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Interested to know... does your local player-base have a problem differentiating between a casual/narrative event and a competitive event?

Do you have competitive tournament guys that fight to the death to bring tournament powered lists to your casual nights?

Do you have narrative players going to your competitive tournaments and complain about OP lists being present?

Nope. It's cut-throat all the time. Everybody is prepping for the next big tournament and I suspect 8th will be no different.

I think I'm the only narrative player but even I'm not crazy enough to turn up and think people will want to play for fun/casual.

Casual/Narrative games are usually not done as an event, just a few of us will schedule it within our group.

The only events are usually tournaments or leagues (which always end up being competitive)

Same here: only four of us play custom scenarios on asymmetric tables, the rest is eternal grinding of Eternal War on typical "fair, mostly empty tables". There is no interest and no resources (not enough/dull terrain) to organize a proper narrative event at my FLGS, so I don't even try to bring this up.

I don't play with the other folks in my area because they can't divorce themselves from tournament play, in list-building or attitudes.

I've never had an issue, but most people I play with understand they're not mutually exclusive. We all play to win but bring thematic, cohesive lists and enjoy campaigns.

No, but there are definitely some guys who can't turn it off (the rock hardest list all the time) and those who can't turn it on (always play what they feel like, even when going into tourneys) and so you know what you're going into if you're playing them.

I've never had an issue, but most people I play with understand they're not mutually exclusive. We all play to win but bring thematic, cohesive lists and enjoy campaigns.

In AOS, for example, once someone starts rocking 18 skyfires or the kunnin rukk list, it definitely becomes mutually exclusive.

If the event is listed as a casual event and people bring casual lists and people show up with tournament powered lists, there becomes a large problem.

The answer as has been given to me is "don't ever bring casual lists and always bring lists that can compete in tournaments and you'll never have a problem"

Yup, I seem to be surrounded in a casual at all costs environment.

I'm no competitive player by any stretch but I like having discussions on rule interactions as I like my games to be clear and concise. But no, even attempting to have these discussions at my F(not so sure TBH right now)LGS results in cries regarding "Idiots on the internet/Reddit!" and you're made out to be the fething devil or something because you've even dared question the holy scripture of GW (yes, it ALWAYS is GW games).

Both extremes are bad but this end of the scale it utterly poisonous to a playerbase. Any hint of a discussion of this kind gets you labelled as "one of those WAACs" even though nothing could be further from reality.

 auticus wrote:

I've never had an issue, but most people I play with understand they're not mutually exclusive. We all play to win but bring thematic, cohesive lists and enjoy campaigns.

In AOS, for example, once someone starts rocking 18 skyfires or the kunnin rukk list, it definitely becomes mutually exclusive.

If the event is listed as a casual event and people bring casual lists and people show up with tournament powered lists, there becomes a large problem.

The answer as has been given to me is "don't ever bring casual lists and always bring lists that can compete in tournaments and you'll never have a problem"

Well, yes and no. Narrative play is a mindset, not a strict set of rules and hard limits on list building. Getting an absolute trouncing may not be fun all the time, but its technically no less of a narrative experience than you doing the trouncing or having a close match. Casual is such a loosely defined term, as is narrative, that coming to an agreement on what it means will differ wildly from person to person. So while there are going to be people who might be donkey-caves or might just be ignorant bringing a crazy powerful list to an event that was explicitly advertised as being 'casual', there are also going to be people bringing a random hodge podge of units and calling it 'fluffy' and 'casual', then complain when they repeatedly lose to even a rather moderate list.

The solution then is to either avoid playing with people you know have differing opinions on how they derive fun from the game, or talk out the differences and come to a compromise where the weaker list gets upgraded and the better list gets downtuned. Or you just suffer through games with someone who enjoys the game differently.

All I know is that I bring what I consider to be 'casual' lists in that they're thematic, cohesive, fit with the fluff, and play in a way I enjoy playing. Chances are that my list is also in the mid-tier (or mid-upper) of competitiveness too. In my experience, casual/narrative is most definitely not mutually exclusive with 'competitive'.

The guys I generally played with were pretty casual. Yes, we'd play to win with what we had, but you never saw rock hard tournament lists come up unless the match was organized specifically as a 'tournament training' match.

I think, like most places, you have the normal break down:

10% Actual casual gamers.
40% "Casual gamers" who are far too competitive
40% "Competitive gamers" who aren't very competitive (or they're just bad)
10% Actual competitive gamers.