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Had a pretty rude shock yesterday. Drove up to another store to play OP Peak Performance.

Wasn't sure on the fleet building rules, so I asked:
"120 points, no more than 60 points on a ship."

OK, is there a ship minimum?
"No, but you can't spend more than 60 points on a ship"

Ship pure, faction pure...?
"Ship pure"

What about the dual faction ships?
"You can take them as long as they are ship pure"

Right, but I can't place Picard on a Borg Tactical Cube, right?
"Yup. Ship pure"

Any resources banned? I think Flagship is the latest...
"Yeah, the ship one, Attack Die, Reinforcement sideboard, oh, and no Officers, and 12 points of resources. And no Fighter Resources"

Officers? You mean the ones you can assign to your ship?
"Yeah"

Is it one resource up to 12 points, or...?
"As many as you want, up to 12 points"

Anything else?
"Yeah, you can't use Khan"

Any little bells going off inside ya'll's head yet? I had a few, but I ignored them because I was excited to be playing in a different store.

Here is what I heard: No dual faction ships, or you can take one, but it must be faction pure. My meta defined that as you have to pick one of the factions and that's the faction for the ship. I mentioned the Romulan Hijackers and I was told that was OK, but I couldn't put Romulans on a Fed ship and vice versa. I was like "Huh? OK..."

No Officers meant no Exchange Officers and no Fleet Officers. Turns out he meant Exchange Officers, but I could have brought Fleet Officers. And it was only the flagship resource, not the Fleet Captain resource.

So yeah, I was a bit perturbed when I faced off against a build that had a Fleet Captain that added crew slots and reduced -1 SP for crew upgrades, Science Officer, and Weapons Officer, the Cardasian/Borg ship with Dominion and Borg stuff, and the Avatar of Tormad with Romulan and Borg stuff. Called over the TO, and was told his fleet was legit. That's were the misunderstandings really started.

Next was the Borg player with 4 sugar cubes. He would move them all together, then do all their actions together. I pointed out that he can't do that, and he shrugged his shoulders and said "no one's ever said that to me before". OK... during the action phase, he would take out the range ruler and sweep it around, then say "I'm doing this...". Did I mention he would do all his actions at the same time? I said to him "Look, you can't premeasure. You have to declare your action, then measure to the target. If the target is out of range, then you wasted your action".

"I've never heard of that! I always play like this." Call over the TO, and the TO confirms it. Player ignores it and continues to move all his Cubes at the same time, premeasures with the range ruler, then declares all his actions. This wasn't my group, I was the stranger, I didn't want to rock the boat, so I just said whatever, and let him win. More complaints about the guy: He had no dice, had to borrow my templates, and even had to use some of my status tokens. Also, he was pretty upset when I asked him if he knew about the changes to Borg Movement and shooting. He said yes, but it didn't stop him from trying to move the old way or shoot me at range 3.

Next opponent was a kid- probably about 12. I had 119 fleet points, he had 120. I was playing MU Enterprise and Fed Prometheus, and he had Sovereign and Voyager. We both had a Picard. He was adamant that he had the initiative because he was playing Feds, and I kept trying to tell him no, I have the lower point fleet, so I have the initiative, so you will have to deploy the first ship, and my Picard will move before your Picard and shoot before your Picard. No matter how many different ways I tried to explain it, I just gave up and deployed both my ships, and then he deployed his. Then, throughout the entire game, he would move all his ships, then do actions, then do combat, and he wouldn't follow any initiative order. I'm just about banging my head on the table here. Surely these guys know how to play the game, right? I mean, I saw a couple guys I had played before, and I knew the TO, so... I won that game, but the kid still raised a ruckus saying he won- I destroyed his Sovereign twice, and he blew up my MU Galaxy twice, until I pointed out I got the points for all his discards (he was running Transphasics and a lot of discards). I had one discard- Tasha Yar and that threw him in a tizzy when I used it.

Final opponent was running the dual faction ships with Dominion/Borg/Romulan upgrades, Independent Fleet Captain, and Fleet Officers. Apparently, it was a house rule that Independent stuff could go on any ship. Also, his points were wrong on his data sheet- he was over by 15 points. Again, I called over the TO, and this was a popular guy, and the TO just shrugged his shoulders. And this point, I'm fired up, and mad as heck. I don't go off, because I know it wouldn't do me any good. I call over the TO and tell him "I'm done, I'm not having any fun anymore, and you can score this however you want". I also told the TO that next time, you need to be clear, explicit and write your house rules down as well as your tournament rules for people coming from out of town about fleet building and play. We then discussed in great detail what "ship pure" meant to them. I then made him tell me EXACTLY by name which resources were banned, and if there were any other cards that were banned. Finally, I pointed out that my two previous players had no idea about initiative, deployment, Borg rules, and movement/action/combat. Oh, and proxies are OK, so the guy playing with the Space Dock and no cards was accepted.

I was invited by one of the other players to OP Encounter at Farpoint next week at a different store across town. I asked what kind of rules they had? And started to get the same feeling I did from this place.

TLDR When you guys play at different stores, do you find a lot of house rules that make you uncomfortable, or play styles that are the accepted norm at that store, but not how you actually play the game?

You are always allowed to pre measure with the range rules in STAW, unless a card specifically says you cannot.
(http://www.wizkidseventsystem.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=2451&p=5734)

You only score points for your opponents discards if you destroy the ship the discard is placed under or you forced them to discard. So unless you destroy Voyager you don't get points if he uses transphasic torpedoes.
(http://www.wizkidseventsystem.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=2379)

Otherwise I agree it is always better when shops have their house rules printed out. That is why WK gives a space on their event page for any house rules.

Whelp, time to quit the game. If Wizkids can't be bothered to publish a new rule book with all this crap in it, then I can't be bothered to play their lousy game.

Tired of arguing with people that can't justify why they do something, when I can point out in the rule book that they can't. But oh, wait, random Wizkids guy that probably doesn't even know how to play the game comes along and says you can on a random post buried somewhere in their own website.

this game. It's no fun anymore.

Wow, is the place where you play normally overly competitive? Deploying confusion I can see, but the moving and shooting thing, was wierd like he didn't even read the rules. untill we have fresh blood walk in a play where i'm at we have been ignoring the rules forum. we also gave up on taking the game too seriously..

Tam I also hear you Heroclix has a new rulebook every year, releases tons of LE and limited resource gak and never bans anything. Wizkids plainly has zero clue with Star Trek.

To be fair pre measuring is nothing new. It says on page 11 of the rule book that a player can check for range before committing to a target lock. Andrew Parks clarified that it applies to all pre measuring way back in the unofficial FAQ and WORF just carried that over. So WORF isn't changing anything up on you.

I think a lot of confusion comes from the fact that x-wing is different, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that under FF rules you commit to the action then check range. It is a big difference, but it is in the rulebook for STAW. Every once in a while I still see people that try to say you can't shoot the ship you bump.

As for the discard points it only seem logical. Every place I play did it that way even befor WORF made it official and I believe that was part of the old FAQ too.

My "confusion" might be from my X-wing playing on checking range.

For the discards counting- I don't have access to the old FAQ, nor do I want to try and comb through it to make a point or prove I'm right/wrong. What I know is, that at my regular venue, if a player uses a discard, the opposing player gets those points no matter what. Why would there be a special rule from WORF saying you don't get those points unless the ship is destroyed? Any time a ship is destroyed, you get the points cost for that ship (except with the escape pod card... what a headache). Have people actually argued that because the card was discarded, it was technically no longer on the ship, and therefore not considered a part of the ship for points destroyed purposes? Sometimes, I really, really hate gamers and their "logic".

The main point I'm trying to make here is that there seems to be a vast difference between venues on how to play STAW, and Wizkids is not really doing anything to stop that from happening. Not that I expect a Wizkids "Enforcer" to be at every OP or tournament, but it would be nice if Wizkids published a new rule book with a lot of these WORF-isms included along with clarification on a lot more.

The discard issue is in the current FAQ, 11th bullet on the 1st page of tournament rules. WK felt the need to clarify because a player should not be penalized for using their own upgrades. Why should my opponent get 10 points if I use transphasic torpedoes? That makes no sense If a ship is destroyed or an upgrade is stolen that is one thing, but to have someone potentially lose a game for using their own upgrade is just wrong.


FAQ issues aside WK actually wants venues to play whatever house rules makes their players happy that is why they have space for house rules on their event page. WKmis in the business of selling games they don't really care how stores change things up as long as players keep buying.

Dude, I would've refuse to play with that borg kid, And the spacedock player, I refuse to play with someone if they're not willing to play by the rules OR actually physically own the cards. You don't see me using Locutus even though I don't own the Giant Assimilation Cube. How hard is it to understand that you need to buy the ships to use the cards?

Tamwulf, you handled it a bit more calmly than I would've, I would've been showing them the Borg rules and etc.

 PlaguelordHobbyServices wrote:
Dude, I would've refuse to play with that borg kid, And the spacedock player, I refuse to play with someone if they're not willing to play by the rules OR actually physically own the cards. You don't see me using Locutus even though I don't own the Giant Assimilation Cube. How hard is it to understand that you need to buy the ships to use the cards?

Tamwulf, you handled it a bit more calmly than I would've, I would've been showing them the Borg rules and etc.

Agreed
I have issues with the spacedock thing at an OP Anything goes at home or casually but you are supposed to have the actual cards, otherwise fed players would hace Systems Upgrade on every ship.

 Mr. S Baldrick wrote:

 PlaguelordHobbyServices wrote:
Dude, I would've refuse to play with that borg kid, And the spacedock player, I refuse to play with someone if they're not willing to play by the rules OR actually physically own the cards. You don't see me using Locutus even though I don't own the Giant Assimilation Cube. How hard is it to understand that you need to buy the ships to use the cards?

Tamwulf, you handled it a bit more calmly than I would've, I would've been showing them the Borg rules and etc.

Agreed
I have issues with the spacedock thing at an OP Anything goes at home or casually but you are supposed to have the actual cards, otherwise fed players would hace Systems Upgrade on every ship.

Quoted for truth, everyone would be using the $40 cards in multiples and I'd be sitting there with my legitimate fleet wondering why I'm playing a phantom?

I have only encountered one house rule, which is the Faction Pure rule.

I hate full proxy play... but I am ok with letting a player run x3 of an upgrade if he has 1 copy of it at least. It sucks buying an entire ship just for one card.