bolter AND heavy stubber costs 89 points), this was too much for me. I told him that I would not play on against him when he is cheating. This resulted in a massive fit, denying all cheating (of course) and instead accusing me of cheating. Well, it resulted in the shop owner coming to see what was going on, who asked us to leave if we could not behave in his shop. I did not care as I was not interested in continue playing that guy, but my friend threw a tantrum and insisted to continue playing. I just packed my stuff and left.
Weeks later he called me and invited me to his house. I accepted, as I still thought that he was my friend, but when I came he demanded I apologize to him. I refused and left. That was pretty much it.
I was no saint back then either, as I was... how to put it delicately... rather competitive and was also (sadly) know to throw a bit of a tantrum when faced with a loss. But I managed to put that aside in favor of just trying to have fun and playing the bloody game. But the combination of being a bad loser, an even worse winner, cheating and lying was just too much for me.
I once frequented a place. One guy who worked there was pretty stinky. He was a nice guy and a good painter but he was stinky. I never left because of him but i did avoid him. It was a big store so i could get away but... anyways the guy ended up leaving for a job at GW working on White Dwarf and so on.
A college friend of mine finally landed a GOOD job a while ago. He invited me to his place (full-on guest room) to have a boys week while he took some use-it or lose-it vacation time.
I flew in, so I decided to take a custodes force in a carry-on in case we wanted to do a pickup game.
Local hobby store was nice looking, but something was "off" about it. We paid a small fee for table use, and it became more than obvious that newcomers were not exactly welcomed with open arms. The manager and group of Magic players seemed chummy, but they all stared at us like fish in a bowl.....and it seemed they hated fish.
I'm hoping this was just my Midwesterness throwing them off. I ended up conceding in turn 4 just to leave.
cuda1179 wrote: A college friend of mine finally landed a GOOD job a while ago. He invited me to his place (full-on guest room) to have a boys week while he took some use-it or lose-it vacation time.
I flew in, so I decided to take a custodes force in a carry-on in case we wanted to do a pickup game.
Local hobby store was nice looking, but something was "off" about it. We paid a small fee for table use, and it became more than obvious that newcomers were not exactly welcomed with open arms. The manager and group of Magic players seemed chummy, but they all stared at us like fish in a bowl.....and it seemed they hated fish.
I'm hoping this was just my Midwesterness throwing them off. I ended up conceding in turn 4 just to leave.
I've heard of some stores like that, they're basicly a club house for a select group that also sells gaming materials
Played in a tournament at a local store in Lafayette, Indiana called The Game Preserve. Carlos, the manager at the time, made a ruling in the tourney regarding my multimelta hit on a Chaplain on bike in 3rd Ed. that cost me the semifinal match. Not so big a deal, except we had the White Dwarf errata that specifically stated that the bike Toughness buff didn't apply to instant death. Also fair to mention was the fact that I got to play 2 first round games in that tourney because of the "odd number of players", the two being my younger brother and best friend, conveniently enough. The match I lost was to a kid named Tony who was running Imperial Fists, more specifically Carlos' Imperial Fists army that was stored at the store.
Just Tony wrote: Played in a tournament at a local store in Lafayette, Indiana called The Game Preserve. Carlos, the manager at the time, made a ruling in the tourney regarding my multimelta hit on a Chaplain on bike in 3rd Ed. that cost me the semifinal match. Not so big a deal, except we had the White Dwarf errata that specifically stated that the bike Toughness buff didn't apply to instant death. Also fair to mention was the fact that I got to play 2 first round games in that tourney because of the "odd number of players", the two being my younger brother and best friend, conveniently enough. The match I lost was to a kid named Tony who was running Imperial Fists, more specifically Carlos' Imperial Fists army that was stored at the store.
Yeah, that smells a little funny. I always suspected the two guys that ran 40k events at the FLGS. For starters, before any tourney they looked over all lists for legality , but their lists were only ever reviewed by each other. I always wondered if they used this as an opportunity to tailor their lists. Also, at the end of a campaign two guys came up as tying for first place, and both were undefeated, however one of them was literally one of the organizers I had a tie game with in the first week of the event.
The wrath of a bored Boomer Karen with Social Media and the ability to do a Google Review can absolutely ruin a business. Even if it's trivial and petty. I've seen this stuff get so out of hand, it had to involve police running Karens off the property and outright restraining orders.
are there many pensioners posting scathing reviews on Google in your area? Surely it’s more likely the parents of the kids in the shop - millennials - who’d be doing that?
My parents are “boomers”, and all they’ve had is a rather amused tolerance at the sort of things I wasted my time on.
You must have missed the mad mothers back in the eighties.
In the 80s, I wasn't into 80s culture. I mean, sure I watched the D&D cartoon, and I assume my friends probably did too. But that's all it was - just a cartoon. Also, I live in a real country, not one made up for TV like America.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Back on-topic, I've thankfully never met anyone who would actually make me leave a gaming venue. Probably because I run the club, so in the words of Sparks, "This town ain't big enough for the both of us and it ain't me who's gonna leave". I've met a few people who think they're relaxed casual gamers, but really aren't - usually perfectly decent people, don't cheat, abuse the rules or anything, but can't quite get into a "narrative" mindset. Thankfully the "great unwashed" seem to be less common these days.
I still haven't done my first game but it will come within the end of this month. Me and my friend decided to make some games between us to learn the game and know the basics. After that we will go to play with other players in our FLGS.
We agree that it wouldn't be fun not for us not for our opponent to play against two complete noobs.
TBH I do not know how I will behave during the game but no matter what, I would never insult my opponent or giving up and play Switch...respect first of all.
Employers in the store are very friendly so I should not have any problems on that side. I saw people playing there and they seems ok even if they are freaking loud but, well, we are italian Maybe in few weeks I will be back with some nasty stories
Good luck Bearblu! Just remember rule #1 is have some fun! It already sounds like you put some thought into making sure your opponent enjoys the game as well, so sounds like you'll be fine.
I suspect most of the culprits in this thread never once even considered what you already have.
Worst one for me was in 2008 I was in a league playing with a 40k club that met and was based in the local game store I worked at. I did not join this club and flat out told them that I couldn't because I wanted to stay impartial as a store employee, but also because members of said club paid 5 bucks a month into the club so they could "do events with prizing" for club members. Never saw those free club member only tournaments and the old guy who kept all the financial records always had new models and wouldn't discuss club funds... but a story for another time.
So it's the last week and standing for the league are pretty much locked in and no matter what I finish 1st or 2nd. Same goes for my last week opponent. Prizing is the same for 1st,2nd, and 3rd. So I ask my opponent if we can play a super casual game bringing units we don't normally play because we played 7 weeks of high tier competitive games. The league is 30 player 20 hyper competitive and 10 super casual just throw dice players. This guy (I'll call him Bob) is the most WAAC salty player in the group and I hate playing him. So I'm hoping that because the stakes don't matter we can go casual and like me he has 4 of everything for his army. He agrees...
Day comes a I show up early and get set up. I'm playing 5th edition Blood Angels. I'm bringing dev's tacticals curbulo and tycho gunline..... something blood Angel's don't do well. Not one assualt element in my army because these models haven't seen the light of day in.... years!
Welp in rolls Bob and after pleasantries he starts setting up.
He sets up the latest tournament winning swarm bug list that he played every game this edition... I ask him what's going on and he says he is running a little different list then he normally does but its casual still. I say feth and just play he wins roll off and gets the deployment he wants. We deploy and I fail to seize so I use corbulosonce a game reroll and I seize and he loses it about that ability. I move and shoot and he is still going on about the reroll. His turn he moves deep strikes shoots but can't charge so passes turn.
I move everything back but 20 tacticals that I space out to intercept his charge and shoot some more. His turn I'm swarmed and have my army surrounded and know that the game is over. I tell him that no need for a turn three and he goes on and on about if I didn't have a broken reroll there would even be a turn three anyway. The league organizer comes over and gives us our prizes and chats as I pack up. Bob walks around the room telling everyone that the game was an easy win and he knew he was getting first. I'm done listening so i make to leave. Bob stops me and wants to shake my hand congratulating me on a great game and getting second and I finally snap and tell him i won't shake his hand and it wasn't a great game. He starts yelling telling me I'm a bad sport and how I'm not part of the club and shouldn't have been allowed to play. I try to leave again and the organizer stops me and wants to talk and I tell him what happened and he tells me if I don't apologize I can't play because bob is a cofounder of the club.
You know after reading this thread I wanted to share my own little story to this...
So in my area before 8th came out the war gaming scene dried up entirely due to no FLGS supporting miniature gaming. The only FLGS around anymore is all about Magic/coffee as it is a cafe as well. Anything not Magic is never supported by the store and is often not even tolerated by the staff to the point of them demanding that we "sign up" with them any night we wanted to play, even if we had been playing at the store for months every Tuesday night. This is just set up for the rest of the story because after this my dad built a table in his basement and all of my gaming became either with him or one of our few mutual friends. My entire experience with 8th edition has been with the same group of about five people so it is really bad when one of them is just awful to play with.
Generally the group is mid to high competitive but because we are all very friendly we try to have a balance in mind when we arrange games, talking about how competitive we want the game to be long before we even make list. This worked out for the longest time because the three "guest" players that are not me or my dad all have a really good grasp on the game and know exactly how to build a list that will fit into the arranged level of game. The problem started when my dad, who for the longest time just liked throwing dice and laughing with friends and never really cared about how good his list was, started to research and build more powerful list. On top of that his main army was Imperial Guard which have a really good time with 8th and his secondary army was Imperial Fist, which after their supplement became very powerful. Soon my dad got to the point that he was able to compete with our more powerful tournament level list and began winning as much as he was losing.
At this point it might seem like this is turning into a rant about my dad turning into a TFG but the point of this is partially to get it off my chest but also share my experience with 8th. The truth is that I am the awful hobbyist that is causing our group to kind of fall apart. My dad and I have been playing the game since 3rd edition and through that entire time our games have always been rather one sided in my favor because my dad never really cared about doing well he just wanted to have fun. I was a competitive player up until mid 7th edition when I got so tired of how ridiculous the game had become and just started to build my armies around concept and themes, I embraced the fluffy casual life style.
So now that I have set the scene I think most people can see where the conflict is coming into being. The last ten or so games I have played of 8th edition have been completely one sided affairs that ended with my tabled around turn three. One particular game that comes to mind is a 2 v 2 where it was two of our friends playing Eldar/Dark Eldar, my dad playing Imperial Fist and myself playing Slaneesh Daemons/Word Bearers because I wanted to test out the new shinny Faith and Fury rules. I had a small handful of models left on the table by the end of turn two because I of course was running a swarm of 5++ T3 bodies alongside a few squads of Possessed which all got shredded by the Eldar fire power. Now we were playing 3k points per side and my dad had only brought a 1k list so I was rocking 2k of our sides points. Roughly 2k or our 3k was gone by turn two with me effectively out of the game. This being 8th edition with the Imperial Fist supplement fresh off the presses my dad turned around with his army and almost tabled the full 3k Eldar side, it was just...disheartening. I was put off because I already thought that Faith and Fury gave my Word Bearers very little to work with and no matter how hard I tried to make Possessed work it didn't matter because they were still just T4 3+ saves.
Games like this continued as I changed my list, played different armies, tried out new things but due to my new fluff driven mindset I bought models that I thought would match my army concept rather than how powerful they would be. I played a Renegade Knight list against his Imperial Fist because we wanted to see how good the anti-vehicle abilities were, I lost two Wardogs and Two Knights on his first turn before I even got a turn. We both had a laugh and called the game because clearly that game was a forgone conclusion. But every game became the same thing over and over again with me losing most of my army in the first two turns, trying to score points as I could but losing every game.
Finally last week we played two games, one with a revamped Word Beares list heavy on Daemon Engines vs Imperial Guard in which I killed a few Guardsmen and one Hellhound before we called the game and finally the last game that I just lost it on. I was running Sisters of Battle vs the same Imperial Guard list, I was running some heavy guns looking to give him a ranged battle to compete with his own. I had the first turn and fired everything I could at him and moved all of my Rhinos up field to get ready to unload on him the next turn. I managed to kill a Hellhound and damage a Russ pretty good while killing a few Guardsmen that were in range of my combi-bolters and light arms but I looked across the table and could see the four other Russes at full strength and felt despair. His wrecked my army, taking probably 500 of the 1.5k I had brought but the problem was that the 500 he took off the table was most of my anti-tank weapons. I looked at the table at the bottom of turn one and just told him that I was done, I didn't want to sit there for another two hours playing a game where all I did was pick up models while he rolled a hundred dice a turn. He got mad, we had an argument were in the end he said that he just wasn't going to play me anymore which I agreed because I had no interest in playing the armies he plays anymore. Of course we made peace before we left because we are family but at the same time we really have no desire to play each other anymore. I feel like I just don't have the models to play at the level he plays at anymore and he doesn't want to screw up his list building by purposefully making is weaker.
TLDR;
My bad attitude cost me my only play group and it sucks, but I accept that it is my own fault.
I guess the moral of the story is...sometimes TFG just has different expectations than the group? I don't know. I just felt like sharing my story.
A lot of the time its not even casual vs competitive; but often just two people of different skill levels. A person who understands the game really well who builds a casual list is going to make a very different (and often better performing) army to someone who builds a casual list who doesn't understand the game well.
Skill level differences are a real problem because those with a higher skill will more so win and those with a lower skill will lose more often. In Wargames that can last hours and in small play groups this can be a real problem because you can end up in "no win" situations for long periods of time. In games like MTG it can be even worse in terms of power performance (against a good deck a bad deck often has no hope unless the good deck gets messed up with shuffling); however because matches are over fast you can often move onto another player- its not as big a time sink.
Sometimes you do have to realise that there are people you will auto-lose too and that you either play them for a challenge or you play someone else. There's no shame in that, its just learning where you can compete and find a challenge without being overwhelmed.
Another aspect is to ask the better players to teach you to play better. This can be very important with small groups if you get left behind by the skill development of others. In much larger groups you can often soak such variation because there's more chance of more varied skill levels being present.
Maybe its time to make a load of posters; make facebook group; abandon the garage and find somewhere cheap to rent (school hall; church hall etc....) for an afternoon/evening and form a proper club and try to recruit new people.
Overread wrote: A lot of the time its not even casual vs competitive; but often just two people of different skill levels. A person who understands the game really well who builds a casual list is going to make a very different (and often better performing) army to someone who builds a casual list who doesn't understand the game well.
Skill level differences are a real problem because those with a higher skill will more so win and those with a lower skill will lose more often. In Wargames that can last hours and in small play groups this can be a real problem because you can end up in "no win" situations for long periods of time. In games like MTG it can be even worse in terms of power performance (against a good deck a bad deck often has no hope unless the good deck gets messed up with shuffling); however because matches are over fast you can often move onto another player- its not as big a time sink.
Sometimes you do have to realise that there are people you will auto-lose too and that you either play them for a challenge or you play someone else. There's no shame in that, its just learning where you can compete and find a challenge without being overwhelmed.
Another aspect is to ask the better players to teach you to play better. This can be very important with small groups if you get left behind by the skill development of others. In much larger groups you can often soak such variation because there's more chance of more varied skill levels being present.
Maybe its time to make a load of posters; make facebook group; abandon the garage and find somewhere cheap to rent (school hall; church hall etc....) for an afternoon/evening and form a proper club and try to recruit new people.
One of the biggest things I've had to stop doing with frustrated people where I play is offering to play their army against mine to show how I'd run it. More often than not I can win, or at least make the game far far less one sided than it was, but if you take away peoples' primary excuse for their loss (my army is just bad/their army is just OP) then they tend to fall back on "This person is just a scummy WAAC player" and they get mad at you or at others rather than at the game.
It seems like a quick army switch would be a good way to get peoples' confidence back up, show them their army CAN win and they just need to use it effectively, but evidence has shown me that's the opposite of what a lot of folks want to see and hear, and they're much happier with a string of losses they can blame on out of control factors.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Angeloftheblood wrote: Worst one for me was in 2008 I was in a league playing with a 40k club that met and was based in the local game store I worked at. I did not join this club and flat out told them that I couldn't because I wanted to stay impartial as a store employee, but also because members of said club paid 5 bucks a month into the club so they could "do events with prizing" for club members. Never saw those free club member only tournaments and the old guy who kept all the financial records always had new models and wouldn't discuss club funds... but a story for another time.
That reminds me of a group I played with. I was one of the "officers" of the club, meaning I could plan and run events when I wanted to, i could talk with new players, resolve disputes etc.
The club leader was a guy who'd been doing it since like 3rd edition, by 7th he very rarely played and most often would just turn up at the club to talk to people, paint a bit, it was clearly a social thing more so than a game thing, and that's fine. He was like a dedicated PR guy who talked to all the folks who stopped in. We only took cash (like 10$ for a year) because the store offers a really nice discount and just doesn't want us giving it away for free. Similarly, none of us ever saw any of that money, it was ostensibly for terrain and events, but all our events were free (and not super common) and we'd had the same terrain for ages.
Things went downhill when the last "founding member" of the group of friends our club leader had started with moved away to another state for a job, and passed away somehow. The first time I heard about it, which was the only time I really trusted any of the information coming from this leader guy, he said it was "an accident". The guy was probably 50, lived alone, 450+ pounds, so yeah sudden and tragic but you could immediately understand that a cross-country move might be risky for a guy like that.
At that point, club leader dude just stopped showing up. Totally understandable, again - this friend of his was one of the primary reasons he showed up and it'd be a painful reminder. We knew the club was important to him and basically just left it in limbo for almost a year, waiting for the leader to make the first move. It was pretty clear he wasn't coming back, but just in case it was still important to him to be "the leader" we weren't about to contact him and take that away.
We finally hear from him, and as expected he says he wants to step down and have us take over collectively. The only weird point in this conversation was that he wanted us to change the name and logo of the group because he had both those things....patented. Patented? Whatever. We changed the group name and logo to a different thing, and basically continued on as before, except now we were handling the cash and realizing...hey...this kind of adds up. We can run some events with prizes and get some new terrain now, neat!
So months go by, and we hear something about the old club leader guy. A friend says he found a blog made by him and he is talking about how our evil WAAC gaming drove his friend to have to move (somehow...his friend was one of the most competitive players in the group as I remember, at least he had a WK/Scatterbike list in 7th) and therefore we killed him. Furthermore, we were the reason he now had no money, and we all worked together to try and get rid of him. He had all our names, phone numbers and email addresses listed up on his blog. Also, in a moment that made me go from very scared to laughing for a second, he said he was planning on suing us for violating his patent. I really want to see this patent.
We called the cops at that point, and besides that blog disappearing, have not heard anything from him or from the cops about the situation. It has been a couple years.
Not a thing that made me leave a game group, but it did cause a game group to stop existing and morph into a very similar, differently named group under new management!
Overread wrote: A lot of the time its not even casual vs competitive; but often just two people of different skill levels. A person who understands the game really well who builds a casual list is going to make a very different (and often better performing) army to someone who builds a casual list who doesn't understand the game well.
Skill level differences are a real problem because those with a higher skill will more so win and those with a lower skill will lose more often. In Wargames that can last hours and in small play groups this can be a real problem because you can end up in "no win" situations for long periods of time. In games like MTG it can be even worse in terms of power performance (against a good deck a bad deck often has no hope unless the good deck gets messed up with shuffling); however because matches are over fast you can often move onto another player- its not as big a time sink.
Sometimes you do have to realise that there are people you will auto-lose too and that you either play them for a challenge or you play someone else. There's no shame in that, its just learning where you can compete and find a challenge without being overwhelmed.
Another aspect is to ask the better players to teach you to play better. This can be very important with small groups if you get left behind by the skill development of others. In much larger groups you can often soak such variation because there's more chance of more varied skill levels being present.
Maybe its time to make a load of posters; make facebook group; abandon the garage and find somewhere cheap to rent (school hall; church hall etc....) for an afternoon/evening and form a proper club and try to recruit new people.
This really isn't an issue of who the better players are, we are all about the same skill level the only thing that has changed is my own goals when it comes to the game/hobby.
Warhammer has never been a game where skill was more important than army selection because of how horribly imbalanced it is. I have played almost every single army in the game and still collect most armies but have recently downsized. Switching armies has been discussed but generally the response to my issues with playing Word Bearers is that I should not play Word Bearers.
All three of the other players in our little group also play Chaos and their advice to me is to essentially play a completely different army composition in order to be more competitive. I know exactly what I would have to do in order to be more competitive within the group but I am not interested in playing an army that is a slave to the meta. I know that Alpha Legion is the way to go, I know that souping in Knights and Renegades will make the army more competitive, but if I do all of that I am not playing an army I am interested in.
So the other solution is just to find other people to play but the pool of players in the area has seemingly dried up with everyone just disappearing or playing at places that are 30-40 minute drives from where I live. At this point in time with a small child and working a bunch of over time I don't have four to five hours to get a game in no including travel time. There is something to be said when I can bring my little one with me to my parents house to get a game in lol.
I'll be honest, I know what the solutions to the issues I have are but at this moment in time they are things I am not interested in. Playing armies I do not want to play because the current edition of the game is so alpha strike heavy, ranged focused and lethal that I am not really interested in even playing much anymore. I am looking more into playing other games but still have the problem that the closest FLGS that supports minis is a rather long drive away.
I just wanted to share my story and maybe give an insight into how some people end up being that guy.
One of the biggest things I've had to stop doing with frustrated people where I play is offering to play their army against mine to show how I'd run it. More often than not I can win, or at least make the game far far less one sided than it was, but if you take away peoples' primary excuse for their loss (my army is just bad/their army is just OP) then they tend to fall back on "This person is just a scummy WAAC player" and they get mad at you or at others rather than at the game.
It seems like a quick army switch would be a good way to get peoples' confidence back up, show them their army CAN win and they just need to use it effectively, but evidence has shown me that's the opposite of what a lot of folks want to see and hear, and they're much happier with a string of losses they can blame on out of control factors
I had this nearly exactly with a guy who I was trying to help getting to grips with BB on FUMBBL. I mean, at first I had to tell him basic stuff like how many sides a dice had ("Why don't I roll a Pow every turn!"? "Because that's like rolling a 6"), but then it was him struggling to have any ability to see the balance in different factions.
He started off playing Chaos Dwarves, losing a lot, then he got absolutely outplayed by a High Elf team. Cue: "AG4 is cheating. It's so OP. You can't beat Elves".
So he made a High Elf team. Lost a lot. Got beaten up really badly in a particular match by Orcs. Cue: "It's not fair, Orcs are such a strong roster, all that S skill access".
At my suggestion he made an Orc team. Actually did ok until he came up against a high TV Chaos Dwarf team. Cue: "it's not fair, Chorfs are OP, you can't win against Claw."
So he made a Chaos Chosen team (called, hilariously, 'Embrace the Claw'). Lost 3-0 to a DE team. Quit the game forever.
In addition to this he could not keep his cool in game, and often resorted to insulting his opponents. It was that, not the team-switching, which led to me refusing to talk to him any more.
I can recall a story from when I first got started playing 40K. This was back in 7th.
I'd only been playing for a few days when my friends took me up to the FLGS to get more games in with new people. I played Salamanders back then, and I went up against a guy playing CSM. He brought two helldrakes with baleflamers.
He got mad when he found out I had a 4+FNP against flamer weapons army wide, even though his list was still specifically designed to club baby seals.
I can think of dozens of examples over the years, but they mostly had to do with extreme personalities.
We had one guy in my FLGS who bought a crazy CSM army. It was 6th edition, he was running double FOCs with 6 Heldrakes, 160 Cultists, and some Chaos Lords with Plasma Guns. The army was impossible to beat, it would just spread out all over the board and he was using all sorts of placement tricks to prevent opponents from being able to target anything but the nearest unit. Every game would end with him controlling every objective through weight of bodies while his Heldrakes BBQed everything that mattered.
The thing was, the guy had awful manners. His army was painted with Testors Enamels, everything had exactly 3 colors. He thought this made it by definition beautiful and would go on about all the effort it took painting it in 2 days. It would take him 40 minutes to get through each movement phase, opponents would literally go to lunch turn 2 because they knew what was happening. The player had poor personal hygiene, he wore a jean jacket that had never been washed all year, including the summer, and you could smell it. And his teeth. Looked like he sharpened them.
The worst part was he would steal his opponents models. You came in with 30 Guardians, you would leave with 28. He was taking them as trophies, we actually caught him with the models in the bag. He pretended it was an accident, but people knew it had been happening. Wasn't long after this he decided he was going to switch to Tau because he wanted something more competitive for other players. Loaded up on Riptides and Drones to create another unbeatable list.
He absolutely lost his cool one day and flipped a table on someone who decided they wanted a fight in the parking lot. Had to call the cops and close the store for the rest of the day while we cleaned up the mess. People started coming into the store just to tell us to ban the guy, there was a lot of anger built up over 6+ months of him hanging around too often. Right around that time, his parents decided to move to North Carolina and he went with them. Never heard from him again.
A reason I don't really tournament or pickup game anymore is because of a few stories.
I've seen the guys that throw a fit when they lose. I've played the guys that chuck dice at the wall when they lose or roll bad. I've played guys that throw their stuff into their case forcibly when they lose or their guys die. I've had the guy that refused any judge overruling some strange rule they were trying to cook up. I've had the guy threatening to take me outside and fight me because he didn't like an event rule I put in place. I've played the guy that got caught with loaded dice (actually six people over the course of a decade in our club were caught with loaded dice and banned from our leagues and events).
The ultimate was a regional RTT back in the mid 2000s where I saw a legit table flip. It wasn't a game I was involved with, but the loud crash, the site of models flying through the air, and dude storming off leaving everything in ruins because he lost a game will never be something I ever forget and was one of the key catalysts to getting out of tournament play for me.
It is really interesting how many of the negative stories here have to do with the mismatch between casual and competitive lists.
It seems to cause a lot of strife.
I notice in this and other threads a lot of stupid store owners. Catering to scumbags because "they spend a lot of money", ignoring the fact they're chasing away other people. It really goes to show that most people who open gaming stores don't have a lot of business sense, its a side project and as a result they don't seem to care much as long as poeple buy from them while often providing nothing other than table space to be worthwhile.
The worst thing I saw was years and years ago when I was in my senior year of high school and shortly after so like 1999. I had a friend (I'll refer to him as "my friend" even though he stopped being one) who's father owned a game store down the street from me, so I went there frequently after school just to hang out. This guy was really smart (in a lot of gifted programs; I had known him off and on since like elementary school) but incredibly lazy. He would lie about working at the store during school hours to get OJT (on the job training) and basically have working count as classes, so he could sleep in. He dropped out of school midway through the senior year because he felt it was easier to just get a GED than finish classes.
Anyways, two stories with this guy, one wargame and one RPG. The wargame one, we did a fairly casual Warhammer Fantasy league, this was like 5th edition, which ran a few weeks and had a prize of store credit at the end. He played a Bretonnian army that was basically a kitted-out hero on a dragon (bretonnia could have a higher than normal percentage of heroes, because bretonnia) and a couple min sized archers who didn't do anything all game; his hero on dragon would just tear through everyone's army. Nobody liked playing him (he was also the rules-lawyering/WAAC type, he did the same in D&D when we were kids) so eventually, everyone dropped out, leaving me to play him in the final round (I didn't have a stellar record but was automatically going to be 1st or 2nd). Anyway, I was playing the then-new Vampire Counts, and since I knew he would field his lord on a dragon I took Hand of Dust which, if I rolled well, would have one shot his dragon. It was basically if I rolled well I would win, if not I would lose. I missed the amount needed to kill him by a wound or two and lost, but came in second and got a small prize while he got the main prize (in credit. in his dad's store. when he was paid there and could order whatever he wanted at cost) and spent it on Magic cards or something. After running everyone else out of the league by being a WAAC scumbag.
The second one, the one that basically got me blackballed from the store for years until it shut down, involved the Hackmaster RPG. Hackmaster was at that time a blatant parody of 1st edition D&D,so the book would talk about how "real men" sucked it up and dealt with the dice, only pansies complained, the GM was god, if you didn't like the idea of the game being uber hard then you're too much of a wimp to play, etc. a lot of macho comedy stuff based on how they act in the Knights at the Dinner Table comic. These guys seemed to miss that it was a parody. I was invited one day to join their group and it turned out that my "friend" not only had the most powerful character in the group because the GM had a tendency to throw ultra-hard monsters at everyone to kill them (claiming it was "part of the game", like I believe we fought a Beholder once at 3rd level who bit my character's head off), but the rest of the group were basically his character's servants and lackeys. I found out from talking to someone who had been in their group on the Hackmaster forums that they would also bring people into the group, let them roll to start with a magic item, then kill them/get them killed and take the magic item then laugh at/insult/run the person out if they complained saying they were pansies who "couldn't hack it" at the game. One guy, who said he was a teacher, would be fethed with constantly and my friend laughed about it because he would take it seriously:
He was given a magic sword and made to think it was a cursed sword that would turn on him when he least expected it so he was always paranoid. The guy was high-strung it seemed and my friend did this deliberately to screw with him. He even got super pissed one day and stormed out of the store, like he was beet red and I thought he might have had a heart attack or break the windows or something, just because of stuff that happened in the game thanks to my friend's antics. So anyway, I wanted to play on my friend's ego and I asked on the Hackmaster forums for character advice, explaining some of the things that went on (I didn't say how they were chasing people out, someone else chimed in and said they did that to him. I basically just said oh my friend has the strongest character in the group so I'm thinking of playing to that) and saying I wanted to make a character who would have journeyed there because he heard of <My Friend's Character> and his fame and wanted to learn from him (figuring I wouldn't be screwed with if I was playing to his ego). Someone stepped in and said they had played with this group, and talked about what they did to run people off and make their experience miserable. At the time, stores had to be part of the Hackmaster Retail Association to sell the products/have sanctioned games; it wasn't required but had some sort of prestige. So KenzerCo, the company that made the game later came into the thread and said, without going into any details, that after talking to the store and the owner they were removed from the Retail Association. That's when some of the group dogpiled the thread insulting me, my family, anything you can imagine, presumably because they had something happen as a result of this (I never found out what, before this went down I just calmy called my friend one day and said I wasn't enjoying it and wouldn't be back. He either didn't know about this at the time or was playing it calm, which seems unlike him, because he just said okay and nothing else). The guy who was always being screwed with even came on the thread, furious and pretty much cussing me out every other word, to literally threaten to kill me (I am not making this up) and basically warned that I better not show my face around the store because he had a gun (he actually said that. Something like "And just so you know, I carry a gun"). Needless to say, I did not go back. I never did figure out what made them so angry, since to my knowledge there wasn't anything special about being in the Retail Association in the first place. But it had to have been something major to get literal death threats for the inadvertently bringing the store's shenanigans to light.
A year or two later I had talked to a group that played 40k and were going to play at the store. I told them without going into detail that I wouldn't go to that store because we had history but for giggles, if you go there casually mention my name and see the result. The next day they said that not only was I not welcome in the store but I probably shouldn't even be in the vicinity when the group played 40k there. They didn't go into more detail but the way it was worded I imagined being outside getting Chinese food or something (it was next to a takeout place) and having someone from the store look up, see me and yell "There's Wayniac, get him!" and chase me with bats or something. He held a grudge that long, and some of the regulars from that store still would give me dirty looks if I happened to see them over the years (they never said anything, however). All because I asked for advice on a character and it came to light the store and group were basically chasing people away from the game.
Da Boss wrote: It is really interesting how many of the negative stories here have to do with the mismatch between casual and competitive lists.
It seems to cause a lot of strife.
Sometimes. But just as often in my experience, the perception of a mismatch between casual and competitive can cause just as much of a rift. I've seen plenty of people getting incredibly angry because their opponent beat them with what was objectively a far less competitive list, because they used tactics that the other player just didn't like.
one of the most common causes of people complaining about negative experiences is a guy who, in my opinion anyway is always extremely polite and friendly, does a reasonably high effort job painting his minis, and plays generally not terribly competitive list builds. I'm talking like, pre Space Marine 2.0, White Scars with tons of bikers, bike HQs, min sized scouts for troops, and lots of vanvets. He kills infantry with dakka and melee, then either ties tanks up or just ignores them, tanking their firepower on lots of 3++ storm shield saves.
But the fact that he very purposefully charges things he knows he cant kill to stop them shooting, very carefully uses his pile in and consolidate moves to wrap up dudes and keep them from falling back, and relies on a pretty decent turn 1 alpha strike just sets some players off to no end.
By contrast, we have a player who's fairly active in the tournament scene and has a reasonably meta competitive Deffskullz ork list with a bunch of reroll spammy KMB units and a bunch of mek guns and a big ork horde who wins well over 3/4 of his game and (IMO at least) has a worse attitude than the first guy by far, spends most of the game complaining about GW like a living dakka post, and nobody seems to care.
He's since switched from that list to a big bugs nid list and I've heard nothing, so maybe it was just that playstyle. But it is interesting how much the perception of competitiveness and certain factions/styles of play get automatically singled out as un-fun regardless of how actually strong they are. People like playing against the orks, for the most part as far as I can tell because they give you time to kill their stuff while you kill theirs, killing you in simple, easily understandable ways, and being a generally beloved faction that people like seeing on the table.
Yeah I can see that. Denial is never a particularly fun playstyle to go up against. Though I think that is a lot less clearcut, you know? Like people complaining about being outplayed by this kind of list probably did not have a fun time, but perhaps they could mitigate that somehow? I like those sorts of lists, most of the time, particularly if it is clear that the player has put some effort into it.
Wayniac wrote:I notice in this and other threads a lot of stupid store owners. Catering to scumbags because "they spend a lot of money", ignoring the fact they're chasing away other people. It really goes to show that most people who open gaming stores don't have a lot of business sense, its a side project and as a result they don't seem to care much as long as poeple buy from them while often providing nothing other than table space to be worthwhile.
The worst thing I saw was years and years ago when I was in my senior year of high school and shortly after so like 1999. I had a friend (I'll refer to him as "my friend" even though he stopped being one) who's father owned a game store down the street from me, so I went there frequently after school just to hang out. This guy was really smart (in a lot of gifted programs; I had known him off and on since like elementary school) but incredibly lazy. He would lie about working at the store during school hours to get OJT (on the job training) and basically have working count as classes, so he could sleep in. He dropped out of school midway through the senior year because he felt it was easier to just get a GED than finish classes.
Anyways, two stories with this guy, one wargame and one RPG. The wargame one, we did a fairly casual Warhammer Fantasy league, this was like 5th edition, which ran a few weeks and had a prize of store credit at the end. He played a Bretonnian army that was basically a kitted-out hero on a dragon (bretonnia could have a higher than normal percentage of heroes, because bretonnia) and a couple min sized archers who didn't do anything all game; his hero on dragon would just tear through everyone's army. Nobody liked playing him (he was also the rules-lawyering/WAAC type, he did the same in D&D when we were kids) so eventually, everyone dropped out, leaving me to play him in the final round (I didn't have a stellar record but was automatically going to be 1st or 2nd). Anyway, I was playing the then-new Vampire Counts, and since I knew he would field his lord on a dragon I took Hand of Dust which, if I rolled well, would have one shot his dragon. It was basically if I rolled well I would win, if not I would lose. I missed the amount needed to kill him by a wound or two and lost, but came in second and got a small prize while he got the main prize (in credit. in his dad's store. when he was paid there and could order whatever he wanted at cost) and spent it on Magic cards or something. After running everyone else out of the league by being a WAAC scumbag.
The second one, the one that basically got me blackballed from the store for years until it shut down, involved the Hackmaster RPG. Hackmaster was at that time a blatant parody of 1st edition D&D,so the book would talk about how "real men" sucked it up and dealt with the dice, only pansies complained, the GM was god, if you didn't like the idea of the game being uber hard then you're too much of a wimp to play, etc. a lot of macho comedy stuff based on how they act in the Knights at the Dinner Table comic. These guys seemed to miss that it was a parody. I was invited one day to join their group and it turned out that my "friend" not only had the most powerful character in the group because the GM had a tendency to throw ultra-hard monsters at everyone to kill them (claiming it was "part of the game", like I believe we fought a Beholder once at 3rd level who bit my character's head off), but the rest of the group were basically his character's servants and lackeys. I found out from talking to someone who had been in their group on the Hackmaster forums that they would also bring people into the group, let them roll to start with a magic item, then kill them/get them killed and take the magic item then laugh at/insult/run the person out if they complained saying they were pansies who "couldn't hack it" at the game. One guy, who said he was a teacher, would be fethed with constantly and my friend laughed about it because he would take it seriously:
He was given a magic sword and made to think it was a cursed sword that would turn on him when he least expected it so he was always paranoid. The guy was high-strung it seemed and my friend did this deliberately to screw with him. He even got super pissed one day and stormed out of the store, like he was beet red and I thought he might have had a heart attack or break the windows or something, just because of stuff that happened in the game thanks to my friend's antics. So anyway, I wanted to play on my friend's ego and I asked on the Hackmaster forums for character advice, explaining some of the things that went on (I didn't say how they were chasing people out, someone else chimed in and said they did that to him.
I basically just said oh my friend has the strongest character in the group so I'm thinking of playing to that) and saying I wanted to make a character who would have journeyed there because he heard of <My Friend's Character> and his fame and wanted to learn from him (figuring I wouldn't be screwed with if I was playing to his ego). Someone stepped in and said they had played with this group, and talked about what they did to run people off and make their experience miserable. At the time, stores had to be part of the Hackmaster Retail Association to sell the products/have sanctioned games; it wasn't required but had some sort of prestige. So KenzerCo, the company that made the game later came into the thread and said, without going into any details, that after talking to the store and the owner they were removed from the Retail Association. That's when some of the group dogpiled the thread insulting me, my family, anything you can imagine, presumably because they had something happen as a result of this (I never found out what, before this went down I just calmy called my friend one day and said I wasn't enjoying it and wouldn't be back. He either didn't know about this at the time or was playing it calm, which seems unlike him, because he just said okay and nothing else). The guy who was always being screwed with even came on the thread, furious and pretty much cussing me out every other word, to literally threaten to kill me (I am not making this up) and basically warned that I better not show my face around the store because he had a gun (he actually said that. Something like "And just so you know, I carry a gun"). Needless to say, I did not go back. I never did figure out what made them so angry, since to my knowledge there wasn't anything special about being in the Retail Association in the first place. But it had to have been something major to get literal death threats for the inadvertently bringing the store's shenanigans to light.
A year or two later I had talked to a group that played 40k and were going to play at the store. I told them without going into detail that I wouldn't go to that store because we had history but for giggles, if you go there casually mention my name and see the result. The next day they said that not only was I not welcome in the store but I probably shouldn't even be in the vicinity when the group played 40k there. They didn't go into more detail but the way it was worded I imagined being outside getting Chinese food or something (it was next to a takeout place) and having someone from the store look up, see me and yell "There's Wayniac, get him!" and chase me with bats or something. He held a grudge that long, and some of the regulars from that store still would give me dirty looks if I happened to see them over the years (they never said anything, however). All because I asked for advice on a character and it came to light the store and group were basically chasing people away from the game.
Wow, what a bunch of unstable gakheads, you're probably lucky to be away from them as they're probably trouble magnets. And that Hackmaster game sounds douchey and cringy as hell.
Da Boss wrote: complaining about GW like a living dakka post
This is the story of how I went from being really interested in 40k as a game to only interested in painting the minis and reading the books as far away from my local community as possible. Not saying they're all bad, but the group of regulars at what has been up until recently the only gaming store in my area (the local GW) really turned me off of Warhammer for a while. The manager is a great guy, if a bit pushy when he gets in his head what he thinks your army needs, but the regular store-goers are jerks.
Shortly before the launch of 8th edition, I discovered Warhammer 40k through reddit and thought the models looked awesome. I found out there was a game and TONS of lore and spent a few months looking into it. After absorbing a ton of lore and reading various articles on the playstyles of all the factions at the time, I decided that I really liked the AdMech. The codex had just released a month or so before, the models in the Start Collecting looked awesome, and I had spent some time saving bits and pieces of my paychecks to buy the SC box and the codex. I was on a tight budget at the time because I was still having to use my parents' income on my FAFSA and was having to pay a significant amount out of pocket for school every semester. One day after I had finished with my classes, I made my way down to the GW to buy my codex and a box at the very least, but potentially the Start Collecting instead. I went in and told the manager that I was new to the hobby, hadn't built much other than hobby lobby models, and was looking at starting with AdMech. I mentioned that I wanted to try and save as much money as I could starting out. I should have clarified what I meant, but didn't get the chance.
He immediately recommended Knights as the best choice for someone wanting a cheap army because with the right loadouts, a full 2k army could be made with just a few models. I started to say that the Knight was too expensive for me at the time (my budget was ~$130 including the tax, the Knight was $140 before tax, IIRC), when several of the regulars sitting there painting chimed in. It was a several minute-long rant, the gist of which was something along the lines of "this is a HOBBY and hobbies are EXPENSIVE. If you aren't willing to pay that much, you should get out." The manager wasn't happy that the guy said it, but didn't say anything to him about it and then recommended that I get Grey Knights instead of AdMech for a more budget-friendly choice. I went over and looked at their codex for a few minutes, then left without buying anything. I checked the store's reviews after I left, and it turns I wasn't the only one with issues with the regulars. Almost every review talked about how wonderful the manager was if you got him one-on-one to help you start out, but how awful several of the store's regulars were to anyone new.
To that guy's point, I do understand that hobbies are expensive. However, I don't support telling someone who is new and has already said that they're on a budget that they either need to go all in or give up. If I had bought that knight, blowing my budget out of the water, I would have felt awful for weeks afterward. I also would have been incredibly intimidated with that as my first model, and I probably would have never finished it and instead given up on the hobby all together. I know that seems extreme, but I know how I am when I get overwhelmed by a project. Heck, it took me forever to finish the Magmadroth for my Fyreslayers because my airbrush compressor died on me and I had to paint it by hand, and that was after a year of experience painting! Instead, I took it slow, buying some cheap minis and practicing on those.
The whole thing turned me off of 40k for about a year before I finally ended up buying some minis for cheap on eBay. Even now, several years later, I still only go to the GW occasionally to pick up paints that I need immediately for painting projects. Thankfully, a new LGS just opened up a few weeks ago and is supposed to be a really casual environment for gaming. Otherwise, I would probably never get to play a game because the only other choice in less than an hour's drive is that GW.
Da Boss wrote: It is really interesting how many of the negative stories here have to do with the mismatch between casual and competitive lists.
It seems to cause a lot of strife.
Sometimes. But just as often in my experience, the perception of a mismatch between casual and competitive can cause just as much of a rift. I've seen plenty of people getting incredibly angry because their opponent beat them with what was objectively a far less competitive list, because they used tactics that the other player just didn't like.
I'd say one of my most memorable games was from 4th edition where my opponent completely lost his cool, complaining with every dice roll, 'that army is such bs.!'
The triggering incident?
His IG guys not getting armor saves when in CC with a carnifex.
Da Boss wrote: It is really interesting how many of the negative stories here have to do with the mismatch between casual and competitive lists.
It seems to cause a lot of strife.
Sometimes. But just as often in my experience, the perception of a mismatch between casual and competitive can cause just as much of a rift. I've seen plenty of people getting incredibly angry because their opponent beat them with what was objectively a far less competitive list, because they used tactics that the other player just didn't like.
I'd say one of my most memorable games was from 4th edition where my opponent completely lost his cool, complaining with every dice roll, 'that army is such bs.!'
The triggering incident?
His IG guys not getting armor saves when in CC with a carnifex.
Second mate, 4th like where every weapon was DS 5 ? and a carnifex more akin a tank but better in nearly every reagard ? Erm, why would he suspect that he had an armor save ? Like all the chaff under SV4+ had never an armor save in my experience.
He immediately recommended Knights as the best choice for someone wanting a cheap army because with the right loadouts, a full 2k army could be made with just a few models. I started to say that the Knight was too expensive for me at the time (my budget was ~$130 including the tax, the Knight was $140 before tax, IIRC), when several of the regulars sitting there painting chimed in. It was a several minute-long rant, the gist of which was something along the lines of "this is a HOBBY and hobbies are EXPENSIVE. If you aren't willing to pay that much, you should get out." The manager wasn't happy that the guy said it, but didn't say anything to him about it and then recommended that I get Grey Knights instead of AdMech for a more budget-friendly choice. I went over and looked at their codex for a few minutes, then left without buying anything. I checked the store's reviews after I left, and it turns I wasn't the only one with issues with the regulars. Almost every review talked about how wonderful the manager was if you got him one-on-one to help you start out, but how awful several of the store's regulars were to anyone new.
Wow, what an obnoxious spanker. Sorry you had that experience. I hope you have enjoyed yourself more since, sounds like that guy had terrible social skills and a terrible attitude. Also the GW guy absolutely should have just sold you the Start Collecting if that is what you wanted. This upselling nonsense is very offputting.
He immediately recommended Knights as the best choice for someone wanting a cheap army because with the right loadouts, a full 2k army could be made with just a few models. I started to say that the Knight was too expensive for me at the time (my budget was ~$130 including the tax, the Knight was $140 before tax, IIRC), when several of the regulars sitting there painting chimed in. It was a several minute-long rant, the gist of which was something along the lines of "this is a HOBBY and hobbies are EXPENSIVE. If you aren't willing to pay that much, you should get out." The manager wasn't happy that the guy said it, but didn't say anything to him about it and then recommended that I get Grey Knights instead of AdMech for a more budget-friendly choice. I went over and looked at their codex for a few minutes, then left without buying anything. I checked the store's reviews after I left, and it turns I wasn't the only one with issues with the regulars. Almost every review talked about how wonderful the manager was if you got him one-on-one to help you start out, but how awful several of the store's regulars were to anyone new.
Wow, what an obnoxious spanker. Sorry you had that experience. I hope you have enjoyed yourself more since, sounds like that guy had terrible social skills and a terrible attitude. Also the GW guy absolutely should have just sold you the Start Collecting if that is what you wanted. This upselling nonsense is very offputting.
Also, wrong. Aren't Custodes generally considered the cheapest per point?
...
Yeah, a basic squad of adeptus custodes is 4$/point, a knight looks to be about 2.5. I'd assume the custode elite stuff is even better ratios, since their character guy is 35$ for like 200+ points, their bikers can be all characters if you want making them like 450pts for 60$, etc.
Da Boss wrote: It is really interesting how many of the negative stories here have to do with the mismatch between casual and competitive lists.
It seems to cause a lot of strife.
It is the single greatest bane in trying to run casual events for me, and why I am the way I am and am passionate about game balance the way I am.
He immediately recommended Knights as the best choice for someone wanting a cheap army because with the right loadouts, a full 2k army could be made with just a few models. I started to say that the Knight was too expensive for me at the time (my budget was ~$130 including the tax, the Knight was $140 before tax, IIRC), when several of the regulars sitting there painting chimed in. It was a several minute-long rant, the gist of which was something along the lines of "this is a HOBBY and hobbies are EXPENSIVE. If you aren't willing to pay that much, you should get out." The manager wasn't happy that the guy said it, but didn't say anything to him about it and then recommended that I get Grey Knights instead of AdMech for a more budget-friendly choice. I went over and looked at their codex for a few minutes, then left without buying anything. I checked the store's reviews after I left, and it turns I wasn't the only one with issues with the regulars. Almost every review talked about how wonderful the manager was if you got him one-on-one to help you start out, but how awful several of the store's regulars were to anyone new.
Wow, what an obnoxious spanker. Sorry you had that experience. I hope you have enjoyed yourself more since, sounds like that guy had terrible social skills and a terrible attitude. Also the GW guy absolutely should have just sold you the Start Collecting if that is what you wanted. This upselling nonsense is very offputting.
I've enjoyed myself painting since then, but haven't played a game yet since there aren't any other places to play in an easy driving distance right now. Most of the non-GW stores closed down because of bad locations, and I haven't made it to the newest store that opened up yet.
I also never did get any AdMech. I do still want to grab a box some day, but I've spent my time since then painting a handful of marines, some Fyreslayers, and various minis from other systems.
the_scotsman wrote: One of the biggest things I've had to stop doing with frustrated people where I play is offering to play their army against mine to show how I'd run it. More often than not I can win, or at least make the game far far less one sided than it was, but if you take away peoples' primary excuse for their loss (my army is just bad/their army is just OP) then they tend to fall back on "This person is just a scummy WAAC player" and they get mad at you or at others rather than at the game.
It seems like a quick army switch would be a good way to get peoples' confidence back up, show them their army CAN win and they just need to use it effectively, but evidence has shown me that's the opposite of what a lot of folks want to see and hear, and they're much happier with a string of losses they can blame on out of control factors.
"Now that I've thoroughly tanned your backside, let me do it again with the collection of models I've just effortlessly curbstomped , sight unseen, just to peacock away at how much better I am at this than you are."
That's why this sort of offer is NEVER going to go down well, no matter how well-intentioned it is in your mind ... (And I say this as someone with a black belt in Foot-In-Mouth-jutsu)
Not got many contributions that havent been hinted at already, though one particular annoyance for me was that Guy Who Doesn't Like Your Game/Genre. Yes ok, we get it, Warhammer isn't a perfect simulation of medieval warfare and has (had?) some ... quaint mechanics, but constantly going on about it, and making sure that any potential new club members also know your opinion. Repeatedly. Then wonder why they stop coming back. Pity because otherwise a great guy and an absolute treasure trove of modelling knowledge, but...
Hey, there's that social awareness thing again....
Wow, what a bunch of unstable gakheads, you're probably lucky to be away from them as they're probably trouble magnets. And that Hackmaster game sounds douchey and cringy as hell.
It really wasn't. They since made it less of a parody and its own game, but it was meant to be a tongue-in-cheek jab at the "good old days" of D&D, like they do in the comics it came from. Let me be clear here the game wasn't to blame, it was just these jackasses who took it to some extreme for whatever reason. It would have been a fun game if you played it like a light-hearted almost comedic game ("The old man approaches you and says he knows the location of vast riches, for--" "I WASTE HIM WITH MY CROSSBOW!" type of stuff) but they went way too far. Especially at the end. The thread and probably forums now are long gone but I wish I had saved it just to laugh at it later.
Luckily other than that experience I've never really had one so bad I've left a store. There are a few people I don't like to play Warhammer against because they make the game not fun, including a few actual friends who I'm fine talking about Warhammer with (just dislike playing them), but nothing extreme.
the_scotsman wrote: One of the biggest things I've had to stop doing with frustrated people where I play is offering to play their army against mine to show how I'd run it. More often than not I can win, or at least make the game far far less one sided than it was, but if you take away peoples' primary excuse for their loss (my army is just bad/their army is just OP) then they tend to fall back on "This person is just a scummy WAAC player" and they get mad at you or at others rather than at the game.
It seems like a quick army switch would be a good way to get peoples' confidence back up, show them their army CAN win and they just need to use it effectively, but evidence has shown me that's the opposite of what a lot of folks want to see and hear, and they're much happier with a string of losses they can blame on out of control factors.
"Now that I've thoroughly tanned your backside, let me do it again with the collection of models I've just effortlessly curbstomped , sight unseen, just to peacock away at how much better I am at this than you are."
That's why this sort of offer is NEVER going to go down well, no matter how well-intentioned it is in your mind ... (And I say this as someone with a black belt in Foot-In-Mouth-jutsu)
I've seen it happen a couple of times and neither time it went down like that. I've done it myself with a good friend who I've known for years and was learning EC. We switched armies as I am unfamiliar with EC and it was just to see how another person who was learning would play.
Another one I saw was from a friend of mine when he worked for GW. He was playing a kid at LOTR and the kid who was using an army consisting of The Fellowship got whooped. To which he says that The Fellowship is no good. Friend offers to play again but switch sides to teach him how to use them as a competent combined arms force.
It's all in the presentation and how you talk to them. Sure if you just play their army for them they won't learn anything. You have to shift from play to teach mode and not everyone has teaching mode. You gotta learn how to teach.
the_scotsman wrote: One of the biggest things I've had to stop doing with frustrated people where I play is offering to play their army against mine to show how I'd run it. More often than not I can win, or at least make the game far far less one sided than it was, but if you take away peoples' primary excuse for their loss (my army is just bad/their army is just OP) then they tend to fall back on "This person is just a scummy WAAC player" and they get mad at you or at others rather than at the game.
It seems like a quick army switch would be a good way to get peoples' confidence back up, show them their army CAN win and they just need to use it effectively, but evidence has shown me that's the opposite of what a lot of folks want to see and hear, and they're much happier with a string of losses they can blame on out of control factors.
"Now that I've thoroughly tanned your backside, let me do it again with the collection of models I've just effortlessly curbstomped , sight unseen, just to peacock away at how much better I am at this than you are."
That's why this sort of offer is NEVER going to go down well, no matter how well-intentioned it is in your mind ... .
Yeah, that's a realistic portrayal of how these scenarios go, it's never an offer given out of frustration when someone has spent the last couple hours whining endlessly about how utterly broken your army is and how completely hopelessly underpowered theirs is, and how there's nothing they could have done.
Often, people give you no way to continue the conversation in a friendly, positive light not taking their frustration personally, and you think maybe you'll try giving some productive advice or tell them about some of the weaknesses that your army has or tactics they could have tried to use. I don't know about you but I despise giving advice that just amounts to "buy some new stuff" online and I hate it even more in person, so if I talk to someone about how to change their game experience I almost always try to treat the list as something I'm not allowed to touch, unless I know exactly what's on their bench or I can rearrange the models they have in a different configuration. The best way to do that if you're standing at a gaming table with your miniatures right there and your dice and everything still out is to run through a couple of example scenarios.
That's what I generally do nowadays, anyway, it seems to work a little better. And I have seen some people do the full game re-rack thing successfully - one of our more competitive players is a high school teacher, and I've seen him do an extremely good job showing someone how to better use their list.
Ah... well, ironically enough, I've clearly not expressed my point in the manner in which it was intended!
What I was getting at was not that the idea of helping your fellow gamer is a bad one, nor attacking your motivation, scotsman. But it's how it CAN (note, CAN) sound to the person you're trying to help - especially if, as you say yourself, they're frustrated.
This means that they're not in a learning mindset.
They're already having a crappy time, their mental shields are already up, they're going to be naturally antagonistic about all things -> *insert ruleset name here, 'cos it's not exclusively a 40k problem* <- for a while.
They can very easily twist well-intentioned words into gloating.
Don't forget, it might not be YOU, per se. Your game could just be the twelfth one on the bounce in which they've been utterly blown out, made to feel powerless and that something they do for 'fun' actually isn't any more. I've been on both sides of the table on this one, and it sucks either way.
Grimtuff's post actually touches on the only times I'd expect it to go well - "a good friend", or at least "known for years" preferably in a regular club environment or a 'kid' who's still relatively new but, more importantly, is already used to being taught stuff in their 'day job', as it were. And even then, you have to get both of them at the right time, in my experience.
) the presence of said person made me genuinely unwilling to spend time in the store, and I re-scheduled plans to game as a result of it. I wouldn't be able to relax around said person, and frankly I don't care to have them anywhere close to my life.
. Still, that's not really my jam, since in this case the people being made fun of are Not present...
