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Look, if you have a guy that will only play his Vulkan TH/SS horde at casual night, he's just a jerk. Likewise, when you step into a thread discussing Vulkan hordes, and chastise everybody for playing cheesy lists, you're also a jerk. You might be comforted in knowing that somewhere out there, a jerk that has something in common with the people you're talking to was mean to you, so you're asshattery is completely justified, but you're still a jerk.

A big part of being a good human being is letting stuff go, and not retaliating against the person that hurt you. To retaliate, not against that person, but against total strangers, isn't just mean, it's kind of pathetic.

Look, if you have a guy that will only play his Vulkan TH/SS horde at casual night, he's just a jerk.

What if that's his only army?

I'm just saying, the GW hobby is pretty fething expensive, not everyone has multiple armies to choose from. Or even enough models to do a competitive or casual list with.

Sidstyler wrote:

Look, if you have a guy that will only play his Vulkan TH/SS horde at casual night, he's just a jerk.

What if that's his only army?

I'm just saying, the GW hobby is pretty fething expensive, not everyone has multiple armies to choose from. Or even enough models to do a competitive or casual list with.

Find me a guy who literally does not own a GW model other than the components for hardcore tournament armies.

You raise a good point. It's possible that a tournament list may be the only things the guy has painted, or the only army he feels comfy with. It could also be the only army he brought. Still, I think if you're an experienced tournament player, you should know that you have a huge advantage built in over chumps at casual play night. If nothing else, you spot the other guy some points, or handicap yourself somehow.

Crappy units are pretty cheap on ebay, and any SM player can get a tac squad and a dread for cheap from AoBR.

Deadshane1 wrote:
Neither player during that game was a casual gamer...has nothing to do with the subject here.

Then my question for you is,

If a casual player decided to enter tournament just for fun , does that all of a sudden automatically make them
NONE casual?

LunaHound wrote:

Deadshane1 wrote:
Neither player during that game was a casual gamer...has nothing to do with the subject here.

Then my question for you is,

If a casual player decided to enter tournament just for fun , does that all of a sudden automatically make them
NONE casual?

I think that a casual player that enters a tournament for fun can have fun, as long as they accept the fact that they might lose some games. If you go in with the mindset that you'll play three games, get to see some interesting looking armies, and get to play for at least a small stakes, than yeah, they can come and still be a casual gamer.

Most tournaments are smaller affairs anyway: 4-12 people playing at a store, and while the handful of big fish will battle it out for the top, there's plenty of room for fun lists in the middle and bottom.

Polonius wrote:Crappy units are pretty cheap on ebay, and any SM player can get a tac squad and a dread for cheap from AoBR.

If I want to make my army crappier I'll just take more fire warriors and devilfish, lol...you can't make me waste money on crap units like Vespid or Krootox.

I might take Vespid if you were giving them to me, but I won't pay for them.

Sidstyler wrote:

Polonius wrote:Crappy units are pretty cheap on ebay, and any SM player can get a tac squad and a dread for cheap from AoBR.

If I want to make my army crappier I'll just take more fire warriors and devilfish, lol...you can't make me waste money on crap units like Vespid or Krootox.

I might take Vespid if you were giving them to me, but I won't pay for them.

Well, that's my point. Anybody that's been gaming for any length of time has some extra stuff they can add to an army, or switch out some wargear options, etc. to water it down.

I am surprised lash spam did not make the 10 most hated armies list.

G

I used to think I was a casual gamer but apparently I'm a tournament player according to my GW manager. I never play cookie cutter lists, I enjoy painting and won't field anything unpainted, and I'll go with the flow for most things. That being said I want to play by the rules, so no you can't have an Ironclad Death Company Venerable Dread (what the argument was about) and I'll let your floaty tape measure go so far before I say something, and this apparently make me a tournament player.

fullheadofhair wrote:

Don't know. As a casual gamer myself I think threads like that are stupid. Different lists are for different environments and no-one environment is better than someone elses. If you are going to take on a tournie player in his/ her type of environment, even for a friendly, you should take your hardest list as a matter of respect and give the best game you can. V'v tournie player should be willing to adapt when asked for a casual scenerio based game.

Have a hard list doesn't make you a dick. Whining about why you lost when your underpowered fluff list got walloped by said power list makes you a dick. To paraphrase Sean Connery "don't bring a knife to a gun fight". People should be aware of the environment they are going to be gaming in (and that includes opponent) and plan accordingly.

This may well be the best statement of things I've ever read on Dakka! Excellent point!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Instead of a whine fest like a bunch of little girly men about this topic - are we instead missing the true point.

We have a game system and rules that can support BOTH aspects of the hobby. Hardcore tournament and the Epic Narrative campaign fluffy to the max games. If only the energy expended debated which is the right way to play the game could be put into making both aspects better.

Ultimately - it comes down to the event organizers. You can have tournaments that reward the soft scores and balance things that way. Or you can have more 'ard boyz tournaments. I personally think that BOTH are the way to go. I guess I'm an on the fence person - I enjoy the hardcore no holds barred tournaments and also enjoy building armies for the story and pageantry of the list - the fluff. Sometimes I enjoy one - sometimes I enjoy the other. The only time I get irritated is when I don't know which one is which ahead of time - either bringing a knife to a gunfight or a nuke to a snowball fight. Variety is the spice of life - and we all enjoy a hobby that can appeal to both gaming types - as well as to the painter/converter extraordinaire.

Ain't that a good thing?

djones520 wrote:
I consider myself a casual gamer. I honestly don't mind seeing those lists in a tournament scene. Thats what tournies are for, winning. But it does irritate the hell outta me when people bring that to the FLGS weekly fun night.

See, this is something I have an issue with. We all say we'd like to see fun fluffy stuff on league night, but everyone has a different definition of what is fun, fluffy, and competetive, and usually what people mean when they say "fun and fluffy" is that they want their opponent to let them win.

I don't understand why anyone posts an army list other than to make it stronger.

If you're playing for fun, or whatnot, pick the models you like, or the theme you want, and go with it.

Posting army lists is asking to be told what units are suboptimal and should be replaced with bloodcrushers. And it's cool to say 'help me make my army better, but I want to keep some theme' - but even then, you're asking people to make your list better, within that established set of restricitions.

Unlike most people, I won't comment since the OP was to the "Casual Gamer"................

Oh never mind, I can't resist!

It's like when my slow playing thread, there were several people posting giving advice/critisizing even though they admitted to not being tourney players. It's human(internet) nature to spout off your opinion. The internet makes it much easier to do so.

By the way, altough I do love tournies, I also play casual, so I think I qualify to participate in this thread.

GG

I think the more neutral and inoffensive way to phrase it is that when posting a thread in Army Lists, You Make Da Call, or Tactics, it's very useful to give context. To explain where/when/in what environment you intend to use the army/information.

And it behooves respondents to pay attention to the initial post, and respond (or don't respond, if they're not interested in the type of play) appropriately for the context/situation the OP describes.

Champion_0f_Chaos wrote:Some Jerk Lists Would include, Nob bikers list, guard Air Cav, Stern guard drop pod, jet bike seer council, stuff like that are generally not fun to play against

Wow. That's a pretty broad brush you're painting with, there.

First off, you're calling people jerks for liking to play hard armies. That's seriously bad form.
Second, you're trying to make your OPINION onto fact... another failure.

I happen to think that the armies you listed as "generally not fun to play against" are some of the BEST to play against. I WANT my opponent to bring the biggest, baddest, toughest army he can field so we can see who stomps the muck out of who.

By the way... although I do enjoy a win, I do NOT mind losing. I am a casual gamer.


Eric

One thing I see casual gamers doing, in our gaming group at least, is that there will always be a few competitive players. People who like tournament play and will make top notch lists to win. That is their goal: winning. After awhile the casual players, while winning isn't their main goal, will get tired of losing and want to win. It is simply human nature to want to win.

So then the casual gamers will build up their lists. They will search online for tactics, lists, and the like to help them win. Eventually when they are able to give the competitive gamer a good fight, drawing or possibly even winning against him, then the competitive player will change their list and tactics. Then the cycle starts over and over with each side changing their tactics and lists to beat the other player, be them casual or not. Eventually both sides turn into competitive gamers and then there are no more casual gamers.

I would know since I am guilty of the above as a former casual gamer.

I would say having a utopia of all casual gamers with no worries of winning or losing and every plays nice is about as likely to succeed as the 'utopian' idea of communism was. Good idea in concept, but there will always be those who will want to rise above the rest thus unbalancing the power.

whitedragon wrote:

djones520 wrote:
I consider myself a casual gamer. I honestly don't mind seeing those lists in a tournament scene. Thats what tournies are for, winning. But it does irritate the hell outta me when people bring that to the FLGS weekly fun night.

See, this is something I have an issue with. We all say we'd like to see fun fluffy stuff on league night, but everyone has a different definition of what is fun, fluffy, and competetive, and usually what people mean when they say "fun and fluffy" is that they want their opponent to let them win.

There is fluff and there is the game. Each is a separate entity.

The concept of a "fluffy" army is meaningless since GW has taken great pains in recent years to destroy/contradict there own established fluff on a regular basis.

If one wants proof look no further then the current chaos codex...

IF the list is legal and you enjoy it then play it. IF GW can't sort out there own feth when it comes to game balance or codex design then so be it...

Deadshane1 wrote:Why do "Casual Gamers" enter threads that have titles like: "How to build the Hardest Marine Army and Win at Tournaments"

...and 'add' to the discussion by saying things like "you're a jerk if you build armies like this!"

Don't you know that the thread isnt for you in the first place? I don't recall ever feeling a need to enter threads entitled "How to build the fluffiest Ultramarine army ever!" (in fact I never go into them) and rail on about how your army lacks focus and will never win a 'Best General' award.

It's just confusing to me.

Welcome to internet forums.

No one is obligated to play anyone else, nor is anyone obligated to say or not say anything. Just deal with the consequences of your own choices and don't bitch about what's obviously going to happen.

My main problem comes when you can't get a proper casual game in, because the other gamers are only seeking 'practice' games, whether my list is geared for a Tournament or not.

This impacts on my preferred enjoyment, and that is when I draw my line.

I myself am a casual tourney player and havent done bad as of late. The only time i comment on a tourney list is if 1 it is the army i play and 2 they have a good list or 3 they have completely messed up their list and i am usually not thd first to tell them so. There have only been a handful of times that i have ever commented on a different army than my own and that is because i have played enough orks to last a lifetime!

I gotta say, the relative hardness of a list makes relatively little difference to how enjoyable a game is.
Case in point: I went to a tournament over the weekend and took my little mech Witch Hunters list. Not exactly a hard core army, but it is fun. (Still has yet to win me best appearance though.)
First game was against Seer Council/5 Bright Lance Wave Serpent eldar. Dawn of War, Kill Point. I had never fought eldar before (and guess who didn't bring a psychic hood because "No one EVER plays psykers around here!") I got my face STOMPED! Oh my god, did I get stomped.
Second game was against a Tau list with lots of kroot and stealth suits. Kind of a nifty little list that was pretty different from what I was used to. It was a close game, coming down to a draw on objectives turn 7.

Which game did I enjoy most? The first one by a mile. Sure, I got curb stomped, but the other player was a really nice guy who walked me through his army and what had what, answered questions and brought up potential rules confusion before it became a problem. Granted, I had known him from around the store, but he was a good opponant and I learned a few things.
The second guy was not nearly so fun, with a tapemeasure that was... less than accurate, and a poor grasp of the rules when they didn't benefit him. He was kind of pissy and just in general was not that fun to play against.

My point? So glad you asked... It isn't the "super broken OMGWTFBBQ!" lists that are the problem. If you are a casual player, by definition you shouldn't care whether you win or lose beyond the fact that it is the general goal of both sides in the game. What makes or breaks games (in my opinion at least) is how good of a sport your opponant is. It is no more fun to kick in the teeth of a whiney bitch than it is to lose to a cheater, but the opposite is quite true. Win or lose, nice, fun people are nice and fun to play against.

Because they can.

That doesn't make sence.

That's almost like those slow's that go onto youtube and look up random metal band's and diss them to make the other's pissed.

Might be a mild form of Troll.

I personally only get serious during tourny's cause I paid to get in.

And let's face it in a Tourny setting it's live to win but people should remember the casual game's should be fun not hardcore.

Shadowbrand wrote:That's almost like those slow's that go onto youtube and look up random metal band's and diss them to make the other's pissed.

...

And let's face it in a Tourny setting it's live to win but people should remember the casual game's should be fun not hardcore.

You use an offensive term to describe the mentally handicapped, yet you misuse apostrophes?

First, please refrain from using that term. There are posters who have relatives/friends who are mentally handicapped, and they take offense to it.

Second, please refrain from making such outrageously ironic comments.

Thank you.

I'm a little confused about where this thread came from. It seems like just another generic troll to get the 'casual versus tournament' debate all riled up again.

To test this hypothesis, I checked the most recent 3 pages of threads in the army list forum. I looked through every thread who's title implied that it was for competitiveness (either by asking for criticism, by mentioning tournies or competition, or by being a current 'tourney list'). Interestingly enough, there was only one post that might have come close to being what the OP describes. It was in a 2K Word Bearers army, and it was about theme, more specifically, how the player could make the Word Bearers theme come out more strongly. Nowhere was it mentioned that the list was 'cheesy' or 'unfair'. In fact, I didn't see any of this sort of behaviour in all of the threads that I looked through.

So where is this assumption that 'casual gamers' are sticking their noses into competitive threads and flaming people coming from? I can only assume that the OP was feeling frustrated with 'casual gamers' and decided to stick it to them. I'm hardly surprised that this thread has received numerous mod alerts and warnings. Perhaps this was a natural extension of the 'RaI vs. RaW' that came about in YMDC and related threads, and someone wanted to apply it to 'Casual versus Competitive'. This thread, to me, reads like a needless attempt to divide people over what can be a touchy subject.

I suppose the moral of the story is that, in general, people are doing a pretty good job of respecting the Army Lists forum. I saw no indication that the OP's claims happened at all, and I also have noticed that competitive players don't come into threads called 'friendly XX' and tell the people to take out their Autarchs and put in two Lash DPs. It isn't happening, and it's damaging to declare that is is.


Maybe all we need to do is keep on respecting each other, and things will work out fine. Especially if we remember that 'Casual versus Competitive' isn't 'Hitler versus Churchill'. This divisiveness and drawing of sides isn't helping anything. Actually, threads like this could only make the problem (which I don't think there is right now) worse, not better.

I may be mistaken, but I'm guessing this was the thread that inspired this one:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/253157.page

Yeah, you're absolutely right. I was aware of the thread (I've been reading it, and it did a good job of riling me up - even without any 'stake' as it were in the conversation). It was the main motivator for my guess that deadshane was feeling frustrated with Casual Gamers. I should have addressed that in my post.

It shouldn't detract, though, from the main idea of my post - which is that attempting to draw lines through the forum community and setting people against each other is a bad plan, and can only make the forum a less pleasant place to visit.

Thinking through the consequences of making a thread is a great idea. I'm certain that, at the time, deadshane could envision that this thread wouldn't be a place for enlightened discussion, but would be a magnet for heated tempers.