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Has anyone else had one of those games where you end up doing too good and end up feeling just terrible for mowing someone down?

Today there was a small generally friendly tournament of 1500 points, about only 7-8 people and only a few competitive builds. Now I play Tau, started back during mid-late 5th, and before I even start unpacking this guy is talking about how cheesy Tau are; he really was going on about how he would probably just forfeit if he even went against a tau player and even sooner if he went against a Tau/eldar list. This is just when I start unpacking my army and setting up. I use Eldar allies, and was kind of excited to field them since I just painted up some jetbikes the week before and this would be my first chance to use them. He sees my army and just says "Oh. There's one already."

I end up paired against this guy turn 2. I ask about his army because he used some Nids I'd never really seen before since I've only played against them once before. He goes over his army with me, he didn't ask about mine so I just assumed he knew.
Game is vanguard and he deploys a bunch of gaunts in the open with his Swarmlord right in the middle
I counter deploy with a HBC Riptide and Buffcommander with 20 Kroot in range of the Swarmlord
I seize the initiative
I shoot with the Riptide.
This is where it goes really bad; I nova charged the riptide and he asked what it meant so I explained, then I rerolled my misses and he asked why so I told him about the C&C node, then I rolled 4 rends and start to reroll the rest and he asks why so I explain about the PEN chip giving Monster Hunter, I got 7 rending wounds on him and he goes to roll cover and I have to explain that it ignores cover then showed him the book because he seemed confused. Needless to say he got pretty upset, shook his head and sighed, shook hands and said he was done, packed up and walked right out of the tournament 15 minutes into round 2.

About 6 other people asked me what happened so I had to keep explaining what happened and that's really all I did for the next hour and a half waiting for the next round. I honestly felt pretty bad, especially because the guy hasn't played a competitive game since 3rd and wasn't aware of Tau/Eldar even though he thought he knew enough to say they were cheesy. I feel like I should have explained what my army was before he deployed, that way he wouldn't have deployed so recklessly. I honestly thought that with as much as he was hating on Tau that he would know the very basic of what people complain about.
Here's the list I used too, which I really don't find all that cheesy, but maybe that's just me.

You're beating yourself up for nothing. It was a tournament, which implies that you bring all the cheesy flavor you can muster. He limped in, and that's on him. You are not responsible for the way anyone else decides to prepare or play.

Tournaments, by definition, are for the competition. If that's a problem for your local community, you should have comped events, or community round robin days. Play the game the way you and your community decide.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
P.S. Though it has a few cheesy components, I don't think that's to cheesy of a list. You did nothing wrong.

I've been there. I just got the new Tau codex and played 1-2 games with it (i,e,e enough to basically figure out how the main stuff worked). I had been doing really well against my opponents, getting really close and fun games.

I decided to shake things up some and brought what I thought was a really fun not so competitive list. It had Shadowsun and some stealth suits; sniper drones, a sky ray, and rail rifle broadsides as my heavy support choices; 2 squads of pathfinders with ion rifles... pretty much all the "fun but not great" stuff (not Vespid though. I still don't want to touch Vespid).

Anyway, my opponent usually played really genestealer focused Tyranids. I was expecting a fun game with probably a loss. It turned out he was experimenting with a new list and everything he brought was countered in some way by my list.

His one flying hive tyrant was shot down in flames by my sky ray. When the gaunts dropped down in a pod the ion rifle pathfinders utterly annihilated them with small blasts. The sniper drones and Kroot punched holes in his monsterous creatures, the doom was instant deathed by the broadsides in the interceptor phase. The stealth suits lead his couple genestealers all across the board always staying just out of charge range and shooting them to bits...

It honestly made us both feel really bad because we both were expecting a weird game where we were trying out new and interesting lists and I honestly don't think I could have built something to counter his better if I had known his list in advance and spent time researching it. I can't actually remember losing anything other than a few fire warriors come to think of it.

I guess the biggest thing is that I had an honestly good moment, where my dice finally lined up and I seized the initiative for the first time in probably 8 games, got a nova off when i needed it, and got a good amount of rending.

Then it just kinda got turned around when the guy just packed up and left.

@dementedwombat I know how it's like facing up against the hard counter army randomly. I also think a lot of it is just the current tau "sub-prime" units are actually really well balanced and older units like genestealers just don't hold up with the new editions.

Yep, had a very fast infantry aspect eldar with 3 wasp assault walkers. My friend had chaos. By turn 2 his army had all died from my shooting and didnt get to return fire at all. I lost 1 warp spider to my jump rolling.

That game sucked.

Run Shoot Jump is a bit over the top in my opinion.

No offence but i look at your list and personally id just end the game and move on. I hate people mashing random allies together. But i dont go to tournaments because of lists like yours

But in your defense he shouldn't expect any better going to a tournament. Other than that i understand perfectly why he would just leave.

 Savageconvoy wrote:
Has anyone else had one of those games where you end up doing too good and end up feeling just terrible for mowing someone down?

Today there was a small generally friendly tournament of 1500 points, about only 7-8 people and only a few competitive builds. Now I play Tau, started back during mid-late 5th, and before I even start unpacking this guy is talking about how cheesy Tau are; he really was going on about how he would probably just forfeit if he even went against a tau player and even sooner if he went against a Tau/eldar list. This is just when I start unpacking my army and setting up. I use Eldar allies, and was kind of excited to field them since I just painted up some jetbikes the week before and this would be my first chance to use them. He sees my army and just says "Oh. There's one already."

I end up paired against this guy turn 2. I ask about his army because he used some Nids I'd never really seen before since I've only played against them once before. He goes over his army with me, he didn't ask about mine so I just assumed he knew.
Game is vanguard and he deploys a bunch of gaunts in the open with his Swarmlord right in the middle
I counter deploy with a HBC Riptide and Buffcommander with 20 Kroot in range of the Swarmlord
I seize the initiative
I shoot with the Riptide.
This is where it goes really bad; I nova charged the riptide and he asked what it meant so I explained, then I rerolled my misses and he asked why so I told him about the C&C node, then I rolled 4 rends and start to reroll the rest and he asks why so I explain about the PEN chip giving Monster Hunter, I got 7 rending wounds on him and he goes to roll cover and I have to explain that it ignores cover then showed him the book because he seemed confused. Needless to say he got pretty upset, shook his head and sighed, shook hands and said he was done, packed up and walked right out of the tournament 15 minutes into round 2.

About 6 other people asked me what happened so I had to keep explaining what happened and that's really all I did for the next hour and a half waiting for the next round. I honestly felt pretty bad, especially because the guy hasn't played a competitive game since 3rd and wasn't aware of Tau/Eldar even though he thought he knew enough to say they were cheesy. I feel like I should have explained what my army was before he deployed, that way he wouldn't have deployed so recklessly. I honestly thought that with as much as he was hating on Tau that he would know the very basic of what people complain about.
Here's the list I used too, which I really don't find all that cheesy, but maybe that's just me.

Spoiler:

-Spirit seer: 70

-Wraithguard: 210
D-scythe

-Waveserpent: 130
Scatterlaser
Spiritstones
holofield

-Jetbikes: 51

-Commander-187
Msss/c&c/pen
Iridium/vrt-
Onager/nwsj

-Kroot (x20):145
hound/sniper

-Kroot (x20):145
hound/sniper

-Riptide: 200
Skyfire/hbc/sms

-Riptide: 190
IA/fusion/ewo

-Crisis suitx1: 52
(x2) Fusion

-Piranha (x3): 120

You know the more I see things like this the more I understand what the real problem is. There is such a massive power gap in the codices at this point that a mediocre Tau list is still better than the best Tyranid list. Or Ork list. So while your list wasn't the worst it could be, you are at such a massive advantage by virtue of what codex you are playing that the game seems almost pointless to him as a Tyranid player.

Hell I have six armies right now and I can see it with a cursory look at the codices for all of them how much power creep there is and as more codices come out it becomes more and more obvious.

Every time I play Salamanders against IG, I feel like I'm beating up a cripple.

I had a game I felt absolutely horrible about last week, where I found out midway through the thrashing that my opponent had purchased me an extravagant Christmas gift (and I had gotten him nothing!).

Whenever I'm playing an opponent who's new at the game or new at their army, I always feel bad for winning, because I'm never sure how hard I should go. If I take it easy on them, they don't learn their army effectively. If I go too hard on them, I ruin their good time. I usually wind up hamstringing myself on points and then playing as hard as I can, as a compromise.

Constantly.

I play my neighbour a lot, and the dice gods HATE him.

I beat him 9/10 of the time, often quite rapidly.

I've tried giving myself a handicap to compensate, or building as un-uber a list as i can run, but he gets offended if i take it too easy on him.

He's a great guy, but i feel bad when i wipe him out.

Yeah, these games just happen and it rarely has anything to do with list strength. I've brought lists that consist of "my best painted 1500 points" and completely massacred people because they didn't bother to bring any anti-tank or have a plan beyond "move up 6" every turn and then charge". Some people just don't know what rules exist, don't care enough to accept the offer of "need anything explained?", and expect that "roll some dice and see what happens" is the only strategy that anyone will use. Unless you deliberately cripple your own list and refrain from making good decisions you're going to crush those players and there's nothing you can do about it.

The worst one for me was a game where the guy started whining about how overpowered IG was and how there's no way I can fit that many tanks into a 1500 point game (I played mech IG with only minimum troops). Then once the game began and I killed some stuff right away he whined some more (apparently nobody is supposed to bring long-range guns and kill stuff before it can charge). Dropping his deathwing in and wiping out my LRBT and two Medusas was completely ignored, and he continued whining every time I did anything (OMG WTF you rolled 4 hits out of 10 with lasguns! UNFAIR!), especially when one of his precious terminators died (apparently a 2+ armor save means you shouldn't ever lose models). Then the insult to injury was the guy running the campaign listened to the whining, believed his laughable accusation that I was the one with the poor sportsmanship, and kicked me from the campaign. Needless to say I didn't really miss it.

My brother and I play a lot of games and between us we've played most the armies (I think only Sister of Battle and Black Templars are the only armies to have not graced our home table). It was late 5th edition, I had started Space Wolves and had an army I wanted to bring to an upcoming tourney and needed to test-fire, he was toying around with an assault-y Tyranid lists. The dice tend to hate him and love me. This time...the dice went overboard.

I lose the go first roll off and he sets up for what amounts to a Tyranid banzai-charge down the board. I set up my admittedly cheesed out army among the ruins on my board edge. It's a very shooty SW build: 2 Long Fang squads with 5 missiles each (and one had a termie WG w/ a Typhoon), There were 3 Land Speeder Typhoons, a Whirlwind, and a couple Rifleman Dreads. My HQ was a Rune Priest who sat with a small unit of Grey Hunters toting a Plasma Gun. The rest of the army consisted of as many rhino-mounted Grey Hunter squads (9 guys plus a WG) as I could fit in.

I seized initiative and...it was ugly. He had bunched up his guants expecting to be able to run them all forward and spread out on the advance. The Whirlwind's first attack landed right in the middle of two guant blobs, knocking them both down to something like 4-7 bugs. The autocannons, Priest, and Missiles barrage his stuff with Krak missiles and literally every monster minus a Carnifex and half a Tervigon are blown right off the board. From there my guys just keep firing on his stuff. I proceed to not lose a single man (or machine).

It felt very, very dirty.

I was desperate for a game a little while ago... managed to get a 1k game against a newbie space marine player. He told me he was new, it being one of his first real games outside Tutorial Sessions, so I agreed to tutor him as we played - pick up rules he missed out on in his advantage, and so on.

The reason I was so desperate? Codex: Adepta Sororitas had been released that day, and I wanted to try it out.

He had Space Marines. Blue Space Marines, with scouts and Devi-Centies and a Predator.

To add insult to injury, even with letting him find out why doing certain things was a bad idea and letting him do over (since half the point was to teach him the game), the dice favoured me in every single way and I tabled him in three turns.

Now that made me feel bad about winning. I don't think I'm that brilliant a player. I'm average at best. Especially since he had the basis for a fun army.

Next time I went into store, he was working on Necrons. ><

There was this one game I feel a little bad about.

It was the dude's first match since 3rd edition (he went to university and stopped playing, then he came back) so I was giving him a training match (2 troops and a HQ type of thing.) Long story short I got destroyed (happens to me every time I train a newbie.)

Anyway, we had a few hours left and he was like 'Do you want a small match?' I thought that was fair enough, however I only had enough on me to play 1k points, and it involved bringing a Heldrake and a flying daemon prince.


Turn one was okay, the DP moved up the flank and took a beating but survived on one wound.
Turn Two the Heldrake came in and ate the only unit of AT in the game. The DP charged into the command squad and killed them all with the black mace.


I lost two marines that game, and I completely destroyed his army.


However he did laugh it off, and I did warn him pre-match that nothing he had could destroy the drake easily.

yea ive been there. a few years back, in whfb 7th, i made my first army, and decided i wanted to push my painting skills. i ended up creating a mono tzeentch daemons list. (with some help from dakka) now - having not played whfb much before this point, i really had no idea what i was doing, and just wanted to get some of everything, and really push into the bright blues, pinks, and oranges of tzeentch, and i did quite well i think. anyway, no one else i knew played fantasy really, except this one fellow who played DE. we played MANY test games, where i tried diff builds, so i could learn the army and fine tune it. he won some i won some. fun!

anyway, at the anual major tournament i faced him in the 3rd round, having won my first 2 by rather convincing margains. and faced off against my old sparring DE friend. it ....did not go well for him. by turn 2 i had killed half his army, had kairos in behind his lines, doing what he does, and had taken like 3 horrors as casualties. he packed up and left after that turn. (and aparently is STILL bitter about it years later.

a couple of years after that, i played my DE (brand new, shortly after the new cron release - all they had out was wave 1 i believe) ended up facing off vrs a new necron player. tabled him by end of 2... just because my venom list was "hyper optimized" as my friends put it, and his necron list was....just a few battleforces and older things thrown together.

both games i felt sort of bad kicking butt... but the dice just went with me, and the other side failed. combined with luck, and armie matchups... yea. solid tourney wins, but i feel sort of bad the other guy didnt enjoy it. i know i dont like my ass getting kicked... (and ive been on the wrong side of MANY more of these kinds, then ive handed out)

it happens. shake hands, win with humility, and move on.

My last 40k game was just this... I felt horrible.

The guy was fairly new to CSM, all he has was the contents of DV + a Sorc and to small CSM sqauds, versed him with my Mono-Slaan daemons. I don't think I've rolled that many 5s or 6s ever in my life before that game...

Next to no daemons died that day, and practically all his guys died to AP2 attacks...

At least his Warlord never got a chance to face mine in single combat... I rolled the ID warlord trait + the Fleshbane greater reward on the one model is a terrifying prospect... especially when that model has a tonne AP2 Attacks...

The most one sided games I've had have been as a result of list-tailoring.

Opponent "Oh, you've brought your new Ork army? Scatter lasers on everything."

Looks up to see a wall of battlewagons....

I had this one game, my CSM vs. my friend's DA. We're all rookies, but I'm more experienced, and it showed during that match. The friend was extremely apprehensive of approaching my squad of Noise Marines, and I was in a pretty "aggressive" mood after my recent defeat at the hands of Tyranids. As a result, he ended up strolling at the fringe of my army's shooting range while doing little of importance, and I relentlessly pursued and blasted him to bits with my Vindicator, Tri-Las Predator and Blastmaster. I felt bad afterward and told him what mistakes he did to avoid that happening again.

I think that was also the game where a squad of 20 cultists with ranged weapons wiped out 4(!) Ravenwing bikers, and the 2 remaining ones ran away due to failed morale test. I was as astonished as he was.

 Peregrine wrote:
Yeah, these games just happen and it rarely has anything to do with list strength. I've brought lists that consist of "my best painted 1500 points" and completely massacred people because they didn't bother to bring any anti-tank or have a plan beyond "move up 6" every turn and then charge". Some people just don't know what rules exist, don't care enough to accept the offer of "need anything explained?", and expect that "roll some dice and see what happens" is the only strategy that anyone will use. Unless you deliberately cripple your own list and refrain from making good decisions you're going to crush those players and there's nothing you can do about it.

The worst one for me was a game where the guy started whining about how overpowered IG was and how there's no way I can fit that many tanks into a 1500 point game (I played mech IG with only minimum troops). Then once the game began and I killed some stuff right away he whined some more (apparently nobody is supposed to bring long-range guns and kill stuff before it can charge). Dropping his deathwing in and wiping out my LRBT and two Medusas was completely ignored, and he continued whining every time I did anything (OMG WTF you rolled 4 hits out of 10 with lasguns! UNFAIR!), especially when one of his precious terminators died (apparently a 2+ armor save means you shouldn't ever lose models). Then the insult to injury was the guy running the campaign listened to the whining, believed his laughable accusation that I was the one with the poor sportsmanship, and kicked me from the campaign. Needless to say I didn't really miss it.

If you talk in person like you do on here at times, I could see why someone would believe you have poor sportsmanship.

I had that one tourney game where I played against a friend from the local miniature club. I play Necrons and he's a CSM player (was still using the 5th ed codex at the time).

Now, this guy often has some fairly bad luck with his dice, but what happened on my first turn was really quite something- he played first and, among other things, moved up a large squad of jetpack assault marines with his warlord in its center towards my flank. I had two units of 5 warriors and a destructek each with LoS on the blob but only the destructeks had the range.

Roll to hit, score a 6- precision shot on the warlord. Roll to wound- didn't fail. He rolls his invul, succeeds. So far so good, I didn't really expect to do anything serious that turn.

Second Destructek rolls to hit, scores a 6- precision shot on the warlord.

He didn't make his save this time around. S8 meant instant death.

I felt bad for the guy...

I get this a lot with Dark Eldar because of the night shields. They move up just into range and find out their weapons are still out of range and they get murdered the next turn.

I'm immune to the moans now though, I know the feeling they have based on my Nids playing TAU on the long deployment.

Its one of the aspects of the game. Don't bring specialist armies as you will get rolled from time to time.

Has anyone else had one of those games where you end up doing too good and end up feeling just terrible for mowing someone down?

Never happened to me . Wining is always good .

I've never had any incidents like this in 40K, but in general I never enjoy crushing people in games unless they're arrogant or obnoxious.

Most of my friends growing up were these very "MLG" competitive players who had to always win at any cost. I've watched them play with little kids (not strangers online, I mean like nephews) in games like Halo and just completely and utterly maul them, to the point where the kids are like, crying.

I can't do that, personally. I would rather throw a game and make it look like a hard-won victory (or loss) for the other guy than to just crush them outright.

I like to think that that's why I've never won first-place in anything.

I suffered a bad brain injury at work. So I asked a person at a local game store if he would mind teaching me how to play 40k. Having memory loss and not playing since I got hurt I knew it would be tough on me. This was my first game in 6th edition, so I made an easy green tide army of Orks and he decided to field chaos with three hell drakes. That was my first time dealing with hell drakes and by round three my army of Orks was removed from the table. Not sure if he felt bad and at that time my head was to scrambled to know what the heck was going on. So thats how my welcome to 6th edition went.

Well I'm usually the other guy
Seriously, when I started playing I had no idea of the game and played couple of games against my uncle who's pretty competitive. He always brought an easy list with random choices and still beated me bloody and I could always sense the awkwardness when he realised that he "wasn't supposed to win".

I've been on the other side as well. About a month ago, there was a Chaos player at local GW and we played a 500 point game where I had a Wraithlord. The game was Big Guns Never Tire and he had a single meltagun and PF on the field. After we realised that he couldn't kill my Lord I started feeling bad because he said it was his first game in five years and I beat him with no problem and lost like three models.

But the game is about winning (especially in tournaments) so you shouldn't feel bad about it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Chute82 wrote:
I suffered a bad brain injury at work. So I asked a person at a local game store if he would mind teaching me how to play 40k. Having memory loss and not playing since I got hurt I knew it would be tough on me. This was my first game in 6th edition, so I made an easy green tide army of Orks and he decided to field chaos with three hell drakes. That was my first time dealing with hell drakes and by round three my army of Orks was removed from the table. Not sure if he felt bad and at that time my head was to scrambled to know what the heck was going on. So thats how my welcome to 6th edition went.

You play for first time (kind of) and he fields three Heldrakes...?
Wow, that was kind of messed up :/

Three helldrakes is standard for CSM lists.

Dude you would not believe a game I had that was purely non competitive and we both had to bring allies, I brought generic space marines and guard but only one veteran squad no platoon and no chimera, this was before the 6th edition space marine codex was released. My opponent brought dark angels and space wolves. It was a 1500 point game, I tabled him.

I kid you not I only lost a total of 3 models, just 3! 1 storm Bolter pf terminator and 2 marines. I swear that it was nuts, I really felt bad. That guy could not roll dice to save his life.

 soomemafia wrote:

But the game is about winning (especially in tournaments) so you shouldn't feel bad about it.

Sorry but, what? This is a game, games are about having fun. Winning and losing is part of the game but the goal should always be for both players to have fun whether it is in a tournament or pick up game. Why do people forget to have fun, that makes no sense...

I hope you don't feel like I am attacking you, I am just commenting on your statement as it struck me as odd.

I once played a game against a Tau player I had never met before who was kind enough to offer to play a match with me at our FLGS when my regular opponent had to cancel. The game started fine, and it looked to be fair, even match, and then hot dice on my side and cool dice on his wrecked the match. He was tabled by the fourth turn and it took the fun out of it.

Arbiter_Shade wrote:

 soomemafia wrote:

But the game is about winning (especially in tournaments) so you shouldn't feel bad about it.

Sorry but, what? This is a game, games are about having fun. Winning and losing is part of the game but the goal should always be for both players to have fun whether it is in a tournament or pick up game. Why do people forget to have fun, that makes no sense...

I hope you don't feel like I am attacking you, I am just commenting on your statement as it struck me as odd.

Why do you people claim that wining or playing to win is somehow not fun or that it can't be fun , and that there are some sort of other hard to explain things ,specialy for tournaments , that are suppose to decide if a game is fun or isn't?

It's alwayz sad when players with fluffy lists meet competitive tau-dar and such stuff. The game really lasts like 1 turn and the other few turns are just a massacre of the left-overs.
I don't think you should participate in tourneys with fun lists. It's a waste of time for both players. Fun player ain't recieving any fun and competitive player ain't competing (however, many competitive players strive for free wins so it's not feeling that bad on their side).
The OP's opponent didn't act quite right. Everyone knows even without his whining that new tau/eldar/daemons are full of unballanced overpowered stuff. But tourney players are ment to spam cheeze or counter some widely met cheeze, nope?
For example, noone would call orkse's battlewagon rush a cheezy list and orkses are widely considered non-competitive, but they totally counters trip-tide spam and tau gunline.

"You strive for victory. That is obvious. What may be less obvious is the nature of victory. There are circumstances in which you can destroy the enemy utterly, without loss to your own forces, and yet the victory may be his. In all situations, you must first decide on the nature of victory, and then take steps to secure it. Avoid the instinct of fight first and think later." Leman Russ - (Meditations, Book VI)

Always love a good excuse to quote my favorite Primarch...

But the above pretty much sums it all up, that guy walked into a 6th edition tourney with 3rd edition rules in his head, he should have atleast went to a few tournaments, and just sat, watched, asked questions on rules and get himself caught up on whats changed from 3rd to 6th edition, given there are 2 editions and many years between the two, how much as been added since 3rd, taking from from what little I know of 6th edition as a whole (which isn't much, thank Russ for Codex... ) I'd say quite a lot changed, hence "you must first decide on the nature of victory, and then take steps to secure it." and "Avoid the instinct of fight first and think later."

Don't kick yourself for rinsing the poor guy when you're up-to-date on 6th edition rules and competitive tips and tricks and he wasn't, he pretty much fell into the game arse over head, and got canned simply for not being up-to-date, when he could have (more or less) easily could have.

"The opportunity to secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself." - Sun Tzu

Another good quote, but seriously don't feel bad dude, you where nice about everything, he choose to quit from being overwhelmed by the new rules, not you being "cheeky", which I really think you weren't.