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Heey there,

I've played about eight matches of 8th ed. so far with my Imperial Guard army and have thus far had a blast playing it.

Unfortunately, my opponents haven't. No matter what I try (making less effective lists, trying out uncommon and less powerful units etc) my opponents seem to never have a good time fighting my army.

I try to stay positive to them, help them with their tactics in-game, never argue about cover/los or argue about certain rules that might favour me. I also offer them refreshments regulary.

And still, they behave so negatively when it's my turn. Whenever I make a decent shooting roll, they almost don't even bother to make their saving throws.

I got a comment from one of my opponents that I tend to play my armies 'too efficiently'. For instance, I don't forget that extra lasgun that the Heavy Weapons team brings, or throw a grenade with a sergeant since that is more efficient than his las-pistol. Things like that are 'not fun' to play against he said.

Am I turning into 'That Guy'? What can I do to change this?

Forget some of my army's rules or some of my units in certain turns? Don't try and seize the intiative? Use my units less efficient?

And would this not be de-grading towards my opponents?


I hope someone can help, if I no-one wants to play me in my local club, I'll have no-one to play with :(

Maybe they just dont like you i dont know.

you could always try an army swap.

or maybe your group is just a bunch of donkeycaves

is your army fully painted? are they major fluff bunnies

what is your lists?

Try and ask your opponents what is particular "op"/"lame" to play against. Playing effecient is not a proper argument in my oppinion especially not when you give THEM the benefit of a doubt in cover rulings. and refreashments, you sound like a really nice opponent.

But you might have a brain that reads the battlefield much much easier and efficient than your opponent perhaps even think a turn ahead most of the time without knowing it, lot of people only play by what they currently see on the table. If thats your problem, try and field stuff you have a hard time getting good results with, thats only thing you really can do. Its hard to try and force yourself to do stupid moves.

What sort of stuff do you usually field?

are you donkey punchin newbs ?

It's really difficult to accuately assess your own demeanour during a game. You might feel like you're being a great opponent, but if several people are put off playing against you that might be a sign that it's you, not them.

If you play at a club or something, I'd recommend having a chat with someone with whom you feel you're on good terms with. Ask them if they wouldn't mind spectating on one of your games so they might offer their opinion and feedback on how you are as you play. Try to pick someone you know well, so you can be sure that they'll cut the crap and tell you it straight. I mean, it doesn't have to be a really serious thing, but just if they've not got a game that day, or just on occasion throughout the session. Obviously this is a bit more difficult if you're not playing in a large club, or don't feel close enough to any of the players there to discuss this sort of thing with them. It's important that the understand that you're concerned about it and that honesty will benefit you more in the long run than trying to spare your feelings.

I mean, I'm not saying that you are the problem, it might be the other guys you're playing with, but it could be worth a shot. The other thing you could try is just asking your opponents after the game. I've know some people who are pretty dour and solemn a game only to gush about how much they enjoyed it afterwards (the game wasn't against me, but this was when having a pint later in the evening). On another occasion my opponent complained that they were really bored during my psychic phase of my 7th edition demons because I didn't seem to know what I was doing - and truth be told, I was still learning but took the feedback on board to streamline that part of my game to make it more enjoyable for my opponents.

As long as you're not spamming Vendettas or 900 conscripts, I don't see how they can complain.

Suggest doing a fun game of "The Warp exploded so now we have to play with each others armies".

Honestly, if they're complaining about things like throwing a grenade with a sergeant, they're the ones being "That Guy".

Or really, just trying to micro-manage how you play in general is a no-go. After all, do they want you to play your army, or do they want you to pretend to play your army while they play it for you?

Did these people like playing you before 8th edition? If they did, then the problem might be their's for only enjoying a game when they're heavily favoured. If they didn't, the problem might be yours with your attitude. If the problem is their's, as suggested, try an army swap, try a different army, or try different opponents because these folks complain too much (asking you to forget to use stuff your army has is pretty ridiculous). If the problem is yours, swallow some pride and ask if there's any way you can change yourself to be a better opponent for them.

If all they want is an easy win, I guess you could deploy artillery at the front of your deployment zone with no screening units. Or go really heavy on overcharging plasma cannon sentinels so you blow up a lot of your own units for them.

That wouldn't be very sporting toward yourself though.

You're playing a top tier army, and a lot of people simply don't have a counterplay to the base guard kit. But without seeing your list i can't make a statement about balance in this particular case.

If you're bringing a tuned list against people who are looking up move distances, that's bad form, really. I intentionally take weaker lists against some people, with the expectation that i'll lose, but do my best to keep it close.

I'm not saying you've done anything wrong, but you've found yourself in a pretty unfortunate spot, so trying to think about ways to change how people perceive you. If playing you is akin to signing up to get brutally curb stomped over 3 agonizing turns, you should consider changing. Guard is the new Eldar in 8th edition. You have to tone down your list for people.

Its also entirly possible you just walked into a very cliqueeeeeee store

unless these are people you already know.

gotta work up that social skills to break down their awkward nerd barriers.

Guard have been buffed to 7th edition Eldar status in this edition. I've only played a couple of games and my opponents are already dreading playing against ANY guard list, no matter how toned down I attempt to make them. It's a shame because I truly enjoy playing them as well, and they were the first army I ever played when I started playing back in 7th edition.

Doctoralex wrote:

And still, they behave so negatively when it's my turn. Whenever I make a decent shooting roll, they almost don't even bother to make their saving throws.

I got a comment from one of my opponents that I tend to play my armies 'too efficiently'. For instance, I don't forget that extra lasgun that the Heavy Weapons team brings, or throw a grenade with a sergeant since that is more efficient than his las-pistol. Things like that are 'not fun' to play against he said.

Assuming the following, so that I can address the above points in a useful way:


Some people really do not understand that any competitive game is going to see them lose. Having met a few of these myself, some people are so insecure that they immediately begin sulking once something doesn't go their way. II don't know why, but some people are just like that and will always refuse to accept reasonable losses. To the point of shooting themselves in the foot, and then blaming the other person.
People who decide that playing the units how they're supposed to be played is somehow "bad sportsmanship" aare themselves being donkey-caves.

That said;

Do you have, or are you near, a 100% win rate?

Because that will cause this damn near 100% of the time. It doesn't matter how nice you are, it doesn't matter how much you handicap yourself. If you win more than 90% of the time, everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) will hate you. They will also gloat on the one time they do win.

And this is neither their fault nor your fault. It is a fact of mammalian psychology. In an experiment done on rats, it was found that rats have circuitry in their brain for playing. Their minds damn near atrophy without playing. They need it,, like we do. Their method of playing is often play-fighting. The winner is whomever can pin the other tom the ground and immobilise them. However, if one rat is over 10% larger than the other rat, the bigger one will win almost all the time. And when they do, they receive a social backlash. It turns out that a permanent losing streak will deter a mammal from even necessary behaviour. However, if the larger rat allows themselves to be defeated more than around 10% of the time, the smaller rat is fine.

So one possible solution is, if you're winning too much, find a way to not win so much.

> Take your IG to a tournament often
> Play Orks fluffily with a horde or something once or twice a month (and get into the act)

Going only by the OP, it kind of sounds like the opponents are more of 'that guy' material. Assuming OP's claims to being a sincere, genuinely enjoyable human being are true, then the opponents sound like they hate losing, hate having any of their models die, and don't want to make any effort at improving so that they die less and win more.

Assuming OP has also detuned the lists progressively to help and has tried to help their opponent and is polite, then I can't really find fault with OP in the generics. Of course, social situations being what they often means that everything is more complicated than it usually seems, especially when its presented as a few lines on a forum, but hey.

Keep being a good guy, play the force you want to play, and be a genuine and polite person. If they continue to be sad and miserable, then firmly but politely tell them that they are ruining your experience and that you've tried to help in many ways. Either they'll buck up and start working with you, or you'll need to find new opponents, or you continue on as you are.

Its all a two way road. Your opponents don't get to continue to make you feel bad without any repercussions.

Something else is going on here. It seems really unlikely that 8 different players would dislike the player just for what he posted in the original post.

Remember how fun it was to find out you were playing against Eldar in the last edition? I feel like that's the sentiment toward guard now and could very well be the main issue.

From your description it sounds like they find your shooting so powerful that they feel they don't really have a chance (and getting that extra hit in with a grenade or whatever is just rubbing salt in the wound).

If that's the case, consider ways to mitigate that.

Ideas include:

- Lots of terrain and few to no units that don't need LOS to fire.
- Taking things that are less efficient points wise (so little in the way of plasma guns for guard, f. ex.).
- Playing some of the scenarios that might counteract your shooting (I don't have the book in front of me so I can't make specific suggestions, but I think the night fighting rules have negative mods for shooting beyond 12" which will help your opponent close the distance if that's the thing).
- You could even suggest playing some narrative games with crazy rules "just to see what it'd be like", like "what if artillery can't fire until turn 2 due to rainstorms" or "you bring 3000 pts, I bring 1500 - let's see how long I last" or whatever.

The best bet, though, is asking the other players exactly what you asked us "I'm having a good time, but I don't think you are. I don't want to be 'that guy' and I want both of us to have fun - what can I change to make this work out for both of us?"

Though I'll also point out that if they're actually not rolling saves and just taking models off the table... well definitely tell them to stop that. Most Guard weapons don't deny saves, they're definitely shooting themselves in the foot if they're not rolling them!

one of two things is happening. Thier liars, or their donkey-caves.

Try not to worry about it.

 GreaterGood? wrote:
Thier liars, or their donkey-caves.

I'm sorry, but see sig.

I am not sure if this applies in this case, but I'll admit why I find IG a bit boring this edition. I've even noticed that the IG players themselves are a bit bored with this in my FLGS as well.

It's the endless turn. Playing against IG means you are going to spend a large turn waiting for your IG opponent to finish their turn and it just gets boring after a while. Games that should have taken 2-3 hours suddenly take 5-6 hours because IG is just shooting endlessly.

I never had this problem with IG before 8th so my guess is that the split-fire possibility has made IG play much much slower than before. Instead of having an entire unit shoot at a another unit we have IG players evaluate endlessly over their massive forces how to split fire and how to maximize effectiveness. This will of course drag the game's length a lot as people are splitting their dice pools, adding orders, and any other force multipliers.

I've actually seen a few IG players turn towards smaller elite forces(Space Marines) because they just got tired of how long a game took when playing IG.

Again, not sure if this is a problem in your games, but something I've noticed locally.

Thanks for all the responses guys!

Here's (roughly) the llist i used last game that was still considered too efficient:

Battalion:

2x company commander

4x infantry squad with autocannon and sniper rifle

2x sentinel with multilaser

1 leman russ exterminator

1x wyvern

I have asked my opponents how I can help them and as i mentioned, they said that i was using my units too efficiently.
Several people also hated the Wyvern, so i wont be fielding that anymore.

Ive also noticed that people dont like it when i focus fire a unit to destroy it in one turn. Again, maybe i should use my units a bit less efficient and spread my fire around?

On other points;
-as far as i know there isnt a hygiene problem. I shower every day (twice with this current heat), change clothes daily put on deoderant twice a day and try to be mindful of my hygiene in general.
-Most of my army is painted though i admit, at a poor Quality. I dont enjoy the painting side of the hobby.
-a lot of comments have said the Guard is super OP now, even if i dont field the OP units (comscripts, plasma spam, arty spam, astropaths etc).

Switching the army with my opponent does sound like a good idea! Ill try that!

Doctoralex wrote:
Thanks for all the responses guys!

Here's (roughly) the llist i used last game that was still considered too efficient:

Battalion:

2x company commander

4x infantry squad with autocannon and sniper rifle

2x sentinel with multilaser

1 leman russ exterminator

1x wyvern

I have asked my opponents how I can help them and as i mentioned, they said that i was using my units too efficiently.
Several people also hated the Wyvern, so i wont be fielding that anymore.

Ive also noticed that people dont like it when i focus fire a unit to destroy it in one turn. Again, maybe i should use my units a bit less efficient and spread my fire around?

This is not a scary list.

Losing builds character and helps them learn. Keep kicking the gak out of them.

Neither you nor the players you play against are TFG.

I have a few friends who are like this when we play board games. The hard truth is that you are probably out of their league, and it can be frustrating to play a game they know they are going to lose. The chance of winning is important, and the time we invest in each individual game can be massive for our weekly lives.

It's similar to like, would you bet $50 that you would win a footrace vs Usain Bolt?

That's what it feels like for some people. They are losing time spent on a game they know they are going to lose.

They should prolly get better or change their lists or realize 8th isn't 7th and they're going to be losing models a lot faster and suck it up.

Yeah, if you're playing slowly that can be a major pain point whether you do well or not. Slow play is just frustrating, and learning to play fast is a major part of getting good with a horde army.

That's one reason that even though universal split fire is a thing, I still try to build my units cohesively and avoid split firing too much. Because splitting means making separate rolls, and that slows the game down.

So for example, if I have an infantry squad with a LC in it, I might split the LC off to shoot at a vehicle, but I won't split the lasguns because that would be too much hassle. If I have multiple identical squads (which I often do, because that helps speed up list building, deployment, AND play), I'll often try to activate them in large groups. The people who play with me usually let me too, because they know how much faster it is.

For example, say I've got four of those lascannon infantry squads. I activate them all at once, declare each one will be firing lasguns at whatever target is in front of them, and then put all four lascannons on a single target. Bringing coins or something to mark targets can help keep group-activations like this orderly. Then I can just roll the lasguns for each target, and roll all of the lascannons together instead of four separate times.

Also, because the frag grenade is S3, don't roll it separately from the lasguns. Just roll the number of shots, add those to the lasgun total, then roll them all together. It takes less time to roll 10-15 dice together and count results, than it takes to roll 9 dice and then roll 1-6 more.

Doctoralex wrote:
Thanks for all the responses guys!

Here's (roughly) the llist i used last game that was still considered too efficient:

Battalion:

2x company commander

4x infantry squad with autocannon and sniper rifle

2x sentinel with multilaser

1 leman russ exterminator

1x wyvern

I have asked my opponents how I can help them and as i mentioned, they said that i was using my units too efficiently.
Several people also hated the Wyvern, so i wont be fielding that anymore.

If that's a too-efficient over-tuned list, I can't imagine what they would think of my Guard List. Not sure what your point level is, as I don't have my books in front of me at the moment, but the list I run at 1500(Give or take a bit, as I may have forgotten some things or mis-remembered) is
1x Company Commander
1x Tempestor Prime
3x Guardsmen squad with 2 Grenade Launchers. (and as mentioned, treat them as if they're just 'extra las shots' since frag grenade launchers are basically just Variable Lasguns, but don't get buffed by las-things.)
3 HWT's with Lascannons
2x 10 man Tempestus Prime squads with 2 Plasma guns each.
3 Leman Russes with Battle Cannon and single Heavy Bolter.

The store I play at, the people have no issue fighting in to this list. It's likely just an issue of the people you're playing at, or unnoticed issues stemming from you.

As has been said before, some people are just exceptionally negative when they lose or don't have things go well for them. I have to admit, I do get moody when I get my gak stomped real hard by exceptional early rounds of shooting, but that's just life.

IMO, best thing you can do is to just ask the opponents what you can change, or just not care about what they think and play how you want to.

One thing I noticed, and this may or may not be the case here but, being "helpful" when playing with other players can often be seen as being condescending. That's the only thing I can think of someone hasn't already mentioned.

Doctoralex wrote:
I got a comment from one of my opponents that I tend to play my armies 'too efficiently'. For instance, I don't forget that extra lasgun that the Heavy Weapons team brings, or throw a grenade with a sergeant since that is more efficient than his las-pistol. Things like that are 'not fun' to play against he said.

I have a friend who I could see this complaint being made against - and he IS quite frustrating. It's not that he's rude, has poor hygiene, is rules-lawyery, or the like...but it's because of time. I've clocked him taking 15-20 minutes to decide where to place a single drop pod before. Multiply this sort of thing by an entire turn. And then by several turns. Because he takes so long, it just gets frustrating and people who play against him want the game to just move on.

I'm not saying you're doing this, OP, but to point out that maybe it's an ancillary thing like that that's coming up.

... THAT is the list they consider too good?

Well goddamn. I'm building a 1500 list which is literally 3 units of terminators and 4 of scouts, which most people would say is sub-par. I don't think I'd perform at all that bad against that list army even if I toned mine down to the ~750 range your list looks to be going for.