I think most of us would probably agree that a lot of the people who play Warhammer 40k are a little bit.. weird. I want to hear what some of your experiences have been (for entertainments sake) either at your local gaming story, a friend's house, or even at some tournaments. 40k is an emotional game, and I wouldn't be surprised if people do some weird things in response. For example, have you ever had someone rage quit in furious anger? Have you ever made someone cry? When the game gets stressful, what strange behaviour did your opponent conjure up? Or are you the weird one? Have you done something that looking back on it you seem unable to explain why you did it? I'll start by sharing my weird encounter.

I picked up a game with a stranger at my local gaming store. Generally I am a bit apprehensive to play with strangers simply because I don't know their interpretation of the rules, and I'm scared they are going to bring something super overpowered. I'm usually just looking for a friendly game with semi-competitive painted armies. Any-who, I was itching to play so badly that I agreed to play with the first person who accepted my request.

So we meet up and the guy seems normal-ish, maybe doesn't smile at all, but that's okay. He tells me he won a tournament but they didn't give him full points or something because they said he was using an 'internet' list. Apparently they thought his army was unsportsmanlike. Apparently he was upset about this. Already I was thinking I've made a mistake. We go on to play, and indeed he's got a chaos space marine internet list with obliterators and demon princes, blah, blah. But I just play and enjoy myself anyways, getting slaughtered. Then all of a sudden he makes this loud shrieking noise that didn't seem to be motivated by any events going on in the game. I was taken aback by it and said, 'what was that?' And he says, very seriously, 'a battle cry'. So I just ignored it and continued playing. Periodically he would make the noise, but I just ignored it from then on.

Then when things started getting hot in the game, he got more excited. So he started making the sound more, and I could tell he was getting 'elevated', pacing and hyperventilating. Although I'm not sure why, since he was utterly destroying me. He made some bad rolls then got upset and took the dice that rolled poorly and threw them in the garbage. I looked at him a bit flabbergasted and asked why he did that. He said the dice were no good. He likes to get rid of bad dice. Throughout the rest of the game he continued to throw away 'bad' dice and periodically making his 'battle cry'. He never laughed, never was friendly, and I just wanted the game to end so I could go home.

Reflecting back on the experience, I wonder if he had tourette's syndrome. Possibly, but it would have been nice to have had a disclaimer. In the moment, it was one of the weirdest experiences I've ever had.

Let's hear yours!

Hahahaha. I used to play only with a group of friends back in the day. Plenty of "counts as" and even some paper cutouts of units that hadn't made it to South Africa yet but were in the latest WD. Those were some mad, fun times.

That being said I did venture out of my friends group once. ONCE. The guy would constantly narrate his armies moves. And then narrate mine too. I don't mean like "My heavy weapons squad shoots your Lictor" I mean full on "Now, in the heat of battle as the Lictor jumps from concealment the stanch defenders of Cadia open fire with their heavy weapons, the chugging bark of autocannons ripping the air."

It was fun and all to see them that involved but it made me question his sanity.

I did the "paper template in the size of a Leman Russ" at one time too. I also made some Leman Russ tanks out of wood and nails. The wooden ones are actually pretty decent.
But that was when my army was 35 Guardsmen, 1 2nd-hand Leman Russ tank that among other things didn't have tracks, and a lot of green army men. And that soviet commissar from one of the Lego sets.

I'm not the only person who makes tank noises (or other onomatopoeia] when I play, though if I do say so myself, I make the best of them . My friends once made fun of me for absentmindedly pushing a Vanquisher [mine] and the Hammerhead [not-mine] around dining table and having them engage is a tank duel like I was a little kid playing with dolls. Which too be fair, I am an adult [am I really though. Aren't we all just kids inside ] playing with dolls.

Warhammer world years ago when kill team wasnt a game but they used to do events using a similar format.

guy was running chaos daemons, i'd made it to the top table with my orks.

He queried every rule, every inch, ignored rules that effected his stuff like (at the time) discs of tzeentch landing in cover needing a test. The games were short so no time to query anything. Fairly aggressive but trying not to appear like a d***. Was the definition of WAAC. Towards the end i was on the verge of telling him he was being a prick but i was a bit younger at the time, he was bigger than me and i just silently ranged inside. Had the nerve to ask how i was getting on in other games during the lunch break.

Same format different event, it was about the fime riptides came out and you could fit one into the format. So there were 20 riptides at the WHW event. What made it worse is after every round your units gained skills like FNP etc. Again with my orks his riptide was so powerful with ignore LoS weapons after the first couple of turns i said good luck mate, this isnt fun and walked packed me models away. Wasn't 100% his fault the format was broken and WHW changed it in later events but he didnt really see how ridic it was and play it more fun...

Another one was at a local touney a few years back towards the end of 7th, to be fair it was a tourney and i think he was an ETC team member. His army was literally about 100 fenresian wolves in a conga line with rune priests and DARK ANGELS psykers casting all sorts of madness. It was the most unfluffy army i have ever played against and he was cold calm and literally just appeared to be there to win, no banter, nothing.

+bonus people: casuals at local clubs over the years who simply do not know the rules well, this is where i'm on the other end appearing to be a d*** but literally playing the game correctly where they are suprised by pulling them up on things they are doing wrong / things i am doing which are now normal e.g. wrap'n'trap etc. I try to let these sorts of people know what i'm doing and 'forget' to fire the odd unit here and there if i see them getting frustrated but you can't just let them play the game wrong and it gets awkward

Cheating. But the way he cheated was so weird. He'd just blatantly start moving his units way from our teams during our turn and when I called him out saying "Dave stop moving, it's our turn." He got in a right huff about the audacity of me not letting him cheat.

He was a bit...odd to play in general. He'd hop on whatever army people told him was best and take the units he was told were best but had so little understanding of how to play he never succeeded. It got to a point where he was using scatbikes and I was handily beating them with striking scorpions.

Edit: I remember playing someone who used Tyranids in 7th. This was meant to be a teaching game so I pointed out he needed to roll reserves for his trygon and other reserves which ruined his entire game plan and I felt so bad. Lovely guy though, he ended up playing some Tau Genestealer Cultists.

Ages ago (Early 4th) at the local shop of the time I played a guy who was all psyched & eager to pit his Eldar vs my 3 Baneblades (two old Armorcasts & 1 of the new FW ones).
He knew what 'Blades were. He had no problem with people fielding whatever. And HE requested the match up.

I get to the shop & find out he's already set up the terrain. This wasn't unusual as it was the groups custom of who ever got there first would set up the table & then others had the option to change things to a degree (as long as the original table theme was kept) But it looked pretty.... sparse. Wich was of much waaay more benefit to me than the Eldar (unless he had something up his sleeve I didn't know about {spoiler: he didn't}.) So for HIS benefit I added some more areas of cover & some actual LoS blockage - some boccage, & some buildings. It was still pretty wide open ag fields, but now, whatever the side there were areas he could potentially use to approach objectives/Blades if he chose.

So we rolled for mission, deployment areas & 1st turn.
He took 1st turn.

He proceeded to cheerfully swarm his entire army, save for a few lance platforms & a Fire Prism, straight forward into the waiting teeth of 3 Baneblades.
Zero attempt to use any type of cover or to hit either flank (where the volume of fire he'd take would've been much less due to fire arcs/limited LoS), or any other tactic.
He landed a few lance weapons hits wich did virtually nothing to my blades.

Play passes to me. About 75% of his army ceases to exist. When the dice stop rolling he has nothing anywhere my tanks or objectives & zero chance of winning shy of getting lucky shots when rolling on the Super Heavy Damage table & blowing me up.

Turn 2:
I take a few more lance shots, none of wich fell into the lucky category.
1) I move forward a bit to make sure I have all surviving Eldar in ranges/arcs. 2) I finish tabling him.
And he's perfectly fine with this.

He hasn't played a game of 40k since. Though he will tell others about the game. When asked why he doesn't play anymore he simply replies that all of his Eldar died in battle.
Turns out that he'd decided that he was done with 40k & had chosen for his Eldar to commit suicide by combat. So he chose a match where he was sure he'd be tabled.

ccs wrote:
Ages ago (Early 4th) at the local shop of the time I played a guy who was all psyched & eager to pit his Eldar vs my 3 Baneblades (two old Armorcasts & 1 of the new FW ones).
He knew what 'Blades were. He had no problem with people fielding whatever. And HE requested the match up.

I get to the shop & find out he's already set up the terrain. This wasn't unusual as it was the groups custom of who ever got there first would set up the table & then others had the option to change things to a degree (as long as the original table theme was kept) But it looked pretty.... sparse. Wich was of much waaay more benefit to me than the Eldar (unless he had something up his sleeve I didn't know about {spoiler: he didn't}.) So for HIS benefit I added some more areas of cover & some actual LoS blockage - some boccage, & some buildings. It was still pretty wide open ag fields, but now, whatever the side there were areas he could potentially use to approach objectives/Blades if he chose.

So we rolled for mission, deployment areas & 1st turn.
He took 1st turn.

He proceeded to cheerfully swarm his entire army, save for a few lance platforms & a Fire Prism, straight forward into the waiting teeth of 3 Baneblades.
Zero attempt to use any type of cover or to hit either flank (where the volume of fire he'd take would've been much less due to fire arcs/limited LoS), or any other tactic.
He landed a few lance weapons hits wich did virtually nothing to my blades.

Play passes to me. About 75% of his army ceases to exist. When the dice stop rolling he has nothing anywhere my tanks or objectives & zero chance of winning shy of getting lucky shots when rolling on the Super Heavy Damage table & blowing me up.

Turn 2:
I take a few more lance shots, none of wich fell into the lucky category.
1) I move forward a bit to make sure I have all surviving Eldar in ranges/arcs. 2) I finish tabling him.
And he's perfectly fine with this.

He hasn't played a game of 40k since. Though he will tell others about the game. When asked why he doesn't play anymore he simply replies that all of his Eldar died in battle.
Turns out that he'd decided that he was done with 40k & had chosen for his Eldar to commit suicide by combat. So he chose a match where he was sure he'd be tabled.

Well... At least he was in good spirits?

Weird, to be sure, but not harming anyone.

ccs wrote:
Ages ago (Early 4th) at the local shop of the time I played a guy who was all psyched & eager to pit his Eldar vs my 3 Baneblades (two old Armorcasts & 1 of the new FW ones).
He knew what 'Blades were. He had no problem with people fielding whatever. And HE requested the match up.

I get to the shop & find out he's already set up the terrain. This wasn't unusual as it was the groups custom of who ever got there first would set up the table & then others had the option to change things to a degree (as long as the original table theme was kept) But it looked pretty.... sparse. Wich was of much waaay more benefit to me than the Eldar (unless he had something up his sleeve I didn't know about {spoiler: he didn't}.) So for HIS benefit I added some more areas of cover & some actual LoS blockage - some boccage, & some buildings. It was still pretty wide open ag fields, but now, whatever the side there were areas he could potentially use to approach objectives/Blades if he chose.

So we rolled for mission, deployment areas & 1st turn.
He took 1st turn.

He proceeded to cheerfully swarm his entire army, save for a few lance platforms & a Fire Prism, straight forward into the waiting teeth of 3 Baneblades.
Zero attempt to use any type of cover or to hit either flank (where the volume of fire he'd take would've been much less due to fire arcs/limited LoS), or any other tactic.
He landed a few lance weapons hits wich did virtually nothing to my blades.

Play passes to me. About 75% of his army ceases to exist. When the dice stop rolling he has nothing anywhere my tanks or objectives & zero chance of winning shy of getting lucky shots when rolling on the Super Heavy Damage table & blowing me up.

Turn 2:
I take a few more lance shots, none of wich fell into the lucky category.
1) I move forward a bit to make sure I have all surviving Eldar in ranges/arcs. 2) I finish tabling him.
And he's perfectly fine with this.

He hasn't played a game of 40k since. Though he will tell others about the game. When asked why he doesn't play anymore he simply replies that all of his Eldar died in battle.
Turns out that he'd decided that he was done with 40k & had chosen for his Eldar to commit suicide by combat. So he chose a match where he was sure he'd be tabled.

That is from a narrative point of view, quite cool. He gave his army a good sending off. Sure they didn't achieve much by the sounds of it, but I bet he got some satisfaction out of being able to tell the story of his Eldar dying.

My oddest experience, was at a club games day. Me and another player had arranged to play a game of KoW. Unbeknown to us at the time two 40k players had decided to play a game of Apocalypse. We agreed to play after them as table space was limited. They took two of the six tables to play a game that lasted from 10am till 7.30pm (ish). A bit extreme, and when this was brought up on the group chat, I was somehow to blame.

I still get a laugh out of it to this day, the sheer audacity is boggling. I watched bits of the game, and nothing seemed to happen at all.

 stonehorse wrote:

ccs wrote:
Ages ago (Early 4th) at the local shop of the time I played a guy who was all psyched & eager to pit his Eldar vs my 3 Baneblades (two old Armorcasts & 1 of the new FW ones).
He knew what 'Blades were. He had no problem with people fielding whatever. And HE requested the match up.

I get to the shop & find out he's already set up the terrain. This wasn't unusual as it was the groups custom of who ever got there first would set up the table & then others had the option to change things to a degree (as long as the original table theme was kept) But it looked pretty.... sparse. Wich was of much waaay more benefit to me than the Eldar (unless he had something up his sleeve I didn't know about {spoiler: he didn't}.) So for HIS benefit I added some more areas of cover & some actual LoS blockage - some boccage, & some buildings. It was still pretty wide open ag fields, but now, whatever the side there were areas he could potentially use to approach objectives/Blades if he chose.

So we rolled for mission, deployment areas & 1st turn.
He took 1st turn.

He proceeded to cheerfully swarm his entire army, save for a few lance platforms & a Fire Prism, straight forward into the waiting teeth of 3 Baneblades.
Zero attempt to use any type of cover or to hit either flank (where the volume of fire he'd take would've been much less due to fire arcs/limited LoS), or any other tactic.
He landed a few lance weapons hits wich did virtually nothing to my blades.

Play passes to me. About 75% of his army ceases to exist. When the dice stop rolling he has nothing anywhere my tanks or objectives & zero chance of winning shy of getting lucky shots when rolling on the Super Heavy Damage table & blowing me up.

Turn 2:
I take a few more lance shots, none of wich fell into the lucky category.
1) I move forward a bit to make sure I have all surviving Eldar in ranges/arcs. 2) I finish tabling him.
And he's perfectly fine with this.

He hasn't played a game of 40k since. Though he will tell others about the game. When asked why he doesn't play anymore he simply replies that all of his Eldar died in battle.
Turns out that he'd decided that he was done with 40k & had chosen for his Eldar to commit suicide by combat. So he chose a match where he was sure he'd be tabled.

That is from a narrative point of view, quite cool. He gave his army a good sending off. Sure they didn't achieve much by the sounds of it, but I bet he got some satisfaction out of being able to tell the story of his Eldar dying.

My oddest experience, was at a club games day. Me and another player had arranged to play a game of KoW. Unbeknown to us at the time two 40k players had decided to play a game of Apocalypse. We agreed to play after them as table space was limited. They took two of the six tables to play a game that lasted from 10am till 7.30pm (ish). A bit extreme, and when this was brought up on the group chat, I was somehow to blame.

I still get a laugh out of it to this day, the sheer audacity is boggling. I watched bits of the game, and nothing seemed to happen at all.

That's basically apocalypse. My friend group repeatedly had the idea to play bit team games of apocalypse. We would start around 10 and usually not be finished by midnight. One time, I got a game in with one of my friends between turns with my models that had died already while waiting for the other team to take their movement phase.

It does give some memorable moments pertinent to super-heavies doing cool stuff, but now that there's super heavies in regular 40k, those aren't really special apocalypse moments anymore and it's just slow.

ccs wrote:

He hasn't played a game of 40k since. Though he will tell others about the game. When asked why he doesn't play anymore he simply replies that all of his Eldar died in battle.
Turns out that he'd decided that he was done with 40k & had chosen for his Eldar to commit suicide by combat. So he chose a match where he was sure he'd be tabled.

This is actually...kinda cool. Weird, but cool. I can respect that

I have had the usual things (dice cheaters, rage quitters, a guy who had every marine named and would have them talk to each other when they moved, shot, etc (and to be honest, this guy was cool and fun and I'd play him again and twice on Sunday)) However...
I once had a player beg to break a model apart on the last turn of the game so that it could control two objectives and gain the needed VP's to win (this was 6th or 7th ed). Is this cheating? Yes (talk about your modeling for advantage) but the weird thing is it almost made sense. It was a transport flyer with a unit inside, and the explanation was it crashed and scattered across. It was a game for fun, so we made a rule up and played it like this; He placed the pieces by using the scatter die, then the models inside, and the pilots. Then he rolled to see who died in the crash model by model. The result was...he lost because the two pilot models died and they were holding one objective.

Now, the model was unpainted and hadn't been fully glued, so he wasn't destroying an expensive model. Again, this guy was a fun fluffy guy, and I enjoyed the match against him.

I will point out in that I may be the weird guy. I used to have a set of vehicles that were all magnetized so that when destroyed, I could pull off the top and replace it with a burning/damaged replica...(if you aren't aware, previous editions had destroyed vehicles left on the table as terrain...)

edwardmyst wrote:
I will point out in that I may be the weird guy. I used to have a set of vehicles that were all magnetized so that when destroyed, I could pull off the top and replace it with a burning/damaged replica...(if you aren't aware, previous editions had destroyed vehicles left on the table as terrain...)

That ain't weird, that's just cool hobbying- I remember seeing an article about exactly that in White Dwarf. My dad had a small box full of spray painted cotton to stick on top of vehicles to mark them destroyed.

edwardmyst wrote:


I will point out in that I may be the weird guy. I used to have a set of vehicles that were all magnetized so that when destroyed, I could pull off the top and replace it with a burning/damaged replica...(if you aren't aware, previous editions had destroyed vehicles left on the table as terrain...)

This is just normal. I used to take my turrets off and put cotton balls in the holes, until it was decreed that the cotton balls would no longer be available for game playing.

Had a game of Apocalypse right near the launch of 8e that was supposed to be our "goodbye to 7e" day where the other team insisted on a cover-free 36" of no-man's-land (for context my team had 30k Astartes, Tyranids, and Craftworlders, theirs was Guard and Tau, so we were grotesquely outranged/outgunned and Apocalypse at the time was supposed to be played with 18" no-man's-land to let it start going faster). The Tau player then wouldn't tell me what he was rolling when, called the game when I objected, and sent me an angry email after the fact telling me that he was so angry I'd accused him of cheating that I was never to contact him again.

Runner-up is a Warmachine player who scooped and walked out of the store (grousing at me about how much of a munchkin I was during cleanup) during a tournament after winning a rules argument over an issue on which he was completely wrong.

Kayback wrote:
Hahahaha. I used to play only with a group of friends back in the day. Plenty of "counts as" and even some paper cutouts of units that hadn't made it to South Africa yet but were in the latest WD. Those were some mad, fun times.

That being said I did venture out of my friends group once. ONCE. The guy would constantly narrate his armies moves. And then narrate mine too. I don't mean like "My heavy weapons squad shoots your Lictor" I mean full on "Now, in the heat of battle as the Lictor jumps from concealment the stanch defenders of Cadia open fire with their heavy weapons, the chugging bark of autocannons ripping the air."

It was fun and all to see them that involved but it made me question his sanity.

This is hilarious!! Haha. I love how you ventured out of your friend group ONCE hahaha. Such an awkward situation when you can't keep up with a stranger's nerdiness. You gotta fake laugh and pretend it's cool but inside you're like 'wtf is this guy doing'.


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 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I did the "paper template in the size of a Leman Russ" at one time too. I also made some Leman Russ tanks out of wood and nails. The wooden ones are actually pretty decent.
But that was when my army was 35 Guardsmen, 1 2nd-hand Leman Russ tank that among other things didn't have tracks, and a lot of green army men. And that soviet commissar from one of the Lego sets.

I'm not the only person who makes tank noises (or other onomatopoeia] when I play, though if I do say so myself, I make the best of them . My friends once made fun of me for absentmindedly pushing a Vanquisher [mine] and the Hammerhead [not-mine] around dining table and having them engage is a tank duel like I was a little kid playing with dolls. Which too be fair, I am an adult [am I really though. Aren't we all just kids inside ] playing with dolls.

Sounds to me you are a goof more than anything hahaha. Yeah Warhammer brings out the children in us. Now that I'm in self isolation, I spend hours just staring at my army imagining fictional battles and events. I probably do make sounds for my guys.. I am just unaware of what I'm actually doing because I'm immersed in the fantasy.


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 Latro_ wrote:
Warhammer world years ago when kill team wasnt a game but they used to do events using a similar format.

guy was running chaos daemons, i'd made it to the top table with my orks.

He queried every rule, every inch, ignored rules that effected his stuff like (at the time) discs of tzeentch landing in cover needing a test. The games were short so no time to query anything. Fairly aggressive but trying not to appear like a d***. Was the definition of WAAC. Towards the end i was on the verge of telling him he was being a prick but i was a bit younger at the time, he was bigger than me and i just silently ranged inside. Had the nerve to ask how i was getting on in other games during the lunch break.

Same format different event, it was about the fime riptides came out and you could fit one into the format. So there were 20 riptides at the WHW event. What made it worse is after every round your units gained skills like FNP etc. Again with my orks his riptide was so powerful with ignore LoS weapons after the first couple of turns i said good luck mate, this isnt fun and walked packed me models away. Wasn't 100% his fault the format was broken and WHW changed it in later events but he didnt really see how ridic it was and play it more fun...

Another one was at a local touney a few years back towards the end of 7th, to be fair it was a tourney and i think he was an ETC team member. His army was literally about 100 fenresian wolves in a conga line with rune priests and DARK ANGELS psykers casting all sorts of madness. It was the most unfluffy army i have ever played against and he was cold calm and literally just appeared to be there to win, no banter, nothing.

+bonus people: casuals at local clubs over the years who simply do not know the rules well, this is where i'm on the other end appearing to be a d*** but literally playing the game correctly where they are suprised by pulling them up on things they are doing wrong / things i am doing which are now normal e.g. wrap'n'trap etc. I try to let these sorts of people know what i'm doing and 'forget' to fire the odd unit here and there if i see them getting frustrated but you can't just let them play the game wrong and it gets awkward

Yeah I can imagine that since you are an experienced tournament player it would be awkward to play people who don't know the rules. I've had a few experiences like this when I was learning. Basically my whole battle plan is moot when halfway I proceed he tells me I can't do that. Then everything is f'd and it is awkward!

I think unfluffy armies are literally the worst. I would hate to play something like that. However, as a Chaos player, I feel that I can mix and match stuff and get away with it fluff wise since Chaos is full of so many different scattered warbands. I do make some effort to make sure that every list make's some sense fluff wise though. Usually it's a mixture of World Eaters and some Iron Warriors and team up. Between those two I can have pretty diverse detachments.


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pm713 wrote:
Cheating. But the way he cheated was so weird. He'd just blatantly start moving his units way from our teams during our turn and when I called him out saying "Dave stop moving, it's our turn." He got in a right huff about the audacity of me not letting him cheat.

He was a bit...odd to play in general. He'd hop on whatever army people told him was best and take the units he was told were best but had so little understanding of how to play he never succeeded. It got to a point where he was using scatbikes and I was handily beating them with striking scorpions.

Edit: I remember playing someone who used Tyranids in 7th. This was meant to be a teaching game so I pointed out he needed to roll reserves for his trygon and other reserves which ruined his entire game plan and I felt so bad. Lovely guy though, he ended up playing some Tau Genestealer Cultists.

Oh dear god.. yeah I don't know how people can stomach playing a mix-match of units that shouldn't be together fluff-wise. I understand that you think the units are cool... but c'mon. Isn't an army that makes sense in the rich and deep world of 40k much cooler than just cherry picking the coolest models here and there?


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ccs wrote:
Ages ago (Early 4th) at the local shop of the time I played a guy who was all psyched & eager to pit his Eldar vs my 3 Baneblades (two old Armorcasts & 1 of the new FW ones).
He knew what 'Blades were. He had no problem with people fielding whatever. And HE requested the match up.

I get to the shop & find out he's already set up the terrain. This wasn't unusual as it was the groups custom of who ever got there first would set up the table & then others had the option to change things to a degree (as long as the original table theme was kept) But it looked pretty.... sparse. Wich was of much waaay more benefit to me than the Eldar (unless he had something up his sleeve I didn't know about {spoiler: he didn't}.) So for HIS benefit I added some more areas of cover & some actual LoS blockage - some boccage, & some buildings. It was still pretty wide open ag fields, but now, whatever the side there were areas he could potentially use to approach objectives/Blades if he chose.

So we rolled for mission, deployment areas & 1st turn.
He took 1st turn.

He proceeded to cheerfully swarm his entire army, save for a few lance platforms & a Fire Prism, straight forward into the waiting teeth of 3 Baneblades.
Zero attempt to use any type of cover or to hit either flank (where the volume of fire he'd take would've been much less due to fire arcs/limited LoS), or any other tactic.
He landed a few lance weapons hits wich did virtually nothing to my blades.

Play passes to me. About 75% of his army ceases to exist. When the dice stop rolling he has nothing anywhere my tanks or objectives & zero chance of winning shy of getting lucky shots when rolling on the Super Heavy Damage table & blowing me up.

Turn 2:
I take a few more lance shots, none of wich fell into the lucky category.
1) I move forward a bit to make sure I have all surviving Eldar in ranges/arcs. 2) I finish tabling him.
And he's perfectly fine with this.

He hasn't played a game of 40k since. Though he will tell others about the game. When asked why he doesn't play anymore he simply replies that all of his Eldar died in battle.
Turns out that he'd decided that he was done with 40k & had chosen for his Eldar to commit suicide by combat. So he chose a match where he was sure he'd be tabled.

This is actually a pretty hilarious story. But it seems sad though because it's like he still loves and enjoys his army despite never playing anymore or leaving the hobby. Usually when people peace out they sell their stuff in a rage and gripe about how games workshop is a terrible company. However the game in my opinion is better now than it ever has been. I'm happy I held through the darker years.


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 AnomanderRake wrote:
Had a game of Apocalypse right near the launch of 8e that was supposed to be our "goodbye to 7e" day where the other team insisted on a cover-free 36" of no-man's-land (for context my team had 30k Astartes, Tyranids, and Craftworlders, theirs was Guard and Tau, so we were grotesquely outranged/outgunned and Apocalypse at the time was supposed to be played with 18" no-man's-land to let it start going faster). The Tau player then wouldn't tell me what he was rolling when, called the game when I objected, and sent me an angry email after the fact telling me that he was so angry I'd accused him of cheating that I was never to contact him again.

Runner-up is a Warmachine player who scooped and walked out of the store (grousing at me about how much of a munchkin I was during cleanup) during a tournament after winning a rules argument over an issue on which he was completely wrong.

Wow I haven't experienced that intense of an altercation, but I've definitely seen stuff go down in our local forums. There was a huge controversy when the 'old timers' who have been playing 40k since day one, who are mostly fluffy players, started feeling like they weren't enjoying the game as much with the advent of the new younger generation of 'power gamers'. Basically our community was divided because of this difference in players and I think people stopped picking up games and the league shut down for awhile. I think part of the reason this was happening was because back in 7th the rules were so broken than people could easily abuse stuff.

While I’ve got stories of cheating and the like I’ve only ever played one genuinely weird person. When I was pretty new to the hobby back in 4th I agreed to play some guy at the GW near me. He seemed a little off and in hindsight he probably had some severe anxiety disorder. But after the second turn, it was a fairly standard game, he was probably coming off slightly worse than me mainly due to luck, but he just packed up his stuff and left mid game. He didn’t say anything just packed up his stuff, and boom gone. I kept bumping into him and he just ignored me after. I was pretty young at the time and didn’t want to say anything but it just felt awkward.

 stealth992 wrote:

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 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I did the "paper template in the size of a Leman Russ" at one time too. I also made some Leman Russ tanks out of wood and nails. The wooden ones are actually pretty decent.
But that was when my army was 35 Guardsmen, 1 2nd-hand Leman Russ tank that among other things didn't have tracks, and a lot of green army men. And that soviet commissar from one of the Lego sets.

I'm not the only person who makes tank noises (or other onomatopoeia] when I play, though if I do say so myself, I make the best of them . My friends once made fun of me for absentmindedly pushing a Vanquisher [mine] and the Hammerhead [not-mine] around dining table and having them engage is a tank duel like I was a little kid playing with dolls. Which too be fair, I am an adult [am I really though. Aren't we all just kids inside ] playing with dolls.

Sounds to me you are a goof more than anything hahaha. Yeah Warhammer brings out the children in us. Now that I'm in self isolation, I spend hours just staring at my army imagining fictional battles and events. I probably do make sounds for my guys.. I am just unaware of what I'm actually doing because I'm immersed in the fantasy.

Dreadnoughts go "zoop-zoop-zoop" when walking. Tanks to 'tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic" when driving slowly to a low "grrrrrrrr" when moving at high speed.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 stealth992 wrote:

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 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I did the "paper template in the size of a Leman Russ" at one time too. I also made some Leman Russ tanks out of wood and nails. The wooden ones are actually pretty decent.
But that was when my army was 35 Guardsmen, 1 2nd-hand Leman Russ tank that among other things didn't have tracks, and a lot of green army men. And that soviet commissar from one of the Lego sets.

I'm not the only person who makes tank noises (or other onomatopoeia] when I play, though if I do say so myself, I make the best of them . My friends once made fun of me for absentmindedly pushing a Vanquisher [mine] and the Hammerhead [not-mine] around dining table and having them engage is a tank duel like I was a little kid playing with dolls. Which too be fair, I am an adult [am I really though. Aren't we all just kids inside ] playing with dolls.

Sounds to me you are a goof more than anything hahaha. Yeah Warhammer brings out the children in us. Now that I'm in self isolation, I spend hours just staring at my army imagining fictional battles and events. I probably do make sounds for my guys.. I am just unaware of what I'm actually doing because I'm immersed in the fantasy.

Dreadnoughts go "zoop-zoop-zoop" when walking. Tanks to 'tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic" when driving slowly to a low "grrrrrrrr" when moving at high speed.

This isnt weird, weird would he actually breaking your models when they die.

I like making noises and am currently working on actual sound effects for my armies.

Racerguy180 wrote:

This isnt weird, weird would he actually breaking your models when they die.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plUPJ0inN4c

It takes 9 mins to actually get to it and then there's screaming noise metal but yeah - the one and only original sacrifice of an army to a new rules edition/game.



Otherwise I don't really have any odd stories to tell. I've avoided all the crazies. Or forgotten them or perhaps I am the crazy one and I've yet to realise my own tales!

There was a guy I played against where he started coughing blood on his army, but it was fake blood and he was playing World Eaters + Khorne daemons. I never saw him again and nobody believes me that it happens outside the one single dude that was at Hobbytown that day.

I used to play against a dice thrower, back in yee olde days. Like, across the room.

I played against a guy that modeled fedoras onto his Space Marines. They had to earn them, so the "newbies" didn't have fedoras yet. Onto the helmets, not onto bare heads. He modeled fedoras onto the helmets.

I know I've played against people with mild personality quirks too, but those were the ones that stand out the most.

Someone once accused me of bringing a meta list half-way through a casual game when I took a single unit of Destroyers and then a load of Heavy Destroyers. Now? Perfectly valid criticism, back when Heavy Destroyers were 35% more pts? Not so much. I calmly ragequit while sizzling inside and got sour every time I saw him since.

I'm lucky enough that I pretty regularly get asked if my there's something up with my dice or whether that was really my roll. I cackle like a maniac when this happens. I also say pop every time a vehicle of mine dies without exploding, I imagine all the air that gets displaced when the vehicle magically disappears makes a pop sound. When I'm not playing with one of my close friends I'll send a message to people I played against querying whether I did anything annoying if I liked the game we had, so far nobody has complained about the pop sound effect yet.

I played a competitive game against a stranger and got accused of fast-playing my opponent, something that I only do when people slow-roll dice that can be fast-rolled without any impact on the game. My opponent said the game was unwinnable their army was trash and the last time they played against my list they got stomped (buddy of mine copied my list), my opponent was just about to cry, wanted to surrender thinking I was a WAAC gamer. I calmed them down and said I thought they still had a good chance at winning and that I had no intention of fast-playing them. I ended up losing, which I suppose was for the best, at least I had the moral high ground.

I've played against someone who regularly coughed up blood, drunk people, high people, little bit of everything.

Pots & kettles, girls, pots & kettles :-)

Moriarty wrote:
Pots & kettles, girls, pots & kettles :-)

We're all mad here!

I think there's a dwarf spearman stuck through the wall at the old hobby club after someone got rather perturbed with their army in WHFB. Wasn't a game with me, but the person who lost their cool was a friend of mine.

Back in late 5th, I was getting back into the game with a Tau army and learning the game. Opponent was a rather notorious 15-year old who used proxies all the time, and didn't own any of the books. He just used the stats & points as he remembered them from games he played against other opponents. And while normally I don't mind proxies (a lot of folks in the club used them, and I had too in earlier years), he kept changing model profiles on me for whatever he needed to counter my units. He was also a fan of orks, and would yell "Waagh" at the top of his lungs at the start of every Melee phase, regardless what army he ran.

Of course, I didn't find out how notorious he was until afterward. By then, my Tau army had been ganked by a Jaws of the World Wolf from a bunch of blue-painted marines. Playing him apparently was considered some sort of initiation rite at the time, but it flat turned me off to the club entirely (which I'd interacted with on and off for last few years), and I did not return.

 stealth992 wrote:

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ccs wrote:
Ages ago (Early 4th) at the local shop of the time I played a guy who was all psyched & eager to pit his Eldar vs my 3 Baneblades (two old Armorcasts & 1 of the new FW ones).
He knew what 'Blades were. He had no problem with people fielding whatever. And HE requested the match up.

I get to the shop & find out he's already set up the terrain. This wasn't unusual as it was the groups custom of who ever got there first would set up the table & then others had the option to change things to a degree (as long as the original table theme was kept) But it looked pretty.... sparse. Wich was of much waaay more benefit to me than the Eldar (unless he had something up his sleeve I didn't know about {spoiler: he didn't}.) So for HIS benefit I added some more areas of cover & some actual LoS blockage - some boccage, & some buildings. It was still pretty wide open ag fields, but now, whatever the side there were areas he could potentially use to approach objectives/Blades if he chose.

So we rolled for mission, deployment areas & 1st turn.
He took 1st turn.

He proceeded to cheerfully swarm his entire army, save for a few lance platforms & a Fire Prism, straight forward into the waiting teeth of 3 Baneblades.
Zero attempt to use any type of cover or to hit either flank (where the volume of fire he'd take would've been much less due to fire arcs/limited LoS), or any other tactic.
He landed a few lance weapons hits wich did virtually nothing to my blades.

Play passes to me. About 75% of his army ceases to exist. When the dice stop rolling he has nothing anywhere my tanks or objectives & zero chance of winning shy of getting lucky shots when rolling on the Super Heavy Damage table & blowing me up.

Turn 2:
I take a few more lance shots, none of wich fell into the lucky category.
1) I move forward a bit to make sure I have all surviving Eldar in ranges/arcs. 2) I finish tabling him.
And he's perfectly fine with this.

He hasn't played a game of 40k since. Though he will tell others about the game. When asked why he doesn't play anymore he simply replies that all of his Eldar died in battle.
Turns out that he'd decided that he was done with 40k & had chosen for his Eldar to commit suicide by combat. So he chose a match where he was sure he'd be tabled.

This is actually a pretty hilarious story. But it seems sad though because it's like he still loves and enjoys his army despite never playing anymore or leaving the hobby. Usually when people peace out they sell their stuff in a rage and gripe about how games workshop is a terrible company.

Oh no, he doesn't still love & enjoy his army. Or the game. He's not bitter about it or anything, just completely long done with it. It's a game he played for a few editions (somewhere in 2nd before I met him to when he walked away) before deciding it wasn't really his thing anymore.
The story gets told now & then because he still plays board games at the now-current shop & occasionally runs into others from back in the day. Or when newer players are looking for opponents etc. Eventually you'll hear something along the lines of "I heard/I didn't know you played 40k/Eldar." "Yeah I used to play along time ago at {a previous, now long gone, shop} ." "Would you be interested in _____?' "No thanks, my Eldar all died in combat during their last game." Wich leads to ??? & the story being retold.

I played with a guy in a wheelchair once because he had been in a car accident and broke both legs.Man, talk about determined.

He had a relative with him move stuff and measure things for him. We were gaming at his place and he had the table set really low, as in legs taken off and sat on milk crates so he could see it. I ended up on my knees moving stuff a lot.

No problems, he needed some fun being stuck in like that. It was a good game and he didn't mind losing. I think it was the pain meds.

Didn't actually play him, but at a tournament I ran a long time ago a guy showed up in this weird costume of black cloak, full face-mask and thick padded gloves. What made it even weirder was that his shoes were just regular white trainers, which kind of ruined the overall look. Also, he was playing Blood Angels, which didn't really fit at all with his costume. Then, to top it all off, about halfway through game 2 he finally took off his gloves after suffering through a game and a half with basically zero manual dexterity. IIRC he played all his games pretty much in utter silence too. I'm not sure if he was trying to be intimidating or something but the whole thing came across as just kind of tragic rather than the sinister and mysterious approach he was going for.

I guy in our gaming group in college was also in a local basketball league. They got done playing right before gaming started, so he was always in a hurry to get there in time. Super cool guy, and was always concerned about hygiene (no time for a shower before gaming) so he'd wipe himself off with a handful of wet-wipes, throw on some body spray and deodorant and get to gaming. His sweat smell was minimal.


However, he would still be wearing loose fitting stretchy gym shorts, and I don't think he wore underwear. He was just the right height to the gaming tables that when he'd have to lean over the table you could literally see his genitals laying on the table (through the shorts, non-exposed). He even knocked models off the table a couple times with his tallywacker.

One of my first games was really strange, and more so considering I was new and did not know what was okey and what was not.

Played against an eldar soup player. normal deployment 5 objectives to cap. 2000pts.

got first turn, he didn't steal initiative. As soon as my turn started my opponent, who was 30 min late, informed me that he HAS to go for a smoke, went out came back 10 min later. I finished my turn. His turn was devastating, but I was not tabled, so turn 2 deep strike was going to be a thing.
As soon as my opponents turn ended, he had to go to the WC, and when he came back he again had to go out for a smoke. And he wasn't just smoking he was reading his phone talking with people etc. 10+ min passed again.

This was well in to 40 min in to the game, so the store owner came and said that, if we want to finish the game we are going to have to pay for the extra hour. I didn't have the money, so my opponent said that, if that is so then we are just going to check the points earned and list the game as being ended. I didn't know if saying no to something like that was okey, and he was someone who played the game longer, so we finished the game. He said bye and told me to fill out the form for the store event. Only next day one of the people that invited me to start w40k, told me at school that what I did was stupid, and that I should never do stuff like that again, because I am making them look bad too.

This was the strangest game of w40k I ever had.

Karol wrote:
Only next day one of the people that invited me to start w40k, told me at school that what I did was stupid, and that I should never do stuff like that again, because I am making them look bad too.

This was the strangest game of w40k I ever had.

The game itself doesn't sound strange, but just against someone who really didn't care to play and was extremely casual about it. Honestly somewhat rude it sounds like, but otherwise not totally abnormal

Strange reaction from your school friends though - forbidding you playing other people?

nah, playing wasn't a problem. just not acting stupid. I have problems with acting wrong sometimes, main reason why I go to a sports school in the first place. Rules are clear and easy to follow. normal school was horrible to go through. Took me some time to realise how the store worked, but I think in the end I had it more or less figured out.

To me the game was bizzar, because he was wasting my and his time and money. If he told me he didn't want to play or wanted to play someone else, I would have understood it better. Only later it was explained to me that he was tanking his score, so that his friend could get prizes for 4th place.

Was a 14:7 lose for me, which was one of the better scores I had in my entire run, mostly because we didn't get to turn 3, so 900pts of my stuff that was off the table didn't count as destroyed, and he didn't finish some of my characters and squads. Back then I didn't know that the meta game could be as complicated as in sports. And to be honest I even liked it, add another layer to the game.

 greatbigtree wrote:
I used to play against a dice thrower, back in yee olde days. Like, across the room.

I played against a guy that modeled fedoras onto his Space Marines. They had to earn them, so the "newbies" didn't have fedoras yet. Onto the helmets, not onto bare heads. He modeled fedoras onto the helmets.

I know I've played against people with mild personality quirks too, but those were the ones that stand out the most.

M’lady.

I would actually love to see fedora space marines. You wouldn’t happen to have a picture, would you?

Karol wrote:
nah, playing wasn't a problem. just not acting stupid. I have problems with acting wrong sometimes, main reason why I go to a sports school in the first place. Rules are clear and easy to follow. normal school was horrible to go through. Took me some time to realise how the store worked, but I think in the end I had it more or less figured out.

To me the game was bizzar, because he was wasting my and his time and money. If he told me he didn't want to play or wanted to play someone else, I would have understood it better. Only later it was explained to me that he was tanking his score, so that his friend could get prizes for 4th place.

Was a 14:7 lose for me, which was one of the better scores I had in my entire run, mostly because we didn't get to turn 3, so 900pts of my stuff that was off the table didn't count as destroyed, and he didn't finish some of my characters and squads. Back then I didn't know that the meta game could be as complicated as in sports. And to be honest I even liked it, add another layer to the game.

if he wanted to tank his score they where more effective ways he could do it while making it more fun for you. (taking a shooty army and only meleeing or something.)

I think in your shoes though given this was an event and he was deliberatly wasting time I proably would talked to the store owner (whom sounds like he saw what was happening) and asked him to make a forfeit ruling.

My funniest game experience was and always will be when I went to the game store in my home town, where I was bored on summer break so I decided to go get some 40k in. I ended up playing against the guy in the back who didn't have an opponent yet (bit of a red flag, lol) and he had the standard competitive 5th ed list of GK draigo-star+a couple dreadknights.

I was getting slaughtered with my orks, but I managed to get Old Zogwart within 18" of draigo and used his Zogwart's Curse ability.

This was an extremely simple ability. I believe it read something like this

"Zogwart's Curse. Old Zogwart may make a psychic test and select an enemy character within 18" and within line of sight. The players then roll off. If the player controlling Zogwart wins, the enemy character is removed from play and replaced with a squig with the following statline (Something like S4, A1, W1, T4, Sv-). The character does not count as having been slain, and remains the warlord if he was the warlord, but he loses any warlord trait rule he might have had."

My opponent probably spent 20 full minutes standing in front of me, reading and re-reading the rule and scowling, occasionally blurting out something like

"But he has to get an invulnerable save!"

"It's not an attack."

"But he has ETERNAL WARRIOR!"

"Doesn't say anything about that."

"But he's attached to a squad - the paladins can use their bodyguard ability!"

"But it's not an attack."

Eventually, he decided that unless I provide a squig model, LEGALLY draigo cannot be replaced with a squig.

So I walked into the shop, bought a pack of fantasy squig herders, opened them up in front of him, and plunked a squig down on the board. To this day, most worthwhile 12 bucks I've ever spent on the hobby.

Not that crazy of a story. I started off with a 40k Thousand Sons Army and I was known around the shop as the guy who tried really hard to have a well painted army but was absolutely horrible at the game. I didn't have any money so I had a slow growing army that was always behind the meta and honestly I just enjoyed the hobby/lore aspect of the game more than playing. I think in 4 years of playing in that shop I never came close to winning.

There was one guy - very typical WAAC, smelly, neckbeard, doesn't paint his miniatures, keeps them balled up in a tackle box, blows all his money on the latest/best army, you probably know the type. Everyone is hanging out and pairing up to play games, talking trash to each other, building their army lists and this guy decides he is going to bet a friend he can destroy me so bad he doesn't lose a single guy. I had no idea this was going down and just thought ok.. if I have to I'll play this guy. He's using Tau which at the time I think their main tactic was marker lights, broadside, kill everything and basically retreat into a corner. I have two units of the old rubric marines which were super slow but could always shoot, Ahriman, some raptors, a dreadnaught, and a borrowed rhino. He is just absolutely destroying me.

At some point during the game he is using his Commander to do the old jump over terrain, shoot, and then jump back over terrain to block LOS. He forgets to jump back over the terrain and ends his turn. I take that opportunity and focus fire to kill his commander. Granted at this point there is absolutely no way I'm winning. I just want to finish out the game and try to get to one of the objectives and try to get some victory points.

He loses his mind. First he tells me his turn isn't over. Then he tries to say that I moved his model out of the terrain it was behind. Then he says I was cheating because I distracted him near the end of his turn. I am super confused at this point because he's winning by a long shot and it really doesn't matter. I start to move my guys back to where they were at the start of my turn to let him 'finish his turn'. Unfortunately for him the guy he bet is sitting watching the game and is like no pay up guy you lost a unit, stop trying to cheat you made a mistake and he killed one of your units. The guy I'm playing picks up his commander and throws him in the trash, puts his hand on the table and sweeps his entire army back into the tackle box he is using to transport them and leaves. The guy who won the bet then tells me the guy bet him $50 dollars he wouldn't lose a single unit to me.

I didn't see the guy I played for a couple months. When he finally came into the shop he wouldn't even look at me. Everyone we played with gave him endless amounts of crap because the story slowly warped into I beat him and he got so mad he conceded. Which really ticked him off.

 Overread wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:

This isnt weird, weird would he actually breaking your models when they die.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plUPJ0inN4c

It takes 9 mins to actually get to it and then there's screaming noise metal but yeah - the one and only original sacrifice of an army to a new rules edition/game.

I'd forgotten that lunacy existed...

the_scotsman wrote:
My funniest game experience was and always will be when I went to the game store in my home town, where I was bored on summer break so I decided to go get some 40k in. I ended up playing against the guy in the back who didn't have an opponent yet (bit of a red flag, lol) and he had the standard competitive 5th ed list of GK draigo-star+a couple dreadknights.

I was getting slaughtered with my orks, but I managed to get Old Zogwart within 18" of draigo and used his Zogwart's Curse ability.

This was an extremely simple ability. I believe it read something like this

"Zogwart's Curse. Old Zogwart may make a psychic test and select an enemy character within 18" and within line of sight. The players then roll off. If the player controlling Zogwart wins, the enemy character is removed from play and replaced with a squig with the following statline (Something like S4, A1, W1, T4, Sv-). The character does not count as having been slain, and remains the warlord if he was the warlord, but he loses any warlord trait rule he might have had."

My opponent probably spent 20 full minutes standing in front of me, reading and re-reading the rule and scowling, occasionally blurting out something like

"But he has to get an invulnerable save!"

"It's not an attack."

"But he has ETERNAL WARRIOR!"

"Doesn't say anything about that."

"But he's attached to a squad - the paladins can use their bodyguard ability!"

"But it's not an attack."

Eventually, he decided that unless I provide a squig model, LEGALLY draigo cannot be replaced with a squig.

So I walked into the shop, bought a pack of fantasy squig herders, opened them up in front of him, and plunked a squig down on the board. To this day, most worthwhile 12 bucks I've ever spent on the hobby.

There was always an urban legend doing the round when I got into this hobby that at a tournament somewhere someone was vehemently claiming Morgiana Le Fay could not, in fact turn his Slann mage priest into a frog as he was already one, albeit a larger one.

Given what I now know 20+ years later I can absolutely see that being true.

I once saw someone actually put a dread into a sock and threatened to dreadsock someone, but they got talked out of it.

Another was seeing a mid 40's "plus size" gentleman get very aggressively celebratory for Vortex Grenading a 13 year olds Monolith during an Apoc game once.

I've had a couple of weird ones in the past

- Played a large Apocalypse game back in 4th in a GW, where the theme was "for every model you kill, you get a penny off your Games Day ticket". I was using my Guard at the time, and fired my Basilisk a good 90" or so at a squad of Devastators right on the other end of the board.

I must have been around 14 at the time, and this 50 year old neckbeard starts throwing a tantrum saying he'd get a cover save from a Valkyrie that's roughly halfway between the Basilisk and the Devs. I argued that as it's a Barrage weapon, you would only get cover from being in terrain. Wherever this is correct or not I'm not sure now, but the GW staff sided with me, and the sheer petulance coming off the guy was incredible. The ironic part is that we were playing with the endless reserve rule, where your destroyed units come back next turn, he just didn't want me getting 5p off my Games Day ticket.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Another encounter I had much more recently was a small tournament during 8th Edition. This was a simple "12 players, £10 buy-in" scenario in the FLGS over one day, nothing too extreme. The lists were pretty competitive however (I myself was running triple Knights), but spirits were all high until the last game.

I was playing the top player, who was running a Raven Castellan (before the nerf), as well as a Tallarn Battation with 3x Tank Commanders. During the game I noticed his Guardsmen were moving around 24" a turn, he essentially had at least 4 objectives at the end of his first turn. I questioned him on it and his response was:

"I'm advancing the unit and putting the Move Move Move order on them so they can move the same amount again"

Now this is incorrect for two reasons

1: Orders are done in the Shooting Phase, not the Movement Phase.
2: You must still make a new Advance roll.

For point 1, his attitude was "eh well this just saves time. For the second point, he started going into weird references such as "If you look at this entry in the BRB and cross-reference it with the Tyranid FAQ, you could interpret it as this...", I think it was made more complicated by the fact that English wasn't his first language; His English was very good, almost fluent, except when you tried to argue against him, at which point suddenly he can't understand you.

Turns out he had been doing this trick all day, and combined with incredible amounts of inch-checking and LoS-arguing, won the tournament by a fair margin. Overall he was treating the one-day FLGS tournament like the LVO, which put a sour taste in my mouth and put me off the tournament scene for good.

It got even weirder though as a couple of weeks later he adds me on Facebook and starts trying to argue his point further, with the addition of "these guys (can't remember who he stated) are the best in the country and they run it this way", as if it makes any difference. I eventually got blunt and just told him to leave it before blocking him.

Well, might as well post some too.

Back home at my local GW there was a guy named Steve. Steve would always follow the same pattern of coming in, getting in a massive shouting match with someone and getting banned from the store. Now, our local was a kind of training facility for the area so it had a fairly high rotation of staff. Steve would wait for there to be an unrecognised staff member, come in and get invited to the weekly games night. Rinse and repeat.

I only had the pleasure of playing him once and he went berserk on me over LOS with his War Walkers, which he literally threw in his case after losing said argument. He thought pointing them up gave them LOS, to which the staff replied "Go behind that building and look up. If you can see the shop then you have LOS." .
There are numerous such incidents to name like when it took a group of us far too long to convince him that 11" was not 12". Friend was playing him and fired a Meltagun at his Avatar (this was in 3rd, so it wasn't immune) and it was only just in range. Steve's turn- he walks forwards then get to the assault phase and has to roll a difficult terrain test and rolls a 5. All of a sudden he is magically in assault range.
My friend is playing the then brand new Tau with his TS (3.5 codex. They had a lot going for them with 2 wounds ). He has his Sorcerer Lord behind a small terrain piece, hidden and ready to pounce on the Tau in the following turn. Steve comes across and "borrows" said terrain piece for the game he is setting up. Sorcerer proceeds to get shot off the board.
He is playing another game and his Falcon gets stunned/shaken (whichever one was the lowest and just "may not shoot".). Steve then proceeds in the following turn to shoot with it. We tell him it cannot, to which he replies "It may not move!". We tell him he is mistaken and he gets more and more agitated eventually screaming at the top of his lungs "IT. MAY. NOT. MOVE!" which prompted the staffer eating his Subway in the back room to pop his head round and ban him.

There was the small kid who would go around every table and ask "Are dey Dark Eldar?" at literally every player's army. Those Plague Marines- "Are dey Dark Eldar?". Tyranids- "Are dey Dark Eldar?" and so on...

Another GW store. More oddballs. Now, I'm debating posting this one as the conclusion of this is more sad/tragic than anything and isn't exactly something for our amusement, but it was a weird experience looking back. There was a guy that would come to our store that we nicknamed "Crazy Mike", now Mike wasn't all there. He would mutter to himself and talk to his minis. Kinda odd, but nothing I hadn't seen before in nerd circles. Mike all of a sudden disappeared one day. We heard rumours he'd become homeless and ended up in a hostel, turns out it was much worse than that. Him and his brother ended up having some kind of mental degradation that took their minds back to the age of a child, they were even in a documentary on Channel 4 a few years back. It's incredibly jarring looking back as Mike was a semi regular opponent with us just thinking he's a run of the mill oddball that usually populates GW but it seems very obvious something was up with the benefit of hindsight.

We had another guy we called "Stressed John". John had that look like he'd be on top of the clock tower with a rifle any day now. It kinda felt bad to play him as he'd be so despondent when his model's died. One day, he was playing another player who carelessly dropped the lid of his case on top of John's army. There was no malice in it, but it was still bloody ignorant. John flies into a rage and goes to try and murder the other guy. Now, John was a skinny feth and the other guy was the exact opposite. John starts throwing punches and the other guy is like Shrek with the arrow in his bum and not noticing at all. Never saw him much after that.

I know there are more but that's all I can recall for now.

At a FLGS there was a large, plus-size guy with full neckbeard, often looked like he needed a shower. Nice person, played orks, and laughed at everything. He'd be around the store a lot but I'd never see him buy anything, just talk and build ork vehicles from nice looking cardstock printouts. I think the owner knew him and let him hang out. If he beat an army he'd never beaten before he'd ebay-purchase some heads from said army and add them to his warboss's pole. Physically he was very disabled - or seemed to be. He could barely walk, something about construction accidents earlier in his life that ruined his back and legs. I'm not certain if any of it was true as no one could cooborate it, but I took him at his word.

The last 40k FLGS tournament I participated in was in 7th edition. I had fluffy Eldar with aspect warriors and some Harlequins. I took only a few scatterbikes just to be slightly competitive. Second game in I'm paired with ork guy. I had never gone against him before or seen him play, I just thought he was a jolly middle aged man that had seen misfortune in his life and enjoyed his orks. If you recall 7th, Eldar just beat Orks, almost without exception. He states he has to sit in his chair for the game due to medical stuff so I help him move his orks around, always asking if x is here he wants them, etc. No problems there. His turn one takes forever - a disabled guy playing a horde army - and he does nothing to my Eldar even if he takes nearly all objectives with his horde. My turn one goes fast and I wipe out half his force from range, but can't yet move in to get objectives.

His turn two starts and suddenly he's out of his chair, sort of hobbling but looks fake. Spends a lot of time thinking about moves, making odd jokes about orks to himself, asking for help moving a unit only to walk over to it and move it back himself later, telling me how great it would be if he could add an Eldar head to his bosspole, and showing me random pictures on his phone of really poorly painted Dark Eldar he claims his wife recently finished that he was so proud of. It was very odd and it was one of the strangest delay tactics - if that's what it was - I've ever seen. Guy has nearly all the objectives with what's his that remains and time is called before his turn two is over, so he wins.

I thank him for the game, shake his hand, and help him pack his army away since now the game is over he suddenly can't walk anymore. He doesn't have any more images to show me or ork jokes to muse about. Talks a lot about how excited he is to add an Eldar head to the pole. After I pack away and head to the store front the owner was really surprised I lost, given it was an Eldar vs. Ork matchup in 7th. He gave me a strange look when I explained how it happened. I never saw ork guy at the store again. I don't know if he really did have health problems and they caught up to him, or if the owner had to have a chat.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Well, might as well post some too.

Back home at my local GW there was a guy named Steve. Steve would always follow the same pattern of coming in, getting in a massive shouting match with someone and getting banned from the store. Now, our local was a kind of training facility for the area so it had a fairly high rotation of staff. Steve would wait for there to be an unrecognised staff member, come in and get invited to the weekly games night. Rinse and repeat.

That is almost dead on for someone who went to the store I did...

As many will know, I’m a former GW Till Monkey, so I’ve seen my fair share of odd behaviour. So many, it’s genuinely hard to give specific examples.

All I’d say is to keep in mind this Hobby has an appeal to those with lower social skills, and health issues such as autism and Aspergers.

I've got a couple I can share.

These are recent to semi-recent (within the last two years).

Disclaimer/Full Disclosure: I work part time at a FLGS here locally, though I took a hiatus from working there as my wife and I had a baby girl in January, my stories come from both playing/being a member of the community as well as being an employee at the store itself.

We have some very talented players and painters in the store, but we also have the odd few birds as well.

The first one, though there has been some improvement recently thank goodness, is notorious for poor hygiene. This isn't 100% his fault, as he is very much on the spectrum and though I am NO doctor, it seems to be Asperger-like in symptoms. He often smells very bad, and looks like he hasn't showered in days, in addition to never having clean clothes on. He's in his mid 30's, but has the mentality of a 14 to 16 year old. Nice enough guy but can be very loud, over bearing and 'clingy' (made more difficult with his odor), often wanting to inject himself into conversations at awkward times. It can be difficult & frustrating to play with him around, and many have taken to having to tell him to quiet down or calm down, while being polite & understanding of the mental issues & circumstances outside of his control. He's kinda jumped from game-to-game (Star Wars X-Wing, various card games) before finally settling on 40k. The silver lining is that he's improving a bit on the hygiene front at least, and hopefully over time will learn to be less prone to be quite so loud and, for lack of a better term, obnoxious (to be around, not that he's overtly being obnoxious consciously).

The second one hasn't been coming around any more. I call him the giant man baby. Sadly, I actually invested some time and effort into bringing this guy 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 the aforementioned 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 play 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. I felt bad for him in a sense, 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/brought him into the hobby 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/hasn't been coming around the store anymore that I've seen, though I only work one day a week currently. 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 regarding this guy.

That's all I'll add for now. Take it easy.

-Red__Thirst-

@the scotsman.

To be fair to your opponent that spell is horrible game design. And being on the receiving end of it just isn't fun at all. It takes real good sportsmanship to laugh that off.

Red Thirst! Congrats on the child! Good luck with her!

 JNAProductions wrote:
Red Thirst! Congrats on the child! Good luck with her!

Thank you! She's our miracle baby & we're kinda in love. Hoping she'll be equal parts girly girl and tabletop nerd with me.

Appreciate the well wishes!

Take it easy.

-Red__Thirst-

Nothing overly crazy in 40K for me I think..

I do remember trying 2nd edition for first time. Local store owner where I bought my new DA army says he will play me for my first game, He has chaos. I wasn't familiar with the rules, so he basically waffle stomps me with every combo he can conjure, explaining how awesome it is and how it just destroyed my army (including some vortex grenade thing that assassinates Azrael?). Cool, yeah that was fun, had a great time. First and last game of 2nd edition...sold army soon after. I mean dude, you're the store owner.....you want me to buy more, yeah?

Other one was at local FLGS, great place, really miss it (and still game with the people I met there). This weird guy (not really bad in any way, just different to the usual people in there socially...no big deal) showed up to events and set up a camera to film the games, and narrate into the camera. Horrible painted army, with tacked on weapons everywhere, just really poor visually. Little did I know that this dude was just way ahead of everyone else in respect to Youtube batrep channels, lol. Now they're everywhere.....but with better painted models.

Funniest non game related experience was me basically facilitating a sale of an XBox between a guy in the shop and a friend of mine. Anyway, my buddy comes back to me after buying the XBox, hands me a DVD that was left in the console and says "you may want to give this back". I think it was called Jungle Princess or something. Some cheap porno, lol. Poor guy disappeared for awhile after that.

the_scotsman wrote:

Eventually, he decided that unless I provide a squig model, LEGALLY draigo cannot be replaced with a squig.

So I walked into the shop, bought a pack of fantasy squig herders, opened them up in front of him, and plunked a squig down on the board. To this day, most worthwhile 12 bucks I've ever spent on the hobby.

IIRC the spell does say: "You must provide a squig model". That last one might be technically correct.

In friendly play, I would probably just take my character off the board, though, I don't really care that much in casual play. But in a competitive setting I might be kind of irritated though, because that would mean that you deliberately baked using this spell offensively into your list and also deliberately didn't bring squig model, and resolving the spell and then going "oh, I don't have a squig so you don't get your squig, but the spell goes anyway" sounds like getting away with something.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

Eventually, he decided that unless I provide a squig model, LEGALLY draigo cannot be replaced with a squig.

So I walked into the shop, bought a pack of fantasy squig herders, opened them up in front of him, and plunked a squig down on the board. To this day, most worthwhile 12 bucks I've ever spent on the hobby.

IIRC the spell does say: "You must provide a squig model". That last one might be technically correct.

In friendly play, I would probably just take my character off the board, though, I don't really care that much in casual play. But in a competitive setting I might be kind of irritated though, because that would mean that you deliberately baked using this spell offensively into your list and also deliberately didn't bring squig model, and resolving the spell and then going "oh, I don't have a squig so you don't get your squig, but the spell goes anyway" sounds like getting away with something.

Every iteration of Gift of Chaos I've ever seen has specified that the target dies whether or not you have an extra Spawn model but you don't get the free Spawn model unless you have one. I know it's a different power but it sounds like a reasonable extrapolation to me.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

Eventually, he decided that unless I provide a squig model, LEGALLY draigo cannot be replaced with a squig.

So I walked into the shop, bought a pack of fantasy squig herders, opened them up in front of him, and plunked a squig down on the board. To this day, most worthwhile 12 bucks I've ever spent on the hobby.

IIRC the spell does say: "You must provide a squig model". That last one might be technically correct.

In friendly play, I would probably just take my character off the board, though, I don't really care that much in casual play. But in a competitive setting I might be kind of irritated though, because that would mean that you deliberately baked using this spell offensively into your list and also deliberately didn't bring squig model, and resolving the spell and then going "oh, I don't have a squig so you don't get your squig, but the spell goes anyway" sounds like getting away with something.

Every iteration of Gift of Chaos I've ever seen has specified that the target dies whether or not you have an extra Spawn model but you don't get the free Spawn model unless you have one. I know it's a different power but it sounds like a reasonable extrapolation to me.

Here's the thing: with Gift of Chaos, you give yourself the spawn/daemon prince. [and your own character died for it] By not having your own spawn, you're basically losing something to get something and then voluntarily forgoing getting the thing you could be getting by not having a spawn model.

With Zogwort's curse, you give your opponent a squig to replace their character. Saying "oh, I used an ability to replace your unit with a squig, but since I left my squigs at home it's just a kill spell and you don't get anything" is very much "getting away with something", so I would probably rule that "you must have a squig to give your opponent, otherwise the spell fails" to prevent somebody from going "oh, I just left my squigs at home" and getting around it that way. It's not like a squig is strong, but it is a fully usable unit that your opponent controls, and it can be leveraged and you might have to shoot or fight it to dispose of it if it gets somewhere inconvenient.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
...Here's the thing: with Gift of Chaos, you give yourself the spawn/daemon prince. [and your own character died for it] By not having your own spawn, you're paying the cost but not getting the "reward"...

Correction: Bolt of Change. It's been called Gift of Chaos before but apparently isn't anymore. The offensive turn-into-spawn power.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
...Here's the thing: with Gift of Chaos, you give yourself the spawn/daemon prince. [and your own character died for it] By not having your own spawn, you're paying the cost but not getting the "reward"...

Correction: Bolt of Change. It's been called Gift of Chaos before but apparently isn't anymore. The offensive turn-into-spawn power.

The spawn is still your unit, not theirs, which is an important difference. It's not about the destroyed character, it's about potentially conveniently "forgetting" a component to slightly increase the power of the spell. You're shortchanging yourself the spawn by not having it, not shortchanging your opponent the squig.

You can always handicap yourself if it's convenient, but handicapping your opponent because it's convenient for you is something I'd frown upon. Even if a squig isn't powerful, it is a thing they get to control that can be used for things.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
...Here's the thing: with Gift of Chaos, you give yourself the spawn/daemon prince. [and your own character died for it] By not having your own spawn, you're paying the cost but not getting the "reward"...

Correction: Bolt of Change. It's been called Gift of Chaos before but apparently isn't anymore. The offensive turn-into-spawn power.

The spawn is still your unit, not theirs, which is an important difference. It's not about the destroyed character, it's about potentially conveniently "forgetting" a component to slightly increase the power of the spell. You're shortchanging yourself the spawn by not having it, not shortchanging your opponent the squig.

You can always handicap yourself if it's convenient, but handicapping your opponent because it's convenient for you is something I'd frown upon. Even if a squig isn't powerful, it is a thing they get to control that can be used for things.

No you can't shortchange yourself whenever you want, that's still cheating. Whether you do it with the intention of giving yourself or your opponent a better chance. The reason the why you need a Squig for Zogworts curse is because the spell says you do, with the spawnification thing it's an option and if you are playing matched play it even comes with a cost attached if you do choose to summon a spawn.

Had a guy that would remeasure every single measure you did, even when it was something like a weapon being in 10" range of a unit and the weapon had a range of 48" range. Remeasured literally everything. I even tried to facilitate him holding my tape so he could see there was no shenanigans going on, but he would still immediately remeasure everything. That night I went and bought a pair of tin snips and an extra tape measure, anticipating the day I'd play him again. Unfortunately it never happened.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
...Here's the thing: with Gift of Chaos, you give yourself the spawn/daemon prince. [and your own character died for it] By not having your own spawn, you're paying the cost but not getting the "reward"...

Correction: Bolt of Change. It's been called Gift of Chaos before but apparently isn't anymore. The offensive turn-into-spawn power.

The spawn is still your unit, not theirs, which is an important difference. It's not about the destroyed character, it's about potentially conveniently "forgetting" a component to slightly increase the power of the spell. You're shortchanging yourself the spawn by not having it, not shortchanging your opponent the squig.

You can always handicap yourself if it's convenient, but handicapping your opponent because it's convenient for you is something I'd frown upon. Even if a squig isn't powerful, it is a thing they get to control that can be used for things.

I'm confused. What are you complaining about, exactly? Is your assertion that if your opponent doesn't plan ahead of time to use a specific psychic power and bring the extra mini they may or may not need and the spell tells them is optional anyway along you interpret that as cheating by making the psychic power more powerful?

If so this may be one of the weirdest complaints I've ever heard, which qualifies it for inclusion in this thread.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
...Here's the thing: with Gift of Chaos, you give yourself the spawn/daemon prince. [and your own character died for it] By not having your own spawn, you're paying the cost but not getting the "reward"...

Correction: Bolt of Change. It's been called Gift of Chaos before but apparently isn't anymore. The offensive turn-into-spawn power.

The spawn is still your unit, not theirs, which is an important difference. It's not about the destroyed character, it's about potentially conveniently "forgetting" a component to slightly increase the power of the spell. You're shortchanging yourself the spawn by not having it, not shortchanging your opponent the squig.

You can always handicap yourself if it's convenient, but handicapping your opponent because it's convenient for you is something I'd frown upon. Even if a squig isn't powerful, it is a thing they get to control that can be used for things.

I'm confused. What are you complaining about, exactly? Is your assertion that if your opponent doesn't plan ahead of time to use a specific psychic power and bring the extra mini they may or may not need and the spell tells them is optional anyway along you interpret that as cheating by making the psychic power more powerful?

If so this may be one of the weirdest complaints I've ever heard, which qualifies it for inclusion in this thread.

The exact text of the power is "the target model is replaced with an angry squig under the control of your opponent. You must provide the squig model."

If I use Zogwart's curse on your character, youi get a squig that you get to control. If I then go, "oh, uh... I 'left' my squigs at home, I don't got one for you", and the power still resolves, I have effectively cheated, by refusing to execute the part of the power that benefits you but executing the part that benefits me.


This is different from Bolt of Change because when I cast bolt of change and kill your character, I get a spawn, not you.

pm713 wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
Well, might as well post some too.

Back home at my local GW there was a guy named Steve. Steve would always follow the same pattern of coming in, getting in a massive shouting match with someone and getting banned from the store. Now, our local was a kind of training facility for the area so it had a fairly high rotation of staff. Steve would wait for there to be an unrecognised staff member, come in and get invited to the weekly games night. Rinse and repeat.

That is almost dead on for someone who went to the store I did...

GW Loughborough early 2000s perchance?

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
...Here's the thing: with Gift of Chaos, you give yourself the spawn/daemon prince. [and your own character died for it] By not having your own spawn, you're paying the cost but not getting the "reward"...

Correction: Bolt of Change. It's been called Gift of Chaos before but apparently isn't anymore. The offensive turn-into-spawn power.

The spawn is still your unit, not theirs, which is an important difference. It's not about the destroyed character, it's about potentially conveniently "forgetting" a component to slightly increase the power of the spell. You're shortchanging yourself the spawn by not having it, not shortchanging your opponent the squig.

You can always handicap yourself if it's convenient, but handicapping your opponent because it's convenient for you is something I'd frown upon. Even if a squig isn't powerful, it is a thing they get to control that can be used for things.

This is a wild ass debate for me because I would just...I don't know, put something, ANYTHING down on the table to represent a squig if you didn't have one? Does it matter? At the time, no squig models for 40k technically existed IIRC, they were only a fantasy unit in a metal blister pack.

A gretchin, a random dead ork boy, a die, an objective marker, a base..

Obviously a part of the spell as written is that your opponent gets a thing with the squig's statline and their character doesn't count as killed for victory point purposes. Just use some kind of proxy.

Modern GW sure has changed its playerbase in wild, wild ways.

I concur, any model (an Ork boy that had died previously) would work for this as there were no 40k squig models available at that time.

Both sides are correct, technically, and depending on how nuanced of an argument you want to have, you could argue both sides convincingly.

Personally, so long as you give me an orkish infantry model I'd be fine with it. Ideally a squig, but I'm not going to fret if it isn't, so long as the model is about the correct size and mounted on the correct base for it, I'd be good to go.

Take it easy.

-Red__Thirst-

Ackshually there were three I can think of off the top of my head- the two Bommsquigs in the Tankbusta box that had been released at the same time as that codex and the metal attack squig on the metal warboss variant.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Ackshually there were three I can think of off the top of my head- the two Bommsquigs in the Tankbusta box that had been released at the same time as that codex and the metal attack squig on the metal warboss variant.

Yeah one of my weirdest experiences was when someone um ackshualied me on a weird experience thread about how I could have snapped off a piece of my warboss model and used it as a squig during an interaction with a weird dude I had 10 years ago.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
Ackshually there were three I can think of off the top of my head- the two Bommsquigs in the Tankbusta box that had been released at the same time as that codex and the metal attack squig on the metal warboss variant.

Yeah one of my weirdest experiences was when someone um ackshualied me on a weird experience thread about how I could have snapped off a piece of my warboss model and used it as a squig during an interaction with a weird dude I had 10 years ago.

Bruh, I would've thought the intentional misspelling was obvious I was being facetious.

 Grimtuff wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
Ackshually there were three I can think of off the top of my head- the two Bommsquigs in the Tankbusta box that had been released at the same time as that codex and the metal attack squig on the metal warboss variant.

Yeah one of my weirdest experiences was when someone um ackshualied me on a weird experience thread about how I could have snapped off a piece of my warboss model and used it as a squig during an interaction with a weird dude I had 10 years ago.

Bruh, I would've thought the intentional misspelling was obvious I was being facetious.

Yeah, I know

I've had the standard encounters with the usual suspects like everyone else. You all know the various archetypes. The one encounter that stands out to me is the guy who had a home grown, recasted army. This was in mid 5th edition.

The guy was playing Chaos Space Marines. Most of his large models were cast in plaster. His land raider looked like it was made of butter. His defiler came apart at the waist half way through the game. Every move left some plaster dust on the table. I thought it was awfully bold of him to come play at store and just with his army's literal composition show the owner and everyone else that he wouldn't be supporting the store with purchases. We had a small tournament not long after. One of the rules was "no plaster models."

This was many years ago - back in good old 5th edition.

It was the last summer before college. A group of 6 of us decided to play one big game of Apocalypse. I also bring my girlfriend and another friend who both wanted to hang out and chat and spend the day seeing what the whole Warhammer hobby is like.

We all arrived at the one buddy's house around 8 AM and we split into teams, figure out what we're bringing, and start deploying. Two of the people playing have never played Apoc, and with just general chatting we both finish deploying around noon.

At this point, the host insists on splitting off into another room to talk strategy. I'm on his team, and we oblige. So as we're discussing, he declares he's going to get all 3 stratagems for our side and use them for himself. Not caring that much, my other teammate and I go with it.

We return to the table and ask the other team if they've picked stratagems. They ask if we could skip using them since they have the two new to Apoc players and it's already way later than we hoped it would be.

The host bristles at the very idea and immediately states that under no circumstances would they be allowed to not use those rules.

It ends up being 5 v 1 about this - we all want to just throw dice and have a good time, but he's deeply insulted that we would derail his strategy. This discussion ends abruptly with the host stating that the two newer players need to leave immediately.

We all try to talk him down, even to the point of they're willing to try the stratagems. However, the damage is done, and we all pick up our fully deployed armies and leave (which takes almost an hour - there was a lot on the table) and leave. This is the only Warhammer game that I was genuinely concerned that punches would fly.

So this was my girlfriend (now wife)'s introduction to the game. She and the extra friend got front row tickets to this meltdown, and they both decided maybe this wasn't for them. (Thankfully after almost 10 years the one friend is hooked and my wife is slowly gaining interest!)

I don't talk much to the host anymore. He's probably changed, but just the sheer pettiness and the complete disaster of the day essentially ended our friendship.

I was playing in a weekly league, oscillating between pure slaanesh daemons and running slaanesh daemonkin. Not gonna post the full list, but it had a flawless host daemon prince, sylle'eske and a contorted epitome. A lot of fast infantry, backed by a large number of beatstick characters and some noise marine shooting to clear screens or maybe snipe a squishy backline piece. Midway through the league was when the ultramarine supplement dropped, though i managed to table what was in retrospect a goddam horrific list to take top spot.

I was doing really well in the league, and beating out the powergamey ultramarine player had actually surprised everybody as nobody really expected my list, particularly the heavy slaanesh considering they were actually a good few daemon players in the league, it was just me who played slaanesh.

So uh, maintaining top spot kind of fething sucked. Working up the league had my list get pretty nasty in places, with a flawless host daemon prince getting buffed by prescience and diabloic strength turning them into my top knight killing, primarch slapping, dreadnought dunking murder ball out of the variety i'd seeded into the list. The whole thing was made to ramp up real quick through synergies, so most units could turn into a world beater when needed, this was just my worst.

This prince was flawless host. Armed with ultimate confidence, the intoxicating elixir, 2x claws, and diabolic strength. If they got their power off, their stat line ballooned to 9 attacks at strength 10. A backup dancer jump sorcerer providing prescience and agonies gave +1 to hit and a 5+ fnp. Against imperium, this all let him get 4 extra attacks per 5 to hit cos of dttfe, rerolling 1's to hit. It was the dreaded flawless lord discordant, bite sized and untargetable, if marginally less punchy (it was horrendous overkill anyway usually) before the lord discordant was released i think. The prince really didn't like those imperial lapdogs.

So i was placed against a kinda friend who was 3rd i think with a full knight list, and this mega prince wiped nearly their entire list single-handedly. It was horrific. Using gear like the forbidden gem let me dodge the dreaded dominus knight mega relic flamer, and units like the epitome and fiends let me continuously tie down and bully knights until either world-beater-in-chief deleted them, or they were ground to death by numbers.

At the time i thought it was hilarious, because goddam mid game it was insane. I just got to the point i kept stacking buffs on it, like my MoP joining the fun to throw on infernal power and cursed earth, delightful agonies (csm) etc and having it eat a charge from a knight after some unlucky possessed who'd been nearly wiped by previously mentioned flamer managed to body block 2 knights shooting through absurdly good rolling. They killed something like 5 knights total by the end, and i don't mean armigers.

I wiped them, and they were decently upset by just getting steamrolled but they were cool about it, if frustrated by it a bit. Then we found out because of how the league scores worked out, i'd be playing them again them in 2 games to defend top spot. I don't really remember the game inbetween (thousand sons/tzeentch maybe? If it was then a squad of possessed may have beaten magnus to death).

They (knight opponent) asked me to tone the list down, as they only had knights available atm as they didn't want to get slaughtered. I mean it was a nasty knight list, but i felt kinda awful about the sweep so i agreed. New list was slaanesh/khorne daemons, as i rarely got to bust out a lot of my khorne conversions from 7th so i thought it's be fun. Even got to use my converted skulltaker, who hilariously predicted what the new model would look like. I did bring a khornate smash prince- i'd never used it before, thought it could be fun and they didn't see play till the last turn of the game, which was turn 3 and the game was over by that point.

I'd tabled them again by accident, and again it was kind of ridiculous. Skulltaker managed to duel two armiger warglaives to death in a row, and somehow sylle'eske and a slaanesh daemons prince managed to kill the dread flamer dominus through forcing a swarm of daemonettes through the overwatch, and then jumping in with fiends to pin it as they beat it to death over 2 fight phases. I don't even remember how i killed the rest, except that one was killed by a low 20's bloodletter blob (it was all i had).

In the face of the second unexpected wipe, they started crying and had a meltdown about their life going to gak. I hadn't known about any of it as i kept apologising, and felt like gak for just dunking on them like that. Later i found out that it'd secured me winning the league as i was too far ahead on points to be caught with only a game in the league left to go. Was a pretty bitter win, though i started to become better friends with them and their group after.

For the final game, i brought nothing but renegades and heretics with daemonettes for pure swarm in a 200+ model meme list against the ultramarine player who was absolutely now gunning for me. In part because of the boards lack of cover/los blocking terrain i took like 100+ casualties in turn 1, failed every single of my 10ish charges on turn 2, half of which were below 7" as i rolled something like three double ones. Some deamonettes and epitome tagged a repulsor turn 3, which passed it's debuffed morale and flew off laughing as the centurions finished mop-up. By their turn 3 assault phase, i had a renegade commander and enforcer left. Enforcer got dueled by a primaris lieutenant, and actually managed to win because i'd modeled them with power fists (they were my babies, my utterly terrible babies). Turn 4 they shot them with a full squad of grav centurions after the unit the enforcer charged fell back, firing squad style as the rest of the army hunted my commander and killed them. I killed 4 models, 3 of which was by a souped up renegade enforcer with a power fist and plasma pistol who cost like 50pts.

Laughed, shook hands, then went for a pint with everybody after and had a laugh. Guess it turned out okay in the end, and got along better with the store crowd.

There aren't that many Guard players in my area, or people who play pure Guard at least. I always wanted to play some other Guard players so I asked if any wanted to play against my Catachans at my local club. One guy responds and we arrange a game. So, about a quarter to a third of my Catachans have dark skin and one of my company commanders is based on Sergeant Apone from Aliens (think the new Catachan Colonel). When I start getting all my stuff out, he asks why I have none white Catachans. I find it a bit of a weird question, but I try to remain cordial, give him the benefit of the doubt thst it was a badly phrased question, and say black Catachans have been a thing for a while (there's two on the 3rd edition codex), adding a bit of diversity breaks up the monotony of painting hundreds of Guardsmen and it makes it look like a real army of individuals not just clones. He kinda of scoffs at that, then proceeds to get his army out, which is a Nazi themed Cadian army. He obviously didn't go as far as putting swastikas on, but if you know about World War 2 uniforms you could see it as all the colours were right. Anyway, we play and to his credit he's not a bad player and knows how to play Guard so the game goes fairly smoothly inspire of the number of models on the table. However, by turn 3 the game has very much turned in my favour. I've shot most of his screening and heavy hitter units to bits and I charge his warlord and remaining troops with a big blob of Catachans backed backed up with Straken and a priest. Guess who makes the killing blow to his warlord? Only company commander Apone. Until now, he'd been fairly level headed about loses and poor dice roles, but after this, he sulks and won't even make eye contact. He packs up his stuff and leaves without a word.

Next guy was someone I played as I was just getting back into 40k after a 14 year hiatus. It was a red hot mid August day, and my opponent was a Tau player who turned up in a leather trench coat which he never took off. Bear in mind that the temperature was in the high twenties, in a room with lots of people and no air conditioning. I, and most of the other people were in vests and shorts. The guy also wore sunglasses inside, never took them off once. As we play, we get chatting. The guy is really into Anime and Japanese popular culture and when I mention I taught English in Japan he won't drop the subject and talks about how great Japan is even though he's not been there. I gingerly try to explain that it's not as perfect as he thinks and that some of his ideas about Japan aren't accurate which he seems to take great offense to. He also would pepper his speach with gratuitous and really badly pronounced and incorrect Japanese and when I asked him why he said something along the lines of "oh I'm just so into Japan I can't stop thinking in Japanese and it just comes out".

Last one is more positive, weird in a good way. There is a guy in my area who has a ginger Imperial mustache (like Lemmy from Motorhead) and a mohawk. He's actually a really nice and funny guy but he's very eccentric. He plays Marines, and every single one of his marines are bare headed and have a ginger imperial mustache and mohawk just like himself sculpted out of green stuff.

The "catachan flesh tone" paint is pretty African American, IIRC. Black Catachans are definitely canon.

 CatachanDevil wrote:
There aren't that many Guard players in my area, or people who play pure Guard at least. I always wanted to play some other Guard players so I asked if any wanted to play against my Catachans at my local club. One guy responds and we arrange a game. So, about a quarter to a third of my Catachans have dark skin and one of my company commanders is based on Sergeant Apone from Aliens (think the new Catachan Colonel). When I start getting all my stuff out, he asks why I have none white Catachans. I find it a bit of a weird question, but I try to remain cordial, give him the benefit of the doubt thst it was a badly phrased question, and say black Catachans have been a thing for a while (there's two on the 3rd edition codex), adding a bit of diversity breaks up the monotony of painting hundreds of Guardsmen and it makes it look like a real army of individuals not just clones. He kinda of scoffs at that, then proceeds to get his army out, which is a Nazi themed Cadian army. He obviously didn't go as far as putting swastikas on, but if you know about World War 2 uniforms you could see it as all the colours were right. Anyway, we play and to his credit he's not a bad player and knows how to play Guard so the game goes fairly smoothly inspire of the number of models on the table. However, by turn 3 the game has very much turned in my favour. I've shot most of his screening and heavy hitter units to bits and I charge his warlord and remaining troops with a big blob of Catachans backed backed up with Straken and a priest. Guess who makes the killing blow to his warlord? Only company commander Apone. Until now, he'd been fairly level headed about loses and poor dice roles, but after this, he sulks and won't even make eye contact. He packs up his stuff and leaves without a word.

That's actually kinda hilarious. Mildly disturbing, but hilarious.

 CatachanDevil wrote:

Last one is more positive, weird in a good way. There is a guy in my area who has a ginger Imperial mustache (like Lemmy from Motorhead) and a mohawk. He's actually a really nice and funny guy but he's very eccentric. He plays Marines, and every single one of his marines are bare headed and have a ginger imperial mustache and mohawk just like himself sculpted out of green stuff.

And that's just some grade A awesomesauce. If you're going to rock it, rock it all the way.

I agree on both counts fella. Sadly, Mr Mohawk plays quite sporadically and I'm not a close friend (I've only played him once) but next time I see him and his army I'm going to try and get a pic of his army. It has to be seen. By the way, he's NOT a Space Wolf player funnily enough.

[quote=CatachanDevil
Last one is more positive, weird in a good way. There is a guy in my area who has a ginger Imperial mustache (like Lemmy from Motorhead) and a mohawk. He's actually a really nice and funny guy but he's very eccentric. He plays Marines, and every single one of his marines are bare headed and have a ginger imperial mustache and mohawk just like himself sculpted out of green stuff.

 CatachanDevil wrote:
I agree on both counts fella. Sadly, Mr Mohawk plays quite sporadically and I'm not a close friend (I've only played him once) but next time I see him and his army I'm going to try and get a pic of his army. It has to be seen. By the way, he's NOT a Space Wolf player funnily enough.

I mean, ayone THAT cool couldn't be a Space Wolf player

 CatachanDevil wrote:
Next guy was someone I played as I was just getting back into 40k after a 14 year hiatus. It was a red hot mid August day, and my opponent was a Tau player who turned up in a leather trench coat which he never took off. Bear in mind that the temperature was in the high twenties, in a room with lots of people and no air conditioning. I, and most of the other people were in vests and shorts. The guy also wore sunglasses inside, never took them off once. As we play, we get chatting. The guy is really into Anime and Japanese popular culture and when I mention I taught English in Japan he won't drop the subject and talks about how great Japan is even though he's not been there. I gingerly try to explain that it's not as perfect as he thinks and that some of his ideas about Japan aren't accurate which he seems to take great offense to. He also would pepper his speach with gratuitous and really badly pronounced and incorrect Japanese and when I asked him why he said something along the lines of "oh I'm just so into Japan I can't stop thinking in Japanese and it just comes out".

The term you are looking for is "anime fan".

Wait, weeb is censored? Are they a protected class or something?

That is probably because these days, it's more of a general insult for nerds than an accurate description of a sub-culture.

Yeah, I did not realize just how much of an issue dealing with...I guess ill be delicate here and say "folks who are highly sensitive snowflakes about the existence of different kinds of folks" was going to be until I actually had to manage a play group.

Ive had people with steel legion armies with painted on armbands getting overexuberant about their hellhounds' "gas attacks", ive had Concerned Citizens approach me and whether the manager really allows "those people" in the store and should we go warn him to keep an eye on them in case they try to steal something, ive had people come up to me after playing a few games and cheerfully mention that the club is great the only problem is all the degenerates. Then when I laughed and said "yeah well it's a warhammer club were all a little weird" he said "no, I mean the R---- you have running around."

Yeah - I find the trick is, to hate everyone _equally_, then there’s no problems about discrimination, bigotry etc.

Jidmah wrote:That is probably because these days, it's more of a general insult for nerds than an accurate description of a sub-culture.

...

Subculture?

 Just Tony wrote:

Jidmah wrote:That is probably because these days, it's more of a general insult for nerds than an accurate description of a sub-culture.

...

Subculture?

Subculture - an ethnic, regional, economic, or social group exhibiting characteristic patterns of behavior sufficient to distinguish it from others within an embracing culture or society. Examples include hippies, preppers, goths, trekkies, bikers, juggalos, greasers, skinheads, etc.

 Just Tony wrote:

Jidmah wrote:That is probably because these days, it's more of a general insult for nerds than an accurate description of a sub-culture.

...

Subculture?

Pick up Saga of the Beast, has a good explanation.

Also, "anime fan" and w-word are not synonyms.

Moriarty wrote:Yeah - I find the trick is, to hate everyone _equally_, then there’s no problems about discrimination, bigotry etc.

Heh. Nice.

the_scotsman wrote:Yeah, I did not realize just how much of an issue dealing with...I guess ill be delicate here and say "folks who are highly sensitive snowflakes about the existence of different kinds of folks" was going to be until I actually had to manage a play group.

Ive had people with steel legion armies with painted on armbands getting overexuberant about their hellhounds' "gas attacks", ive had Concerned Citizens approach me and whether the manager really allows "those people" in the store and should we go warn him to keep an eye on them in case they try to steal something, ive had people come up to me after playing a few games and cheerfully mention that the club is great the only problem is all the degenerates. Then when I laughed and said "yeah well it's a warhammer club were all a little weird" he said "no, I mean the R---- you have running around."

I have no idea what the R stands for. I'm not sure if I should know.

 JNAProductions wrote:

Moriarty wrote:Yeah - I find the trick is, to hate everyone _equally_, then there’s no problems about discrimination, bigotry etc.

Heh. Nice.

the_scotsman wrote:Yeah, I did not realize just how much of an issue dealing with...I guess ill be delicate here and say "folks who are highly sensitive snowflakes about the existence of different kinds of folks" was going to be until I actually had to manage a play group.

Ive had people with steel legion armies with painted on armbands getting overexuberant about their hellhounds' "gas attacks", ive had Concerned Citizens approach me and whether the manager really allows "those people" in the store and should we go warn him to keep an eye on them in case they try to steal something, ive had people come up to me after playing a few games and cheerfully mention that the club is great the only problem is all the degenerates. Then when I laughed and said "yeah well it's a warhammer club were all a little weird" he said "no, I mean the R---- you have running around."

I have no idea what the R stands for. I'm not sure if I should know.

The only one I can think of is the word that used to describe those with mental deficiencies. But that wouldn't be capitalised and has more letters.

 Grimtuff wrote:
My friend is playing the then brand new Tau with his TS (3.5 codex. They had a lot going for them with 2 wounds ). He has his Sorcerer Lord behind a small terrain piece, hidden and ready to pounce on the Tau in the following turn. Steve comes across and "borrows" said terrain piece for the game he is setting up. Sorcerer proceeds to get shot off the board.

Imagining this actually happening in universe is hilarious

We see this Sorcerer taking cover behind a boulder. The boulder suddenly poochies up into the sky and the Sorcerer just blinks at the array of guns now pointing at him and then cut to black with the sound of gunfire and gurgling.

Kayback wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

Moriarty wrote:Yeah - I find the trick is, to hate everyone _equally_, then there’s no problems about discrimination, bigotry etc.

Heh. Nice.

the_scotsman wrote:Yeah, I did not realize just how much of an issue dealing with...I guess ill be delicate here and say "folks who are highly sensitive snowflakes about the existence of different kinds of folks" was going to be until I actually had to manage a play group.

Ive had people with steel legion armies with painted on armbands getting overexuberant about their hellhounds' "gas attacks", ive had Concerned Citizens approach me and whether the manager really allows "those people" in the store and should we go warn him to keep an eye on them in case they try to steal something, ive had people come up to me after playing a few games and cheerfully mention that the club is great the only problem is all the degenerates. Then when I laughed and said "yeah well it's a warhammer club were all a little weird" he said "no, I mean the R---- you have running around."

I have no idea what the R stands for. I'm not sure if I should know.

The only one I can think of is the word that used to describe those with mental deficiencies. But that wouldn't be capitalised and has more letters.

I think he means racists.
Personally racism is perfectly fine to me - in universe in the game. Heck most players are highly speciest to start with and will insult other armies based on species - meanwhile Tyranid players keep mentioning how good everyone tastes and the chaos players keep trying to tempt you to join their dark gods and demonic rites.

However some people don't know how to stop the game spilling into reality; meanwhile others have difficulty separating game and reality in terms of the opinions of others.


That said 40K is fine, I mean heck people play full on WWII games all the time as both Axis and Allies sides and no one bats an eyelid at that. Even when you're playing as Soviets or Germans and enjoying when your Panzer smashes through the weak allied Churchill tank armour.

 Overread wrote:

I think he means racists.
Personally racism is perfectly fine to me - in universe in the game. Heck most players are highly speciest to start with and will insult other armies based on species - meanwhile Tyranid players keep mentioning how good everyone tastes and the chaos players keep trying to tempt you to join their dark gods and demonic rites.

However some people don't know how to stop the game spilling into reality; meanwhile others have difficulty separating game and reality in terms of the opinions of others.


That said 40K is fine, I mean heck people play full on WWII games all the time as both Axis and Allies sides and no one bats an eyelid at that. Even when you're playing as Soviets or Germans and enjoying when your Panzer smashes through the weak allied Churchill tank armour.

I'll second this. A good friend of mine loves history, especially military history, and fields Germans in Bolt Action and has German and old Austrian themed armies in 40k. He really likes Germans in WWII and we can banter about Axis vs. Allies and counterparts in 40k all the time. Back in university he was heavily involved in the international clubs, has many friends from there still, and is happily married to a non-white woman who is wonderful. I think the "racist" term (among others) is thrown around FAR too often, and in doing so it ignores many of the other layers of human existence that people experience. Someone like my friend could easily come across as a weird player with weird experiences, but in reality he's quite normal and such behavior is extremely normal now and through history.

He's not a bit German.

Kayback wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

Moriarty wrote:Yeah - I find the trick is, to hate everyone _equally_, then there’s no problems about discrimination, bigotry etc.

Heh. Nice.

the_scotsman wrote:Yeah, I did not realize just how much of an issue dealing with...I guess ill be delicate here and say "folks who are highly sensitive snowflakes about the existence of different kinds of folks" was going to be until I actually had to manage a play group.

Ive had people with steel legion armies with painted on armbands getting overexuberant about their hellhounds' "gas attacks", ive had Concerned Citizens approach me and whether the manager really allows "those people" in the store and should we go warn him to keep an eye on them in case they try to steal something, ive had people come up to me after playing a few games and cheerfully mention that the club is great the only problem is all the degenerates. Then when I laughed and said "yeah well it's a warhammer club were all a little weird" he said "no, I mean the R---- you have running around."

I have no idea what the R stands for. I'm not sure if I should know.

The only one I can think of is the word that used to describe those with mental deficiencies. But that wouldn't be capitalised and has more letters.

It was that one. I wasnt gonna try and type out a number of spaces equal to the number of letters. He was referring to the fact that several of our club members have mild disabilities.

Same player, but a tie between:

1) the time I turned up to a game to find the board berift of cover save for rows of knee high transport blocking walls and range markers, with his artillery heavy army already set up in the far corner of a corner to corner deployment.

2) the time he ranted and then stormed out after I killed a critical model without of line of sight, and then told him to jog on when he objected (he was the referee).
Now his objection seems reasonable except that the same squad had shot and killed the same model two turns in a row, and neither had moved save for when the referee replaced it after reminding the player to roll FnP.

Neither I nor my opponent had bothered checking LoS the second time around and the model had already been removed when the guy put the model back again insisting that he had made sure it wasn't visible when he had previously replaced it. And he felt I was out of line calling him a just a little bit biased at that point...


Still I did quite enjoy playing against the guy. Some improbable streak of good or bad luck would always always cost him our games no matter how strong his list, cheesy his play, or advantageous his position.

 CaptainWaffle wrote:

 Overread wrote:

I think he means racists.
Personally racism is perfectly fine to me - in universe in the game. Heck most players are highly speciest to start with and will insult other armies based on species - meanwhile Tyranid players keep mentioning how good everyone tastes and the chaos players keep trying to tempt you to join their dark gods and demonic rites.

However some people don't know how to stop the game spilling into reality; meanwhile others have difficulty separating game and reality in terms of the opinions of others.


That said 40K is fine, I mean heck people play full on WWII games all the time as both Axis and Allies sides and no one bats an eyelid at that. Even when you're playing as Soviets or Germans and enjoying when your Panzer smashes through the weak allied Churchill tank armour.

I'll second this. A good friend of mine loves history, especially military history, and fields Germans in Bolt Action and has German and old Austrian themed armies in 40k. He really likes Germans in WWII and we can banter about Axis vs. Allies and counterparts in 40k all the time. Back in university he was heavily involved in the international clubs, has many friends from there still, and is happily married to a non-white woman who is wonderful. I think the "racist" term (among others) is thrown around FAR too often, and in doing so it ignores many of the other layers of human existence that people experience. Someone like my friend could easily come across as a weird player with weird experiences, but in reality he's quite normal and such behavior is extremely normal now and through history.

He's not a bit German.

This is why I tried to phrase my post in as delicate and sensitive a way as possible so as not to offend.

Its all well and good to talk about opponents who scream and throw models and dice and flip tables and cheat in ways a five year old would find outrageous on the playground, but theres a special bespoke layer of internet skepticism reserved for stories that involve people displaying the same level of childishness toward someones gender or skin tone.

“It was that one. I wasnt gonna try and type out a number of spaces equal to the number of letters. He was referring to the fact that several of our club members have mild disabilities. “

So, he plays with toy soldiers, and is critical of people displaying ‘arrested development’? Pots & Kettles, much?

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

Jidmah wrote:That is probably because these days, it's more of a general insult for nerds than an accurate description of a sub-culture.

...

Subculture?

Subculture - an ethnic, regional, economic, or social group exhibiting characteristic patterns of behavior sufficient to distinguish it from others within an embracing culture or society. Examples include hippies, preppers, goths, trekkies, bikers, juggalos, greasers, skinheads, etc.

I know what subculture is, I was expressing disbelief at using it to justify or legitimize cultural appropriation.

 Just Tony wrote:
I know what subculture is, I was expressing disbelief at using it to justify or legitimize cultural appropriation.

Cultural appropriation isn't a real thing.

CaptainWaffle wrote:
I'll second this. A good friend of mine loves history, especially military history, and fields Germans in Bolt Action and has German and old Austrian themed armies in 40k. He really likes Germans in WWII and we can banter about Axis vs. Allies and counterparts in 40k all the time. Back in university he was heavily involved in the international clubs, has many friends from there still, and is happily married to a non-white woman who is wonderful. I think the "racist" term (among others) is thrown around FAR too often, and in doing so it ignores many of the other layers of human existence that people experience. Someone like my friend could easily come across as a weird player with weird experiences, but in reality he's quite normal and such behavior is extremely normal now and through history.

He's not a bit German.

Overread wrote:
I think he means racists.
Personally racism is perfectly fine to me - in universe in the game. Heck most players are highly speciest to start with and will insult other armies based on species - meanwhile Tyranid players keep mentioning how good everyone tastes and the chaos players keep trying to tempt you to join their dark gods and demonic rites.

However some people don't know how to stop the game spilling into reality; meanwhile others have difficulty separating game and reality in terms of the opinions of others.


That said 40K is fine, I mean heck people play full on WWII games all the time as both Axis and Allies sides and no one bats an eyelid at that. Even when you're playing as Soviets or Germans and enjoying when your Panzer smashes through the weak allied Churchill tank armour.

Churchills are stupidly well armored. If only my Panzers could easily smash through them .


But anyway, I have US, USSR, and German Flames of War armies [and nobody to play with ]. The important part is separating reality from the game. It's perfectly fine to play the Germans in wargames and in RTS games and whatever. At the very least, somebody has to be the bad guys for you to have a game. I my playgroups, I am the person who can prattle on for hours about german tank company doctrine or soviet defensive tactics in 1943 or the merits of the M4A3 until people start to take three steps away hoping it stops, but there's a difference between being into WWII history and crossing the line. The problem is when it starts to leak out into reality and/or you lose sight of the context of it. If you start supporting the nazis and what they fought for, then there might be a problem.

The context is important, especially for historical games. Real people fought and died in those wars for real ideals. It's important that, as much as it's fun to be like "Boom! My IS-2 blows a hole in your Panther!" or to read a manual telling Private Fritz to throw a jerry can with a hand grenade tied to it onto a T-34, that we're portraying something that goes beyond a clash of toy tanks on the tabletop where real people did horrible things.


And it's also important to understand that 40k is satire. You're supposed to know that this world is not a good future, and that the people in it are not good people, and that the ideals they're fighting for are not good ideals. It's played for humor in 40k ["look at how funny the stupid fascists are!"], and if you find yourself truly believing in the Imperium of Man or the Chaos Gods or whatever, you might have a problem.

the_scotsman wrote:
This is why I tried to phrase my post in as delicate and sensitive a way as possible so as not to offend.

Its all well and good to talk about opponents who scream and throw models and dice and flip tables and cheat in ways a five year old would find outrageous on the playground, but theres a special bespoke layer of internet skepticism reserved for stories that involve people displaying the same level of childishness toward someones gender or skin tone.

It's the internet. It's ironically more of an isolated microcosm than the outside world, since everyone you're interacting with is generally self selected by belief and interest. In addition, there's the whole issue that some people just don't have the same life experiences as other people. Believing the prejudice is real can be hard if you don't experience it yourself. Fortunately, people tend to be a lot more civil in person. The person standing right there in front of you makes a big difference about what you're willing to say.

Some people seem to have a vested interest in making cultural appropriation a real thing. I like to play 'how far back do you want to go?' - if wearing a kimono is appropriation, so is wearing trousers.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
I know what subculture is, I was expressing disbelief at using it to justify or legitimize cultural appropriation.

Cultural appropriation isn't a real thing.

You are wrong, but this isn't the place for that discussion.

Quite right, let’s stay on topic please. Thaks!

I guess the part that truly amazed me was that I did think that way, that real people in real life would be more reasonable and functional than what gets displayed online.

But nope. The second you become the designated Childishness Containment Specialist you realize that peoples personalities online are just what their real personality is underneath.

as for people playing Nazi themed 40k armies I can very much understand why someone might be a bit... taken aback by that. I mean playing the germans in a WW2 game is one thing, they had some cool hardware, but when you base an army totally aside on Nazi's people are going to wonder "is this some sort of joke I don't get, or is he glorifying them?"

BrianDavion wrote:
as for people playing Nazi themed 40k armies I can very much understand why someone might be a bit... taken aback by that. I mean playing the germans in a WW2 game is one thing, they had some cool hardware, but when you base an army totally aside on Nazi's people are going to wonder "is this some sort of joke I don't get, or is he glorifying them?"

Yeah. Like okay, Ork freebootas look good in officer caps and trenchcoats.

But do they really need the deaths head on their caps, the red, white and black swastika armbands and the SS symbols painted on their wagons?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

And it's also important to understand that 40k is satire. You're supposed to know that this world is not a good future, and that the people in it are not good people, and that the ideals they're fighting for are not good ideals. It's played for humor in 40k ["look at how funny the stupid fascists are!"], and if you find yourself truly believing in the Imperium of Man or the Chaos Gods or whatever, you might have a problem.

Is 40K satire any more, though? If we look at the majority of the fiction put out by GW then it certainly doesn't seem so. They are playing it straight down the line with the Space Marine bolter porn and its like.

Sure, we still have stuff like Ciaphas Cain but that is one series surrounded by a load of works that genuinely do not appear to be in on the joke.

Where is the 40K equivalent of Tom Sharpe's Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure, which viciously ripped the police of Apartheid South Africa apart? Where are the books that actually have us in fits of laughter at the stupidity of the Imperium?

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

And it's also important to understand that 40k is satire. You're supposed to know that this world is not a good future, and that the people in it are not good people, and that the ideals they're fighting for are not good ideals. It's played for humor in 40k ["look at how funny the stupid fascists are!"], and if you find yourself truly believing in the Imperium of Man or the Chaos Gods or whatever, you might have a problem.

Is 40K satire any more, though? If we look at the majority of the fiction put out by GW then it certainly doesn't seem so. They are playing it straight down the line with the Space Marine bolter porn and its like.

Sure, we still have stuff like Ciaphas Cain but that is one series surrounded by a load of works that genuinely do not appear to be in on the joke.

Where is the 40K equivalent of Tom Sharpe's Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure, which viciously ripped the police of Apartheid South Africa apart? Where are the books that actually have us in fits of laughter at the stupidity of the Imperium?

Well, there's still the Regimental Standard which makes like 90% of it's humor or more based on "fascists are stupid and funny"

Maybe, but at the risk of of driving this into politics you def gotta admit that more and more people do seem to be glorifying facism these days

You guys are drifting waaaaaaaaay off course. Keep it to weird stories and not a discussion of whether it’s appropriate to play a nazi army in 40k

The group I used to game with everything in 28mm and even 15 mm and the guy who often played Wehrmacht was different to the guy who was wanting to play Nazi Space Marines. Having seen a couple of those online as well I think they'd fit in this topic well even though the Imperium is Xenophobic as hecking.

Back when I started playing with them I had a random selection of IG units cos they were cool (Maining an Ultramarine 2nd Company). My selection included a Vindicare and some Rattling snipers. One guy borrowed them. During the game I killed the Vindicare and my opponent revealed the Vindicare was proxying for Manvolio, the legendary rattling sniper.

We got into a fairly protracted heated debate on WYSIWYG and proxies.

Just want to say in my case, I wasn't opposed to the guy having a Nazi themed army on it's own merit. It was the fact that he had a Nazi themed army combined with him making snide comments about the "ethnic diversity" of my army. One of my other hobbies is airsoft, and I know a few people who wear WW2 German kit for games. The ones I know aren't racists or fascists. Quite a few of them even collect and use Soviet gear too. It's important to distinguish between those into history and reenactment or just the aesthetic, and those who do genuinely have an affinity for the ideology.

The fact that 40k is satire does seem to go over a lot of people's heads. I think that has a lot to do with being based in British humour which is more deadpan and subtle. I think that's why more people overseas tend to take 40k at face value (though that's not to say there aren't such people like that in the UK). Same goes for Judge Dred, a British comic (even though it's set in America) which satires the police state but is taken as a serous endorsement of police brutality by some.

 Manchu wrote:
Quite right, let’s stay on topic please. Thaks!

This also goes for the discussion about Nazis, fascism in 40k and rise of extremism in real life unless that actually constituted "Your weirdest experience with a player" in 40k (which is not an excuse to make stuff up to continue that line of discussion).

The weirdest experience I had with a player was a kid which kind of always was at one of the stores I used to play at.

He would get dropped there by his parents around noon and they would pick him up just before the store closed, basically abusing the staff as baby-sitters.
He had some issue with on one of his hands (translator tells me the English term is clubfingers?), which was always in bandages, but that wouldn't have really have mattered if he didn't keep making weird jokes about being a cripple all the time.
I've been told to watch my models around him since he allegedly would pocket some when no one was looking. While I never saw any proof of that, I still was constantly keeping an eye on him whenever he was close to my stuff/game. He would also pick up models without asking to look at them and drop them in different places than they were, which was mildly annoying.
He would also always barge into games and discussion and be a loud and annoying kid in general, but not vastly different from how many boys at that age are.

So I was there playing 5th edition orks against some army I can't even remember (might have been GK) and we were running some sort of special mission where you would be fighting in a no-atmosphere environment with all non-vehicles having a chance of your suit ripping and instantly dying when getting shot at.
During the third turn he suddenly starts deploying a squad of blood angel terminators, a few sanguine guard and assault marines on the table edge and declares that he now joins the game - apparently all other people at the store had successfully dodged playing him and he was the only one without an opponent.
He starts rolling dice while doing pew-pew and explosion noises, but doesn't actually kill anything while my opponent gives him a death stare and I'm wondering about how to suddenly switch to three players. After he failed to do anything, his attention span ended and he wanders off join a discussion a few tables to the right. I shrug, carefully pick up his models and move them off the table.
We continue playing and after an hour or so he return and looks at his models and screeches
"Oh my god, are all of them dead?!"
to which I just responded "Yes" without really thinking about it because he was anoying.
"How did that happen, they are terminators!"
"Well, we are fighting on the moon, and the ork's shooting ripped through their suits." I lied.
He believed me, begrudgingly packed up and went on to complain to every single person that didn't get away fast enough about how orks on the moon are unfair and how blood angels sucked, some with visible question marks in their face.

In the other story I am the weird player.
So, when I started playing orks, it was custom to declare your Waaagh! at the top of your lunges. In fact, when you didn't do it that way, quite a few players argued that you didn't do it proper and would not let you use the rule. For the story, also keep in in mind that I'm very much an ork in real live, 6.4' tall, deep and very loud voice.
Fast forward a few years, some time during sixth edition. My battlewagons unload, I want to give my boyz fleet and declare my Waaagh! like I have always done, as loud as I could.
At the table behind me a necron player in his late teens was so shocked, he dove for cover under the table, jumping into his and his opponent's army cases and knocking off one of the table's six legs. He really hurt himself - so needless to say, that was the last time I declared my Waaagh! in that manner

 Jidmah wrote:

In the other story I am the weird player.
So, when I started playing orks, it was custom to declare your Waaagh! at the top of your lunges. In fact, when you didn't do it that way, quite a few players argued that you didn't do it proper and would not let you use the rule. For the story, also keep in in mind that I'm very much an ork in real live, 6.4' tall, deep and very loud voice.
Fast forward a few years, some time during sixth edition. My battlewagons unload, I want to give my boyz fleet and declare my Waaagh! like I have always done, as loud as I could.
At the table behind me a necron player in his late teens was so shocked, he dove for cover under the table, jumping into his and his opponent's army cases and knocking off one of the table's six legs. He really hurt himself - so needless to say, that was the last time I declared my Waaagh! in that manner

Not gonna lie, I did something similar in a small tournament up at Warhammer World during 5th ed 40k.

I'm running a mixed Chaos Daemons army and I'm facing down a Nidzilla list. One of the Hive Tyrants gets a bead on The Masque and shoots her with his 2x twin Devourers (so 12 shots rerolling everything). The Masque now has 12 3++ saves to make and I make them all, so I decide to do a little dance and sing out "Can't touch this!" after making all the saves, much to the confusion of my opponent.

Hoping this doesn't clarify as following on the off topic posts, but I got into Flames of War (back in version 2) after a discussion from a road trip back from a GW Games Day in Cali. I wanted to build a "German" themed Guard army that was all Afrika Korps, 88s as basilisks etc, thought it would have looked great. There is a BIG difference between a German themed list and one that represents the other aspect. As it turned out, never came to fruition, I just went out and bought some Grants and british Motor company boys, panzer IIIs and Afrika Korps infantry. That started my long hiatus from 40K as I preferred FOW, only returning to 40K toward end of 7th.

I wouldn't bat an eyelid at a force that was built that way.

wasn't 40k, but had an interesting game of warhammer when that was a thing.

Facing a player with a dwarf army, nice custom bit of terrain that had a bit of "the western wall" to it, nice cannon dug outs etc, didn't bother me too much, it was very nicely done.

anyway he sets up, what can only be described as an amazingly well defended hill, and asks smugly what I will do now..

I shrugged, he knew I had Bretonnians when he set up so felt zero issues doing this given the game he went for.. I set my entire army up in the opposite corner, he asked what I was doing.

I noted my Trebuchet out ranged his cannons and asked him what he was going to do, since I only needed to kill one of his units to call it a win.

the rage was awesome

I was looking to game locally, and a friend of mine put me in touch with a local he knew (vaguely). After our first game in a different genre, I decided to give it one more go (he was a bit odd). I show up for a game he's set up to host. We're playing as scantily clad lady barbarians...fighting scantily clad evil ladies..backed up by more scantily clad evil lady barbarians, etc.

The entire table was nothing but sword and sorcery style bikini-clad, sword wielding ladies. Now, I'm about as non-PC as you can get, but the vibe was very weird...everything this guy owned was naked-women-esque. This coupled with some other...quirks, led me to not game with the fellow again.

 Elbows wrote:
I was looking to game locally, and a friend of mine put me in touch with a local he knew (vaguely). After our first game in a different genre, I decided to give it one more go (he was a bit odd). I show up for a game he's set up to host. We're playing as scantily clad lady barbarians...fighting scantily clad evil ladies..backed up by more scantily clad evil lady barbarians, etc.

The entire table was nothing but sword and sorcery style bikini-clad, sword wielding ladies. Now, I'm about as non-PC as you can get, but the vibe was very weird...everything this guy owned was naked-women-esque. This coupled with some other...quirks, led me to not game with the fellow again.

One time a guy came in who was doing that whole "stand around peoples game making random interjections and moving to another table when his great reference based humor was not riotously hilarious" chestnut.

He came over to our table and mentioned he had an army that was slaanesh but hed put big penises on all of them.

"Do you think that would offend people?"

"Probably, I guess." Seemed like that was what he wanted to hear from his tone.

"Oh real PC place huh, that sucks."

Then he left. Never saw him again.

Sometimes I wonder about the line of thinking that would lead a person to enter a store, say that, and leave to never return. I dont think I'll ever get it.

Trolls are not restricted to the internet alone - however they are much rarer in reality because, well, it takes actual effort to walk to a game store, enter and try trolling. Plus it requires a much more directly confrontational attitude

 Elbows wrote:
I was looking to game locally, and a friend of mine put me in touch with a local he knew (vaguely). After our first game in a different genre, I decided to give it one more go (he was a bit odd). I show up for a game he's set up to host. We're playing as scantily clad lady barbarians...fighting scantily clad evil ladies..backed up by more scantily clad evil lady barbarians, etc.

The entire table was nothing but sword and sorcery style bikini-clad, sword wielding ladies. Now, I'm about as non-PC as you can get, but the vibe was very weird...everything this guy owned was naked-women-esque. This coupled with some other...quirks, led me to not game with the fellow again.

With that you've just had me remember another oddball, well; not odd in the traditional sense as he seemed like a cool guy but anyways. It was around the release of Mordheim, so circa 2000 and there is a campaign at our local GW. I'm not playing in it (never got into as I was salty some kid nicked my free Aenur mini that you got with WD.... ) but I'm watching this game with this guy I've never seen before. He's a bit of a hippy type, claims he walks everywhere and has this wonderfully self sculpted warband of like Norse looking guys. The leader is like standing with his hands on his hips and has this huge blond moustache. Guy says the leader is called Sven and is a porn star.

I never saw that guy again but that imprinted on me for 20 years...


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 Overread wrote:
Trolls are not restricted to the internet alone - however they are much rarer in reality because, well, it takes actual effort to walk to a game store, enter and try trolling. Plus it requires a much more directly confrontational attitude

Reminds me of a story an old GW manager told me when he managed GW Watford. Now, was this guy trolling or was this genuine? We'll never know but it makes for a fun story. Customer comes in screaming with a broken Nintendo Wii (you see where this is going?) demanding a refund. No matter how much he told them that despite being called GW they do not sell computer games. Guy eventually gives up and chucks the Wii at him.

Now manager has a prop. This was at the height of when the Wii came out and people are asking if they have them in stock as they see "Games" in the name of the shop and not notice the rows upon rows of miniatures.... Any time anyone came in asking if they had a Wii in stock he'd get out this broken one.

did have one guy at FLGS, was always one for pointing out when people were playing things wrong or in "non approved(tm)" ways.

was easy to wind up, had a game with someone else, we both agreed any natural "2" could be re-rolled, but didn't have to be.

this guy had steam coming out of his ears by the end of it

leopard wrote:
did have one guy at FLGS, was always one for pointing out when people were playing things wrong or in "non approved(tm)" ways.

was easy to wind up, had a game with someone else, we both agreed any natural "2" could be re-rolled, but didn't have to be.

this guy had steam coming out of his ears by the end of it

Next time play Binary rules. 1s are successful and everything else is discarded as it doesn't exist.

Necron players get to reroll 2s.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Is 40K satire any more, though?

Less so these days. Not so much because the quality of writing has changed (rose goggles really do wonders) but because we humans decided that reality should look more like the satire.

40k was never a satire, as confirmed by the people who created it.

I was playing against this guy, and losing. Went to take a piss.

When I came back the dude was packing up his army, and then blurted out as loud as he could: "You're using loaded dice!" and stormed out.

Shop owner knows this is dumb, but comes over and asks to look at my dice.

Couldn't find them.

The dude took my dice. He'd stolen all the dice I had at the table. Just some cheap chessex dice.

And he never came back.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
I was playing against this guy, and losing. Went to take a piss.

When I came back the dude was packing up his army, and then blurted out as loud as he could: "You're using loaded dice!" and stormed out.

Shop owner knows this is dumb, but comes over and asks to look at my dice.

Couldn't find them.

The dude took my dice. He'd stolen all the dice I had at the table. Just some cheap chessex dice.

And he never came back.

Play game with 500$ of models on either side.

Steal 15$ of dice?

the_scotsman wrote:

Play game with 500$ of models on either side.

Steal 15$ of dice?

To this very day I'm just at a loss at this one.

Tabletop gaming has no shortage of socially maladjusted weirdos that make me cringe, but this one incident still makes me scratch my head.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

Play game with 500$ of models on either side.

Steal 15$ of dice?

To this very day I'm just at a loss at this one.

Tabletop gaming has no shortage of socially maladjusted weirdos that make me cringe, but this one incident still makes me scratch my head.

Its always the ones that just cut off spontaneously that stick with me.

One time a guy came in to play a game, went up against a fairly friendly regular. The guy had a nice looking imp fists army. After the game, he shakes the regulars hand, and says "thanks for the game, you can have these."

Then left. Didnt take his minis.

According to the store owner, hes an absurdly rich dude with a major ebay addiction. Buys whole armies because they're great deals he just cant pass up, and they sit around his house. Then when his wife screams at him that shell divorce him unless he gets rid of some, he takes them to the store and gives them away. Sometimes to the store to resell (so the owner has no problem with him) sometimes to random people.

the_scotsman wrote:
According to the store owner, hes an absurdly rich dude with a major ebay addiction. Buys whole armies because they're great deals he just cant pass up, and they sit around his house. Then when his wife screams at him that shell divorce him unless he gets rid of some, he takes them to the store and gives them away. Sometimes to the store to resell (so the owner has no problem with him) sometimes to random people.

Sounds like he'd be happier if he dropped the wife off at the store instead.

Had a 40 something year old teacher start going off about how this game isn't fair and how he shouldn't be losing. This was 6th edition mind you. He was playing Eldar and I was playing Chaos Marines. Strangely, I won the match up but mostly because my dice were hot that day. You shouldn't be allowed to throw hissy fits as an adult playing the most OP army in the game at the time.

Had another guy (huge 6'6" ~280lb Viking looking dude) back in the old fantasy days threaten to beat me up because he miscast with one of his sorcerers and I was able to use his own spell against him (which was one of the miscast results). It was pit of shades, so I threw it on Kholek Suneater who promptly failed his initiative test and died on the first turn.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:

Had another guy (huge 6'6" ~280lb Viking looking dude) back in the old fantasy days threaten to beat me up because he miscast with one of his sorcerers and I was able to use his own spell against him (which was one of the miscast results). It was pit of shades, so I threw it on Kholek Suneater who promptly failed his initiative test and died on the first turn.

Had a guy do something similar in a WHFB tourney at our local club. This is 7th ed WHFB, he's running the indestructible Von Carstein family deathstar Grave Guard unit, Vampire BSB, general, regenerate banner etc. he gets drawn against a guy playing Tzeentch chaos and very first turn the Chaos player casts Infernal Gateway on said unit.

For those who don't know Infernal Gateway was like a really random spell, it was strength 2D6 with 2D6 hits, but if you rolled an 11 or 12 it just straight up deleted the unit. No saves, nothing. It was also cast with irresistible force, so he could not dispel it in any way. He just shouts at the top of his lungs "FOR FETHS SAKE!" and quits the game there and then as the rest of the undead would just slowly crumble.

Though, it is par for the course at that club. I was the weird one there a few times. Last tourney I went to there was a combined X-wing, 40k and WMH one (we had all 3 running at the same time, not against one another). This is WMH Mk2 and I'm running a Butcher3 list vs Circle. Guy throws literally everything he can at Butcher who has just feated to use it defensively so is sitting on max focus and any living models that charge him auto fail their morale (so their activation would end immediately) Opponent is using Morvahna2 and he's constantly cutting her to get more Fury to try and off him with whatever he has that is fearless etc. By the end of the turn Butcher is knocked down and on a single point of health. Dude knows it's over, I stand up from my chair and do my best Rocky impression "Hey! I didn't hear no bell!" I yell out. I'd not gone up there in a while as the FLGS had opened up so I was a bit of a stranger to a lot of the people there and a load of them turn around like dafuq is this guy?

Had a guy do something similar in a WHFB tourney at our local club. This is 7th ed WHFB, he's running the indestructible Von Carstein family deathstar Grave Guard unit, Vampire BSB, general, regenerate banner etc. he gets drawn against a guy playing Tzeentch chaos and very first turn the Chaos player casts Infernal Gateway on said unit.

Yeah, 7th ed. had a lot of very unfun combos. The Grave Guard death star was brutal, but Infernal Gateway was just garbage. Having a single spell that could delete a unit completely is just bad game design.

I was on the receiving end of maxed out gateway about 3 or 4 times. It was always gak.

Dreaded 13th too.

I did a doubles tournament one time, double dark elves with the flying unkillable master on a pegasus, 3 hydras, spear elf battery for the Sorceresses Dagger and 2 Ring of Hotek's. The worst part, the ruling on the Rings meant you could protect your unit with the ring from enemy magic, but as long as the sorceress was part of the unit, but outside of the ring's aura she could still cast magic normally. So broken. We came in second at that tournament.

Back when I was still very new to the game, I had probably played less than 12 games of 40K at the time, a friend invited me to go with him to a game store to meet some other players.

I ended up running a game with a guy.

7th Edition: (My) Salamanders vs. (His) Black Legion

He lost his gak when he found out that I got a 4+ FNP against flamer weapons from my chapter trait, which made his THREE hellturkeys' was less effective.

He still ended up winning the game by tabling me on the end of the second turn, but he spent HOURS crying about how it's not fair that I get to have FNP against his OP unit.

It was really off putting. I don't think he or I ever played again.

Forgot about another, somewhat odd experience.

Had a guy pop into the local Facebook group, asking for a game since he was coming into town from Brazil. I said "sure, just let me know - I can meet you at the GW store and we can have a quick game."

I get to the GW store, and he shows up late (the store isn't open for much longer) spends a while complaining about GW openly to the GW manager, and then we play like one half of a turn of a game and he says he needs to take off (his wife and kids are in the store too). He was a nice enough guy, but I drove 40 minutes to get the store to play about 20 minutes of 40K with a complete stranger from another country.

Weirdly he gave me a random Windsor and Newton brush he had in his case...and took off. Weird evening.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
I was playing against this guy, and losing. Went to take a piss.

When I came back the dude was packing up his army, and then blurted out as loud as he could: "You're using loaded dice!" and stormed out.

Shop owner knows this is dumb, but comes over and asks to look at my dice.

Couldn't find them.

The dude took my dice. He'd stolen all the dice I had at the table. Just some cheap chessex dice.

And he never came back.

Wait, he was losing or you were losing?

I would love to see those space marines with fedoras

kkehno wrote:
I would love to see those space marines with fedoras

I'm sure he meant Marines with trilbys. A fedora is what Indiana Jones wore.

Had plenty of games with weird players, and more than a few where I was the weird one (mostly when I was much younger, but the cringe is still real!)

There was a game back in 5th where I was running Blood Angels (assorted groans from the audience), and I played a pick up game with a younger kid - he had an odd assortment of space marines and scouts, none of them in legal squad sizes and with some ambitious conversions. I was helping him organise his force into something coherent, when he suddenly realised I was running Blood Angels and refused to play me - just took off.
Next game after I ran the same BA army against a traitor IG army - superbly painted, well converted, real nice guy. I was the weird one here because due to the deep-strike rules at the time my terminator captain landed miles away from the DC he was supposed to support, right in front of his guns. Can't remember what he shot me with - think it was a plasma gun. Anyway, flustered younger me then queries the AP of plasma weaponry - because I'd remembered reading somehere that terminator armour was designed to survive in a plasma generator core. I'd forgotten that as a captain he got a 4++ invuln, and was hurriedly trying to argue that plasma was AP 3 and not AP 2!

Apparently BA were so reviled at this time that I once got talking with a security guard at the Houses of Parliament, who'd noticed my 40k wallet as it went through security. He asked me what army I played - I replied Blood Angels, to which he said CHEAT! (Fair enough I suppose.)

Another one - ended up playing a newbie at a GW, whose only model was a Necron doomscythe. I'd brought GSC looking for a pick-up game. At this time I was still working off 7th, but everyone had moved on to 8th so I couldn't find a game (guess that makes me the weirdo!) Anyway, I agreed to a game with this guy - his doomscythe against two squads of my neophytes with mining lasers and seismic cannons. Best of three strafing runs. Two out of three I downed his doomscythe and blew it up. With mining weapons...

Last one, and this I feel particularly bad about. I was gaming with a mate of mine at our local FLGS, and there was another guy there filming a solo kill team game. Anyway, me and my mate were chatting - asking him how his family was, how his older brother is getting on at uni - he revealed that his brother had a new partner, and I was so surprised I asked 'man, woman, mineral or vegetable?' So it turns out he's dating a non-binary woman, and I'm afraid this other guy in the store felt we were discussing something transphobic - he said to us it's ok, I'm removing the audio for the report to tape over it. Awkward...

Anyway that's my lot - I try to live and learn and strive to become a better me.

Locally, it was P, a guy at one of my groups in Leeds. I first met him when he was demo-ing Warmachine to a group of rookies, and doing a terrible job of it. I found myself constantly interjecting to correct rules misunderstandings / huge whoppers (no, having one Pyg Bushwacker with line of sight does not let the nine behind the building contribute to a combined ranged attack). I may have started the Warmachine scene at that store by getting in touch with the local Pressgangers and saying "There's potential new players at this store, but you need to get there before he drives them off."

P was full of interesting stories and anecdotes, almost none of which made any sense. Like how GW had been bought out by a company in the Bible Belt, and all references to Chaos were going to be removed for being un-Christian. It got weirder when he started talking about his own past--or somebody's past. Like how he was ex-SAS, and his disabilities came from being tortured by the IRA, or how he was on the hit list of....the Yakuza.

Yup, the infamous Yorkshire Yakuza.