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Funny moments in tournament history…

So, with all the serious tournament threads these days, I thought I would share a funny story with everyone…. Yes, this is a true story.

This is in regards to my friend Ted and a 40k tournament he played with his Space Marine army many years ago. The story goes that Ted gave his Force Commander a complex. Apparently from the stress of military life, Ted’s Force Commander saw an imaginary hippo. As Ted’s games would go, he had a small purple hippo that had absolutely no effect on the game what-so-ever, but each turn Ted would roll a scatter die and whatever direction the purple hippo went, Ted’s Force Commander would follow in that direction... As you can imagine, this got pretty funny just in normal games with Ted. However, when Ted brought it to tournaments is when it really got hysterical…

I remember one such tournament after my round had ended earlier than his, I walked over to watch the end of Ted’s game. The guy that Ted was playing was freeking out over the hippo. He kept asking, “What the heck does that thing do?” Ted would calmly reply, “The hippo has no game effect what-so-ever, but wherever the hippo goes my Force Commander is forced to follow it.” Ted’s opponent then said, “Well, can I shoot at it?” Ted’s response was, “No, you can’t shoot at it, it is just a purple hippo.” (At this point I’m trying to keep a straight face, but I can’t.) The guy was starting to get persistent, and even complained at one point that the hippo was out of unit coherency. (By now I can’t hide that I’m laughing.) Apparently, that’s when Ted’s opponent was really getting aggravated. The guy stops the game, and goes to get a tournament official. The TO finally comes over and asks what the problem is. Ted’s opponent states that he doesn’t understand why he can’t shoot at the purple hippo, and states that Ted is cheating and has counted the number of times that the purple hippo has been out of unit coherency. The tournament official did his very best to keep a straight face, and politely said, “Ted, please do us all a favor and let this man shoot at the purple hippo.” Ted’s response, “Uh, ok…” Ted’s opponent, then thanked the TO and the official walked away.

This is the best part… Ted’s opponent then asked, “What are the stats of your purple hippo?” Ted’s response, “Um, I don’t know?” His opponent then replied, “Well aren’t they in your codex?” as he reaches for the Space Marine book. Ted says, “Um, I’m pretty sure there are no rules for a purple hippo in my codex, but you’re free to look.” (At this point, I’m laughing so hard I can’t see straight and I have to go outside.) Ted’s opponent then goes running after the TO again and states that he is sure that Ted is cheating since he is using units that aren’t even in the codex and he demands that Ted forfeit the game. The TO is still trying to keep a straight face and calmly walks back over to the table and says, “Ted, can we simply say that the hippo is dead?” Ted agreed, simply because by now the game had been stopped for a half-hour while this was going on… The game ended a short while later and Ted had won, but the guy he played gave him zero for comp and sportsmanship. When asked for comments at the bottom of the scoring sheet, Ted’s opponent wrote, “Player cheated and used an illegal purple hippo.”

I laughed

I did too.

There was an epic photo once of some chap who was playing Tau against a White Scars army. The White Scars chap opted to start everything in reserve, and the Tau player infiltrated Kroot across the opposite table edge, one every two inches or so, until the entire board edge was covered. Result was the White Scars couldn't deploy anything, it all counted as destroyed, and the Tau player won by default. There was an epic photo of him sitting next to the table as well.

To tell you the truth, if I came across an opponent doing that (Chasing the Hippo) in a tournament, I'd be rather annoyed.

Ketara wrote:I did too.

There was an epic photo once of some chap who was playing Tau against a White Scars army. The White Scars chap opted to start everything in reserve, and the Tau player infiltrated Kroot across the opposite table edge, one every two inches or so, until the entire board edge was covered. Result was the White Scars couldn't deploy anything, it all counted as destroyed, and the Tau player won by default. There was an epic photo of him sitting next to the table as well.

That photo is legendary.

Someone was having a (well-mannered, in good fun) flip-out over Doom of Malantai as he slowly found out:
1.What it did.
2.That it worked in HIS turn.
3.That it worked IN assault.

Not much around 'ere.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

skyth wrote:To tell you the truth, if I came across an opponent doing that (Chasing the Hippo) in a tournament, I'd be rather annoyed.

I'd be rather happy, him rolling a scatter dice for his commander's movement?

It's not like it can be (...should be) mistaken for an ACTUAL unit.

Haha, that is awesome! That is someone taking the game way too seriously when they flip out over an obvious joke! Oh well, makes for a good story now.

This looks likes an interesting thread! I think, hey... whats that? I'll be back...

I just got looked at funny at work

dang you WolflordPatrick!

On a sidenote my commander is a greedy bastard so he probably would have tried to beat the enemy commander to it and steal it to use it's power for his own!!!!!!!!

Great story. Moar please!

Last March at the Socal Slaughter in Space GT I brought Dark Eldar. I performed well through the first half of the GT, and at the end of day 1 was holding a commanding lead in battlepoints. On day two, I brought a fifth of Captain Morgan with me. During the lunch break, we were discussing likely final matchips, and I was expecting to have to face Hulksmash with his 22 missile launcher army against my flying paper circus Dark Eldar. I was resigned to loosing that matchup, so decided to get drunk. Over the next hour, the entire fifth disappeared, getting topped off about 10 minutes into my last round - where instead of facing Hulksmash, I ended up facing Dave Faye's Chaos Marines - a fight that should have gone well in my favor, except that I was so drunk that when I say "falling on the floor drunk" I do mean that I was on the floor by our table.

And I'm a happy drunk. Everything was a big spinny happy blur, I joked with Dave for what turned out to be two hours and change, before losing the game on turn3 by one killpoint. I don't remember much after that except being extremely happy and toasty, and later yelling myself hoarse at Medieval Times because our knight (The Green Knight) was getting gangbanged by the other knights for being a traitor, and I was using some explicit language screaming at them for being spankers and other things while my wife was trying to shush me.

Buddy of mine brought a friend to a WHFB tourney a few years back. His friend wasa DROP-dead gorgeous female with ample assets in very little clothing, most of what was there had been applied with a brush. She wore this backless shirt that showed off a full back tribal dragon tatoo done in red ink.

Turns out they were friends from work.

Turns out she works as a stripper.

She made it through the first round, but he escorted her out at the lunch break. When he came back in, the entire store treated him to a standing ovation. You never seen a geek so redfaced.

Oh, she drives a Hummer, too. Yeah, there's a lot of places you can go with that.

Your friend Ted should started singing " All I want for Chirstmas is hippopotamus"