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You have fallen for a basic fallacy yourself. There is more difference between the 3 then points vs PL, tough it is the biggest.

And I think vector strike got the names wrong. PL alone is not a game mode.

 generalchaos34 wrote:

That's not saying i'm not looking to win, I do enjoy it if I do, but I want to make sure that its an enjoyable experience for all. Besides, we only grow through learning from failures

Which you're kind of robbing from the other player if you're condescending to let them win or be free from the consequences of their mistakes. Don't get me wrong, I understand where you're coming from, but I just think there's a lot more middle ground than what you're making it to be. If the other player has a bad list or makes bad decisions, politely offer some constructive feedback and tell them how they can do better next time. If they're just rolling so poorly that the game isn't fun for either of you then yeah, just dive into the silliness and do what it takes to make it fun.

Maybe I'm weird, but I have made a point to not play people who go above and beyond the call to make the most hyper competitive lists. I know that some people are programmed to WIN WIN WIN despite all costs, and I know that sometimes losing is a better alternative in the long term.

Just because someone puts effort into making a decent list doesn't mean they're hard wired to win at all costs. If you give someone a budget of points and tell them they can select from certain units to make an army, any rationally thinking person is going to try to get the most out of what they're given. It's not weird, unusual, anti-social or selfish. It's reasonable, normal behavior. The only difference is in what you find fun compared to what they find fun. Someone like that might think they are robbing the other player of fun and being selfish if they don't hold their opponents to the same standard they seek for themselves and give them incentive to actually try. Fun is subjective. I would personally not find it fun if I were aware that my opponent were treating me like a child and intentionally throwing a game to protect my feelings. I would much rather have them tell me in a respectful and constructive way what I did wrong and how I can improve. But as has been said many times, that's why the crux of this matter really is communicating your expectations and needs to the people you're playing with and reaching understanding and compromise.

I also hate it when people take soup lists and stuff like "this is my catachan detachment and my cadian detachment and my tallarn detachment" so as to milk the most out of the rules instead of having a little pride in "my boys are all Valhallan and they won't dare play as another army!"

You can take pride in making the most synergistic, points efficient list you're able to. You can take pride in efficiently spending every single point. There are a lot of things you can take pride in; just because you don't take pride in the mathematical side of the game doesn't mean someone who does is wrong or vice versa. It doesn't make them any less fun, or any worse of ambassadors for the hobby, or anything. If you're a respectful person who makes an effort at communicating well with other players, that's all that really matters. If you're not, then that is when you're doing it wrong.

 generalchaos34 wrote:
I'd like to counter your initial statement to say that I have purposely lost many games because the other player was having a terrible time. My goal for all my games is to have fun. If one side is experiencing crushing defeat (and not necessarily because of bad play, merely bad luck) I will subtly alter my style, make a few tactical errors, and of course, remain friendly. I'm not having fun if my opponent is not having fun. The game should be a mutual experience for everyone in my opinion, and crushing someone and drinking their tears is not something that appeals to all but the most alpha of dogs. Coincidentally I do a great job getting new players into the game....

That would be a notable (and respectable) exception to the rule. I take it you still came to the table with the intention and plan to win the match against your opponent, which is more my point about playing to win; nobody should be walking to a table with an opponent without the intention or plan to win the game. In fact, I'd argue that someone would be throwing the game if they're not playing to win, since the core objective of any game with an "opponent" is to beat your opponent in whatever scenario the game is laying out for you and them.

Like I say though, your scenario is an exception to that. Kudos to you, sir/madam

That's not saying i'm not looking to win, I do enjoy it if I do, but I want to make sure that its an enjoyable experience for all. Besides, we only grow through learning from failures, never through winning without introspection.

Maybe I'm weird, but I have made a point to not play people who go above and beyond the call to make the most hyper competitive lists. I know that some people are programmed to WIN WIN WIN despite all costs, and I know that sometimes losing is a better alternative in the long term.

This is my point in both of your statements there, firstly that, no matter which way you choose to play, you should not be playing to win at the expense of the fun, and that you should also be playing with people who share your playstyle. Bringing a casual list to a competitive game is just as bad as bringing a competitive list to a casual game; the way you and your opponent want to play the game should be the foundation of everything else when organising a match.

I also am not a huge fan of radically altering the game beyond anything that is sensible (like some of the goofy stuff in 7th, like where did flamers hit ruins? etc.), and I rarely have a problem with letting a player do something they forgot to do if it is going to be catastrophic to their play if they didn't. I also hate it when people take soup lists and stuff like "this is my catachan detachment and my cadian detachment and my tallarn detachment" so as to milk the most out of the rules instead of having a little pride in "my boys are all Valhallan and they won't dare play as another army!"

Am I casual? yes. Am I terrible at this game? Very likely. Have I considered buying a Ushanka to wear when I play my Valhallans at a tournament? Definitely

I think sportsmanship should be a given no matter who you're playing against; perhaps in a tournament it would be different because a different standard of play should be expected from competitors, but in any other environment I'd be a little miffed if someone denied me an opportunity to rectify a mistake I made. It shouldn't matter if you've got a soup list, or if you're playing competitively; just don't be an arse. Lord knows both camps of people would be much happier if respect for each other was mandatory conduct rather than something quite a few people seem to think is optional.

That's not directed at you, by the way. Just more of a summation of my overall point.

actively discourage you from trying to understand the game system infinitely and try to use this knowledge to effectively maximize the quality of your performance of the table.

Here's where I point out yet again that, according to the 40k rules, The Damage attribute on a weapon profile is the amount of damage you deal on a successful Hit. Think about that one for a while.

The reason why people try to discourage you from going down that route is because it's a WASTE OF TIME, because the game quickly becomes unreasonable when you try to do stuff like that.

Is no one going to point out the difference between optimizing and trying to break the game? Because they are different, and I honestly do enjoy the latter. Not because I intend to actually use such tactics to ruin others fun, frankly I don't even use truly optimized builds outside of a tournament, but just because there is something fun about finding loopholes and unintended consequences within a system and pointing them out. It is like stress testing the game system and finding the weak points. If anything, I find this more enjoyable now that I know GW will actually fix any issues that the community as a whole finds, unlike the previous method of hoping your opponent isn't an ass.

Earth127 wrote:
You have fallen for a basic fallacy yourself. There is more difference between the 3 then points vs PL, tough it is the biggest.

Then it works to sum it up at that way when discussing something else, specifically people.

All three 'game modes' can happily be abused, it has little to do with a specific person's dedication to being ultra competitive or ultra casual.
Equally, all three can be fun for people willing to make the effort, regardless of how much they like winning, math, fluff or creating tabletop fanfics. What the three 'game modes' don't do is filter out the bad apples.

Realistically, nothing is going to do that beyond actually talking to them.

 daedalus wrote:
The reason why people try to discourage you from going down that route is because it's a WASTE OF TIME, because the game quickly becomes unreasonable when you try to do stuff like that.

Yeah, this edition is rather bad about the core rules being written in just normal conversational English, which ignores the fact that hit has a specific meaning for example. Also the fact that wounding, inflicting a successful wound, inflicting an unsaved wound, inflicting damage, and when a model loses a wound are often conflated and confused for one another.

However, GW adopted the novel approach of making the core rules so full of such contradictions that people generally just play the way they intended becaus erule lawyering gets you nowhere. Though there were a couple situations where the actual meaning was unclear.

I absolutely think tournaments need to bring back comp and sportsmanship. It would go a long way to curb the most egregious abuses; people who take soup with 5 different factions to maximize things, people who take multiple detachments of the same army with different traits to min-max the units within them, things like that should be dinged on comp because it's clearly just trying to gain an advantage.

Ultimately, Warhammer competitions should be about the hobby, not just who goes undefeated. So the entire hobby should be a factor. Theme, painting, sportsmanship and generalship.

@ Op

I'd have to say you don't seem to have look too hard as whilst dakka is a tad theorycrafting lite there are a fair few forums with lots of statistical data showing expected performance of various units etc, not exactly complex number juggling but can save time mucking about with a calculator or spreadsheet

Dakka is also fairly skewed towards 40k were the 'best' units are (most likely purposely) easy to spot under the haz plasmaz ? theory

Dakka can be a little abrasive, and I've been guilty of being sharp with people who appear immune to reasoned discourse, which only leads to escalating bloody mindedness on all sides, kind of annoying but dakka wouldn't be dakka without it

Once again another thread to bash people who actually enjoy competitive 40k. You don't see nearly as many of these threads from the 'WAAC" players. Personally it's no fun playing people that have absolutely no idea how to build a list, doesn't even have to be tournament-quality but at least competent.

"breaking the game" is completely subjective to ones UNDERSTANDING of how the game works.

To each their own.

Wayniac wrote:
I absolutely think tournaments need to bring back comp and sportsmanship. It would go a long way to curb the most egregious abuses; people who take soup with 5 different factions to maximize things, people who take multiple detachments of the same army with different traits to min-max the units within them, things like that should be dinged on comp because it's clearly just trying to gain an advantage.

Ultimately, Warhammer competitions should be about the hobby, not just who goes undefeated. So the entire hobby should be a factor. Theme, painting, sportsmanship and generalship.

**** no. The last thing we need is a "you beat me, you get a zero" scoring system that rewards TFGs for being TFG.

 Luciferian wrote:
Not everyone is going to see this as an ideal solution, but one way to weed out a lot of the cheese exploited by WAAC type players would be for everyone to have a higher standard when it comes to painting and proxies. If TOs enforced some kind of standard like 3-5 colors + shade + highlight and strict WYSIWYG rules for stand ins, the kind of players who strictly want to cheese out whatever exploitable flaw exists in the rules that month would largely fade away. Making painting part of tournament scoring would be a good idea, as well, even if it were worth as much as half your total points.

Don't play games with unpainted minis and don't play against people who haven't painted theirs. That may seem kind of elitist and biased against people who don't enjoy or can't afford to have the proper models and fully paint them, but that's kind of the point. If you want to play you've got to put your money and time where your mouth is and actually invest in your army and list, instead of just being able to buy or proxy whatever unit is the best in the meta and throwing it on the table.

^this, 100% helps. The big reason that the "competitive meta' is less of a universal thing in a lot of 40k groups is because they're dedicated to fielding painted and buying actual official minis instead of minimum-cost acceptable proxies. I've noticed with every iteration of the competitive whack-a-mole GW has been doing as more and more people make expensive purchases of a unit they want to spam and then it gets nerfed, fewer and fewer people are constructing their armies to min/max.

The very best way to ensure your collection stays at least midlevel playable is to construct units that have a specialized goal in mind, but to have as wide a variety of different units as possible. The answer to "hey, why have 1 of X and 1 of Y and 1 of Z when 3 Xs would be better at the same job?" is because in a month X will be nerfed and it'd be better to have 3 Y.

We now have a meta where Khorne Bezerkers and Genestealers are considered oppressively strong. everything, EVERYTHING, comes around.

I like to play competitively but I don't like to construct armies competitively. My unit choices are mainly dictated by aesthetic and thematic reasons, but then I'll try to do my best with the stuff I've got.

Building a competent list still requires ignoring a vast swathe of the game. Which is where the issue lies in a game that sells itself on its narrative and aesthetics.

I know for me I spent a decade powergaming, so I totally get how to do it. The problem for me is powergaming burned me out and I quit for a few years and don't want to be burned out again.

So the lists that I make are narrative in structure and don't include the latest exploits. This usually means my lists would never be seen at a tournament and would be "B" grade lists that do well and have fun against other narrative "B" grade lists, but are no fun to match up against the powergaming "A" lists.

Earth127 wrote:
You have fallen for a basic fallacy yourself. There is more difference between the 3 then points vs PL, tough it is the biggest.

And I think vector strike got the names wrong. PL alone is not a game mode.

oops, you're right! fixed

 Luciferian wrote:
Not everyone is going to see this as an ideal solution, but one way to weed out a lot of the cheese exploited by WAAC type players would be for everyone to have a higher standard when it comes to painting and proxies. If TOs enforced some kind of standard like 3-5 colors + shade + highlight and strict WYSIWYG rules for stand ins, the kind of players who strictly want to cheese out whatever exploitable flaw exists in the rules that month would largely fade away. Making painting part of tournament scoring would be a good idea, as well, even if it were worth as much as half your total points.

Don't play games with unpainted minis and don't play against people who haven't painted theirs. That may seem kind of elitist and biased against people who don't enjoy or can't afford to have the proper models and fully paint them, but that's kind of the point. If you want to play you've got to put your money and time where your mouth is and actually invest in your army and list, instead of just being able to buy or proxy whatever unit is the best in the meta and throwing it on the table.

Makes me curious what competive level of Finland then seeing we have painted army requirements.

http://www.gowarhead.com/2017/11/war-head-triad-iii-coverage.html

Roughly how competive armies these would be considered in global meta?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 General Annoyance wrote:

 generalchaos34 wrote:
I'd like to counter your initial statement to say that I have purposely lost many games because the other player was having a terrible time. My goal for all my games is to have fun. If one side is experiencing crushing defeat (and not necessarily because of bad play, merely bad luck) I will subtly alter my style, make a few tactical errors, and of course, remain friendly. I'm not having fun if my opponent is not having fun. The game should be a mutual experience for everyone in my opinion, and crushing someone and drinking their tears is not something that appeals to all but the most alpha of dogs. Coincidentally I do a great job getting new players into the game....

That would be a notable (and respectable) exception to the rule. I take it you still came to the table with the intention and plan to win the match against your opponent, which is more my point about playing to win; nobody should be walking to a table with an opponent without the intention or plan to win the game. In fact, I'd argue that someone would be throwing the game if they're not playing to win, since the core objective of any game with an "opponent" is to beat your opponent in whatever scenario the game is laying out for you and them.

I go to the table looking what kind of interesting story scenario leads to this time.

Funny that winning isn't only goal available...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

SilverAlien wrote:

 daedalus wrote:
The reason why people try to discourage you from going down that route is because it's a WASTE OF TIME, because the game quickly becomes unreasonable when you try to do stuff like that.

Yeah, this edition is rather bad about the core rules being written in just normal conversational English, which ignores the fact that hit has a specific meaning for example. Also the fact that wounding, inflicting a successful wound, inflicting an unsaved wound, inflicting damage, and when a model loses a wound are often conflated and confused for one another.

However, GW adopted the novel approach of making the core rules so full of such contradictions that people generally just play the way they intended becaus erule lawyering gets you nowhere. Though there were a couple situations where the actual meaning was unclear.

Have they still bothered to fix assault weapons that they would actually functionally work without requiring players to house rule it?-)

I don't think CAAC players even exist. Asking for a balanced match, by banning some units or tailoring one of the lists, is a completely different concept.

I don't mind playing with extremely competitive lists but only if both lists are on a similar level. In fact I don't even care if the list I play is competitive or 100% fluffy, only two things matter: to be as near as possible the opponent's level in terms of competitiveness and to play something that isn't dull and boring.

The problem with the TAC approach, which never interested me, is that with the current rules you're very likely to have an unbalanced match which is no fun at all, even for the winner.

When it comes to definitions like WAAC, TFG or CAAC we're always talking about friendly games, not tournaments. Friendly games can be competitive, just play with optimized lists, but since they're not part of a tournament the goal of that games should be having fun, nothing more. So discussing with the opponent before the match to adjust one of both lists doesn't make someone a CAAC guy.

tneva82 wrote:
I go to the table looking what kind of interesting story scenario leads to this time.

Funny that winning isn't only goal available...

Irrelevant to the point I was making; no battle in history has been fought with the intention of losing/not winning - just because it's a narrative scenario does not mean that your game objective isn't being victorious.

Like I've been saying, this mentality about the perception of "playing to win" is very much flawed. Because if you're not playing a game to win it, you're throwing the game for all intents and purposes. The key point is to play to win, but not at the expense of the fun.

 Luciferian wrote:
Not everyone is going to see this as an ideal solution, but one way to weed out a lot of the cheese exploited by WAAC type players would be for everyone to have a higher standard when it comes to painting and proxies. If TOs enforced some kind of standard like 3-5 colors + shade + highlight and strict WYSIWYG rules for stand ins, the kind of players who strictly want to cheese out whatever exploitable flaw exists in the rules that month would largely fade away. Making painting part of tournament scoring would be a good idea, as well, even if it were worth as much as half your total points.

Don't play games with unpainted minis and don't play against people who haven't painted theirs. That may seem kind of elitist and biased against people who don't enjoy or can't afford to have the proper models and fully paint them, but that's kind of the point. If you want to play you've got to put your money and time where your mouth is and actually invest in your army and list, instead of just being able to buy or proxy whatever unit is the best in the meta and throwing it on the table.

Unfortunately, the idea that "WAAC-type players don't paint their minis" is often quite false. My first time going to NOVA (2015) I ended up in the second bracket (each has 16 players for those unfamiliar). There, I played 2 guys who had won GTs in the past and another who took top battle points in that tourney. Eldar, Superfriends, and 5 flying hive tyrants...and all were beautifully painted. In fact, my army (grey knights) was on the lower end of painted armies in that bracket. GT winners show up with painted armies; in fact I find it extremely rare to play against a barely-painted army in any tournament I attend, excepting a few small RTTs. So it's not as much of a fix as you might think, especially when you factor in that some people just aren't good at painting and others pay to have their models painted for them.

There are painting competitions for those so inclined...while a "best overall" score can factor in artistic ability the purpose of a tournament is to win games, and should primarily be scored as such. The true way to "fix the game" is to do just that: Fix the issues with the game as they come up so that it is balanced, fun to play, and every unit is viable (or at least has a purpose).

 Blackie wrote:
I don't think CAAC players even exist. Asking for a balanced match, by banning some units or tailoring one of the lists, is a completely different concept.

I don't mind playing with extremely competitive lists but only if both lists are on a similar level. In fact I don't even care if the list I play is competitive or 100% fluffy, only two things matter: to be as near as possible the opponent's level in terms of competitiveness and to play something that isn't dull and boring.

The problem with the TAC approach, which never interested me, is that with the current rules you're very likely to have an unbalanced match which is no fun at all, even for the winner.

When it comes to definitions like WAAC, TFG or CAAC we're always talking about friendly games, not tournaments. Friendly games can be competitive, just play with optimized lists, but since they're not part of a tournament the goal of that games should be having fun, nothing more. So discussing with the opponent before the match to adjust one of both lists doesn't make someone a CAAC guy.

This new "Casual at all costs" (which seems to be just used as a retort to WAAC) would essentially be just what we'd call a "sore loser". Someone who rolls up with a purposely underpowered list, gets their teeth kicked in and then goes on a rant about how their opponent was cheesy, their list was cheese and they claim moral victory for "not playing cheese lists", also potentially the type of person who rants that anything unbalanced should be banned, but this can sometimes be grounded in merit. I don't think many people are really like that, it's just the opposite extreme to the powergaming "git gud scrub" type of gamer.

Additionally, CAAC (to me) also represents people who even throw out the narrative in pursuit of vindication. It's why I don't get along with them.

Fluff players (in my experience) are totally fine getting creamed in a game, so long as it was a fun narrative battle. It may get old getting creamed over and over again, for sure (though for some of us it doesn't), but so long as it's narrative friendly they get over it.

To use myself as an example: at NOVA I tried to have a narrative running in my head (even though I played at the GT) at least for the whole company. I got tabled in a few games (the curse of the baneblade company is that it is is trivial for some armies to table while utterly unbeatable against others) - but I didn't mind. Even my worst game against a Necron Pylon (which one-shotted my tanks) only triggered me a bit because my opponent neglected to mention that it had a -1 to hit ground units, then didn't have the rules when I asked, and then turned out to have them at the end when I confirmed it had a -1 to hit ground units.

Narratively, I was generally okay with that game. Invading a tomb-world, only to be met with staggering, high-tech firepower beyond the ken of mankind which could rip apart a company of superheavy tanks in short order, actually sounds like a neato prelude to some epic story about how the Imperium had to find a solution other than MOAR STUFF.

Wayniac wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
I don't think CAAC players even exist. Asking for a balanced match, by banning some units or tailoring one of the lists, is a completely different concept.

I don't mind playing with extremely competitive lists but only if both lists are on a similar level. In fact I don't even care if the list I play is competitive or 100% fluffy, only two things matter: to be as near as possible the opponent's level in terms of competitiveness and to play something that isn't dull and boring.

The problem with the TAC approach, which never interested me, is that with the current rules you're very likely to have an unbalanced match which is no fun at all, even for the winner.

When it comes to definitions like WAAC, TFG or CAAC we're always talking about friendly games, not tournaments. Friendly games can be competitive, just play with optimized lists, but since they're not part of a tournament the goal of that games should be having fun, nothing more. So discussing with the opponent before the match to adjust one of both lists doesn't make someone a CAAC guy.

This new "Casual at all costs" (which seems to be just used as a retort to WAAC) would essentially be just what we'd call a "sore loser". Someone who rolls up with a purposely underpowered list, gets their teeth kicked in and then goes on a rant about how their opponent was cheesy, their list was cheese and they claim moral victory for "not playing cheese lists", also potentially the type of person who rants that anything unbalanced should be banned, but this can sometimes be grounded in merit. I don't think many people are really like that, it's just the opposite extreme to the powergaming "git gud scrub" type of gamer.

CAAC is a subset of "scrub mentality" but generally more varied and weird. Usually it takes the form of sore losing (whatever beat me is OP, no matter what it is! I've had people complain that Wyches are OP, that GSC neophytes are OP, that ork walkers are OP...) but it can be anything that can be taken as a Transgression or Affront To Fluff.

There is (was, maybe? not sure if theyre still around) a super-cliquey group of CAAC gamers in my area who would pretty much ban people for doing things like "Take more than 2 of any given unit because that's spamming" "point out and print their list and ask for their opponents list" "insist that a rule be played correctly instead of the wildly and obviously incorrect way the group had decided to play the rule". Basically, if you showed up the first time to game and you played one of the clique members and you won? You were most likely to be told to not come back.

Generally, these are folks that take losing even harder than your average powergamer, but rather than doing everything they can in the game to win, they do everything they can outside the game to win. The best example I have of that behavior is a self-described fluffy gamer who would arrange games in advance, knowing which army his opponent had, and then he would hyper-tailor his list against that army and justify it with the excuse of "if I knew I was facing all tanks, of COURSE I would have my soldiers bring nothing but anti tank weapons! I'm just being realistic!"

I usually just left him be and didn't play him, not wanting to start gak, but one time during a campaign I got matched up against him. I couldn't resist - I said I was playing Orks and dusted off all the shelfwarmer walkers I had. I showed up with a Stompa, a Gorkanaut, 6 killa kanz and 4 Deff Dreads in a Dredd Mob list, and as I expected he had something like 30 flamers and heavy flamers sitting behind a promethium relay pipe network. It was the perfect storm because my fluff in the campaign so far had centered around my named big mek, Biln Eye Da Science Git (Biln! Biln! Biln! Biln!) so a dredd mob was perfectly fluffy.

I love the people that cry "it's realistic!" when they list tailor.

It's realistic in an unrealistic world, if that makes sense, but rarely does the Company Commander / whomever is in charge have access to such a thing.

An example would be me bringing Scout Sentinels with my Baneblade company if I knew I was playing someone who liked to deep-strike antitank units. "It's only realistic to have recon for heavy tanks!"

Well, yes, but because the Imperial Guard is organized badly on purpose, superheavy tank companies don't have easy and ready access to sentinels. Or infantry, or much else than Trojans, ammo-carriers, maintenance personnel/vehicles and spare crewmen.

That's why, in any combat situation Sentinels would absolutely be seconded to the superheavy tank companies in order to provide them with scouting potential. A super heavy tank company would not be operating by itself with zero scouting potential (on or off board). Doesn't mean you'd have to include them in your army, but they would absolutely have access to other Imperial Guard units which would be providing advanced scouting for them.

 Elbows wrote:
That's why, in any combat situation Sentinels would absolutely be seconded to the superheavy tank companies in order to provide them with scouting potential. A super heavy tank company would not be operating by itself with zero scouting potential (on or off board). Doesn't mean you'd have to include them in your army, but they would absolutely have access to other Imperial Guard units which would be providing advanced scouting for them.

I agree completely!

Which is why it is unfortunate that none of the local IG players use sentinels commonly; on the "planet" or "system" that is my local area, the Imperium forgot to send a reconnaissance regiment. Guess we've got to rely on orbital scans!

In the grand scheme of things I think most people fall into the middle ground instead of Caac/Waac. A definition of each would really help since most people have an idea what they think they are.

For example : to me WAAC is a player who will cheat to win. They will forget important rules to their advantage, they will measure from the front of the base and move to the back to get an extra inch, they will bring 4 lists and show you the one they want to use after they see what you brought and pick the one that has the best chance of killing you. Waac players don't care about you, then care about that win. List tailoring if both sides know what's coming is not Waac, insisting the rules are played fairly and evenly is not Waac, and trying to, idk, WIN, is not waac.

A Caac player is not some one I have ever ran into. If anything I think I may be the most casual player in my group, I don't care if I win, I don't take the new hotness or build army's based on their table top performance (currently working on a Thousand Sons army slowly, it is my nicest looking army but it also is the worst on the table top, not won a game but I don't care I still take em), but I also try and theme my lists. I like dire avengers so I have 3 squads of them. I use them as cover for my warwalkers. I like eldar missile launchers so all my warwalkers have them. I don't care if they are good or not meta wise, it's what looks good to me. However I have not ever felt I was beat because a unit is op, that's a joke of an excuse to why you lost. I lost because those genestealers are my avengers due to me not prioritizing them properly, not because genestealers are op.

In the Grim darkness of 40k there are only special snowflake commanders and bullies? That's not right....

I don't think waac players are typically bullies. I think waac is applied universally when it shouldn't be at all.

I think the biggest divide is simply someone wanting to play narratively playing against a gamey player that isn't playing narratively but is playing by the numbers or being "optimal".

Thats where the problem lies. And neither player is bad or doing something bad, they just don't get along with what they want out of the game.

The problem is exasperated by the fact that we live in a gamer culture that focuses heavily on "optimal" over "narrative" and narrative players can get very frustrated when there are only a couple people that they can play against and seemingly dozens upon dozens of players that don't give a gak about the narrative and just bring whats optimal. That exasperation leads to extreme frustration and bitter feelings over a bad investment in a game where they can't get opponents that have similar goals and mindset.

Its not an excuse to accuse competitive players for being waac though. Its being bitter and passive aggressive. While I can sympathize because I prefer narrative over optimal, its never acceptable to try and shame someone for enjoying the game different than you.

Yep, agreed with Auticus (our posts were very similar). In short, stop trying to pretend 40K is one community and everyone has the same interests...find people who want to play the game like you do, and go do your thing. There's nothing more to be said.

Also as I said in an eaaarlier psot in this thread forums and tournaments bring out the worst of this discussion.

Can't we all just get along? *hides*