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-Loki- wrote:The new system is (probably) better for compatitive play, since it mostly still just boils down to killing the other army while maybe getting a troop unit to a particular spot. But games lost their, I don't know, character?

It is best to design games to be competition viable. If you want missions with more character, GW did kind of make an entire book of missions




That is not to mention Planetstrike, Cities of Death, and I guess even Apocalypse can get a shout out.

chromedog wrote:I play for fun.
My ego doesn't require that I win at the wardollies.

What's the bet that the guy who wins overall at 'Ard Boyz this year also plays for fun?

I play for fun, but I need some competitive aspect for the game to be fun.

Simply moving toy soldiers forward and throwing dice is not fun. It's boring and menial. Adding some tactics and strategy makes it fun. And in order to do that, you need to have the incentive to beat your opponent.

Devising a badass force, or employing complex tactics is all part of the fun for me. Playing to a somewhat competitive and competent level is an essential aspect of the fun.

...which makes it all the more difficult to swallow GW's horrible game-balance.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

chromedog wrote:I play for fun.
My ego doesn't require that I win at the wardollies.

What's the bet that the guy who wins overall at 'Ard Boyz this year also plays for fun?

I'd bet against the 'Ard Boyz winner playing for fun, unless he finds only winning fun and the actual gameplay and social aspect of the game unfun, in which I would definitely say he would play for "fun".

We don't HAVE 'ard boyz to worry about down here.

GW don't DO tourneys of any kind. They did for a while, but they were crap at it - so they let the blokes who did it before them pick up the ball after they dropped it.

We don't miss them.

I would not say I am competitive as such. I would have a really close gaem and lose rather then desimate an army and win, no fun in that.

I literally do it for fun and can not stand it when you around bad losers or bad winners which are just as bad

chromedog wrote:We don't HAVE 'ard boyz to worry about down here.

GW don't DO tourneys of any kind. They did for a while, but they were crap at it - so they let the blokes who did it before them pick up the ball after they dropped it.

We don't miss them.

Hear that wooshing noise? That's the sound of the point I was making sailing right over your head.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

chromedog wrote:We don't HAVE 'ard boyz to worry about down here.

GW don't DO tourneys of any kind. They did for a while, but they were crap at it - so they let the blokes who did it before them pick up the ball after they dropped it.

We don't miss them.

Hear that wooshing noise? That's the sound of the point I was making sailing right over your head.

*Throws up a glove and catches the point.*

I played against some big D-bags this year at Ard Boyz. Thankfully losing a round or two didn't put me too far off the game for any length of time...

I play to win.

Explanation for those who care: I feel that not playing to win is a disservice to my opponent by not doing the best I can do, it says "look at me I don't need to play well against you" and the much worse after winning "I didn't have to try to win to beat you".

I don't run extremely over powered/ tournament lists, I always have a smile, I am always polite and never cheat.

I play to win.
My ego is so fragile it will be crushed if I don't.
If it looks like I might not win, I cheat.
I hate everyone who plays for fun, and love to crush their 'fluffy' armies flat with my Blood Angel/Necron combo army and call it fluffy just to watch them cry - then I tell them their army sucks, and by extension so do they, then I feel fulfilled for the next week - two if I get them to cry a few tears.

In a more serious vein;
When i play, I play to win the game, and I have fun either way.

curtis wrote:I play to win.

Explanation for those who care: I feel that not playing to win is a disservice to my opponent by not doing the best I can do, it says "look at me I don't need to play well against you" and the much worse after winning "I didn't have to try to win to beat you".

I don't run extremely over powered/ tournament lists, I always have a smile, I am always polite and never cheat.

I think you'll find most who play for fun also smile, are polite and don't cheat. Plus most of us don't have either "look at me I don't need to play well against you" or "I didn't have to try to win to beat you" on our minds at all... nasty generalisation there.

Playing for fun is playing to win.

If fun to you is tabling every person you play then more power to ya. But in most cases people just want a win and in some cases even a draw. I personally enjoy a narrow victory that is hardfought. Both players tend to walk away in better moods.

Aurelia wrote:

curtis wrote:I play to win.

Explanation for those who care: I feel that not playing to win is a disservice to my opponent by not doing the best I can do, it says "look at me I don't need to play well against you" and the much worse after winning "I didn't have to try to win to beat you".

I don't run extremely over powered/ tournament lists, I always have a smile, I am always polite and never cheat.

I think you'll find most who play for fun also smile, are polite and don't cheat. Plus most of us don't have either "look at me I don't need to play well against you" or "I didn't have to try to win to beat you" on our minds at all... nasty generalisation there.

I added the smiling bit so i didn't get called WAAC, TFG, etc which is not me. Also maybe I should of put it feels like I'm saying "look at me I don't need to play well against you" and the much worse after winning "I didn't have to try to win to beat you" cause well it does feel like I'm saying that which isn't fair to my opponent, you should always give your best you can, which means aiming to win even against impossible odds. hmm... should prolly insert a gurren lagann quote here.

BeefCakeSoup wrote:Playing for fun is playing to win.

If fun to you is tabling every person you play then more power to ya. But in most cases people just want a win and in some cases even a draw. I personally enjoy a narrow victory that is hardfought. Both players tend to walk away in better moods.

This^^

I also find that the "I don't play to win, I play to have fun crowd" are basically just those people that really suck at the game and try to make up excuses for their poor playing skills. I also find that those are the type of people that are more likely to cheat,either inadvertently because they ignore the right way to play the rules, or because they don't agree with some particular rule and insist that you have to play it their way, etc...

PhantomViper wrote:

BeefCakeSoup wrote:Playing for fun is playing to win.

If fun to you is tabling every person you play then more power to ya. But in most cases people just want a win and in some cases even a draw. I personally enjoy a narrow victory that is hardfought. Both players tend to walk away in better moods.

This^^

I also find that the "I don't play to win, I play to have fun crowd" are basically just those people that really suck at the game and try to make up excuses for their poor playing skills. I also find that those are the type of people that are more likely to cheat,either inadvertently because they ignore the right way to play the rules, or because they don't agree with some particular rule and insist that you have to play it their way, etc...

I dont agree with the above statement.
Specificaly i have trouble with the statement that the play for fun crowd suck at the game. I base this on my experience against the load of chaos players in the area. Many local players are playing to win but they do so with a different tact than the WAAC players do. One local player only plays 1000 sons. He has a beautiful 1000 sons army, and he will field anything that has the mark of Tzneetch. I dont believe he has ever put together an army with the intent of loosing but he always fields a fluffy, flavorful 1000 sons list. Another local player insists on only fielding units with the mark of Slaneesh. These players are both good players who play the way that they do because it makes the game more fun for them to have a strong theme. They are playing for fun, not WAAC. when i play against them i often field units that i would not field facing a WAAC opponent. It makes for a more varied game when you have loads of scouts running around the field being pursued by chaos dreads and spawn. Against the local WAAC space wolf player every game is going to be Long fang spam with razorbacks and some terminator with ML spam. Boring. The WAAC player feilds the same list every time because it has the greatest likelyhood of winning. Winning matters that much to him that he has given up variety for the assurance that he will overpower his foe via list creation.

How much fun is it to win knowing that the only thing that won the game for you was the list you created. especially if the list you wrote was the same spam from last week etc.

I dont really like to play WAAC gamers, especially since the codex are so poorly balanced that often the codex is what determins tha winner in a WAAC faceoff, not the player.

My opinion boils down to the fact that close games are better than a slaughter any day. Its nice to know what what level of competition your foe will be fielding before you build a list. We often agree to either play a fun and fluffty game, a tournament list, or an ardboys style list befor list creation, that way we have well balanced games. If the game is balanced it really does make for a much more fun experience. Which returns us to the point that codex are not balanced well to begin with...

See, nerfing a list to play with someone who has a terrible army isn't fun to me.

Would I play someone with a really bad army? Sure. Would I bring a fluffy list to give them a chance? No.

Imo, learn to build lists and make a competitive one for fighting randoms and a fluffy one for friendly games. Just because we are playing 40K doesn't mean we have to hug after a game lol

Making competitive players out to be villains is whack too. The is nothing wrong with WAAC with netlists, it only becomes a problem when a sore lose throws a temper tantrum.

Fun. Don't mind losing. Don't mind winning either.

PhantomViper wrote:

BeefCakeSoup wrote:Playing for fun is playing to win.

If fun to you is tabling every person you play then more power to ya. But in most cases people just want a win and in some cases even a draw. I personally enjoy a narrow victory that is hardfought. Both players tend to walk away in better moods.

This^^

I also find that the "I don't play to win, I play to have fun crowd" are basically just those people that really suck at the game and try to make up excuses for their poor playing skills. I also find that those are the type of people that are more likely to cheat,either inadvertently because they ignore the right way to play the rules, or because they don't agree with some particular rule and insist that you have to play it their way, etc...

This left me feeling mildly offended, tbh. I play for fun, am I a bad player? Yes? Why, then, have I won every one of my games in the last oohh... 3 months or so? Hell, I rarely lose these days unless I throw the game... which I do to keep it fun all around or because I think of a really funny really stupid thing to do. But, I play for fun, I must suck at the game. Jeez oh and I have no Spehss Muhreen armies, does that mean I suck too?


Anyway, I play for fun by and large, one of the main reasons I rarely field my Tau any more... because it's no fun for the other person to play cat and mouse with me for 2 hours don't mind losing, sometimes do it on purpose for whatever reason (newer players, someone needs a motivation boost, whatever). What I dislike, really, are WAAC players... they're rarely any fun for someone like me to play against, really, and tend to be very... over-zealous about what they do. This thread is a good example, really. "You play to win or you suck/don't know what you're doing/are a cheater"... wtf? Different people, different ways of doing things guys. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, just that I don't like it oh except assuming people are more likely to cheat if they're non-competitive, that just makes no sense.

sennacherib wrote:*snip*

First of all, you clearly have no idea what WAAC even means. You seem to be under the impression that simply bringing a competitive list to the table is WAAC and it's not.

Second, you're implying that competitive lists are never fluffy, when personally I've found that the opposite is true more often than not. About the only example I can think of off the top of my head that isn't, is the aforementioned long fang spam since Space Wolves are always shown to be this epic close combat army, and their best list relies almost entirely on shooting. Other than that I would argue that the average idea of a "fluffy" army actually isn't all that fluffy, because no real army would take a nonsensical mish-mash of units that have no synergy together, and deliberately avoid using their best assets just to give the enemy army a break. Oh, and let's not forget that we can't take similar units either, since real armies never go to war with more than one of anything that isn't a basic unit of grunts. "Spamming" isn't "realistic" because a real army would never go to war with more than one jet, or more than one tank, and they sure as hell wouldn't waste their time and money giving most of their guys an actual transport or anything and would force them to walk everywhere. Real armies take one missile launcher and two machine guns and tell themselves "Okay that's enough, we got all our bases covered!"

Seriously, I'm getting tired of this bs. Same old thing every fething time a thread like this comes up. "Playing to win is EVIL, I'm a better player and a better person because I play with uncompetitive armies and never actually try to win games! If you don't play the way I do you're wrong, and probably a big, fat, smelly failure at life who doesn't care about anything other than winning gakky games because your life is sad and pathetic and you literally have nothing else!" I'm sick of the dickish, "holier-than-thou" attitude that all of you self-segregated "fun" players have, and your unwarranted animosity towards people who write better lists. And the worst thing is you guys even know who the real one at fault here is, every time this topic comes up I see people bashing GW for their gakky game balance, but they keep blaming the competitive players for their lack of enjoyment while continuing to bend over and empty their wallet for GW every week anyway.

Grow the feth up, god damn it. I swear to god no other game has a fanbase this whiny and clueless. Even if they do have a reason to bitch, like Magic players and the "Caw Blade" archetype dominating Standard for the better part of a year (and Jace the Mind Sculptor being so over-the-top broken that almost every deck splashed blue just for him), most people are just like "Ugh, that Caw Blade...oh well, better learn how to beat it!" and keep playing anyway. I don't know what it is about 40k that turns everyone that plays it into an elitist, close-minded douchebag.

Beregond wrote:This left me feeling mildly offended, tbh.

After some of the crap I've seen so-called "fun" players say about competitive players in general (crap that's equally unwarranted and untrue), I think you have no right to complain about feeling offended.

Beregond wrote:Hell, I rarely lose these days unless I throw the game... which I do to keep it fun all around or because I think of a really funny really stupid thing to do.

Remember people, if you don't intentionally throw games and let people win or act childish and do stupid things for no reason, then you're WAAC. lol...

Beregond wrote:Anyway, I play for fun by and large, one of the main reasons I rarely field my Tau any more... because it's no fun for the other person to play cat and mouse with me for 2 hours

I haven't because it's no fun being forced to play a perfect game all the time, since one mistake means you've lost. Even if you make a mistake when deploying your army you can cost yourself the game with Tau.

As for "cat and mouse", that's how GW designed the army...so obviously it's the Tau player's fault, going by the logic present in these "I hate winning" threads.

Beregond wrote:This thread is a good example, really. "You play to win or you suck/don't know what you're doing/are a cheater"... wtf?

Oh come the feth on, who's saying this? I saw one example of a guy saying "If you play for 'fun' then you're just a bad player" and all of a sudden this thread is just full of good examples of how competitive players are terrible people? Apparently you haven't been reading these threads for very long then, or even paid that much attention to THIS one really, since there's countless examples of "for fun" players being dicks to people who don't play like they do.

The "WAAC" label is a very good example. You guys literally say that competitive players are more likely to be donkey-caves or cheaters in every single thread because you've gone so far as to label anyone with a slightly competent list "WAAC", "win at any cost". But one guy in one thread says the same thing to you and all of a sudden you're "offended", lol, sure...

Sidstyler wrote:

sennacherib wrote:*snip*

First of all, you clearly have no idea what WAAC even means. You seem to be under the impression that simply bringing a competitive list to the table is WAAC and it's not.

Second, you're implying that competitive lists are never fluffy, when personally I've found that the opposite is true more often than not. About the only example I can think of off the top of my head that isn't, is the aforementioned long fang spam since Space Wolves are always shown to be this epic close combat army, and their best list relies almost entirely on shooting. Other than that I would argue that the average idea of a "fluffy" army actually isn't all that fluffy, because no real army would take a nonsensical mish-mash of units that have no synergy together, and deliberately avoid using their best assets just to give the enemy army a break. Oh, and let's not forget that we can't take similar units either, since real armies never go to war with more than one of anything that isn't a basic unit of grunts. "Spamming" isn't "realistic" because a real army would never go to war with more than one jet, or more than one tank, and they sure as hell wouldn't waste their time and money giving most of their guys an actual transport or anything and would force them to walk everywhere. Real armies take one missile launcher and two machine guns and tell themselves "Okay that's enough, we got all our bases covered!"

Seriously, I'm getting tired of this bs. Same old thing every fething time a thread like this comes up. "Playing to win is EVIL, I'm a better player and a better person because I play with uncompetitive armies and never actually try to win games! If you don't play the way I do you're wrong, and probably a big, fat, smelly failure at life who doesn't care about anything other than winning gakky games because your life is sad and pathetic and you literally have nothing else!" I'm sick of the dickish, "holier-than-thou" attitude that all of you self-segregated "fun" players have, and your unwarranted animosity towards people who write better lists. And the worst thing is you guys even know who the real one at fault here is, every time this topic comes up I see people bashing GW for their gakky game balance, but they keep blaming the competitive players for their lack of enjoyment while continuing to bend over and empty their wallet for GW every week anyway.

Grow the feth up, god damn it. I swear to god no other game has a fanbase this whiny and clueless. Even if they do have a reason to bitch, like Magic players and the "Caw Blade" archetype dominating Standard for the better part of a year (and Jace the Mind Sculptor being so over-the-top broken that almost every deck splashed blue just for him), most people are just like "Ugh, that Caw Blade...oh well, better learn how to beat it!" and keep playing anyway. I don't know what it is about 40k that turns everyone that plays it into an elitist, close-minded douchebag.

I play to have fun.

I don't play to win (40k) because 40k is a lot like Magic or any other Game of the Week where you have to reconfigure your list every time a new codex is released. In most cases, this means spending at least several hundred dollars to rebuild your army when there's a new edition or your army gets an update. Sometimes new armies change the meta so drastically that you have to retool your list (Fzorgle) mid-way through an edition/codex cycle.

I buy miniatures I like and play with them. I don't have Obliterators in my Chaos army because they're terrible models. I don't play plague marines because I don't like the aesthetic or fluff. I don't switch to a "more competitive" army (BA, SW) because I don't want to spend $700+ to make a decent army.

In WHFB, I have armies based on the miniatures I have, rather than buying miniatures based on what's the most competitive.

Fortunately, WarmaHordes makes models that look good, are effective, and don't get rendered irrelevant every few minutes. I play to win in WarMachine.

Beregond wrote:
This left me feeling mildly offended, tbh. I play for fun, am I a bad player? Yes? Why, then, have I won every one of my games in the last oohh... 3 months or so? Hell, I rarely lose these days unless I throw the game... which I do to keep it fun all around or because I think of a really funny really stupid thing to do. But, I play for fun, I must suck at the game. Jeez oh and I have no Spehss Muhreen armies, does that mean I suck too?

Really? You spend countless hours getting your army ready for a game, painting assembling and converting your minis so that you can put them down on the table and have a contest of wits against a like-minded opponent. You spend another 30-45 minutes actually deploying your army and then another hour playing the game just so that your opponent throws away the game because he thinks you are not good enough to earn the win by your own?

If you did that to me, that would be the last time that we would ever play. That is the most condescending thing that I've ever read about.

By your own admition, you are saying that you build uncompetitive lists and even then, the only times that you loose a game against anyone in your gaming group is when you throw the game on purpose? And that you do that often to keep things "interesting"?! Yeah, you really should be a barrel of laughs to play against.

And I don't own any Space Marines also, just for the record, but I'm sure that all the SM players out there really appreciated your jab at them.

Fafnir wrote:

Sidstyler wrote:

sennacherib wrote:*snip*

First of all, you clearly have no idea what WAAC even means. You seem to be under the impression that simply bringing a competitive list to the table is WAAC and it's not.

Second, you're implying that competitive lists are never fluffy, when personally I've found that the opposite is true more often than not. About the only example I can think of off the top of my head that isn't, is the aforementioned long fang spam since Space Wolves are always shown to be this epic close combat army, and their best list relies almost entirely on shooting. Other than that I would argue that the average idea of a "fluffy" army actually isn't all that fluffy, because no real army would take a nonsensical mish-mash of units that have no synergy together, and deliberately avoid using their best assets just to give the enemy army a break. Oh, and let's not forget that we can't take similar units either, since real armies never go to war with more than one of anything that isn't a basic unit of grunts. "Spamming" isn't "realistic" because a real army would never go to war with more than one jet, or more than one tank, and they sure as hell wouldn't waste their time and money giving most of their guys an actual transport or anything and would force them to walk everywhere. Real armies take one missile launcher and two machine guns and tell themselves "Okay that's enough, we got all our bases covered!"

Seriously, I'm getting tired of this bs. Same old thing every fething time a thread like this comes up. "Playing to win is EVIL, I'm a better player and a better person because I play with uncompetitive armies and never actually try to win games! If you don't play the way I do you're wrong, and probably a big, fat, smelly failure at life who doesn't care about anything other than winning gakky games because your life is sad and pathetic and you literally have nothing else!" I'm sick of the dickish, "holier-than-thou" attitude that all of you self-segregated "fun" players have, and your unwarranted animosity towards people who write better lists. And the worst thing is you guys even know who the real one at fault here is, every time this topic comes up I see people bashing GW for their gakky game balance, but they keep blaming the competitive players for their lack of enjoyment while continuing to bend over and empty their wallet for GW every week anyway.

Grow the feth up, god damn it. I swear to god no other game has a fanbase this whiny and clueless. Even if they do have a reason to bitch, like Magic players and the "Caw Blade" archetype dominating Standard for the better part of a year (and Jace the Mind Sculptor being so over-the-top broken that almost every deck splashed blue just for him), most people are just like "Ugh, that Caw Blade...oh well, better learn how to beat it!" and keep playing anyway. I don't know what it is about 40k that turns everyone that plays it into an elitist, close-minded douchebag.

perhaps you are the one who should grow up. calling names and getting as upset as you obviously did about my opinion are all hallmarks of an immature person. If your sick of seeing opinion that differ from yours perhaps you should just stay home, draw the shades and never, never venture onto the web. Cheers.

I just play for fun. I'm looking forward to putting my models down and having a fun game. It's taking foreveeer to put together my orks. Machine painting 40 guys at a go is mind numbing. Think next time I'll go with just 10. I don't mind competitive people but I avoid them almost entirely for any game anymore. Mainly for their atitude in general. Example would be some of the biggest tantrum posts above. I don't care if the units/cards I choose aren't the best for the slot. I just wanted to come and spend my free time in a friendly shop and have some fun. I don't feel like being told that I'm an idiot or a noob or listen to you rant all game about how ubber awesome you are.

So because someone enjoys playing competitive lists, they all have to automatically have an attitude of superiority? I've never had someone who played a competitive list be disrespectful of other players because they ran uncompetitive lists. However, I have been berated for running a competitive list. In fact, with no exception, I've always found that the stalwart non-competitive camp have been the meaner group of players and in general less fun to play against. Not only because playing against them is incredibly boring, but because they tend to get quite hostile in the company of a player running competitive army.

I wouldn't play if I didn't have fun. if youdon't play for fun that seems a little silly to me BUT (someone probably already made this point) the idea that "playing for fun" and "playing to win" are two SEPERATE things is simply false. I have been gaming since i was 9 (very little of GW) and have almost always tried my darndest to win. Whenever my opponent does the same the result is almost always fun.

What makes it not fun is whining. Whining about rules, how something isn't realistic, how the dice are againsts you, how a ruleset is 'broken' because something bad happened to you etc... These are the games i will throw just to not hear the other guy. Understand my emphasis here is on the word 'whine'. Noticing something is wrong with a ruleset or being disappointed with a roll is one thing, making everyone around feel as if you have been horribly cheated and all is wrong with the world is another. I guess I would say guys like this aren't 'playing to win' but are playing to 'beat the other guy'. As long as everyone else looses they are happy. Perhaps I let 'whiners' get to me more than I should. luckily my run-ins with them are very few and far between.

At the end of the day I would say I play for fun by playing to win. (exceptions being when I trying to learn a rule set.)


edit* after reading what I just wrote I feel like a should clarify that if youre not necesarily "playing to win" there is nothing wrong with that. I was more trying to make a point that I think playing to win does not necessarily mean a player is putting victory over having fun.

This is always a pretty pointless conversation as everyone lumps themselves into the "competitive" or "just for fun" categories and then vehemently defends their side of this imaginary conflict despite no-one defining what each category means in the same way.

The reality is that most people posting in these threads would probably play against each other and have a decent game because, really, it's rare to play against someone so completely abhorrent that you can't enjoy blowing up each others toys with dice rolls to at least some degree.

I see nothing wrong with playing competitively, I just don't find it fun outside of a tournament.
I go to a FLGW to play games, not to win a contest.
So that's fine to have a tournament with so many Razorbacks on the field that it begins to feel like a wilderness safari but I wouldn't ever enjoy it in a friendly setting.

Tl;dr I'm all for good lists, but I don't like the structure of comp lists.

plastictrees wrote:This is always a pretty pointless conversation as everyone lumps themselves into the "competitive" or "just for fun" categories and then vehemently defends their side of this imaginary conflict despite no-one defining what each category means in the same way.

The reality is that most people posting in these threads would probably play against each other and have a decent game because, really, it's rare to play against someone so completely abhorrent that you can't enjoy blowing up each others toys with dice rolls to at least some degree.

^^^This^^^

But don't worry, a thread just like this will resurface once every couple of weeks, leading to the same silly arguments...

We play serious lists where we are at and for newbies I tone down slightly on the effectiveness. Playing to have fun means winning and learning from losses. I cant see how someone would want to be just a punching bag, they might as well play solitaire instead of having an auto pilot win.

For newbies who might be stymied or anyone in general I always also make the standing offer to switch lists before the game, Ill play theirs and they get mine.