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harshr3ality wrote:I tried to be as descriptive as possible but all of the competitive guys know what I mean when I say non competitive lists.

So just how many long fang ml's squads are 'competitive' and how few are 'non-competitive'. And how many per squad?

How many razorbacks are 'competitive' and how few are 'non-competitive'?

Ad nauseum.

Perhaps you should have just excluded all the really good/competitive/tourney players in your area from the campaign and just let relatively new players play in it?

Next time you could present the tournament rules for the vets as "let the new guys win, but don't let them know it, there are separate prizes for how well you pull this off." Followed by "Oh yeah, and don't be an ass. If you have to ask if you are being an ass, or need rules parameters for what qualifies you as being an ass, then you are an ass."

This kind of mindset interests me, because you usually don't see it in individual sports/games. Like tennis - go to the courts in a park and you won't see guys who are in training and take it very seriously, looking for adolescents who are still taking beginner lessons to play against. They are encouraged to play games against opponents of equal or greater skill, to improve their game. It says something a bit odd about warhammer players, that it is so common (relatively speaking) to see a grown man playing against a kid, trying with all his might to stomp him into the ground.

Are you suggesting that there's a maturity problem in waac-off gamers?

(ducks)

For someone who takes the game really seriously to play a like-minded player, and play to win? No problem at all.

For a serious, experienced player to set up a match against a much newer/less serious/younger player, and try his hardest to win a crushing victory? Pretty incomprehensible to me.

I'm not saying that if you consider yourself a good player, that you should intentionally underperform while playing newbies. I'm saying you should talk them through what you're doing, explain why this is a good idea in competitive terms, etc. As opposed to subordinating everything else to the win - because winning a game of toy soldiers over someone who never really had any chance is a bit pointless IMO.

I think part of the problem is people set these things up and invite all kinds of players. You don't typically see Tennis tournaments or leagues with prizes where John McEnroe and some guy who just picked up a racket play against each other. But in this case, the organizer invited both the new players and McEnroe and asked McEnroe to go easy on them.

McEnroe is not wired that way, or has a different definition of going easy than the organizer.

While McEnroe is a huge jerk, the organizer is the one who's at fault. Why is he having an event with prizes and mixing McEnroe in? Why isn't he making the rules more explicit, or just personally vetting each list? Why isn't he just kicking McEnroe out for obviously ignoring the rules, at least in spirit?

This has nothing to do with WAAC. This guy is just playing a strong list against weak lists for a prize. He's not cheating as far as I can tell, or lying to these new players about the rules, or pulling other shenanigans. He's just using units everyone has started to hate.

lambadomy wrote:I think part of the problem is people set these things up and invite all kinds of players. You don't typically see Tennis tournaments or leagues with prizes where John McEnroe and some guy who just picked up a racket play against each other. But in this case, the organizer invited both the new players and McEnroe and asked McEnroe to go easy on them.

McEnroe is not wired that way, or has a different definition of going easy than the organizer.

While McEnroe is a huge jerk, the organizer is the one who's at fault. Why is he having an event with prizes and mixing McEnroe in? Why isn't he making the rules more explicit, or just personally vetting each list? Why isn't he just kicking McEnroe out for obviously ignoring the rules, at least in spirit?

This has nothing to do with WAAC. This guy is just playing a strong list against weak lists for a prize. He's not cheating as far as I can tell, or lying to these new players about the rules, or pulling other shenanigans. He's just using units everyone has started to hate.

Precisely.

imweasel wrote:

Brother Gyoken wrote:I think there's such a thing as "the spirit" of a campaign. I think if you say "Don't make tournament lists" that should be enough without listing every possible combination of stuff that is considered too powerful to avoid rules lawyers.

What is one person's idea of a tournament list and another person's idea of a tournament list can be vastly different as well as falling everywhere in between.

Using this guideline. you might as well have had the OP build everyone's list.

It's doesn't matter; he shouldn't be bringing in ANY sort of list like he did, even as heavily edited, against brand new players. Against brand new players, its a good idea to bring terrible units, like Possessed, Ogryns, Etherials, whatever, so that THEY GET IN THE SPIRIT OF THE GAME. After the first couple of games, THEN take the training wheels off.

These newer players probably don't even know how to move and shoot, and this dude is taking a pretty competative list, while hiding behind the fact that he "needs to get ready for a tourney". He is a pretty big TFG.

"Get ready for a Tourney" is a pretty lame concept of how you are spending your time in the first place. This isn't some kind of physical sport, it's not like repetition will improve your ability like practicing a tennis serve or a gymnastics dismount. You either build a killer list and make no mistakes, or you don't.
"practicing for a tourney" is seriously, the worst, most EMBARRASSINGLY DORK (like geek in the bad way, not the good way) loser ass excuse for spending your afternoon I have ever heard. It's up their slightly above "I didn't ask that girl out because I had to keep checking on my ebay bid for the rare Wolverine action figure for my collection" level of DORK.

Slarg232 wrote:It's doesn't matter; he shouldn't be bringing in ANY sort of list like he did, even as heavily edited, against brand new players. Against brand new players, its a good idea to bring terrible units, like Possessed, Ogryns, Etherials, whatever, so that THEY GET IN THE SPIRIT OF THE GAME. After the first couple of games, THEN take the training wheels off.

I don't think some of the posters here know what a fun game is. I mean, look at some of these responses. It is all about crushing people. Some of these posters are agreeing with the WAAC guy, practically saying what he did was okay, defending him because there wasn't a point by point list as to what not to bring. Why were ALL the other pros able to bring fun lists but this one guy? I can tell you why. That one guy is an idiot that does. not. care. about other hobbyist's fun at all.

Hopefully this thread is a learning experience for both the OP and any possible organizers reading this in the near future.

Well here's what I have gathered, my responses in red:

You wanted to run a tournament that had some fluff to it.
Fluff is subjective to the person You should have said "I must approve all lists beforehand"

This supposed WAAC player brought a tough list, you said razorback spam.
He could be running a mechanized company, which is fluffy AND good

He brings "Cheesy" lists and plays to win
He could be a competitive player. There's a websiteHere where the people make competitive lists & tear each other apart. They are truly aren't having fun unless it's competitive. Trust me I have beaten a fair amount of face & it is NOT fun.

You approved his list
Can't you just ask him to write another one or switch to a different army such as Tau or Orks just tell him no nob bikers or something?

He is ruining the fun for others
Have you told him this? I know a competitive player, his mindset isn't "I'm being too hard" it's "you're being too soft" and unless someone tells him that people are actively put-off by him he doesn't notice. In fact he enjoys losing, then he learns something.

He does this a lot.
Maybe he's just looking for some competition. Also how do people approach him about it? Do they provoke him with cries of "cheese" or "Stop screaming I'm an " or do they say "Hey man, next time could you tone down your list or slow down & show me what I'm doing wrong?" If they provoke him it's likely to just make him want to say "Cry more"

You seem to think he wants the prize.
He might not, again he might just want competition. I have seen people win tournaments & give up the prize because they weren't in it for the prize. They only go to the tournaments because the prize creates incentive for others to step up their game A few good games were prize enough.

tl;dr Talk to him. Don't remove him. He may just not know, generally people call competitive gamers WAAC. They aren't. They just enjoy the game at a much higher level than others and if it's not being played to that level it isn't fun. Think of it like video games I'll use 2 games, Ninja Gaiden & Call of Duty. Some people like to play CoD, it's fun easy & enjoyable. Some people like to torture themselves with Ninja Gaiden on Master ninja. Both are video games (different genres but hey) yet they are played by very different people. One enjoys a nice relaxing game & the other who enjoys a good challenge. Think about which one that guy is before you go calling him a jerk.

@yeenoghu- There is a such thing as tournament prep. You aren't training muscle memory though you're training your brain. Something akin to a chess match. You are training yourself to be able to analyze any given situation & discern the most favorable outcome & the more different scenarios you are faced with the better perspective you have.

@Buffo - fun is subjective. He might enjoy a good challenge where others don't. To some people taking a silly/fluffy/weak/"fun" list is not actually fun to them.

and again I will say,
If you need a judge ruling on rules parameters to guage whether or not you are being an ass, you're an ass.

Eh, it's an escalation league. I know some lower point events who have parameters set on the lower point games to prevent things. Most 500 pt tournaments I have played explicitly say:
No special characters
No model over 2 wounds
No 2+ save
No invuln better than a 4+
No vehicles with combined armor greater than 33
Limit of 1 H, Elite, Fast Attack & Heavy.

Asking for limitations might be because they want to know "Is this legal" not "OK I can break it here, here & here"

Hey I like what you said about chess, but this is a far cry from chess. Chess does not involve variables, and there never has to be a "ruling" on a contested situation (which louder players usually win, which sucks for me because I play far more quietly than I post), you don't find chess players taking the relative points values for their "army" and spending them all on extra power units (yeah, I'll drop 3 pawns and buy an extra bishop...) so sorry, it isn't at all as precise a mental exercise as a game of chess. Chances are most of the 40k master competitors would suck at chess. There's no loopholes, no tape measures to fudge, figures to nudge, and there's no place for arguement.

In chess: the winners win because they are better, and the losers lose because they weren't
in 40k: the winners win because they are better (according to the winners), win because they had a cheesy list (according to the losers), and the losers lose because of bad luck (according to the losers) or bad tactics (according to the winners).

I know 2 competative tourney players, one of them is ranked on some list or other I don't care about too and you know what they are good at? exploiting ambiguities and arguing. I have played chess with both these guys too when we used to live in the dorms back in my college days, and they both sucked at true abstract strategy (but they can both out-argue me at 40k frequently), so this is just not a good comparison.

Also, you said "you seem to be running a tournament with fluff..." or something along those lines. I totally respect your run down man. I do. I am not (for once) being sarcastic.... but I just gotta say.
Too often the nature of our psychology likes to make things into dichotomy. In this instance, an army is either "fluffy" or "competative", according to the lingo of the moment. This is not quite accurate though.
Fluffy means, the army has a story behind it, or a believable reason for why it is structured the way it is structured... like "These imperial guardsmen are the last survivors of a battalion separated from its regiment after the assault on Leonard VI primus hive. They managed to scrap together several of their leman russ tanks to provide a spearhead and punch through the enemy line to rejoin their regiment"... decent reason why there's a bunch of leman russ tanks on the table, right?

So that's fluffy.

Now... fluffy why all those Leman russes have exactly the same vehicle upgrade, and all the survivors of the battle happen to be riding chimeras, decorated combat veterans carrying nothing but meltaguns on their trip home?
That's a waac list.

You can be fluffy and waac if you try hard enough, but when you need to start making up reasons for spam, you stretch everybody's credibility and finally some truthsayer might come out an say "dude shut up we all know you just power built your TWC/longfangspam off of what you read on the intarwebz, so shut up and smash my 'fun' army already, don't insult me by trying to excuse it."

My two cents

In my opinion, WAAC and new players do not go together. I have a friend who's girlfriend is a newbie SM player, and he stomps her into the ground because he's a WAAC player. Cue the annoyed glare. Thankfully my wife is going to start teaching her.

I game in a big WAAC environment, where people will use all the tricks to win, including switching weapons and units in the middle of a game. Newer players tend to game with each other in that lgs, simply because of the immense annoyance of trying to deal with WAAC players.

If there are new players in a campaign, play SHOULD be friendly, rather than amped up. There is no fun for players getting stomped into the ground on their first campaign.

You can try and justify it by saying tournawebz practice, or thats the way I play or whatever. But its common sense that if you just smash-play a new player, they'll be alienated from the hobby.

+1 to the OP, and +10 to the person who said kick the offender out of the campaign. If you aren't strict, you shouldn't be the organiser. Regardless of friendship, you need to lay down the rules on this.

While I agree that the player in question was out of line and should have participated in the spirit of the event, I disagree entirely with Yeenoghu about winning players, and about tournament practice.

Most of the best players I have met are excellent sports and have no need whatsoever to argue or exploit ambiguities. A few "top" players are like this, sadly, but they are a distinct minority. Most of the guys who resort to unsportsmanlike behavior or arguing for advantage aren't actually good players, even if their bullying attitudes allow them to win locally.

In any game with any degree of strategy, practice helps you get better. Using your tournament list in a variety of situations against a variety of opponents on a variety of tables does help you get better. I agree that doing so against newbie players is a BS excuse, though, not real practice.

yeenoghu wrote:and again I will say,
If you need a judge ruling on rules parameters to guage whether or not you are being an ass, you're an ass.

Brilliant, sir.

Anyway, if you're supposed to bring sub-optimal lists to these things, and everyone else does it but you, you're kind of being a tool.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mannahnin wrote:Most of the best players I have met are excellent sports and have no need whatsoever to argue or exploit ambiguities. A few "top" players are like this, sadly, but they are a distinct minority. Most of the guys who resort to unsportsmanlike behavior or arguing for advantage aren't actually good players, even if their bullying attitudes allow them to win locally.

This is absolutely correct.

The best player that I know (he's quite good, his tournament record is shockingly one-sided) is one of the best people I know.

Maybe it's time for the FOC to get a shakeup. How about a % system like Fantasy? Min 50% Troops, Max 25% HQ, Elites, Fast Attack and Heavy Support.

A solution:

Tell people to deploy their armies and on turn one conceed. He'll soon cotton on. Waste his time and don't give him the 'practice game' also they could say 'well you have such a waac/op/tweaked list there's no point in me playing gg' then make sure they've someone else to play.
He'll learn or leave.

Actually, no, he is NOT entitled to bring whatever list he wants. The Campaign Organizer told the players NOT to bring power game lists. This may be harsh, but if the OP had some balls, he would have told the power gaming git NO at the start of the campaign. Yes, technically the OP said his list was okay, but if the OP wanted to say NO, he could, thus limiting what the WAAC jerk could bring.

Firstly I agree with the rest of your post. However I still disagree with this part. According to the OP he told the experienced guys the format of the event and advised that it was aimed towards less experienced players. He did not from what I can tell disallow them from power lists, he merely advised them it was "friendly". The guy is still entitled to bring a power list, crappy and all as that may be.
Did the OP have any posters up advertising saying "No WAAC lists".
Was the tourney format sent around on fliers/emails/post saying same?
Was each entrant sat down with and explicitly told not to bring a power list?
We'll never know until the OP posts again but it seems from my perspective it didnt happen.

Flipside the event and look at it this way.
Lets say one of our better known tourney players from this very forum came along and posted something akin to this:

"Hey guys just a bit of a rant here. Recently I went to my FLGS to play in a tourney. Im going to be playing Adepticon/Ard Boyz/"whatever" real soon so I wanted to bring a WAAC list and get in as much practice as I could even though the TO said it was a pretty friendly affair. However practice is practice and there were prizes on offer, some of the models I even need! The TO stated that things were friendly but when I showed him my list he said it was too over the top and not in the spirit. I asked him was it allowed under the rules and he said yes but it wasnt fair on the other players and he didnt want me playing it. We argued and eventually he backed down. Now people are saying my prizes should be coinfiscated or that Im a reall *sshole and should be banned. Whats your views?"

I accept I've made a few assumptions in there but I hope you get the gist of what im trying to illustrate. I guarantee there would be a large % of people supporting said player albeit stating it wasnt really in the spirit of the rules. However tourney RAW hes still entitled to bring the list.

tl;dr! TO should have been much clearer/firmer but the guy didnt do anything technically wrong (bar being aTFG which you cant legislate for).

yeenoghu wrote: I know 2 competative tourney players, one of them is ranked on some list or other I don't care about too and you know what they are good at? exploiting ambiguities and arguing.

Have you considered that they simply know the rules better than you and are correcting you?

Monster Rain wrote:Anyway, if you're supposed to bring sub-optimal lists to these things, and everyone else does it but you, you're kind of being a tool.

This. If it was a few players bringing in OTT lists (for that campaign) then I'd suspect it was the OP's fault for not being clear. But the fact is all the other vets didn't have a problem with this, were ready to engage with the newer players, but this one guy didn't.

As for the tourny-practice excuse, it makes absolutely no sense if you are taking an army in preparation for a tourny and using it in a friendly match. If you really wanted to learn from any loss or close call, as Manchu has mentioned, then you would take the list against another tournament orientated list. The TFG knew that this wasn't a tourny level match, but took his tourny list anyway.

Another thing to note:
We are only seeing one side of the argument. I tried to shed light on the possible other side but unless he comes here & says his side we will never know. It's like listening to the OJ trial except OJ is the only one allowed to testify or present evidence

That said how are the other "vets" in the club. Just because they are "vets" doesn't make them good. I've played in a few different clubs and some of them thought their "vets" were good. They weren't, they were just the best the area had to offer. It wasn't hard to beat them and eventually I stopped going. I came back about 2 months later (I made an hour and a half drive to the other club for better games) and was confronted as follows:

Him: "Oh you're back. . . I thought you'd gotten the hint that nobody here wanted to play you and left"
Me: "What? No, I left because I wasn't having fun here. Nobody would or could play at my level"
Him: "Well it's not like we had fun playing you either"
Me: (A bit hurt at this point) "Well I'm sorry, why didn't you say something?"
Him: "We tried, what did you think we meant by you're lists are cheese?"
Me: "I honestly thought you were joking or being a sore loser, next time just be up front with me"
Him: "Well you should have taken the hint but I see your point."

From then on me & that group were fine. We agreed that once a month I was allowed to bring one of my power lists unless someone wanted to play them specifically. Otherwise I brought toned down ones (noise marines instead of plagues, lords instead of princes, dreds instead of defilers ect.) The problem was ignorance on both sides. I didn't know I was causing a problem & they didn't know how to properly convey that message to me.

I guess the reason I'm sympathizing with him where most people here are against him is I feel like I know where he is coming from. It's the king-kong effect. Some people see him as a horrible monster but if you went deeper & got to know him, he's just misunderstood. Again I will advocate you talk to him in a calm manner & just explain your issues. I've found that people can be more than reasonable if you bring up the issue as it's usually a case of ignorance on one side or the other.

@yeenoghu - OK the chess metaphor wasn't perfect but I still think it holds water in that you are playing to train your brain to read certain situations & discern the best outcome. The playing field just isn't 100% even. Also some of my best games were against new players. Mainly because they pull out some weird lists & tactics that can be surprisingly effective. Haven't played 40k much recently been playing Malifaux but:
I was playing a new player & he was using a master called "The Dreamer & Lord Chompy Bits"
My crew was a bit better but Malifaux has a great deal of balance.
I was winning quite soundly until he ran the dreamer into my 2 masters & changed into Lord Chompy Bits (A move I thought was surely suicide)
He then proceeded to chain an ability called "Onslaught" which essentially gives you a free attack and can be chained multiple times. I lost both my masters.
Still won the game (By a scant 1 VP) but that was a strategy I had never seen used and was terribly effective. So playing new guys can teach you things mainly because they are not stuck in a school of thought. Much akin to a child, their imagination & curiosity can lead them to discover some things you never thought of. (Not that I recommend beating the tar out of them, I don't)

Slarg232 wrote:It's doesn't matter; he shouldn't be bringing in ANY sort of list like he did, even as heavily edited, against brand new players. Against brand new players, its a good idea to bring terrible units, like Possessed, Ogryns, Etherials, whatever, so that THEY GET IN THE SPIRIT OF THE GAME. After the first couple of games, THEN take the training wheels off.

These newer players probably don't even know how to move and shoot, and this dude is taking a pretty competative list, while hiding behind the fact that he "needs to get ready for a tourney". He is a pretty big TFG.

Then why in the world is the OP allowing experienced vet tourney players into the campaign TO BEGIN WITH?

You should be railing against him and not 'TFG'...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

yeenoghu wrote:and again I will say,
If you need a judge ruling on rules parameters to guage whether or not you are being an ass, you're an ass.

Pot meet Kettle.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

yeenoghu wrote: Fluffy means, the army has a story behind it, or a believable reason for why it is structured the way it is structured... like "These imperial guardsmen are the last survivors of a battalion separated from its regiment after the assault on Leonard VI primus hive. They managed to scrap together several of their leman russ tanks to provide a spearhead and punch through the enemy line to rejoin their regiment"... decent reason why there's a bunch of leman russ tanks on the table, right?

So that's fluffy.

So says your interpretation of 'fluffy'.

I don't think we should be "Railing" against either.

From only hearing ONE side of the story we don't have a full picture however it looks like they were both in the wrong (TO for not saying something, Player for not realizing what he was doing, that's how I see it) & should sit down & discuss how to fix it so everyone has a good time.

tl;dr of all my args, both parties are in the wrong & should sit down & talk about it instead of everyone ranting on the interwebz.

Shas'O Dorian wrote:of all my args, both parties are in the wrong & should sit down & talk about it instead of everyone ranting on the interwebz.

I agree with this too.

I have posted multiple times about Tyranid comp and have not even gotten more than about two people to agree on what would be penalized as a "WAAC" list. And those 2 disagreed with the other 2 that agreed.


My summary:
Fluff is what you use as justification.
WAAC is what the other guy uses. (Especially if he beats you)

/shrug

*Note: "You" and "the other guy" are not personal, they are situational.

yeenoghu wrote: Now... fluffy why all those Leman russes have exactly the same vehicle upgrade, and all the survivors of the battle happen to be riding chimeras, decorated combat veterans carrying nothing but meltaguns on their trip home?
That's a waac list.

This is a stupid non-definition. For example, I'm playing Armageddon Steel Legion.

Everything is mechanised because it's the Armageddon Steel Legion. Every vehicle and unit is similarly equipped, if not identically equipped, because supply lines are short and vehicles are literally being driven off of the production line into combat.

You can be fluffy and waac if you try hard enough, but when you need to start making up reasons for spam, you stretch everybody's credibility and finally some truthsayer might come out an say "dude shut up we all know you just power built your TWC/longfangspam off of what you read on the intarwebz, so shut up and smash my 'fun' army already, don't insult me by trying to excuse it."

It's still a competitive escalation league. The best way to limit spam in an escalation league is to limit force org choices and expenditures on wargear at the lower point levels.

"The last survivors of a lost space wolves expedition...trapped on the planet for 20 years. At this point, the long fangs outnumber the Grey hunters...there are more rune priests than you can shake a stick at. Gathering up as many of the heavy weapons of their fallen comrades as they could, pushing forward in the last of the company's razorbacks, it has come to this. Years of searching, then months of scouting and preparing. They have found their target, and begin their final assault on (your army/xenos race here). For Russ...for the emperor...for terra!"

Aaaaaand that is my atrocious fluff for my longfang razorspam wolves. They are officially legit and not an army I play to try to win tournaments!

lambadomy wrote:"The last survivors of a lost space wolves expedition...trapped on the planet for 20 years. At this point, the long fangs outnumber the Grey hunters...there are more rune priests than you can shake a stick at. Gathering up as many of the heavy weapons of their fallen comrades as they could, pushing forward in the last of the company's razorbacks, it has come to this. Years of searching, then months of scouting and preparing. They have found their target, and begin their final assault on <your army/xenos race here>. For Russ...for the emperor...for terra!"

Aaaaaand that is my atrocious fluff for my longfang razorspam wolves. They are officially legit and not an army I play to try to win tournaments!

Good job man! Gosh the same thing happened to an awful lot of space wolf expeditions too, ain't that crazy?

Yeah it is really strange, those poor space wolves always getting into trouble.

I guess I didn't write in that my expedition is lead by Bjorn, but then that wouldn't make any sense. Time to change my army!