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Well I had the opportunity to play in a local tournament yesterday with my Blood Ravens from Adepticon. I have to say right off the bat this store was much more friendly than the one I usually play since moving here to the Tampa area. A lot of compliments for my codex Space Marines... even some people saying that they are not used to seeing any vanilla Marines anymore (which will soon change of course with the new release of the SM codex).

I had three games - vs. eldar, Deathwing and Guard. As I have always said the meta game is more fiction than fact as far as I am concerned. In fact I will go so far as to say there is no meta game and this tournament made me feel more certain of this self proclamation. If you are familiar with my Blood Ravens I rank them as a top tiered army list. Two librarians with terminator command squads, lots of 6 man las/plas squads and some speeders thrown in as well... plus a couple of potent Dev squads to boot.

At Adepticon my terminators were god like smashing the enemy down with ease. At this tournament yesterday they still performed well but did not win games for me like they have done so often in the past. Basically I was playing against units I had no experience versus and the lack of experience was telling. When I played in the invitational at Adepticon it was a lot of tri holo Falcons all the way. So gehy really.

Anyways two units that stood out yesterday was Belial's command squad - terminators with four base attacks with lightning claws (banner) were just brutal... the other was a Witch Hunter Inquistorial command squad loaded out with crusaders and mancatchers. My termies had their hands full with both of these units. I had to kill the Inq. unit with lots of shooting and it took both of my termie squads to wipe out Belial with his Deathwing.

G

Interesting to read. Amusingly I ran my melee WH Inquisitor Retinue for the first time Friday kitted out much the same way. Of course, she was wielding a power stake which was something of a dead weight, but I think she managed to make her points back if you exclude the Landraider she was riding in.
Did you post a battle report?

We agree on something, GBF. Mark it on your calendar.

The Inquisitor's retinue sounds pretty badass. Now I know what to buy for my friend for christmas!

Sure there is a metagame. You said it yourself, at Adepticon you saw many tri-falcon lists. On the national level, that is the metagame you prepare for. In a random local store, their metagame may not match the national metagame, but one exists there also.

All metagaming is, is tooling your list against the popular/expected opposition. If you continue going to this local store, you may notice a trend in the armies they bring. Metagaming is simply tooling your lists or taking the optimal list against the popular/expected opposition.

Many people don't use the word correctly, it was actually coined by Richard Garfield creator of Magic: the Gathering to describe how he initially conceptualized Magic tournaments being run but evolved to a somewhat different meaning.

If only it was actually necessary, or indeed, "good" to metagame towards the popular or the expected.

Best players don't do this. Average ones, do.

Stelek: questions, comments.

1. By your post, do you indicate that the concept of metagaming is invalid, indvisable, or merely a push toward mediocrity?
2. Or, rather, are you against the idea of metagaming toward the popular or expected?
3. I see the difference between metagaming and preparation as being a matter of degree. I could see a player preparing elements in his army to face certain things he knows he will find in competitive play (AP3 weaponry for MEQ's, templates for hordes, etc...) as being "prepared". You can take it further by gearing your army totally to face certain opponents. Like I said, a matter of degrees.
4. SO, in your opinion, what DO "Best players" do?

The metagame in 40K has national, regional, and even local flavors. The metagame simply revolves around army building, and what kind of opponents you expect to see.

Locally, almost everyone who plays regularly has experienced it. Somebody comes up with an army list that trounces all the locals, until someone else comes up with a counter. Thank kind of thing.

At a regional level, you've got the guys who travel to RTTs and the like. You'll usually see a core group of players at all or most of the events in a certain region, and the metagame consists of them trying to outplan each other.

The national metagame is quite new, with the GW Tournament Circuit, the 'Ard Boyz tourneys, and events such as AdeptiCon, that have a national draw.

At the risk of sounding self-serving...based on the results of last year, the midwest regional metagame is currently somewhat dominant. Assuming that everyone is metagaming based on their own local or regional biases, its pretty significant that the of the events on the GW Tournament Circuit, I think something like 7 or 8 of 10 were won by players from the Midwest. At the 'Ard Boyz finals, all three place-winners came from Midwest states.

Stelek has something going on there. Many good players have ideas that are out of the box, or they don't try to fit in the mold of the army commonly targeted. Now some of those ideas are then taken and then used enmass and turns out to be what is the cookie cutter army to win with. Tri-Falcon was always around ever since the beginning of 4th edition, Big Bugs was still common in the old Nid Codex, and gunline marines have been gunline marines for a while.

Just because you have out of the box ideas doesn't mean that you're not participating in the metagame. It just means you're advancing it to the next stage.

But the metagame concept can be mistaken for experience. The definition of Metagame itself is pretty broad. While I do agree there is a certain degree of planning that is based on some elementary degree of analysis, I still think that the term metagame is used very loosely and is mistaken for experience.

grizgrin wrote:Stelek: questions, comments.

1. By your post, do you indicate that the concept of metagaming is invalid, indvisable, or merely a push toward mediocrity?
2. Or, rather, are you against the idea of metagaming toward the popular or expected?
3. I see the difference between metagaming and preparation as being a matter of degree. I could see a player preparing elements in his army to face certain things he knows he will find in competitive play (AP3 weaponry for MEQ's, templates for hordes, etc...) as being "prepared". You can take it further by gearing your army totally to face certain opponents. Like I said, a matter of degrees.
4. SO, in your opinion, what DO "Best players" do?

1. Invalid. There is no metagaming in 40k. It took a stupid man to put it out there for everyone to rally around a catchy phrase. Doesn't make it right.
2. In the last ten years of grand tournaments I've been surprised a total of twice. I don't rely on the internet for my lists, I see the codex and I can make killer lists immediately--far better than the usual off the mighty internet.

When was I surprised, you might wonder?

First, when a Tyranid player faced me with like 90 ripper swarms, and I had no idea if I could kill them all before they got to me. As it turns out, my old CA2002 120 Sister army killed every last one. It was still a surprise though--it was a list I'd thought about but judged A) too pain in the assish to actually build, and B) not tournament worthy. Despite losing to me, my opponent won his next 4 games.

Second, when I fought a Nurgle army with my Swordwind. Ever seen 5 Aspect Warrior units charge 7 plague marines, do no wounds, and all run away...and ended up winning anyway despite between us there was 1 dead model (a banshee of mine)? Yeah, that was surprising...50 aspect warriors bouncing. I figured it was g-d telling me he just had to even out the luck he's given me over the years, and that was the time he chose to do it.

3. I play a different game of 40k than most do. I can see the flow of the game from the get go. I can see your best choices, and how to deal with them if you make them...but most players make the wrong choices, and the games end quickly. I've been accused of alot of things over the years, many of them true to one extent or another, but there's always one thing that irks me--if I crush the powerlists the judges have been so kind to set me up with, and the eventual winners play wussy battleforce armies vs wussy battleforce armies...which golden demon painter do I have to bribe and which 'make me a better person' drugs do I need to take so I too can win? I can't prove I'm better and that my way is superior, because I won't pay for golden demon painting (and claim it as my own, as many winners have done in the past) nor will I take anti-psychotics.

Anyway, I see attempting to 'metagame' as believing you have a choice in what armies you will play against (you don't), that those armies will be run the way you would run them (they never are), that your dice actually have a serious place to play (they don't), and that when it's all over and you go 3-1-1 or 3-2 and you say 'if only I'd have...' that THAT is some kind of metagaming.

You want to metagame? You cannot simply play one army, and then see what the top 3 lists are and decide how your list is going to beat them. That's not metagaming, that's powergaming and there really is a difference.

4. I can't say what the rest of the countries 'best' do, as I haven't met any. I've seen alot of the same guys go to tournaments, and funny thing is I know who they are by their faces--and they pretend like their king gak, but when they see me they look the other way because far more often than not I've played them before and that was 'the year'. Or so I've had a few with balls tell me, the year they got run over by yours truly. 5x15=65 players. Remove the first game, and I'd say the second...and that's 3x15=45 'good' players that also crushed their first two opponents. Then they got matched up to me, and they got bounced from the top ten tables to the middle tables. I'll relate an experience to you from last years GT. My buddy and I played the guys who won the team tournament. My buddy is a bright cookie, and if I didn't have alot more experience than him he'd probably be beating me alot more than he currently does. i.e. I can't just beat him with brains. At any rate, these two guys came with 'THE LIST'. The one that was going to just own. They had practiced, alot. They had armies that complemented each other. Us? Well...I hadn't played 40k in like 5 months, and my Eldar were ok but were certainly not a top army (by my standards)...and I'd never played them under the new rules until that day. What I actually fielded at the GT was different than the team tournament, because the list was so bad. Anyway, we're playing these 'hard nuts' and in the end it comes down to a morale check--which I failed. Game. My buddy and I took crap armies (he took Sisters, btw) and we did exceedingly well. More than I expected, by far. All of the guys we played were dancing around me on the top ten tables on Saturday. Then they took a dive, and I was standing around taking the internet's favorite powerlists on the chin. I didn't have an optimized army, but at least when I had just my army and some 6 games under my belt...I beat the guys on table 5 and table 4 in the last two games on Sunday. My army was, and is, totally different from any other I've seen. I play it totally different. It is a balanced army, now. Back then, it wasn't really. Does that have anything to do with metagaming? No. My 'best play' is this:

I play unique armies. You won't see my armies elsewhere. (Well, you might now that I've been spamming Dakka with them.) I play EVERY army. Often. My local opponents have had to get better armies and learn my way of playing because just setting them up and running/shooting at each other doesn't cut it against me. It does for alot of 'best' players, because that's expected. I don't do the expected, or at least, I don't think I do. Most of my friends are extremely intelligent, and can cut their way through most if not all of the chaff players that exist both locally and at the GT level--and I do my best to show them every list, every trick, everything you can do with an army and to an army.

In short, I try my best to give my local opponents the benefit of my experience. They don't have to take my suggestions, but I think they realize my suggestions are there not to make a 'internet list' or fit a money requirement aka 'battleforce armies' but to show them what a strong army list really is and why I'd fear it if I ran into it.
Most listen to me, and my local gaming has gotten quite a bit better of late. Nasty armies are showing up, and while alot of people whine they're playing an 'Andy army'...it's not like I designed it from scratch. Call me a data miner if you like. I can 'see' what is good, and what is actually great. If you run good, no matter how great a general you might be...I run great, and I can beat your generalship. That leaves most players at a severe disadvantage.

It's part of why I don't really enjoy going to local tournaments anymore.
It's also part of why I only enjoy going to GW (and not indy) events, I don't expect serious competition except from those that know me (and can exploit my weaknesses...not that they tell me them lol) but I really do like seeing the armies in person.

For me, a GT is 30-45 minutes of gaming and an hour to an hour and a half of wandering around the art gallery.

It's probably the closest I get to actual metagaming, when I look for surprise armies. I usually don't see any, sadly. They are pretty though, and that makes me happy--it's what makes it worth it, despite my constant carping to the contrary.

Centurian99 wrote:The metagame in 40K has national, regional, and even local flavors. The metagame simply revolves around army building, and what kind of opponents you expect to see.

I could not agree less than I do with that statement.

It's just too simple. Metagaming is very complex, and your definition doesn't meet the requirements IMO.

Centurian99 wrote:Locally, almost everyone who plays regularly has experienced it. Somebody comes up with an army list that trounces all the locals, until someone else comes up with a counter. That kind of thing.

So, all of my armies? I heard this about my Eldar. So I played Legion of the Damned. Same thing, it's "your army". So I played something else. Etc etc etc. Now people realize it isn't my armies. I can play trash (compared to my usual power builds) and still win.

There's a level you are talking about, where nidzilla shows up and everyone loses. That's because those players playing each other have no skills, no concept of tactics, and no idea how close to chess 40k actually is. So it's just an army list that's overwhelming for an army list, and doesn't ever touch the metagame.

Centurian99 wrote:At a regional level, you've got the guys who travel to RTTs and the like. You'll usually see a core group of players at all or most of the events in a certain region, and the metagame consists of them trying to outplan each other.

Funny. The Utah RTT's aren't like that. I haven't heard anyone at my FLGS talk about what people are running at other stores. We could care less. When you suck, what does it matter if you have a good list or not?

Same with all the other states around here.

Centurian99 wrote:The national metagame is quite new, with the GW Tournament Circuit, the 'Ard Boyz tourneys, and events such as AdeptiCon, that have a national draw.

Not sure I'd call that a metagame, for several reasons.

One, they're disconnected.

Centurian99 wrote:At the risk of sounding self-serving...based on the results of last year, the midwest regional metagame is currently somewhat dominant. Assuming that everyone is metagaming based on their own local or regional biases, its pretty significant that the of the events on the GW Tournament Circuit, I think something like 7 or 8 of 10 were won by players from the Midwest. At the 'Ard Boyz finals, all three place-winners came from Midwest states.

Don't worry, I like cocky. The california guys think they're hot gak too. You do realize I'm dying to meet someone can beat me, because it's been 10 years of 'win 3 today, win 2 tomorrow, watch some dickface win the overall then go see how bad my sportsmanship score is this year for tabling people in under an hour'? I don't think I will, but you never know. You guys could be just awesome. Of course, I've beaten sooo many guys who think their hot gak because they placed at a GT last year and they're "sorry" I won't win this year it's not even funny. Just for the record, so no one is confused--I found Cent's adepticon win laughable. I don't want him to be offended, but taking a cookie cutter army and beating scrubs who have yet to figure out how to kill a TMC list after it's been around since...forever (what, 8 years or more), is not part of the metagame. I designed my chaos list to annihilate my nids. It can table the TMC list in 3 turns. I saw alot of chaos players taking absolutely crap lists to adepticon (to the point where I'd cry over how bad all of them were) and losing in a big way. I wrote a tactica just to get decent chaos armies out there, and it's always people taking crappy lists and hoping generalship will see them through. You know who you are. 40k doesn't work that way. If you run into a decent opponent, you lose with a crap list. If you want to metagame something, you need to metagame this:

Lists beat noobs, battleforce armies, and the painters.

Sure, you can cheat and social engineer and buy paint jobs...but in the end, if you don't do any of that...

YOU have to win.

Cent99 believes he got his win because people were 'metagaming' against Titans and he brought MC...wait, what?? Lascannon armies don't kill TMC? How the feth?

If you metagame to understand the game, to understand the rules, to understand how every army plays against every other army in the power builds for those lists...which 99% of the players out there don't...and then you get a real grasp on tactics (sorry, refused flank...split...gunline...rush...those are NOT 'tactics' those are strategies for divisional level combat and UP not bloody company level battles)...maybe, just maybe, you'll see where I'm coming from. Toss in years of experience playing all these different armies and you'll almost be READY to START metagaming, in my honest opinion.

Sorry for picking you out Cent. It isn't anything personal. Just using you as an example.

Centurian99 wrote:Just because you have out of the box ideas doesn't mean that you're not participating in the metagame. It just means you're advancing it to the next stage.

It isn't even close to entering into metagaming.

Hell, out of the box ideas are great...but if you don't know the basics of game theory (most here probably don't) and don't understand you have to run scenarios, statistics, theory, and analysis all within a undefined and essentially randomized set of values...man I could go on and on.

Most of the discussions here aren't metagaming, they're just discussions that could maybe possibly be related to one of those values.

Just ONE!

There are millions out there. I think pretty deep, and I'm still in the shallow end. Maybe in another lifetime I'll really 'get it'.

Hell, is 40K a zero-sum or a non-zero-sum game??

The combinatorial explosions that occur in every game of 40K is more than enough to keep me going for years and years on this subject, so I better stop now. lol

From an academic viewpoint, meta-analysis means analysis of data from more than one existing studies, rather than the analysis of new data.

In this regard, a player might analyse the results of 5 years of UK GTs to find if there are changes or trends in popular/successful armies.

He might draw conclusions that would lead him to change the army he takes to the next GT. There certainly are players who do this kind of exercise.

His conclusions may be flawed however that does not destroy the basic principle.

I would agree that the majority of players use the term loosely.

I have to disagree that there is no metagame.

I also have to assume I disagree with Stelek's notion of what the metagame is, though I find it hard to pick the substance out of the heavy icing of self praise.

Metagaming is a broad term usually used to define any strategy, action or method used in a game which transcends a prescribed ruleset, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game. In other words, using out-of-game information to affect one's in-game decisions.

If we take this definition (from reference.com) to be valid, then I think there's clearly a metagame, and clearly some amount of benefit to be drawn from it.

I'd consider list building to be part of the game, and obviously so is actually playing it. But as you "play" the listbuilding portion of the game, you can (and virtually everyone does), try to factor in the popular builds and popular tactics of the day.

It is NOT metagaming to play all the armies, look at all the lists, and learn how they all play. This is all observations of the rules themselves, and thus internal to the game.

If you're deriving answers from the rules of the game, that's "the game."

If you're deriving answers from outside the rules of the game, that's "the metagame." Observing the most popular lists of the day is outside the game rules.

Best players don't do this. Average ones, do.

Wrong. The best players stay ahead of the metagame. Average ones define it.

Take yourself as an example, Stelek. You're an incredibly great player. Incredibly. Perhaps the best in history. When you build a list, don't you make sure it has answers to all the top lists of the day? Skimmers? Monstrous Creatures? Etc?

Of course you do, I've seen you do it on these very forums.

Now, I know, I'm wrong. I don't know how yet, but I'm going to guess the explanation has to do with how nobody at GTs has any skills or integrity, and they pay for painted armies.

Regardless, as we know, your mind, and thus your listbuilding technique, is beyond the ken of a mortal such as myself. But all I have to go on is my inferior intellect, and to my observation, it looks like you partake of the metagame even as you fail to understand the correct definition of the term.

Honestly, dude, reading your posts fills me with glee. You may be the most colossally arrogant person I've ever seen on the internets. And THAT is really saying something.

Your blog is seriously a thing of beauty.

Stelek wrote:You do realize I'm dying to meet someone can beat me, because it's been 10 years of 'win 3 today, win 2 tomorrow, watch some dickface win the overall then go see how bad my sportsmanship score is this year for tabling people in under an hour'?

So why don't you win the Best General award?

Nurg, I enjoy getting the game over quickly and tend not to care about 'kill your opponents HQ and you get a bonus point, corky!' mission rules. I've come within 5 points, sadly when the spread is 105/104/103/102/101 it doesn't really mean much.

Phryxis, glad I can entertain you. Now why don't you not use the very poorly written (by gamers) wikipedia definition (by gamers) of metagaming (by gamers) and figure out what metagaming is?

Making a list that deals with portions of the game itself is not actually metagaming. If you could restate your argument after you edumacate yourself on what a metagame actually is, that'd be great.

You can if you wish call me colossally arrogant. Or bored as hell of beating scrubs year in and year out. It's only been a DECADE of scrub hell for me, but thanks for noticing my obvious pain over the issue.

Not sure I agree with Stelek about the existance or not of a metagame. After wading through so many opinions locally and internet about what "metagame" truly means, I turned to Webster's. Where else do you go to truly define a word? Anyway, metagame's not in there, but "meta" is. Definition 3 was the most appropriate, meaning roughly to generate a new field of study to critically study another field. I'm not quoting it to encourage others to go look it up themselves and then NOT be a source of web pseudodata myself (avoiding a personal pet peeve there, nothing more).

If he is indeed delving into game theory, he sounds to be dealing with games on a pretty critical basis to me. It sounds like he is looking at all the rules for the different codexes himself, rather than looking around for whateverelse the rest of the worldis using, an valuating every bit of it vs. everyother bit all in his own skull.

Or he's fulla crap. Although, I think if he was, there would be more people out there screaming "Stelek's fulla crap, I play in his store and he get's brutalized regularly."

I've go one interesting question. Stelek, with the kind of analytic prowess you are talking about (sounds more like you are describing a talent than a skill), what the HECK do you do for a living?

I realize that many may be choosing to use other definitions of the word, and they can do that if they like (last I checked the Firemen never made it out of 451), however I can just as easily choose to use a "real" definition. Kinda strikes me as the point of language, least as far as I personally take it.

Game theory isn't a theory of games. It's a theory of setting up limited situations called games that can be used to model and predict behaviour in economics and politics.

For example, game theory plus the theory of asymmetric information explains why the secondhand car market works the way it does. (This is what Joseph Stigler won his Nobel prize for.)

Game theory can be used in strategy.

Phryxis wrote:Honestly, dude, reading your posts fills me with glee. You may be the most colossally arrogant person I've ever seen on the internets. And THAT is really saying something.

Your blog is seriously a thing of beauty.

EXALT

grizgrin wrote:I've go one interesting question. Stelek, with the kind of analytic prowess you are talking about (sounds more like you are describing a talent than a skill), what the HECK do you do for a living?

I've:

Dabbled in the veterinary arts, the culinary arts, and tried doing IS but after doing Oracle for several years I realized suicide was looking attractive and thus needed to stop.

So, now I'm in IT. Less pay, but I'm not your typical greedy American looking for the next raise day after I get one.

This means all my intellect is usually sitting around spinning wheels, so I play with Army Builder quite a bit.

Anyway back to the original topic you touched on--what IS the metagame.

A certain idiot from the Magic community defined it as the game inside the game. This is not correct....using a sideboard isn't metagaming, as metagaming resides in the thought process outside the games rules itself--taking the entirety of the games parts and forming it into a coherent whole you can stick into a scenario and then analyze properly, anyway a sideboard is actually just adopting your own tactics to that of the enemy.

You want an example of actual metagaming? Scouting is one. Do I have an advantage against my next opponent (whoever that may be) if I've tabled my first opponent, walked around for an hour and a half, analyzed all the armies, watched players from afar whose armies I'd consider a threat, and then gone into my next match knowing there's maybe 5 guys I'd have to actually play and if one of those 5 doesn't show up...already knowing I'm going to win?

It's what is outside the games rules, not within it, and not within the actual gameplay itself; that defines the metagame.

I run myself into a 'deliberative reasoning' mode that looks like a poker face but I'm actually playing the game mentally, with my best on my opponents army and my worst on my own--and the slower the other person is setting up, rolling dice, measuring, moving, etc the more times I run through the possible permutations the game might take.

Most wargamers believe that studying lists (highly constrained payoffs), intellectually inferior opponents (the internet, sorry!) and a single layer of play (tournaments or friendly games) will make their game theory better. It won't! This is exactly where metagaming, creativity, and systemic thinking all cease to exist. Most wargamers felt this when the DA codex was released, it made for a game a 7 year old could play. Well, 7 year olds play Tic Tac Toe. There's a reason we don't play Tic Tac Toe anymore, or Sorry!, or Chutes n'Ladders. You can't win. People called the DA codex a nerf. It wasn't really a nerf, not really. You plug it into a metagame analysis algorithm and it would come up a paradox. You can't win. Not very good for a wargame, after all.

I guess the easiest way to put it is this: Metagaming means you use your knowledge of other factors to affect the game. Some call this the game within the game, but a card game is NOT our game. You can't hide anything from me, the rules demand it. So I can't really bluff that my scorpions have meltaguns, or that the card I'm holding IS an ace.
So it's comparing apples vs oranges again. Metagaming in 40k means knowing and understanding more and better than your opponent, not just the game but what is going on around you. I can 'read' most players (read like in poker) and I'm unreadable. I know what you are worried about, often before you do, and that's just a small fraction of real metagaming--using one type of input (psychology) to generate my own understanding of what's going on outside the game and enter it into the scenario I'm running in my head.
I start running the metagame the minute I find my new table.

Note that there are various other types of gaming that can (and do) affect the results of tournaments and these are all negative methods I refuse to use. Social engineering is the biggest one I've seen used, but there are others. These are also metagaming outside the game, but to me they're just cheating.

If you want to see what a metagamer reads, to help get that analytic flow going...try reading a few papers by the US DOD on wargaming. I've read all of them.
You can give http://www.systems.uwaterloo.ca/Research/CAG/ a try. They're highly informative. So is http://jcr.sagepub.com/.

If you don't know what the Prisoner's Dilemna is, odds are you aren't metagaming yet.

Give this a read: http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/hoteck/PAPERS/BGT.pdf

If it doesn't make you fall asleep, there's hope for you yet.

Phryxis wrote:Honestly, dude, reading your posts fills me with glee. You may be the most colossally arrogant person I've ever seen on the internets. And THAT is really saying something.

Your blog is seriously a thing of beauty.

He's basically like Mauleed was 4 years ago. He'll grow out of it, and the hot air that fills his head will eventually leave on its own accord.

BYE

I think mauleed left mostly to play other games, HBMC.

So, it boils down to a disconnect of the definition 'metagame'. Until there is some consensus towards the definition, no use in debating it.

I thought you'd get full battle points if you and your opponent agree to quit the game early as it is so onesided. If my opponent wanted to quit, I think it would be reasonable to request full battlepoints as I would not have the opportunity to earn them. Or, it could be a clever attempt to raise Sportsmanship scores.

But Ed was like that. He mellowed out a bit, though.

Any arrogance (real or presumed) at playing a game designed for 12 year olds and beating another person, is a joke. It's typical internet "I'm a male model-ninja-SEAL-sniper-bouncer-Vietnam vet" nonsense. Except taken to a much more nerdy plateau.

To C99, maybe the Midwest does so well because there is NOTHING else to do in flyover country Out on the coasts, we have options and stuff. Check it out

As for Stelek, nothing personal, but your posts are hysterical. They remind me of the "how about them apples" guy from Good Will Hunting. As I work for the DoD, I'd laugh at that reference, but why bother? Just go with it. As I said to Ed when he started to strut (in his own way), congrats on being so mind-boggling good at a game for throwing dice around and painting one inch science fiction dolls.

Seriously. Why waste your prodigious talents on this game? A bit of advice. I've been around horrifically smart and capable people, in several walks of life. The truly gifted have one thing in common. They don't have to talk about it. Because other people do.

What are these "options" you speak of? Like EXERCISE?

You west coasters are truly sick people.

malf,
I am an east coaster, baby. We do museums and crap.

dienekes96 wrote:The truly gifted have one thing in common. They don't have to talk about it. Because other people do.

Exalt for this.


And I've heard the term meta-game refer to a lot of different things. The definition definitely needs to be nailed down to have any sort of beneficial debate as to whether or not it exists.

I think it does, though, at least in some sense.

dienekes96 wrote:malf,
I am an east coaster, baby. We do museums and crap.

Mus-eems?

Anyway, people do balance their lives better than you suggest. But if
you didn't have unbalanced people you wouldn't have great indy conventions
(any flavor)