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Hi Dakka,

I'm a returning hobbyist getting back into things after about 19 years out of the hobby and I was wondering if my opponent in my last game was being an idiot or if this was a normal attitude and to be expected from the wargaming community.
So I had my third game of whfb at my local games club last Monday. I picked WoC as my army as I love the way the new models look and the story and character behind the army, plus I have a ton and a half (almost literally) of old lead models from when my brother and I used to play. I'd arranged a game with the manager of the local store, who plays empire, and he had said that we should have a 3000pt story driven game with soft, fluffy lists based on a chance meeting between our 2 armies.
Based on this I took a marauder based list, with fast cav, warhounds and marauder units with a small core of warriors, led by a daemon prince (lvl4, shadow).
When he turned up it turned out he had brought 2 steam tanks, 2 hellblasters, 50 greatswords, 3 cannon, 3 mortars, halberdier and swordsman hordes, archers, handgunners, lvl4 metal, lvl4 fire and some other bits. Apparantly the fluff behind his army was the nuln armoury being out on manouvers.

I managed to get a draw out of this, but him turning up after specifically asking for fairly soft lists with this list, which apparently was not even legal (completely ignoring the force % rules) really &^$*£% me off.

The first 2 games I've played of fantasy have been fun, but they have been against friends so before I sink more money into this, I wanted to know if this is normal behaviour or was this guy just being a jerk?

It's him being a jerk, the vast majority of people in the hobby will not do this to you outside of a full-on no holds barred tournament.

I see the jerk part, I don't see how he was over the points % though

Well, you said it was the local #store, let him know that thanks to his antics you will be using other suppliers as frankly, people like that are not a very good example of the average player.
Or next time turn up with 2 hellcannons and a chosen star and warshrine or two. Khorne marauders with great weapons, also a suitable answer as people wince when you drop so many for so few points.

1 - fluffy means different things to different people. It's hard to set up story driven games without a lot of planning.

OR

2 - If you pulled a draw against that list, the manager probably has no idea how to play & it looking to pull a fast one on new players.

Tiarna Fuilteach wrote:I see the jerk part, I don't see how he was over the points % though

Sorry, my mistake. He wasn't out on points %, he had actually used an extra ~500pts.
I don't have the empire book and was going by what a friend had said.

He has 820 points in rares (more than 25% of 3000) and 1025 in special (less than 50%). With two level 4 wizards, he only has 735 points left for core - which is less than the 25% requirement.

So yeah, he cheated. But for you to pull a draw out of that is impressive, especially with your "fluffy" list (WoC are strong no matter how fluffy you make your list).

This guy would certainly be the exception in my experience.

I wouldn't let one bad experience ruin this fantastic hobby for you. As suggested above, I think he was playing for the wrong reasons, instead of a fun fluffy game, he played to win, and didn't even get that. Who's the real winner I wonder...

Fry wrote:I managed to get a draw out of this

You mean you took a bunch of fur and iron clad savages with no range capabilities and charged it against all that fancy-pants Empire shooty, bang-bang death kill . . . and wasn't obliterated?!

Now that is fluff passage I wouldn't mind reading.

It would no doubt centre around a supremely arrogant and cocksure Empire noble, who is a shambles in any actual battlefild situation and wets his pants, letting his command structure crumble at the sight of the first warhound!

Yeah the Nuln fluff, yawn. If it's not all black and red I don't buy it... Just weinergaming in disguise, Apparently almost every tourney list is just nulners in disguise . Multiple Stanks, artillary batteries, and wizard lords is over the top, but empire needs some of those elements to balance out thier list. This game more than many others is mututally cooperative for the enjoyment of all, if your opponent is t contributing to the fun of the game (which should be independant of the outcome) then find a new one.

As a side note, if you are new to the game, and you felt vastly undermanned (his list is pretty hard) but still pulled a draw... Well... I mean either he is terrible. Which is possible, but unlikely with a sizable collection like that and considering he is a manager. Or he was going SUPREMELY easy on you. At that point you might want to reconsider going on 'the forums' to blast an opponent that eased up to give you a chance. Try to communicate more about the game prior to playing next time, perhaps create a narritive where those big guns arnt always looming around, try switching armies after you write lists, there are many options to get more out of your gaming.

More or less repeating what everyone else has said, in my experience those kinds of players are very rare. There's certainly plenty of folk who want to play with competitive lists, and plenty who don't, and a fairly fuzzy line between which is which, but rarely do you get people who claim to be one kind of player, just to trick someone into taking a weaker list.

In fact, the only WHFB player I can think of who acted like that ran, you guessed it, a Nuln list. He kept saying it was fluffy, and kept ignoring the simple fact that his list picked out the most powerful elements of the Empire list. He even had this other thing where he said his fluff included his named General never lost a battle, so it was only fitting with his fluff to take a powerful list.