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Four player game very disappointing. Want to know if my grumpy attitude is reasonable.  [RSS] Share on facebook Share on Twitter Submit to Reddit
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Made in us
Androgynous Daemon Prince of Slaanesh





Norwalk, Connecticut

Okay, I want to ask if I’m just being a grump here, or if my complaint is legit. Played a 4 player game of AoS. Two vs two. That’s all fine. Here’s where I get pissed. One guy is learning and is put on my team. The guy who is teaching him is on the opposing team. Simply because he and the last guy “are both order”, while the learner and I have Death and Chaos, respectively, and it “makes sense for order to be together”. The one order guy builds the Death players list for him. He also has him use the App only, so no bonuses of any kind, and doesn’t even let him look at the App until I put up a stink about this guy not even getting to see the rules of his army, and just pushing stuff forward while the other guy promises not to cheat him. He lets him put models back when he gets the amounts of wounds wrong on the model when removing stuff (because he doesn’t even have access to the damn warscrolls to know how many wounds his models have!).

Needless to say, I run a Gaunt Summoner with a vortex, a decked out LoC, big block of horrors, and summon the Bloodthirster with a huge axe. And run shenanigans with destiny dice. I lost next to nothing, but really feel like if someone is teaching during a team game and holding onto the rules for the learning player, they should be on the same damn team.

Game ran two rounds in three hours.

I also want to make it 100% clear...I’m not upset at all at the guy learning, nor the fourth guy. Just the one who decided teams on his own, while handicapping a new player so badly. I checked in with a friend who plays the same army, and the list was awful.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/03/13 02:45:51


Reality is a nice place to visit, but I'd hate to live there.

Manchu wrote:I'm a Catholic. We eat our God.


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Made in us
Been Around the Block




Eastern Kingdoms

I can understand completely how you could be upset, that was kind of lame to do he should have had him on his team to show him step by step whats what as the game went on, but also in my OP all the lists used should have been fairly tame (non-cheese/ even to a degree) discussed beforehand.
   
Made in us
Death-Dealing Dark Angels Devastator




USA

That is a terrible environment to learn a new game system. Learning games are best as one on one.

If it had to be two vs two, the teacher and learner should have both been on the same side or everyone should have been helping teach.

To be honest, the "teacher" sounds like "that guy," more interested in winning against a new player than actually helping them learn. The new guy should have been looking at his warscrolls from before the game started and at least been allowed to use the handbook abilities.

Cadians
Dark Angels
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Made in us
Androgynous Daemon Prince of Slaanesh





Norwalk, Connecticut

Agreed. Next time the "teacher" decides to be on the opposite side from the learning player, I'm pulling out of the game. I did try to send EVERYTHING I possibly could at the teacher to nuke him off the table for his BS though. We ran out of time for more than 2 rounds though.

I'd played the teacher once in a one on one setting (in 7th ed 40k) and beat him fairly easily; but it was over a year ago. He didn't really seem to have that much of a TFG attitude then.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/03/20 20:36:50


Reality is a nice place to visit, but I'd hate to live there.

Manchu wrote:I'm a Catholic. We eat our God.


Due to work, I can usually only ship any sales or trades out on Saturday morning. Please trade/purchase with this in mind.  
   
Made in nl
Bounding Assault Marine






 EmpBobo wrote:
That is a terrible environment to learn a new game system. Learning games are best as one on one.


I might disagree on this. Though for this specific example I must say the pairing doesn't feel rather forced just because of the grand alliances, but disallowing acces to info is just 'not done'. This tuesday I will have a couple of newbs/friends come over for a big table full of city ruins, and two big armies of Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines. I would think it common courtesy to print a summary of the basic statistics for the models and weapons they will be using, and during the game have them reference them often, so they get used to which stat is what and how they are used. Did so before, and that worked, even in a 2 vs 3 setting, where we just divided the armies. (Two Chaos Space Marines task forces closing in on an Astra Militarum platoon with some support, all on one side of the table, and then forcing them to 'ally' against the massive Tyranid invasion force running up the opposite long table edge, itself also divided between 2 players. It was a blast!)

As for grumpy attitudes and to be TFG or not... I think it is all relative. And time can change all manner of things, including attitudes. If the 'teacher' wasn't a TFG a year ago, but in the mean time lost both his parents, his dog, his girlfriend and his job, he might have been so upset by all the setbacks in life that he latched onto AoS as if it were everything he had left, and started to become rather driven, obsessed perhaps. Less severe, if he was the victim of a couple of true TFG type players in the past year, he might have taken over that attitude just 'to survive' the games he was playing. Not condoning any rude behaviour, but just stating it wouldn't all have to be deliberate. On the other hand, if it was all deliberate, pairing timetowaste85 with a newbie player carrying a sub-optimal list as to more easily beat timetowaste85 this time... That would be a man-part move in my opinion. But we simply do not know all the circumstances now, do we?

The same goes for a grumpy attitude. I didn't think being a bit grumpy about the situation as described would be inappropriate at all. However, being grumpy about specific parts, such as the pairing up, might be a tad unnecessary. How would the two players be on the same team if the teacher and the student were in a 1 vs 1 game? They wouldn't or there would not even be a game! Teacher and student were on opposite sides, as they would have been in a 1 vs 1 situation. Reading about two players with armies from the Order grand alliance pairing up isn't strange to me. Having the proverbial 'Bad Guys', Chaos and Death in this case, trying to work together would sound logic to me too. As you might see from the example I gave (Imperium and Chaos units uniting as there is a far greater mutual enemy looming) I can and will accept the other way around if it tells a good story. But in the end it is still a game to be enjoyed with melee and ranged attacks instead of heart attacks.

Also, being grumpy about a suboptimal list is not necessarily a good thing. Sure, it is a wargame, and people want to win, but sometimes an optimized list also means including many different troops and characters with as many different special rules which all support or enhance eachother if one knows how they work. The games I use to teach new players 40K usually involve them having a basic tactical squad, 9 Space marines with boltguns, and 1 with a lascannon or heavy bolter (well, a bit more than that, but just join me in the example). New players learn the basic weaponry, and they can more easily see what difference a BFG in a squad makes. Now here comes (in my opinion) a bad teacher who gives the new player a Deathwatch Veteran squad, equally 10 marines. However, 'to teach the new player about all the options out there' every veteran has his own, unique weapon load-out. This would likely only confuse the new player, at least in his or her first couple of games. Stick to basics. Even worse when the teacher hands out the basic tactical squad and opposes that with his own veteran squad. If somebody would be grumpy about that, I could most easily agree. That would be a man-part move even if the Power Levels/Point Values would match up. I have seen games where opposing forces were of equal point value (not Warhammer). One side had a model that was ethereal and as such impervious to all damage not from a magical source. The other side had an army of equal point cost, but didn't include magical weapons and spells... You see where this is going?

timetowaste85 indicated not to have a problem with the fourth player. I probably would have, though (even if just a very tiny bit). When I agree to a game with, for example, four players and one is a total newb, I would say the three veteran players should all have a say in teaching the game to the new player. I know some people are rather opposed to a stranger touching their toy soldiers... erm... carefully constructed and lavishly painted model works of art. But when not so skittish about others touching your models, player number 4 could have said something like: "New player, use my army and take your place by your teacher's side. I will join timetowaste85, using your army." I wouldn't put too much gravity on the fourth player not saying something like that, but it might have been a nice gesture nonetheless.



In short, I don't think timetowaste85 being a bit grumpy was unjustified, but there were also a lot of factors we still don't know. Maybe, if New Player seems like a nice guy, offer a little 1 vs 1 game, both with very basic armies. Become the teacher New Player deserves but didn't get. pulling out of a game because teacher and student are on opposite sides of the tabel is, in my opinion, a tad over the top, as we are talking about a hobby that promotes conflict through game rules. Calling shenanigans on bad teacher for unbalancing the teaching environment through one-sided bad list building is a whole different matter.

Like I said, ranged attacks and melee attacks. Not heart attacks.

Cheers.
   
Made in gb
Sure Space Wolves Land Raider Pilot





Freezing to death outside the Fang

Yeah, you weren't at all unreasonable, it sounds like the teacher was being TFG. 2v2s suck anyway but playing a 2v2 to teach someone is quite possibly the worst way to teach someone, teaching games should be 1v1 so that the person learning isn't overwhelmed or left waiting ages for a turn.

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Made in us
Posts with Authority





2 vs 2 can work well for teaching, though. However, it helps if everyone there is helping the newbie.

Now, if he built an awful list for his buddy, that's... kind of dumb, maybe he just didn't know the army as well as he thought? I don't know, I try to give people benefit of the doubt until I see repeated instances of a certain behavior that works to their benefit.

And I work at a shop where we have 'that guy' who 'helps' people who play 'his army', and he always tends to try and steer them away from playing what he is playing.

Honestly, the best thing a new player can do is get what he likes, and learn the system by getting his ass handed to him a few times. However, you need to get beaten by someone who's trying to teach you, not someone who's just there to flatten you.

Overall, I advise against trying to learn with the first guy that's willing to teach. It's usually TFG.

How I learned? I found the guys that were always winning, the 'powergamers'- and I found the nicest and coolest ones. I asked them to show me how to run a competent army, and I also asked them not to pull any punches when they played me, just 'show me where I went wrong'.

After a year of getting stomped (and still enjoying it), my 'mentors' were proud to see me win a tournament for the first time. As a way of repaying them, I divided my store credit winnings between the four of us.

Mob Rule is not a rule. 
   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut




we have a player like that at our store. Totally stomps newbies and ruins the game for them. He is literally a 3 color player with paint slapped on his models haphazardly. He was begrudgingly accepted at the store until he started chasing away new players.

First strike against him was taking new people and destroying them. A part time worker of our GW who was just getting into the hobby when kill team came for 7th edition. They played a game, where the objective was get models to the other side. The dude vanguarded in most of his forces and walked off the board, declaring victory.

Second strike was when the store runner was busy, he would act like the help for the store, when he clearly isn't. Store manager got pissed about that one.

Third strike was disuading people from buying what they liked. Telling people that AoS was garbage and that every army was a shooting army cause some model shot... Telling people they couldn't play 40k with waht they bought cause it'd lose constantly. Really dumb negative stuff.

So he's been told he's on his last leg in the store. Any complaint the manager gets told about, he'll get banned from Games Workshop, and with the area I live in, leaves him with very little alternative, if any at all, to go play.

It's a rule among the player base to not let this guy get in games with newbies as they will more than likely disuade them from continuing in the hobby. Our player base is a pretty good group with plenty of people who play sigmar and 40k, so most newbies have plenty of people to talk to about either system.

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Made in es
Regular Dakkanaut




A funny thing I played a game very similiar to what timetowast85 described.

We had two guys play order, high elves (cause he is a veteran WHFB player and has 5k points of elves and isn't willing to buy any more AoS) and a stormcast guy, who was kindoff a newbie though he did have a great grasp on rules. That was team Good Guys.
Team bad guys were me and a chaos demon player. I bought sixty skeletons and necromancers while the other guy (kindoff a newbie, he didn't know the rules well, but had a great strategy) was an italian and it was a pain understanding him.

In each team we had somehing like a newbie and a guy who more or less understood the rules (me as the death playeer and the elf player). In the end the team dynamics worked out great.

The Chaos/death team won by virtue of a six man/fly strong plauge drone unit grabbing the relic and hauling it away while 10 dire wolves held the line against elf cavalry and great eagles and later thirty plague bearers held against 30 elven spearmen, 10 paladins (5 axes, 5 hammers), 2 eagles and elen cavalary ultimately winning the day.

Perhaps our situation was different due to all of us being aquainted for over a year or over a dozen years for the order players.

P.S.:timetowast85 you have every right to be angry, I know those kind of players, I regret to say that I have been one of those "give rules I don't know to new player and then see them get shitstomped and not feel bad". It sucks, it really does, after some people talked to me (my cousin) I tried and try to change "my sinful ways" and not be TFG, I would like to think that to some degree I am succeding.

P.S.S.: Carnith, I get you perfectly, first time i ever play warhammer 40k 7th I play a 2 vs 2. The guys bring a necron deathstar and a demon dog deathstar with a Cabal in it while I am struggling with some skitarii from the start collecting box and dark angels from the sarter, it hurts when someone important in a club or in your caser a GW store is hardcore powergaming against new players.

"Beyond that opening are my enemies. Behind me are warriors who would happily turn their weapons on me if they thought they could get away with it. Do you really think I'm doing this to try and impress anyone? I know who I am, and I don't give a greenskin's fart what anyone thinks of me."
- Honsou

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Made in us
Clousseau




I think the powergamer baby seal clubbing guy is a fixture at most game stores I've ever been to.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/06/15 00:39:30


 
   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran




Seattle, WA USA

auticus wrote:
I think the powergamer baby seal clubbing guy is a fixture at most game stores I've ever been to.

Which is why I very rarely play pick-up games with strangers. Not necessarily because I'm a n00b, but because I don't like those kind of douchenozzles.
   
Made in us
Clousseau




I am the same way. I am very selective about with whom I spend my free time.
   
Made in us
Second Story Man





Astonished of Heck

 Valander wrote:
auticus wrote:
I think the powergamer baby seal clubbing guy is a fixture at most game stores I've ever been to.
Which is why I very rarely play pick-up games with strangers. Not necessarily because I'm a n00b, but because I don't like those kind of douchenozzles.

The sad part is when said douchenozzles are the only ones available because no one else will play against them. Even worse when everyone who knows better is busy with a game and can't warn you.

Are you a Wolf, a Sheep, or a Hound?
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