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Hey guys,

As the title says - do you ever feel bad for winning? Maybe not for winning a close game, but perhaps after a particularly devastating shooting phase of yours or even tabling someone?

I ask because today I played a guy at my local club (who had already lost 2 games that day). Within two turns I'd obliterated a large chunk of his army and I could see his mood slipping after every shooting phase. He wasnt mad - I could just see him thinking "Great... Another loss."

I redirected some of my fire to make it a closer game and whether it was subconscious or not, I forgot to fire a weapon in the last turn and whilst nothing in 40k is certain, it literally cost me the game (Dorn's Arrow at a tiny gretchin mob in the open, around an objective).

Was my compassion warranted? Or was it a moment of weakness that affected my judgement?

Either way, I'd like to hear whether you guys have experienced similar situations and how you acted during or felt after it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Double posted thread... Good on you ipad,

it really depends. if its a friend of mine then usually feel bad, but they take the loss in good spirit, as I do when I get tabled or similar (which is quite often ). if it is some bragging, unpleasant club vermin then I shall be honoured to wipe his force off the table

it also depends on the list. usually I deliberately make semi efficient lists to make the game more challenging and fun for me, while ensuring that the game should (in theory) be close, thus keeping my opponent really happy throughout, even if he loses. its all about having a good time, and I want to make sure that others are enjoying the experience, as long as they are trying to feel the same back to me. . if that isn't the case, then let's dance.....

oh and you made a good judgement! as long as he felt better after by winning then its all smiles .

GA

Our group used to play LoTR SBG.
I and "player A" were the better players while the B and C were a little worse.
Now that we play WH40k players B and C quite often win with me while the player A hardly ever wins.
He is also the type of person, that when he loses much with one army he changes it. Since we started playing warhammer he has changed his army 5 times.
He does use competitive lists (they are somewhat netlists with some 4fun units), I sometimes give him first turn or make some suicidal moves that usually don't pay off and he still loses hard.

One idea I have is too swap armies next time we play. I'm not sure what else to do.

I am usually so amazed that I even win at all that sometimes, if it's a massacre, I am a bit humbled.

For most people, though, it should just be considered basic civility and humility.

For a friendly game I see no reason to not have some compassion. What I would do if faced with a player new to the game or someone that just maybe isn't a good player is try and give them tips along the way, or maybe deliberately make a bad move to give them an advantage. For me, having a good time playing is a win.

For tournament games or non-friendlies... as General Annoyance said.... Let's dance.

I don't deliberately do stuff to make the game closer such as choosing a less important target for a unit, for three reasons:

1. It comes down to rolling dice. There's always a chance I might try to make a game-winning shot and fail anyway
2. If I suspected an opponent was doing the same to me I wouldn't like it, it would feel patronising.
3. Attitude. If my opponent's army takes a sudden mauling I try to commiserate with them, and I also try to acknowledge when my opponent does well (whether I'm winning or not). That way it stops feelings getting hurt, and generally keeps the atmosphere light.

But I don't feel bad when I win. After all, someone's got to win, I just try to have a good time on the way.

I say good on ya! I'd rather give someone a morale boost and see another happy gamer coming back next week then get another win in a game under my imaginary belt. You probably made his day, that knowledge should make yours

What kind of a moral boost is knowing that others have to let you win , that is worse then losing on your own. You can actualy hurt someone by losing to someone too offten , they may get the wrong idea that the stuff they do and buy is ok .

Never had problems with wining or losing . Table top games are games and while this may be a bit cpt obvious , games have winners and losers .

I never feel bad for winning, that's the point of the game. Also, if you take it easy on someone, they'll never learn how to play better. I'm not saying you should go around crushing some guy learning to play the game, but if its anyone who's been playing for a bit, beat the crap out of them if you can, and then after the game you can talk tactics and hopefully they will learn something. I know when I lose a game I always try to talk to the guy I lost to and try to figure out what I could have done better.

Then again, sometimes its just the dice, and you definitely shouldn't feel bad about that either.

Good decision. Sometimes when bored, and when im playing for fun i only CHAAAAAAARGE with my Blood angels and lose And i usually play for fun.......

I felt bad the other day,
I played a 1000p game against someone I see in the store quite often
we were both practicing our 1000p lists for the upcoming tournament
I tabled him by turn 3 and he had only killed 2 fire warriors...
It was disgusting
My tau vs his nids

I play for fun so i always throw my strategy if the mood spoils, new player or new list. I play this game to have fun so i think the game should be enjoyable on both sides.

i've been playing in a lot of tournaments recently (well a lot compared to how many i've played before) as well as the necessary tournament practice matches and having now perfected an evil farsight enclaves list i actually don't like the idea of playing it, i played a friend on friday with it and while we always have good close matches between his good tactics and my versatile units i couldn't help feel that i'd built a dick list that i know i would hate to have to play, having used a similar list as well in a tournament a few weeks back while i had a few very close matches there were a couple of games where i literally tabled my opponents with very little effort by deep striking farsight and o'vesa behind another tau defence line and catching the guy between that solid squad (with attached allied support O') and my own defence line and basically had my army meet in the middle having killed him off entirely,

i like to think i'm a nice guy so while being able to compete in tournaments is nice i don't like the extremes that i have to play to in order to get a win and liked my previous farsight list better with its larger variety of units that would have under performed in those games but would have felt more natural for me,

getting back to the subject, i'm quite happy beating an opponent if it's been a close match and we've had a laugh etc but if i'm playing someone and i steam roll them i do kind of feel bad for them (unless they've got it coming i like to teach the WAAC guys and bent/cheating people a lesson sometimes), not enough to go easier on them later of course i'm not responsible for how they build their lists or how the dice land each time but enough that i might give it a week or two before playing them again or switching up my forces and bringing my marines out for a match instead, a lot of the noobs struggle against tau especially optimised tau,

@ OP - What a good fellow you are. I like the attitude indeed.

Yeah - I have a mate who plays BA - horribly @ first - we play alot - friendly advice(not criticism) and he beats me about 50% of the time now. Closer games = moar fun!

Yep, I think you did the right thing. I've been an a huge losing streak for nearly the last year, probably twenty five games in a row against my best mate who has whooped and hollered the whole time and then argues with me about why I shoudn't be annoyed. It's forced me to be a better sport, but he is a massive WAAC player and it really ruins the mood lately. Of course, when I finally beat him it will be even sweeter, but still, a few wins along the way would have made it seem like less of a slog!

Do you play tau, Necrons, or daemons w/ drake? If so, do as Han Solo suggests: "Let the Wookie win."

If you're using Eldar or GK, you don't really need to unless you DK spam or Wave Serpent spam.

If you play old codexs, no, I don't think you should let them win.

Feeling bad for winning? No.

But I do feel a bit bad if it turns out my opponent's army has a really hard time with the board/terrain. We sometimes collect a few guys, make up 2-3 boards and start playing, and some boards just don't work for everyone. Such as the red lava planet board where there's difficult+dangerous lava rivers. I practically tabled my mate's orks there (we didn't roll my last shooting phase since it was clear), only losing seven Seraphim from my SoB force. Bunched-up footslogging orks in lava getting hosed down by flamers, heavy flamers and bolter fire? From the front and the back? And the poor Warboss who speeded up with some boyz in a Trukk only to get blown up, then wiped out by a single SoB squad.

It was a total slaughter and winning felt good, but the way the terrain hurt the orks made me feel sorry for my opponent.

I generally loose quite a lot when I play at my FLGS (when I say a lot I mean like 8 times out of 10) but I don't really mind. I like showing up, talking to people, and rolling the dice. I'm pretty sure I lose because I'm just not that good with the tactics and list building. I keep showing up though because everyone is pretty friendly and every time I lose I feel like I'm learning more about how to play the game. Today I had a pretty close game using a completely new list--I still lost in the end but it was much closer and I had a really good time.

In response to the question, I don't mind when I'm being rocked and my army is getting tabled. I'd rather try and see what happened and how I could make my army better than have my opponent go easy on me. That way I feel like no one really learns anything and I'm getting kind of patronized.

Just my 2 cents.

In general, no. If i win because i rolled like a boss when it counted, thats luck thats nothing to be angry at or ashamed of as thats what you depend on to win after the game looks hopeless.

Only time i feel bad is when my opponent fails everything that actually matters. Like last time i went against my Nid friend before he left he literally rolled either snake eyes or 11/12 for every spell he tried to cast. That made me feel bad because he just lost because he failed almost every virtually unfailable psyker test, and when he did pass he took a wound and never passed a regen. I didnt even look at one of his birthing bastards in the backfield, it killed itself lol not joking either.

Cheers for the responses guys, you've all made me feel a lot better about it.

I can see what a number of you guys are saying - in that it could make the other person feel patronised. I know I wouldn't feel like I'd 'really won' if my opponent wasn't trying their hardest.

On the other hand, I'm glad there are others who recognise the need to occasionally show some compassion to an opponent who has been on Struggle Street for longer than deserved.

I guess I felt bad, not because I was sweeping him off the table... It was the fact I was sweeping him off the table after he'd already been handily defeated twice that day.

I feel bad if I steamroll an opponent, but if I win fair-and-square in a closely fought battle then I don't mind too much... well, unless my opponent's on a 10 game losing streak or something.

In 5th ed I went to a tournament and gave no quarter... I felt pretty bad about it because my Wolves just crushed half of my opponents. But still, that's a tournament setting and we're all there to win it, so I did what was necessary.

I usually play against a group of friends and win all of the time with my SM army. I used to feel bad for winning almost every week but after a few months I helped them improve their armies and tactics and now they are on par with my skill level.

Played a game a few months back that was 0 fun. i had first turn, my opponent failed to seize, and my orks (yes ORKS) destroyed nearly everything that gave them a fighting chance in my first shooting phase. the first couple of shots, i was having fun killing Raven Wing. The fun stopped when the absurd luck didn't.

Ok from someone that usually looses. I dont like it when someone throws the game. I can tell and it actually angers me. I dont mind loosing. Yeah repetitive losses in one day sucks but if im goin to loose just let it happen because my tactics are bad or whatever. I never build a list goin ok I want to be able to beat everything thrown at me. Nope I play to my style which is im goin to chase u. Well dosnt always work and I usually loose the game... the thing is I have fun. I am always asking people y they do one thing or another trying to get them to see a different perspective. Like I said I dont win often and it dosnt bother me. I know when the tides have turned and im goin to loose. As for beating somone. Well theres a few people I will perposly table because I love to watch them get pissed off cuz they are bad loosers. As for someone that has good sportsmanship if im goin to table them ill usually start for objectives and let the guy try to take out my army. I guess its mostly do to im always discussing tactics and dont really focus on the game but in bettering my oponets play style.

I feel bad for winning sometimes, usually in three cases:

A fluke event changed the game in my favor - i.e. his LR with termies DT'd immobile or I popped a guy with a 2++ rerollable with an ID weapon... those extremely unlikely events that just change the face of a game. Yes, they're totally by the rules and yes that totally can happen, but when we both only get one game a month and this one is ruined, it kinda sucks.

I am rolling amazing or they are rolling terrrrrible. You just can't overcome dice sometimes. When you roll 20 shots and get 18 wounds and they hit a 3+ six times... that's rough.

And the last, when I'm in a local 1-day and the guy I have in a particular round is a newby or is still young enough to believe that THIS time his pin-point deepstrike won't scatter into impassable and explode. Again, totally within the rules and all, but they were never going to win and they simply aren't equipped to compete on the tables we're playing that day.

In these cases, when it isn't a tournament, often we'll call the game early and try to start a new one. In a tournament, I'll just try to play as quickly, cleanly, and finish it as fast as possible with no BS. If they're young or new, explain everything I'm doing so they see how it all works.

I feel bad when I steam-roll the opponent.
And I feel bad if I know that I only won because I was lucky or my opponent was unlucky with his dice: This one time I played against Orks and his SAG made his first shot and it did nothing. Then he shot a second time and rolled 1,1 that killed his HQ and 5 equiped Nobz.

But what makes me feel really bad is when it's a close win and people complain the next two days that my codex is overpowered.
Last week I played Apocalypse and we won because the other team made some bad choices.
It wasn't even that big of a win: 10 vs 4 victory points.
The complaining that followed ruined all the fun for me.

I felt really bad after an escalation league game at the beginning of the year. I was using the old Tau codex he was using SW with a lot of Long Fangs with missil launchers and about 4-5 unit of thunderwolves lead by a wolf lord.

Turn 1 night fighting. I had BSF armywide for the most part. Two railguns into the thunderwolves took out the lord and another TWC. Rest of the shooting netting nothing significant. TWC unit ran completely off the table.

By turn 3 I had eliminated most of his army and had just brought an allied Heldrake in. I felt really bad at this point since I knew he would have nothing left very quickly.

By the end of the game he only managed to kill a couple drones and a few firewarriors. I also noticed I had left a large FW squad off the table cause I just forgot to ever deploy them.

I've been on the side of the game where you're just getting torn apart and there is nothing you can do to change things. So I really felt bad for the guy. He took it in good spirits and knew it was a competitive escalation game. It may have been Karma since the game before I was absolutely destroyed by a triple Vendetta and melta/plasma vet list.

It entirely depends on the situation in the sense that. If its a friendly game and the opponent just rolls 5 1s saving a terminator squad against a bunch of bolters i ease up on the play intelligently throttle and try to punch things in the face. (make silly but fun plays like tank shocks)

I played a game against a friend of mine recently. Complete wipe off the board due to a couple mistakes on his part and particularly bad dice when he needed good rolls a lot. We both thought it was a rather dull and un-fun game afterwards simply because it was such a no-contest.

The only games I ever feel bad about winning are the ones in which my opponent clearly has no understanding of tactics whatsoever. If I notice a few turns in that things are going the way of a blunder for my opponent when it comes to target priority and things of that nature I just generally start to give tidbits of information on strengths of their army and weaknesses of mine.

Not in a way that sound condescending but more of a general chat about the dynamics of the game in general.