Persuading tournament-style players to tone it down

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**sebster**

Grey Templar wrote:Some people simply can't make a bad list, and for others it simply goes against their very nature.

That's just silly. We are talking about a game here, nothing more nothing less. People have no 'nature' that dictates how they play a game, some greater calling that demands they only ever pick certain troops for their army.

What people have, or don't have, is the ability to work with the social expectations of the group.

It really, really isn't that complicated.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kiwidru wrote:After the game, rather than bring this up I started talking to him. My plan was to make him see us more as friends than opponents. He takes warhammer seriously. Apparently there is a ranking webpage that has all the tournament players in the nation, and he is ranked 30-40ish out of 2k. (personally I think the fact that there are only 2000 big-tourney players out of the millions and millions of Americans to be quite pathetic, and don't see it as a particularly useful mountain to want to be king of, but too each his own). On top of that, there are a couple more players in the local shop that are ranked highe than him! This gave me a lot of insight, since even his pickup games are against top of the nation opponents it is quite possible that it has been so long since he had a truely friendly game that he forgot what it is. He even noted that he had analysed my terrain placement and tendencies, of which I was completely oblivious and am not sure of as I generally deploy in whatever manner is aesthetically pleasing to the batlle. We got into the idea that he didn't like the rules of bitb because it was too restrictive (read: wouldn't allow him to run the same list every game) and I mentioned that's kind of the point... It forces you to choose suboptimal unit and actually tweak your game style/strategy... But since this was happening to everyone a general trend of competition (where everyone has set phasers to "Fun") should still be achievable, and that this was the perfect outlet for showing of who can do the most with the least, which is a seed that seemed to take root. We also acknowledged that there were some weaker generals in our group and being a better general while still using a tournament style list just makes it seem like a crutch, might have also sank in.
I think he was also able to flesh me out a bit as well. I was able to relay the fact that I was a gamer but didn't care about warhammer, as well as the fact that I think obsessing about some random rules that some slowed brittish people try to arbitrarily enforce is unamerican. not everyone cares about pushing the rules to the breaking point and of the people that do generally the only thing they can agree on is how stupid and abiguous the rules are. In my opinion it's the old who is dumber: the blind guy leading the way (GW) or the people that choose to follow him (rules lawyers)?
After a good talk, in which I feel some seeds were planted, we parted ways. I guess I want him to be able to have a chance to trend, either towards us or away before actually mentioning it to him and definatly before laying down an ultimatum, as I truely want him to play with us and honestly I'm hoping we might not have to.

For what it's worth, I think it sounds like you handled the situation really well.

**Warpsolution**

Agreed, and well done, Kiwidru! I'd have probably been more straightforward in my approach (that's the Brettonian in me), but too often I find that people argue with me, not to discover some great Truth, but to be correct. And to do that, all they need to do is beat me, which is easy; any number of childish tactics can reduce the best logical argument to tatters.
Still, I was just about to suggest the "making the most of the least" angle when I saw your big ol' post, so again, well done!

For what it's worth, I'd like to offer up a few things.
- I don't think the idea that "some people just can't make a bad list" is actually that far-fetched.
The reason: I've been playing Magic: the Gathering for 15 of my 24 years, and I've never found a Gamer-subspecies with more potential for underhanded, cutthroat, ruthless, and sometimes just plain unethical behavior.
I know it's a whole different ball game, but some people just can't justify using one card when another would be better. I fell into that trap for a while myself. I would make a casual deck, and then be utterly unsatisfied with it, to the point that I'd be nearly ashamed to play it, because I knew how many better choices were out there.

- that sort of moves me into another point, that being that "fun" is a pretty broad word. And for a lot of people, fun=victory.
I think it's a sad way of viewing this wide and crazy world, but it's pretty common. People like the feelings of accomplishment, of cunning, and of base superiority that go with winning stuff.
And there's nothing wrong with that. We all like to feel good.
But there are other ways to feel good, as many of us know. I prefer a game that's hard-fought, win or lose, with both sides messing each other up as they go. Some people just don't feel that way, though.

To change a Warhammer player's perspective on soft versus hard lists is changing his perspective on the whole game, which is most likely seated in some world-view stuff. So you can try to change the world from the ground up, or you can try to change one man in one way.
I'm going for the first one, and I've gotten results along the way. They just take a long time to come to fruition, usually. Many have yet to.
Still, it sounds like his perspective is beginning to change. For that, I thank you. And, like you said, not because "tournament players are bad", but because people with wider perspectives are better off than people with narrow ones.

**Grey Templar**

Kiwidru wrote:
@ Grey: please focus. First, I mentioned in the origional post that the ogre player took some 'fluffy' selections and I felt he was testing the water, however the 16-18 iron guts with two lords in a single unit were not part of the fluffy selections. Your obsession with this is bizzare since it's obviously not the focal point of the thread, and literally no one is engaging you on the subject.
Secondly, you clearly don't know the situation, and on top of that you havnt even attempted to use the components to piece it together. For instance, rather than trying to predict the outcome of dark elves vs brettonians when mindrazor was involved, why not read the first post and realize that the only mention of magic in which the dark elf players lone wizard was abusing an old lore with no cast restrictions...
(SPOILER ALERT!)
... It wasn't shadow.

Now I don't mean to be harsh, so allow me to further illustrate: In the last turn of my game the dwarf player broke my knights with a unit of 30ish gw dwarfs and had (in my opinion) a clear overrun into the flank of my main unit, which would have allowed him to engage in that combat as well... Easily chopping my wounded wizard and pushing a tied combat to one I was gonna be killed to a man, or forced into a horrendously unlikely break check. To my utter amazement he claimed that HE didn't think he would contact my unit and as such my named char didn't die, and I was able to save some face by having "something" going for me at the end of the game. This was super classy, and it didn't go unnoticed.

Sorry if I didn't see that in your first post.

It would help if you didn't post a wall of text that is difficult to piece together. Try to use complete gaps.

And with your further explanation it makes more sense that things happened the way they did. You have a relativly hardcore tournament player on your hands who is simply acting appropriatly.

**Tarval**

Something to do is to post each list and have each player rank the other list. The list once ranked via the GM post the ranking so that nobody knows who gave what score. Then each army is giving that amount of points plus there points for the event. This will giving your a total for each round until your finish. That way if your seeing that your getting dinged, you might oppt to tweak your list a bit so that you can pick up some soft score points.

10 players in the event

List rankings
1. Bob got first place in the ranking of his list. There for he picked up an xtra 10 points
2. Mike got second and so picked up 9 points
3.
4.
5. etc

gaming
1. Bob got a small victory 5-3 vs his opp

Bobs score for round one would be 15.

Now in order for this to work, the GM has to be rock solid in that he does not show list ranking. If you show them, then your looking at causing some anguish in the event. Something else to think about is to dock/remove the lowest score of each person if needed so that nobody tries to nock somebody else

**Lordhat**

Grey Templar wrote:
You have a relativly hardcore tournament player on your hands who is simply acting appropriatly.

The point is that his actions were not appropriate for the setting. Hopefully the talk will help.