Should I intentionally lose...

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**Sencho**

First of all, bless you for avoiding the lure of 3+ armor saves and playing something other than SMs. They are obviously cool but I like playing against non-MEQ armies on occasion.

Nagashek wrote:

You could try getting together with him over coffee, and discussing what worked and what didn't, all the while feeding him info that you've gleaned online about how to beat Nids (ie: play an army.) That way he doesn't have to dirty his pride, but still gains the intel he clearly needs.

I think this suggestion from Nagashek is a good one. It stinks that your friend is acting the way he is but this kind of helpful and friendly response will hopefully change his mind about 40k. Even the most even-tempered of us have to admit feeling frustrated after losing a game. This is especially true when you are still learning a game as it seems like the rules (or your lack of knowledge of them) keep playing against you. I think you are being very mature and understanding about the whole thing though so I think he will have a positive response.

**Kaldor**

Fafnir wrote:The problem with Newcrons is that, assuming they're played competently, and assuming that the dice aren't being ridiculous, they should never lose. The tools that they have available to them, combined with the core ruleset, makes almost every matchup weighted incredibly in their favour.

This is hyperbole.

**Lobokai**

Do not throw a game, it's both insulting and dishonest. Offer to play 750 against 1000. Offer to let his dead units go into reserves. Balance it using artificial means. But don't throw it.

What I would recommend most, is that you guys play a team game against more experienced players (or with them). Find people who are old pros to come along side you guys. It's very possible that you guys are also playing the game wrong in a way that's helping the nids. You need store pros helping you.

SW are such a good force, I'm also questioning your friend's effort and or skill at this point.

**TheCaptain**

Fafnir wrote:The problem with Newcrons is that, assuming they're played competently, and assuming that the dice aren't being ridiculous, they should never lose. The tools that they have available to them, combined with the core ruleset, makes almost every matchup weighted incredibly in their favour.

Sorry, no. This is so impossibly wrong, I don't even know where to start.

**Neconilis**

He's consistently losing to tyranids with Space Wolves?...

Does not compute!

Also, don't throw the game, at best as someone suggested give yourself a handicap of some sort, create some scenario instead of a standard game where you're a real underdog and see what happens. A loss there might be weighted, but at least it's legitimate, and hopefully that will satisfy both of you.

**TheAvengingKnee**

I have a friend who gets frustrated when he looses so to help him out and give him ideas of what he is fighting when we work together I usually just let slip a bunch of things I plan on fielding in the next game. It seems to have helped him because then he know some of what I am fielding and can try and make his list to deal with them.

**Neconilis**

TheAvengingKnee wrote:I have a friend who gets frustrated when he looses so to help him out and give him ideas of what he is fighting when we work together I usually just let slip a bunch of things I plan on fielding in the next game. It seems to have helped him because then he know some of what I am fielding and can try and make his list to deal with them.

I like that, and it's not as blatant as just handing someone your list and saying, "build a force to beat it, fine by me."

**Foo**

Swap armies with him for one game and see how it goes.

**Crimson**

Sure, it is frustrating to lose constantly, but your friend really sounds like a crybaby. he should at least properly finish the game. His luck could chance, and even if not, at least fight for every victory point with tooth and nail.

And no, do not lose on purpose. I'm sure that would make the fame less fun for both of you. However, if you want make it a bit more challenging for you, you could always field a less optimal list.

**Fafnir**

TheCaptain wrote:
Fafnir wrote:The problem with Newcrons is that, assuming they're played competently, and assuming that the dice aren't being ridiculous, they should never lose. The tools that they have available to them, combined with the core ruleset, makes almost every matchup weighted incredibly in their favour.

Sorry, no. This is so impossibly wrong, I don't even know where to start.

Name one faction that necrons have a poor matchup against. They have the tools to utterly decimate any list, often with minimal effort. What's more, name a single exploitable weakness of the army that they don't have a means of easily working around or covering up.

**Lobokai**

Fafnir wrote:
TheCaptain wrote:
Fafnir wrote:The problem with Newcrons is that, assuming they're played competently, and assuming that the dice aren't being ridiculous, they should never lose. The tools that they have available to them, combined with the core ruleset, makes almost every matchup weighted incredibly in their favour.

Sorry, no. This is so impossibly wrong, I don't even know where to start.

Name one faction that necrons have a poor matchup against. They have the tools to utterly decimate any list, often with minimal effort. What's more, name a single exploitable weakness of the army that they don't have a means of easily working around or covering up.

Close combat against almost any MEQ. As long as you are playing blind lists, I don't see crons being unbalanced.

**Fafnir**

Lobukia wrote:
Fafnir wrote:
TheCaptain wrote:
Fafnir wrote:The problem with Newcrons is that, assuming they're played competently, and assuming that the dice aren't being ridiculous, they should never lose. The tools that they have available to them, combined with the core ruleset, makes almost every matchup weighted incredibly in their favour.

Sorry, no. This is so impossibly wrong, I don't even know where to start.

Name one faction that necrons have a poor matchup against. They have the tools to utterly decimate any list, often with minimal effort. What's more, name a single exploitable weakness of the army that they don't have a means of easily working around or covering up.

Close combat against almost any MEQ. As long as you are playing blind lists, I don't see crons being unbalanced.

Wraiths and scarabs.

If your opponent is getting into combat with your basic troops without using something like Heroic Intervention on terms that aren't in your favour as Necrons, you're doing something very wrong.

Your basic Necron infantry may fold in close combat, but they also have some of the best close combat units in the game outside of that.

**SkyD**

I wouldn't throw a game. Your friend will get better with practice. I can maybe understand the friend on a level though, a close game is fun, a well fought game is fun but for me I was getting crushing defeats with my Eldar. I realised in hindsight for my 1st 2 games I wasn't aggressive enough, so my 3rd game I took the aggressive path, in the 3rd turn I did a good deal of damage to my opponents army as my Eldar came through a wraithgate behind them. I went first, by the end of the 4th I was undone, yet again.

After that I was thinking of just tossing it all in, the Eldar just weren't going to cut it. But I asked for some help on building a list from what I had and got some great help, my list was too skew-wiffed to work well. Then I went and picked up a Falcon to bring up the Eldar's abilities. My 4th game I played I had a far better result.

In the end, my main problem was in how I'd built my army. Points costs are well and all but I was trying to take out Orks, Tau and Dark Eldar who all had transports and heavier support than I had. 1 Wave Serpent, 1 Vyper and 1 War Walker weren't going to last long against his armies.
Your friend might have hit the same snag I did. Albeit Space Wolves would have far better range, etc compared to the Eldar.

**Wolfsblood**

Is he bad at fantasy too? Maybe he just doesnt understand the strategy of his own army? Let him borrow your codex so he can see what all of your units do.

**TheAvengingKnee**

Neconilis wrote:
TheAvengingKnee wrote:I have a friend who gets frustrated when he looses so to help him out and give him ideas of what he is fighting when we work together I usually just let slip a bunch of things I plan on fielding in the next game. It seems to have helped him because then he know some of what I am fielding and can try and make his list to deal with them.

I like that, and it's not as blatant as just handing someone your list and saying, "build a force to beat it, fine by me."

It seems to work, he still gets very frustrated by the games when he loses but it seems to in most cases. I could surprise him with new and different tactics but it always seems to make him more frustrated. I tell him about what the model I am thinking is and what it can do but I just casually toss in a lot of the info ahead of time to make sure it doesn't seem like I am just telling him my list.

Lately I have been thinking of fielding varguard obyron so I have been talking to him about what he can do and what kind of squad I would be taking him with.

**farrowking37**

DangerousBeans wrote:I've been strictly a Warhammer Fantasy player for years but with 6th edition 40K coming out some of my regular gaming pals have decided to venture out into the grim dark future and start armies. Eager to get my futuristic game on, and not wanting to jump on the Space Marine bandwagon (1 chose Blood Angels, 1chose Space Wolves, 1 chose Plague Marines) I checked out all of the armies available and decided to go with Tyranids after a late night viewing of Starship Troopers. A few trades on Dakka later and I had a smallish force to play games with.

My time is limited as I have twin sons and another baby on the way but I've been able to play 3 games so far all against the Space Wolf player, and he has quit on turn 3 in every game. He is that kind of player even in Fantasy.

Game 1: 500 points. Not a whole lot on the battlefield. I've got a Hive Tyrant, some Tyranid Warriors, Devilgants, ripper swarms, and a few spore mines. I was going for numbers mainly as I know he isn't going to be able to field much either. He has a couple of units of Blood Claws with a plasma gun, a unit of Longfangs, with some heavy bolters and plasma cannon, and a rune priest or wolf priest or whatever it is. I'm not too familiar at all with the Wolves Codex so I'm sorry if I get any of the names wrong. We roll up Purge the Alien (very fitting) and get going from there.

We each basically advance and shoot each turn trying to get a grasp for the rules but he is making very poor dice rolls so is taking more casualties than I am. During turn 3 my Tyrant finally stomps over to his priest and eats his face off in combat and at that point he declares me the victor.

Game 2: 1000 points. About a week later we get together again to play. I've got a completely different list cause I want to try out some of my monstrous creatures, so I include a Trygon Prime and a Carnifex, and this time I give the Tyrant some Tyrant Guard. On the wolves side are a unit of bikes and a whole lot of marines, not sure what they are. He gets first turn and proceeds to use the Jaws of the World Wolf psychic power on my Tyrant and at Initiative 5 I naturally roll the 6 and he get sucked under, which enrages the Tyrant Guard. He is absolutely overjoyed and I'm laughing along with him cause I think it's great payback from the first game. Well I figured the game was his until my Trygon Prime came out of it's tunnel and the Tyrant Guard got into combat. These 2 units alone won me that game, they destroyed everything they touched. So at the end of turn 3 he declared me the winner. Never mind that neither of us had claimed any objectives, it didn't matter to him.

Game 3: 1500 points. We roll up the Relic. I've got the Trygon Prime again, a tyranid prime, some Ymgrl, a shooty tyrant with heavy venom cannon, and a I proxy a tervigon with my carnifex. He's got 3 tanks (a whirlwind, a landraider, and a vindicator), Ragnar Blackmane w/ some Terminators and some other fun stuff. The tanks do a lot of damage, but my Ymgrl's destroy the vindicator on turn 2. He is learning to concentrate his fire on my monstrous creatures. My Tyrant only has 1 wound left and the Trygon is down to half wounds. I've lost a ton of Gants and I've only managed to destroy his one tank and 1 unit of bloodclaws. On my turn 3 I have my Trygon grab the Relic (was this legal as he is a heavy support choice?). On his turn 3 he charges the Trygon with a unit of 4 bikers, and it ate all of their faces before they could even swing at it.

At this point he declares that Tyranids are unbeatable and he can't do anything against me. He also tells me he isn't going to play me anymore and maybe we could just stick to fantasy matches. I try to tell him that the game typically lasts 5 turns and despite me having the reclic he certainly has me on the run. He disagrees and starts packing up his stuff, being all grumpy and says he's going to look up how to beat me online and he hates himself for it. I told him I've been looking up tactics online, checking battle reports to see cool Nid builds and what strategies people are using to beat space marines and that it's wise to gather intelligence before a battle. He tells me he doesn't consider it to be wisdom, he considers it weakness.

Really? The accumulated knowledge of a million battles fought on a million worlds is weakness?

So if I ever convince him to play me again should I purposefully try to throw the game to try and make him feel better? He's a good friend of mine and I only have the 2 other friends interested in 40K. The closest FLGS to me is almost an hour away and I usually don't have the time to make the trip. I've been having a lot of fun with my Bugs and it's just sad to see a friend get that bent over it, especially when I've lost plenty of games of Warhammer on turn 5 or 6 when I was winning the whole game. I would think 40K was the same way.

That's about it for now. I can hear my kids waking up. Cheers.

Do you have any terrain on the battlefield? That can make a huge difference in some games.
But seriously, you shouldn't intentionally lose because the player is having issues winning. Although for him at first, he should learn after a while and be able to beat you.
Have fun!

**MunGo_0600**

There's some good wisdom in this thread, of all the guys in my gaming group I probably come off best most often, so I help out the other guys, discuss with them what worked and what didn't and it really helps them.

**TheAvengingKnee**

I have been letting my opponent setup terrain and asking him to make it as balanced as he can. This does some things well, he sets up the terrain in a way he feels is equally balanced for both players and then later he can't be to angry at how the terrain is setup if it hindering him because he set it up that way.

**farrowking37**

That will probably help as well.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Another thing i might suggest is helping him build a list, or giving him advice on how to play.
If his landraiders keep on sploding, help him understand why that happens.
Can't belive he threw one at you. if it breaks that is like 70$ and a few hours wasted!

**LoneLictor**

He sounds like a whiny bitch.

**Red Comet**

Your friend is whining way too much and honestly he should brush up on what's good for Space Wolves. It sounds like he doesn't know what he's doing.

**DangerousBeans**

farrowking37 wrote:Do you have any terrain on the battlefield? That can make a huge difference in some games.

The first game we kind of just set up the board the way we wanted. For the second and third we did the d3 pieces of terrain per 2 by 2 square of board. Some very interesting battlefields from this method. The 2nd game was packed but the third was more balanced.

I like a lot of the ideas in this thread. I think I will let him borrow the Tyranid codex so he can get a feel for it and after he has read it start dropping hints about what I will take if we manage to play again. Thanks everyone.

**The Shadow**

I recommend having a game using some "secret objectives". These can come in two forms.

Firstly, you can do this. Place X number of objecives down on the board. Then, get a 3rd Person to secretly write down numbers between 1 and 3 on X pieces of paper and place one face down under each objective. Make sure you get numbers fair, you want mostly low-ish ones, so if you're using 4 objectives, go for 1, 1, 2 and 3. These pieces of paper are not revealed until the game ends. Each objective then counts as being worth however many VPs the paper says. If you don't have a 3rd Person, just shuffle them. Which reminds me, using Playing Cards works well too.

And/or, you can do it this way.

Get a 3rd Person to assign each of you one or two missions (such as "Slay the Hive Tyrant", "Have your Wolf Lord kill at least 15 models" or "Make sure your Tervigon survives the battle"). You could also make it so the 3rd Person doesn't reveal the amount of VPs you get for completing the mission until the end of the game.

With these things incorporated, unless you table him, he won't know if he's won or not until the end of the game which should hopefully keep him playing all the way through.

All things considered, SW are a lot stronger than Nids, especially in this edition, so once he gets a feel for the army, he'll start to perform better.

**Plumbumbarum**

He's a man, he shouldn't get that upset about a game of toy soldiers.

I was learning a game of table soccer once, I was beaten like 1000 matches in a row - everybody was far more experienced. I did not take loses seriously, one day I won a tournament in that place and for some time I was considered as one of the best players. 40k is so forgiving to noobs vs other games that I can't comprehend the idea of desperating over a 3rd lost game. Also 40k game is not enogh of existential thing to waste emotions about loosing at, not to mention the lost game is still narrative one so there's still a lot of fun.

I had a long streak of wins in 5th with my Tyranids over my friend who clearly played for the mood and fluff and fun etc. My list was also a models love/ fluff/ fun one, enough to mention that it has 3 carnifexes inside. I was not constraining myself about my behaviour, dancing around with his bad throws, trash talking his ICs etc Beating him with Orkz in the middle of that streak, I made a firing squad line of boyz to shoot down the last escaping marine to humiliate his army. It was not out of viciousness or arogance I just found it funny that boyz are shooting emperor's finest to death but he surely wasn't happy,

Guess what, he's still playing, gives me harder time each time I face him and did not pack his stuff in any of the games, also no hard feelings of any kind.

Your friend should imo learn to loose like a sport and enjoy loosing as an opportunity to develop his skills. There are people that are just bad at some particular type of game, I never restrain myself playing them though just like I don't want for example a good tenis player to restrain himself to make the game easier for me. The quicker and harder the game, the faster I learn.

Sorry for grammar, quite drunk here, hope it's readable.

**TheContortionist**

nids are one of the most underpowered armys. I've been having better luck with 6th but it is still always an uphill battle.

**Szeras**

JAWS OF THE WORLD WOLF!!!!!! AWWWWWW!!!!!!!

(For those of you that don't know, necrons have initiative 2. On everything.)