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In some ways, the worst experience I had was at hard boys this year. Sure, the event was fun once I got to playing, but the event was questionable from the outset.

First off, Ard boys is not incredibly popular in Canada. A LGS organised it for the first time ever in the province. and only 4 people showed up to it. It did not help that the event was not promoted in any way.

When I got there, I was discussing the scenarios with another participant when the TD interrupted us and told me that reading the scenarios before a tournament was bad form, and went on a rant about it. The TD also runs another local tourny, so obviously had a bias based on how that event was run.

Next the TD announced that he would not be enforcing time restrictions, and said he would run only 2 of the 3 rounds as there would not be enough time to run all 3 rounds in the 8 hours the store was open. I was stunned. He said he would fudge numbers when reporting the event to GW to make it look like we played all 3 so we could still get prizes.

During the games, the TD was not around for the 2 times (between both boards) when we needed a rules call. I had fun playing the games, scoring a Major win in game 1 and a minor loss game 2. Both my opponents massacred the 4th guy, so I ended up in 3rd place. I fell like I was robbed of the opportunity to fight for a higher position due to the fact that I did not get all 3 games in. In fact, I beat the 2nd place guy with a major win.

After the tourny they were supposed to call or email me with how to get my prize. After not hearing from them for 2 weeks, I called to see what was going on. They said it was too late now to collect the prize.

Worst run event I have ever been to, even if the games themselves were fun.

jetjetex wrote:

Citizensmith wrote:

jetjetex wrote:a little off topic but,what army was he buying?

Unfortunately, this was a long time ago. 1994, the summer after I finished uni. I'd be lying if I said I could remember, sorry.

that would be great to know what army he plays.

More on this over here:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/30/246127.page#814834

and here

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/30/237882.page#690565

Darkvoidof40k wrote:

SwanCo wrote:at a flgs a very fat man crushed me against the gaming table once when walking passed. the piece in my hands broke 1/2 of its weapon off

Did you smite the greater daemon of nurgle?


Nah, bad luck dude. I've had fat, smelly kids try to crush me to death that way. NOT FUN.

Totally agree

However no nurgle daemon killed him. I play Tzeentch and therefor smote him with a mindbolt

he WAS the nurgle daemon

Heh, Some very entertaining posts on here. I'm abit of a lurker but posts like these bring me out of my hermit shell.

My local GW is absolutely spot on, It's a 1-man show but he does a great job. So my experience isn't really todo with GW, but it happened in my local GW Store.

Thursday dinner-time, day off work - Spent the morning in GW as one of "Those" guys who sit at the hobby table in the back of the store like some deranged lepper; clipping, painting and what not. All of a sudden a woman bursts in the door with a rather drunk hooded bloke behind her swearing and shouting about some £10 she owes him.
The manage of the store blocks the door and tried to calm the gent down as to which he shouts to his (Probably now ex-girlfriend) "Gimme' my tenner now or I'll come in and shove a lead model up your arse!" as to which the bloke then pauses, looks at the manager and exclaims;

"Oh wait... They're not lead anymore arn't they? Didn't you change them to mostly plastic now?"

He may have been drunk, abusive and tried to stick the wizard tower from the gaming board somewhere unpleasant. But for being absolutely off his face and knowing at least abit about GW's miniatures.... +1.

Chesterfield is a great place for domestics, seen several on the late nighters in GW.

Darkvoidof40k wrote:he WAS the nurgle daemon

oh ahahaha yes, time to defeat the forces of nurgle with the greater powers of tzeentch

Brilliant thread. Made me chuckle a few times.

Many years ago, back when I was first getting into the hobby, I was around 13/14 and was immensely secretive about it. I had one friend I played battles with regularly, but no-one at my school knew about it. During a day off school me and my friend decided it would be a good idea to go and play some Warhammer Quest in our LGS.

What we didn't realise was that all of the lads in our year at school would be walking around the city together, just chilling. I'm sure you can guess where I'm going with this. Thirty of my school buddies invaded the store, claiming to the manager that they were "really interested in toy soldiers and wanted to check it out." I was absolutely ridiculed.

Looking back, it was absolutely hilarious, but at the time I was devastated.

i try and keep warhammer a secret at my school because all of my 'friends'make fun of me for it.i said i stopped so they would stop making fun of me.

jetjetex wrote:i try and keep warhammer a secret at my school because all of my 'friends'make fun of me for it.i said i stopped so they would stop making fun of me.

Schools are very harsh towards anything "different". Everyone is so desperate to fit in.

Once you get a bit older people don't really care what you do with your spare time. I'm 23 now and all my friends know I do it. When you leave school you realise that you can be more picky with your friends. You don't have to put up with the same people forever

I havn't told anyone at my school. Few people there know anyway, but they're friends of mine who don't really care and one of them plays it anyway. Why o why can't little plastic men be cool?

I've finally run out of GW hard luck stories.. *waits*

Orkrates wrote:

jetjetex wrote:i try and keep warhammer a secret at my school because all of my 'friends'make fun of me for it.i said i stopped so they would stop making fun of me.

Schools are very harsh towards anything "different". Everyone is so desperate to fit in.

Once you get a bit older people don't really care what you do with your spare time. I'm 23 now and all my friends know I do it. When you leave school you realise that you can be more picky with your friends. You don't have to put up with the same people forever

This exactly, I've been there too and trust us as it most definitely gets better.

Heh, I'm in my 50s and put IG on my desk at work..............

I didnt care in school, I was a relatively popular guy too. Just no one ever brought it up. I have always been more the closet SUPER geek though. My girlfriend and I have known each other for 12 years and she has known about my hobby, or should I say Obsession forever. I never really got bothered by the social stigma, considering that many artists I know are interested in the transition from canvas or paper to 3D models, so its a growing community of gamers and miniature artists.

[/steers] Annnnnyway.. back on topic.

yes please.

don_mondo wrote:Heh, I'm in my 50s and put IG on my desk at work..............

See my siggie line.

There once was a man from Nantucket with a.....

Oh, you said back on topic.

When I first started getting into Warhammer the FLGS that I used to frequemt and go to very often now was out of buisness for some reason, they are open again now just in a different location. So anyway I went to the only other store in my area that carried GW products Hobbytown USA. I bought the Black Reach set and a few other things from them over the course of a month, all was well and good for awhile, the staff while not nesacarily helpful werent bad. One day I go in looking for a few boxes of assult marines, they have one box on the shelf which I pickup to buy then I go and try and find an employee to ask if they have anymore in the back. So i find me an employee, it turns out that its the manager/owner, I ask her if she has any other assult marines. She yells at me, like acutally raises her voice and yells at me that there are other customers in the store ahead of me and i'm going to have to wait my turn. The only other person in the store is way on the other side looking at trains trying not to laugh. So I wait a few minutes, during which time she stares at some remote control car peices, and I ask her again, I'm still being nice at this point. She looks at me like I'm something that got stuck to the bottom of her she, and asks me what is wrong with the box I'm holding. I tell her nothing is wrong with them, I'd just like two boxes, she says we might have them in the back. This is followed by about 30 seconds of awkward silance as I wait for her to go in the back and look. So I finally get tired of waiting and say, i'd really appreciate it if you could go in the back and look for me. So she finally does comeing back a good 10 minutes later with another box of assult marines which I buy and then leave the store.

We go to the next time I have to set foot in there. I dont tend to go there very often anymore as I'm not to fond of being yelled at when all I'm trying to do is give you my hard earned money in exchange for little plastic men. But one day I'm working on some mini's and I pretty much run out of everything, I'm out of glue, flocking, blades for my hobbie knife and paint so I figure what the hell, I'll give Hobbytown another shot, so I head on over, walk in the door and the same manager/owner person is standing behind the register. She looks at me, crinkles up her nose and says, Oh, its you again, and then walks away. So I'm in the store for about 10 min I find everything that I went in there for, plus an Ironclad Dreadnought that was calling my name from the shelf. Then I get a really good idea for some of the bases on some Malifaux minis, unfortunatly they dont have what I need instock so when I'm at the register I ask the young girl who is working the register if she can order some for me, the young girl tells me that she can do that and asks me exactly what it is I want, as I'm telling her what it is I want, the manager lady comes running through the store and says very loudly for everyone to hear, that the store will not order stuff for him, becuase I dont think he'd actually come and pick it up. I just stare at her for a couple of seconds, put the money back in my wallet tell the manager that her and her store can kiss my hairy irish ass and walk out, never to return.

Now I do all my shoping at my FLGS, they may have to order me alot of my hobby maerial, but they are always more then happy to do it, and as I order stuff their selection in the store is getting better.

I'm a pretty undemanding customer, I can look for my own stuff and I dont generally ask a bunch of useless questions. But if you accuss me of cheating and lieing your going to piss me off.

My only issue Ive had with a GW or FLGS is my local one closed down . Have to go an hour odd train ride to my nearest now.

lucky you have to go 1 hour,i have to go 4 hours.

jetjetex wrote:lucky you have to go 1 hour,i have to go 4 hours.

ouch that must be a pain. Well add an extra half an hour to get to the train station. Just used be nice to be able to nip in and have all my modelling supplies to hand. now I have to order off the website most of the time.

Two stories... very different...

I've been away from 40k for several years (and 2 editions) for house, work & family... but have recently gotten back into it as my kids have "discovered" it and it's something we can do together. So I took part in our FLGS's Aard Boyz warm-up tournament (a few weeks before the real thing) with a new ork army that I was putting together to share with my 6-year-old. Anyway, my 3rd round... I'm not in contention... just trying to have some fun, and I draw a very experienced, very nice gamer from the store. He is friendly, generous and patient... I am, a completely intimidated, and a complete idiot. I don't misbehave... but I can't remember anything. Rules that I KNOW... I suddenly can't remember, I have my nose in my book, I make multiple, obvious tactical mistakes... something about being in a (relatively) big, formal tournament (which I'd never been in before), the time limit, having a very accomplished opponent, running a larger-than-normal army, etc... just made my brains drain out my ears and I forgot everything. I only suffered a minor loss, but I felt that I was a total waste of his time. Uugh.... humiliating. (He did give me another game the next week under casual circumstances... it went much better and I really enjoyed myself!)

I entered my 9-year old into his first tournament which was a "kids" tournament... kids being defined as anyone up to the age of 18. He was excited, first two rounds went fine. One draw, one minor loss... good games. His third round he drew a slightly older opponent who through a combination of misinterpreting the rules, misusing the rules and taking advantage of the fact that my son was still learning the rules... slaughtered him by turn 2 or 3. I had been warned away from interfering or giving advice earlier in the day by the TO (and rightly so), and since the first two games had gone well I wasn't even concerned or aware of what was happening. I looked over to him just after the game ended. There he was... utterly alone in a crowded room of 40 people. Head bowed, arms straight down at his side, shuddering slightly. Wanting to cry but too humiliated to do it. I'll tell ya as a dad, there has been nothing in my life that did not involve life threatening issues, that was as painful to watch as seeing my son stripped of his dignity & pride, standing there alone.

He bounced back of course and was looking forward to the next chance to play by that night... but it took some fancy reasoning by me and some internal strength on his part to get there. Think it probably hit me harder than it hit him. I'm not an over-protective guy... but *whew*... that was tough.

Lexx wrote:

jetjetex wrote:lucky you have to go 1 hour,i have to go 4 hours.

ouch that must be a pain. Well add an extra half an hour to get to the train station. Just used be nice to be able to nip in and have all my modelling supplies to hand. now I have to order off the website most of the time.

I intend to buy all my stuff off wayland games now - GW is just too expensive.. £22.50 for 10 tactical marines? No chance!

I mean it's not like GW have any sort of financial problems at the minute.. those sons of a 's just want all our money

They're gonna scare more people away than they're gonna get new players because of this.

jetjetex wrote:i try and keep warhammer a secret at my school because all of my 'friends'make fun of me for it.i said i stopped so they would stop making fun of me.

In my school i have managed to maintain a relatively high number of friends and still be the nerdy me around everyone. I've actully gotten on DakkaDakka during my comp sci class and shown some people my models

SwanCo wrote:

jetjetex wrote:i try and keep warhammer a secret at my school because all of my 'friends'make fun of me for it.i said i stopped so they would stop making fun of me.

In my school i have managed to maintain a relatively high number of friends and still be the nerdy me around everyone. I've actully gotten on DakkaDakka during my comp sci class and shown some people my models

i did that a while back in typing class.nobody cared what i was doing.

Back on topic. Yet another bad GW experience was during the first (and only up to this point) tourny i have played. It was prolly about 2 months after i started 40k, and i was doing a doubles tourny. One guy we were playing against had some marine that made all biked troops, and he only brought bikes. He wiped me and my friend fromthe table in 3 turns and laughed at us for "playing so horribly". That was 1.5 years ago and i'm still hesitant to play in a tounrament b/c im scared of meeting another butt monkey like him who will ruin the experience for me.
/rant

njpc wrote:I have the fortune to say the negative experiences are very much outweighed by the postive experiences. I've enjoyed many years of happy gaming. But there are a few experiences in stores i've not enjoyed.

GW Cherry Hill~ I previously had a 75% converted 40K ork army including over 30 Mega Armored nobs converted from terminators. Each model was personalized and represented a space marine chapter he'd taken terminator armor from. I loved the models, took me a entire summer to convert them. I used all 30 1x in a mega battle. On a lunch break from the Mega battle I return to find that 15 were stolen off the table of the mega battle. To say I was pissed would be an under statement. I know that its on the gamers, not the store, but I was blown away that they'd be stolen as in the shop that day was all the regulars that i'd know for over 5 years. I packed up and left. I also never got the models back, but years later found out who took them. Was a 16 year old high school player who was a GT gamer who i'd help build his list for Gamesday.

What happened when you found out who it was? You didn't confront him?

At a mega apoc game my flgs hosted called the "Black Crusade" (6 or so tables of apoc games, professionally made terrain [they bought a FW thunderhawk... and crashed it], and the entry fee was 1 canned good, and for every extra can you brought, you got a "cheating token") I was looking forward to having some fun and maybe winning one of the door prizes. The main opponent I had on my table had pink painted marines and random IG artillery tanks (w/o the codex....) lined up along his table edge. Now normally I'm okay with a little proxying, but enough is enough. I frequently forgot that his scratchbuilt power armor libby was really a terminator one, and his dreadnought was ironclad, among other things. And when I'd ask him what model counted as what, or when he'd remind me, his additude was that I had insulted his mother and I was looking down on him because I obviously had more money because I wasn't proxying anything and I had a Baneblade that I won in a raffle for a man w/ lukemia for $5. Very exasperating.

But the store (the Source) is a great place, it's just that (like all stores) sometimes jerks go to it.

The Seattle Battle Bunker is fairly spot on, a bit further north is a LGS where one of the regulars happens to be a Down Syndrome SoB player. I'm going to hell for this but he smells to all get out, has terrible dandruff, and loves to talk to you from about 4 inches away, and acts as if every single word he stutters were the most important secret to mankind.

I have a pretty high nerd threshold, and I could probably deal with his lack of any sense of personal space, hygiene issues, odor, stuttering, and him wearing the same unwashed pair of sweat pants every day, day in and day out. However, what annoys me is the guys is in his 20's and he throws tantrums if he loses. Not full on crying and yelling mind you, but if hes starting to lose he immediately wants to go back and re-do the math in your army list, and have a look through the codex to make sure your not cheating. Because obviously, if your winning, your cheating. I've personally seen him stop a game for a full hour before trying to find fault with his opponent's list mid-game. I have to drive through this area semi-regularly and I would probably stop by whenever I do if not for the fact that he hangs out there almost constantly.

Oh well, cest la vie.

How dare you insult the special needs. But yes, that would be very annoying, and I would probably only play that person a few times out of decency/not having any other opponents around.

I would say the worst yet kind of amusing experience would be when earlier in the year I was playing in a tournament at a flgs and in the middle of the second round a rather larger (obese) Man's chair broke from under him while this happened he fell backwards into my opponents and my table and launched our armies literally across the store... oddly enough non of my models were harmed I wish I could say the same for my opponents Sanguinary Guard Blood Angels Army .... Though the man offered to pay him $500 to replace the broken models and such.