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I've found playing kids in tournaments to be a real double-edged sword.

On one hand, you can take a dive. Show them how to beat you, etc/other. The kid feels great for whooping on the older guy and can go home with a win.. Your chances at placing just got shot in the ass.

On the other, you don't cheat. But roll the kid.. Now if you advance to a top table or place, your win didn't mean as much since you beat the tar out of a youngin'. It kind of demeans it.

I've done both of the above in tournaments, and I'm always torn on it. I'm there to compete and hopefully win, but I feel like a jerk for crushing a kid. It also takes away from a win because I felt I had an easier set of games. I think "well, thats the nature of the beast in tournaments".. On the other hand, I let the kid win and he feels good about it but I just gave up any chance at competing. While I don't want to say it made for a wasted day/drive/entry fee, it does leave a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.

So yeah, I feel drawing a young person for a match up is kind of lose-lose.

I'm all for helping them learn and grow in the hobby, but I'm at a loss for what to do as far as tournaments go.

I'm sorry Mundar, but I just cannot see it that way.

I'm relativly young (18) but still, I don't see why anyone would deliberatly take a loss vs a younger person (or any newer person) at a tournament.

If a younger person cannot deal with losses in an adult fasion, why are they even at a tournament?
If you are a poor player (age/lengh of time in the hobby regardless) and you go to a tournament and don't expect to get hammered, your crazy.

If someone had done that when I was younger (not that I went to any tournaments) I would have been really angry at them - there is no pleasure in a win if the other person lets you have it.


I'd roll them (or try to) and then say "Good game" and give them tips on how to improve.

I find it strange how people seem to equate "young" to "not very good at the game".

And there are not just two modes of play; either "win epically" or "take a loss". If you are that great at the game you will automatically steamroller a "kid" or a "newer player", you should be good enough to take the game to closer to their skill level and give them a good game while still taking a win away.

That way you get to progress, and they don't feel like they have just been ripped a new one and have nothing from the game, or that you have just played their army for them.

When I say young, I'm talking 10-13 years old.. There were two tournaments locally when a kids eyes would water when he lost his terminator squad and actually started to cry when he lost. I didn't play him, but the guy that did felt pretty horrible. It basically ruined the tournament for the both of them.

And I have no difficulty making it a close game and still winning.

My point was, if you play a kid (usually an easy game) then go on to take a top spot in the tournament, it doesn't feel like the spot was really earned. Someone else could have had 3 pretty tough games, and I could have only had 2.

And yes, a lot of them do go to tournaments with high expectations and don't take their loss in a adult manner. I've been playing in tournaments since I was 13 years old, I'm 29 now. Over the years I've seen it all. Some are cool about it, some don't care, some throw a fit.

My problem is when I go on to top 3, I don't feel like I deserved it.

I suppose that is fair enough, and I was not replying explicitly to your post, but to the general grumblings that seem to come into so many of these kinds of threads, so don't worry

To be honest, unless I'm helping someone to learn the game, I really don't like playing vs anyone younger than at least high school age. It's like when I play basketball, I don't like playing hoops with little kids, but high school age seems to at least "get it" enough to take it seriously.

GG

Mundar wrote:My point was, if you play a kid (usually an easy game) then go on to take a top spot in the tournament, it doesn't feel like the spot was really earned. Someone else could have had 3 pretty tough games, and I could have only had 2.

Meh.. age of your opponent doesn't really mean much in terms of your strength of schedule, so to speak. I've played against 13 year olds who were tougher opponents than some 30+ aged players.

Player-A wrote:

Mundar wrote:My point was, if you play a kid (usually an easy game) then go on to take a top spot in the tournament, it doesn't feel like the spot was really earned. Someone else could have had 3 pretty tough games, and I could have only had 2.

Meh.. age of your opponent doesn't really mean much in terms of your strength of schedule, so to speak. I've played against 13 year olds who were tougher opponents than some 30+ aged players.

QFT. The only game I lost at my local GW's monthly tournaments over 4 months was to a 12 year old. Who managed to handle 2 LRs. With Shrike n' Scouts. In 1000 points.

I'm in the age limit between 12-15, and have never been cheated personally.

Some times in my FLGS, some people play a illegal army but you just get on with it. (Unless its and eight year old with four landraiders, as previously experienced)

Most 'adults' i play give me tips and stuff and ive never been poorly treated by an adult.

My views are that everybody had an army as a 'kid' and thats just how 'adult players' are made.

Alexgm101.

First off, that's a very mature way of looking at things Alexgm...
Now on to my feelings about this topic:


My reason for not liking to play against 'kids' is because I feel guilty afterwards. Let me explain:

The only 'kid' that plays at our store is 11. He's smart, he's a dedicated modeller (his dad and him make model railroad scenery too... which is how they decided as a father-son hobby to start 40k so they could model together). So anyhoo, long story short... he's a nice, bright, enthusiastic kid.

Now the problem is, we have a 'league' game using that little hex map thingy with the flags to represent who controls what territory. It's house rules I think, but the way the league organizer runs, you can fight a randomly drawn player to take over an empty hex, but if you are right next to another players hex, you have to go at it with that player. Some players quite sensibly try to nudge their control zones towards the kid or the dumb players so they can keep their W/L/T ratio up, and shy away from the more seasoned of us.

So I had the unfortunate happenstance of starting right next to 'the kid' one week. I had never played against a child before. He didn't quite understand some rules, his army list was a very weak build but he was just using the figs he had, but he had painted all his figures (more than can be said for the 18-21 yr olds there) and he just wanted to play. I had a premade list of my Eldar (11/0/1 last season) which was extremely streamlined and effective. So no matter HOW HARD I TRIED TO LOSE (making unwise moves, firing at less-than-ideal targets, etc) it was just not goint to happen. I ended up wiping the table (you can't LOOK like you're trying to lose, the kid's not dumb, just inexperienced) with very few figures lost from my army. All this while his dad is watching the whole game.

I left that night feeling like a jerk, even though I was being patient, explaining rules, trying to teach, even making suggestions and warning him what to watch out for in my harlequins charge range and stuff like that... but still I came off with a slaughtering win. I still felt like a jerk the whole drive home. I think it may have brightened his night a bit when I told him that its just the luck of the dice, and that he played a very good game, maybe that helped him, but I still felt bad. I SOOOO wanted the kid to win - but he just wasn't at all good yet. I'm 35 and have played 40k back since Rogue Trader. He's 11 and has played for 2 months. I don't like going to playgrounds win a boxing match against little kids either (the 18-21 yr old attitude cases at my store are another matter... them I probably would), but our league rules forced the most lopsided matchup between the store champ and the new kid. The kid lost the game, but I lost my self respect. I think I was the one that lost overall, and it was a long guilt-ridden drive home.

When I first joined a competitive league they had a 15/16 year old player who was rapidly becoming feared. He had a 3rd ed Razorback spam shooty SM army. He cemented his place as one of the best in a group of over thirty players over the next couple of years before he went away to college and ROTC. Nowadays he’s a commissioned officer and a real life tank commander.

My approach with younger gamers is the same as with any other new gamer. Give them a real game, but give them constructive feedback and suggestions, and be a good sport.

I think Guitardian gets where I'm coming from. An Overall win in a tournament doesn't feel like a win, when it was reached by playing inexperienced players.

I can show them tricks, help them learn etc which may make them feel good about it.. But the whole drive home, I feel like crap for taking a prize that was less work than others may have had to put in

Children can be good at anything they put their mind to.

War games are not an exception.

That's very humane of you to pretend that... but actually lots of children are just fething stupid.

Guitardian wrote:That's very humane of you to pretend that... but actually lots of children are just fething stupid.

And many many adults carry on being Morons for their entire lives.

Whats your point?

The point is, and sorry that I didn't extrapolate on it, that some people just do not have the mental capacity to understand all the rules, exceptions, variations, phenomenal amount of information to keep track of all at once, all at the same time, and still be able to stay cool and think straight on a tactical level.

I'm not saying I don't like dumb people, some of them are very nice, I'm just saying I don't like playing a mentally intense game against them any more than I like beating up toddlers in a prize fight (which, despite the rumors, I only do infrequently). A lot of people think they want to play 40k when they see all the pretty models and such.

When they actually get into the game though, no amount of coaching can help them understand all the aspects of the game and they get discouraged. This game is a pretty steep learning curve and a very costly endeavor in order to 'master' it and know ALL the rules of ALL the codex (which change all the time too). Maybe it's just not good for kids to play in competative settings against grownups. That's what 'youngbloods' was intended for I think. (why don't they have a 'senior citizens' tournament for the terminally forgetful to play on even terms though?

I'm sure there exceptions, but in general, maybe they should learn by playing with other kids that are also learning, instead of being thrown into the water and made to learn how to swim surrounded by sharks who are concerned about their win-loss-tie ratio.

CT GAMER wrote:

Guitardian wrote:That's very humane of you to pretend that... but actually lots of children are just fething stupid.

And many many adults carry on being Morons for their entire lives.

Whats your point?

The dumb children still have hope

Look man, perhaps I am an exception to the norm... my mother was a early childhood development specialist. Me and Alex (redbeard here on line, who also kicks some serious donkey at this game) were reading by age 2. I played my first chess game around 4, I was crunching numbers with D&D at age 6.... etc...

kids these days know how to own someone on Halo3.... It's just not the same kind of kids as the little geeks back in the day with their paper and pencil and 8 sided dice and math scores and imaginations that weren't just handed to them. I know they are out there, and have the potential, but with the dumbing down of schools and the proliferation of easy-to-use video games and easy access to pop culture through the internet that even a downs-syndrome kid can figure out... not having to learn how to speak in DOS and so on etc... it leads to a different mental process than the kids we old dudes (hey I'm only 35, but that makes me ancient as a gamer nowadays) grew up with.

I know they have hope, but that means we have responsibility to hand them a game from time to time, and coax them off of their xboxes and into something a little more thought provoking and mathematically challenging. If that means handing them a game just for encouragement purposes then so be it. I'll take my loss (if I can actually manage to do so) and not care about our "adult" concerns like win-loss ratio (yeah we're all so grown up too aren't we?)

This isn't so much a matter of why it is not cool for kids to play in tournament competetive events (which of course it is not, but... some people take their 1 year old screaming brats on greyhound rides or movie theatres too...), but how we can make them better at it so they do not annoy us so much, and encourage them by explaining to them things like "mathhammer" and "psychehammer" which could actually affect their lives in other places, like school, human interaction, math skills, philosophical concepts like accepting bad luck... the list could go on and on.

The only difference being a kid makes, is that kids are more likely to be new players. I don't see any reason to treat them any differently.

If a new player shows up for a tournament, the new person should get the same treatment that everyone else gets, as a basic deal. If the game isn't impossibly pressed for time, part of the basic treatment everyone should get is the quick rundown of rules if they're facing an army they're unfamiliar with. Now, above that treatment, if the new player is interested, it's nice if you can offer to discuss what might work better next time, or if it was a really quick massacre offer a quick grudge match or something.

So, in what kind of horrible ways are you folks treating each other that kids would need preferential treatment?

I feel some adults take advantage of kids and new players of any age for that matter because they might not have a great grasp of the rules.

I think when your young it is best to go to a doubles tournament first with another person who it is also a first time going to a tournament or a vetran.

or just like high school sports, or boxing matchups: there's the freshman team, and then there's the varsity team... and they don't get mixed matchups between the new players and the hardcore. Occasionally some new player with exceptional intelligence will grasp things and catch on really fast, and get to play varsity games even though he's still a freshman, but in general, they only get matched up with other freshmen.

I really don't think it has to be an age issue so much as an experience issue (like I said, for instance, I was playing D&D when I was 6, so I have a bit of a head start, just as a for instance)... and yeah that 16 year old mentioned earlier who was "quickley becoming feared" in his local area, sure he learned how to SPAM an army real good, big deal. Good for him, now he gets to play with the big kids right? so maybe he gets to play for the varsity team, while some 40 yr old who is just learning because he wants to bond with his kid, he can go play in the 'lightweight' category with other 'lightweight' boxers. Maybe one day he will be a heavyweight, but for now, give him (or 'the kid') a chance to play against people at their own level.

I also could make an analogy to a video game: I can get a huge high score at Madden if I play on 'easy' difficulty level, while learning how to play... less so on 'medium' level... and on 'hard' level I actually feel that my victory is an accomplishment... so clearly I should play on 'hard' level, if I want to be proud of my victory over my xbox.

They should have weight-classes (or whichever category of analogy you want to pick), and a player who enters a tourney can pick which 'level' he wants to compete on. The hardcore badass competetive types will naturally want to prove themselves in the top category, and the inexperienced will naturally be more timid and pick the bottom category... this makes for less wierd matchups (except for TFG who is a hardcore player but just needs to win so bad he enters the bottom category so he can get his little ego trip I guess, but everyone hates TFG anyways so nobody cares if he wins the prize against lightweights he should just go beat up a kid on a playground if he needs it that bad, and nobody will think of him as a 'champion' lightweight fighter, just a jerkwad that needs to wash more and move out of mom's basement before he turns 40)