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My local club have all gone a little bit Tournamental, and are attending as many as they can afford/get time off work for.

Feeling marginally left out, I am tempted to start going along to a couple (but not the Brighton Warlords ones, which I understand are fairly hardcore in their approach. Not really my bag).

But of course, Tourny gaming gets a bad rap for being the home from home for TFG and his nefarious assosciates.

So what I wish to ask is that when you encounter TFG in a Tourny, do you find it detracts from the whole thing, genuinely how often do you encounter TFG, and where abouts on the table system (Top to Bottom, that stuff) do you tend to find them? Not to keen really on spending good money to play some games against strangers if my generally 'meh' attitude to list writing is going to increase my chances of meeting TFG.

Also, and be honest, have you met more TFG at your gaming store/club, or at Tournaments?

Please only reply if you are part of the Tournament scene, as I'm looking for a specific perspective here.

I've never met a TFG when I traveled for a tournament, only known a couple at the FLGS.

I've only met TFG's at FLGS. Nope, take that back. I met one at a tournament back in 2008. All in all one guy in 2 years of at least a tournament a month isn't so bad I'm thinking

I don't find that one knob ruins a tournament for me at all. Usually, what you have is someone trying to argue rules for advantage. In that case, firm and polite is the way to go, if that doesn't work, call over the judge. You'll have to go with his ruling obviously, but it's nothing to get annoyed about.
The other two types can be guys who aggressively assume you are going to cheat all the time. That I find very unpleasant, but I've only met one or two of them in the last 3 years of tournament attendance, and people who see social engineering and so on as a way to win. What I mean by this is people who will suck up to get a better sports score, or will use passive aggressive methods to try and bend the rules, or who try to put you off through slow play, being especially pernickity, and so on. These are the most common type, and they vary in severity. I find it easiest to just politely continue with your game, and stick to the rules. Slow play is easily dealt with by politely asking them to hurry up, and if that doesn't work, asking a judge to observe. Don't let them guilt you into 4+-ing stuff that's obviously not right, or not asking a judge to look.
When it comes down to it, most players are there to have fun. I do think that the third kind are more common the higher up the tables you go, but the best counter to it is knowing your rules well and sticking to them. I'd say 80% of the people I play at tournaments are perfectly sound.

Been going to GW GT's (one a year) since 1998 - at least till they stopped holding them. I can count the number of TFG's I encountered on one hand.

Do they detract from the experience? Yes, a little, but moreso if you let them.

As for myself, I tend to be in the lower top quarter to middle of tournament tables, so I imagine that limits the TFG exposure somewhat.

I've encountered one in my time tourney gaming. The truth is that tourne players != TFGs and tourneys are not full of cheating asshats. A well-run event brings happy, orderly players and stops drama from happening.

I've only been to a handful of tournaments and only once played a TFG, but have been to one, where there were two TFG's and in the third game they were playing each other on the table behind me, damn hard to concentrate on my game as they were arguing about everything, from mm of distance to 4/5 up cover saves etc.

The most amusing argument though was that as one of them had a hoard army, and they were arguing a lot, the time limit elapsed, at this point it was a draw the chap with the 'elite' army, then started acusing the other chap of timewasting on purpose. The TO just said, end of game tough.

Amused me a little, but i think it's the TO who needs to try and keep these people in line

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:My local club have all gone a little bit Tournamental, and are attending as many as they can afford/get time off work for.

Feeling marginally left out, I am tempted to start going along to a couple (but not the Brighton Warlords ones, which I understand are fairly hardcore in their approach. Not really my bag).

But of course, Tourny gaming gets a bad rap for being the home from home for TFG and his nefarious assosciates.

So what I wish to ask is that when you encounter TFG in a Tourny, do you find it detracts from the whole thing, genuinely how often do you encounter TFG, and where abouts on the table system (Top to Bottom, that stuff) do you tend to find them? Not to keen really on spending good money to play some games against strangers if my generally 'meh' attitude to list writing is going to increase my chances of meeting TFG.

Also, and be honest, have you met more TFG at your gaming store/club, or at Tournaments?

Please only reply if you are part of the Tournament scene, as I'm looking for a specific perspective here.

MDG, the only TFG we as a club have encountered was the guy I was telling you about in the store last week. That's one opponent, out of the goodness knows how many I and the lads have encountered in the combined total of games we played at tournaments in the last 12 months. Come with, drink some beer, and enjoy! You know you want to...

While I've met more jerks playing in "casual" environments than in tournaments, there is evidence that cheating and general asshattery will sometimes get you to the top.

I've played in a lot of tournaments with the guy who won the recent Broadside Bash, and he twists rules and gets really pissy when he's losing.

The winner of the recent Seattle indy GT had his cheating behavior recorded on camera, before he was stripped of his prize.

So, the real question is not, "does cheating help people win?" but "why does cheating help people win, and what can we do about it?"

The first thing is that, as gamers, we need to be more assertive of our rights not to get cheated. After the Seattle GT I saw several players post on forums how if they had given appropriate sportsmanship scores, the guy would not have been in 1st place at the end. Also, while he was pulling some really shady stuff, nobody called him out on it. We need to be less afraid to call cheating players out on their behavior. Once cheating stops helping people win, they will stop cheating.

Hear hear, willydstyle. Call cheaters on their cheating, and know your rules well. And his, if you can!

The thing to remember is that at a tourney, you will run into people with different playstyles and rules interpretatons. Different playstyles and different rules interpretations !=TFG.

The biggest thing to watch for in Tournaments is people who play fast and loose with the movement rules, fudging a bit here and there.

Especially in WFB games, where that type of thing is all the more critical.

Other than that, relax, enjoy yourself, have a good time and use the judges/organizers if at all necessary!

To be honest Alpharius, you've pretty much just described me there. Never really looking for an advantage with it, but I simply cannot be arsed to do absolutely precise wheeling etc.

Perhaps I shall give it another go. See where it takes me.

Alpharius wrote:The biggest thing to watch for in Tournaments is people who play fast and loose with the movement rules, fudging a bit here and there.

Especially in WFB games, where that type of thing is all the more critical.

Other than that, relax, enjoy yourself, have a good time and use the judges/organizers if at all necessary!

Movement rules are just as critical in 40k, as the precise placement of each individual model can and does impact the outcome of games. However, many players can't be arsed to do things like reaction and pile-in moves correctly, despite that importance.

I've been to a number of the UK events over the last few years, from the Dark Stars Campaign Weekend to the last throne of skulls. And generally speaking, I have a lot of fun at them. There have been a total of two games I've had where I've run into someone playing hard and fast with the rules, but when challenged on it, neither pressed the issue. At worst, you end up with a slightly exasperating game because you have to solve a rules dispute every ten minutes or so.

I tend to find that knowing most of the rules from all the codexes helps, as it makes it a lot more difficult for someone to push a 'misinterpretation' of the rules on you. But generally speaking, this is a rare occurrence, only about 5% of the games I've had, and they're almost never downright unpleasant games to play.

What you do need to keep in mind though is that play style at a tournie can be a lot different, and sometimes exasperating as a result.

For example, in the last Throne of Skulls, I was on two wins, and a draw. I entered into my fourth game knowing I needed to win if I was going to proceed to the next round. I drew an Ork player, and we ended up playing for two objectives, one in his deployment zone, and one in mine.His army consisted of three battlewagons filled with gazghkull and meganobz, and a load of slugga boyz, followed up by a horde of gretchin and lootas, and a trio of kanz.

I deployed my army, took first turn, and promptly crippled gazghkulls battlewagon where it stood. Due to a KFF though, I did very little opening damage, and just started spreading out, getting ready for the horde approach. His turn began, and the bloke scratched his head, and basically said to me, 'Sorry mate, but I can't win this one. I'm not even gonna try and get to your objective, because I'll get trashed. So I'm going to make this a draw.' He then proceeded to blockade his objective(which was in a building) with his remaining battlewagons to set up a wall, and covered all the space left in that corner of the table with every single model he had.

The result was that whilst I blasted away with everything I had, I simply couldn't get to his objective, because he positioned his whole army on it. Now this was quite frustrating for me as a player, because not only did it preclude a fun game being played in which we attempted to outmanoevre each other, it meant I had absolutely no way of winning whatsoever from my turn 2. From a logical standpoint, it makes perfect sense, as the guy wanted to ensure he pulled the points for a draw out of the bag. He was perfectly pleasant, and even apologetic about it. He was definitely not TFG.

However, that simple calculation for tournament points resulted in a situation that would never occur in an un-competitive environment. So in a long winded way, what I'm trying to say here is that the very style in which people play games can be immensely different in a competitive environment.

I've never run into a real TFG in a tournament, only played one once at my FLGS.

In tournaments, I've had two unpleasant games, (out of quite alot) and looking back at it now, it might even have been the same fella (a couple of years between the two events, and he was young, so he had probably changed quite a bit between the events). Both times, the unpleasant game was a result of me taking an early lead, him pretty much giving up (with some whining and much groaning) - leading to a massacre for me, and then he slammed me on sportsmanship/cheated while reporting score, and thereby loosing me some pts.

I advice you to join a tournament, it is an absolute blast, and the swiss system should ensure that you meet opponents at approx. the same skill level as yourself (for later rounds, 1st is always luck of the draw, and in second, many have gotten easy massacres)

I don't mind someone being a rules lawyer if they know what they're talking about.

It's when someone's being a tool about something that they are dead wrong about that really chaps my ass. Even if I am up against TFG it really only bothers me if I lose to him. Beating someone who takes it all that seriously is the most satisfying type of win.

I've never really run into TFG in a tourney, whether a small local event or a larger (GW US GT) event. And I've been to a lot. What I have run into is people who think they know the rules because "That's the way we play it back in ........" Fortunately, it's easy enough to show most of them the error of their ways. And there have been a couple that tried to cheat along the way, again, not that hard to correct.
Point being, even if you do run into me, errrmmm, I mean, TFG, don't let him ruin it for you. Play the game, have some fun, drink a few beverages of your choice and inclination afterwards while swapping stories about good and bad luck. Heh, the year Dark Eldar were released, we were drinking in the bar afterwards and someone asked me if I'd had to play against one yet, I said something like I don't think so, and the guy several seats down started sputtering, then reminded me that I HAD indeed faced his Dark Eldar army (and wiped it off the board in about three turns......) I bought him a beer and we all had a good laugh about the old man's lack of memory. Just go to the tourney to have fun. And you'll be surprised at how well you play when htat your plan.

Monster Rain wrote:I don't mind someone being a rules lawyer if they know what they're talking about.

It's when someone's being a tool about something that they are dead wrong about that really chaps my ass. Even if I am up against TFG it really only bothers me if I lose to him. Beating someone who takes it all that seriously is the most satisfying type of win.

Just because you know the rules and help others play by them does not a rules lawyer make. The term "rules lawyer" implies trying to bend slightly ambiguous wordings to your favor, and usually does not mean that they are following "RAW."