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TFG exists is just about everything in life. From work to play it seems I run into TFG. Do your best and try to avoid TFG at all cost, at least that's what I do.

OK, back to the thread I started.
Oh, my.
Read it all, good points all around.

The correctness of deceit within a game I feel is irrelevant unless covered by rules and outside of game interaction "should" be honest: my opinion.
At least the concepts of good sportsmanship help enforce that line in the sand where poor manners begin.

Not understanding another person's form of enjoyment: can we just plain accept it?
They want to optimize gear or "farm" that bit longer, or hold you off with that "cheap" move for the fourth time: it is valid, you may not like it, but it is valid.

Anything you think is uninterruptible, unbreakable or unbeatable, "usually" means you did not do your homework. Rarely failing that: poor game design.

WAAC we meet them, but not following games rules is a failure to play as agreed with your opponent: rather disrespectful.
I would not include them as competitive: follow rules, failing that is a cheat.
Why people confuse playing within rules to the fullest as cheating is the mindset I am having a failure to understand. (or viewed as an equivalent)

TFG just seems to be a person in general with social interaction issues: an ineptness or lack of empathy that is hard on the nerves.

I think this unhappiness is found the most in gaming with a large following.
MTG has a HUGE following so some parallels can be found with 40k.

It does look like the discussion before a game is the way to go.
"Just to let you know I will be playing my best." (sorry?)
"You will be playing your best, right?"
"Try to destroy me in this game, OK?"
"Did you bring your cheese? I will not wine."

Thanks all.

 AlexHolker wrote:
That is untrue. Both supply and demand define the price of a card, and making a card more common both decreases demand on the secondary market (since you opened enough from your own booster packs, so you don't need to go looking for more) and increases supply (since once you've opened more than the four you can use, you might as well trade away the excess).

Using the latest set, Dragons of Tarkir, as an example:
A full playset of a specific common card comes once every 41 packs.
A full playset of a specific uncommon card comes once every 107 packs.
A full playset of a specific rare card comes once every 243 packs.
A full playset of a specific mythic rare card comes once every 480 packs.

But the point is that each card of a certain rarity level has the exact same rarity, regardless of its power. A full playset of a powerful mythic rare comes once every 480 packs. A full playset of a garbage mythic rare that will sell for $1 at most comes once every 480 packs. A full playset of a powerful common that is better than the garbage mythic rare comes once every 41 packs. The price of the cards is determined entirely by the secondary market, not by WOTC.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Talizvar wrote:
Why people confuse playing within rules to the fullest as cheating is the mindset I am having a failure to understand. (or viewed as an equivalent)

This article explains it very well: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/introducingthe-scrub

The basic problem is that the "casual at all costs" player comes up with their own arbitrary rules about how the game is meant to be played (no "spam" lists, no LoW, etc) and then expects everyone else to follow them. So in their eyes you are cheating because you're breaking their rules. Obviously this is a stupid attitude, but that's why it's so harmful to the gaming community.

I think the inclusion (in 40k) of the following rule would alleviate a lot of the bad feeling of facing ridiculously overpowered lists.
The rule is;
NO DANGER - (as in "There's no f****ing danger I'm standing here facing that for the next 3 hours")
Before the first unit is deployed roll off. Winner chooses which army they will control.

 screaminskull wrote:
Before the first unit is deployed roll off. Winner chooses which army they will control.

Correction:

Roll a D6. On a 4+ you get to rub your dirty hands all over your opponent's models, carelessly break them, etc, until they finally say " your stupid rule" and concede the game.

 Peregrine wrote:

 screaminskull wrote:
Before the first unit is deployed roll off. Winner chooses which army they will control.

Correction:

Roll a D6. On a 4+ you get to rub your dirty hands all over your opponent's models, carelessly break them, etc, until they finally say " your stupid rule" and concede the game.

To clarify: Are you saying that you're a filthy, clumsy cretin who would break his opponent's models, or that everyone but you is a filthy, clumsy cretin who would break his opponent's models? Or both? There seems to be an implicit accusation here, I'm just not sue who it's aimed at.

Point being, if we want to play 40k Star Wars CCG style, then I trust you enough to touch my models, Peregrine. The main flaw in this idea seems more a time constraint than anything else.

MWHistorian wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:
there is a lot of love for game and to truly "play to win" appears to have a stigma attached that is only reserved for life and death situations.

Only in 40k.

/thread.

I dunno what's been mentioned and argued and bickered after these first two posts, but yeah. What MWHistorian said. My take...

Talizvar wrote:
I want a challenge.
I want to look at rules and find the optimum way to select and play the game in front of me.
I expect to get thumped as I learn, the experts and the weaker players all have something to teach me (again see Sirlin link)...
I am happy to find a player to push it to the max (within game rules!)

... like I said somewhere else recently, I agree about looking for a challenge, learning the game, and finding an opponent to give you all that; but also that one big problem with 40K and WFB is that they're too much about 'looking at the rules to find the optimum way to select and play the game in front of you'. On one hand, you could call it strategy, and searching out canny combos and synergies. On the other hand, you (I) could call it listbuilding, mathammering, exploiting imbalance and loopholes, and the 'max' that you push it to comes with a 'min/' in front of it.
Not to say that TFGs absolutely never exist in any other game, but I haven't seen many games that so readily hand it to TFGS on a silver platter, in the same way as GW's core 2. That whole problem with the game revolving around listbuilding, combined with jaw-dropping rules churn, power creep, utter lack of playtesting (even faction bias?) and the resulting spectre of imbalance that hangs over the thing. Other games (not all, maybe, but plenty) actually pay at least some lip-service to balance and the necessary testing to iron out the wrinkles and achieve it. Other games don't pile on gratuitous special rules and random tables that bring big games this close to a screeching halt, and inherently create so many loopholes you could use 40K/FB to trawl for mackerel.
People complain that the more streamlined, abstracted rules of, say, Kings of War are boring, because they don't have all those gritty, scratchy, speedbumpy rules to create 'flavour'. Because the models and fluff are so flat and dull, they need all that, apparently. Me, I get bored by all the false control of move-shoot-specialrule-hit-pickdice-wound-pickdice-save-pickdice-specialrule-whack-pickdice-hit-pickdice-specialrule-wound-pickdice-save-pickdice-specialrule-woundmarkers-countranks-countbackrank-ooohnoI'veonlygotfour-countbanners-panic-specialrule-flee-pursue-specialrule-nowdoitwithalltheotherunits. Especially when other games are smoother, more elegantly compact, steer towards more tactical choice and in-game decisions (i.e. it's not the size of your gun['s stats], it's what you do with it that counts), and by extension are tighter and less prone to TFG exploitation as GW's two. (And Kings of War is but one of many games that do it this way.) No, the lesser dependence on listbuilding and the type of control that offers, and the increased focus on in-game judgement and on-the-spot risk assessment, will perhaps not appeal much to the young teens that are (or were) GW's bread and butter, and it'll be quite a culture shock for anyone immersed in GW's... idiosyncratic ways of gaming since that kind of age; but I think it'd also be a barrier to most people who play (legally, might I add) by spamming the biggest gunz from the most broken codex, and call it fair, competitive gaming.

 Jimsolo wrote:
To clarify: Are you saying that you're a filthy, clumsy cretin who would break his opponent's models, or that everyone but you is a filthy, clumsy cretin who would break his opponent's models? Or both? There seems to be an implicit accusation here, I'm just not sue who it's aimed at.

I'm saying that I don't trust other people to handle my thousands of dollars in FW stuff (some of it OOP) that I've spent countless hours painting, and a lot of other people feel the same way. A rule that says "on a 4+ you get to use my army" really means "on a 4+ we don't play the game". And that's on top of the fact that I built my army because that's the army I want to play, if I wanted to play with my opponent's army I would've bought that instead.

 Peregrine wrote:

 screaminskull wrote:
Before the first unit is deployed roll off. Winner chooses which army they will control.

Correction:

Roll a D6. On a 4+ you get to rub your dirty hands all over your opponent's models, carelessly break them, etc, until they finally say " your stupid rule" and concede the game.

Ah I didn't say "touch" I said "control".

 Talizvar wrote:

I want a challenge.
I want to look at rules and find the optimum way to select and play the game in front of me.
I expect to get thumped as I learn, the experts and the weaker players all have something to teach me (again see Sirlin link).
People confuse real life behavior with games, I maintain it is not the same.
Life has a lot of grey area, laws, ethics, social norms we need to get along and there is no clearly defined means of "winning" so you balance it all as best you can.
Games have rules, defined winning criteria, subterfuge, misleading, keeping them guessing is the very nature of most games.

Other than a good frank discussion with your potential opponent of the expectation of how the game will be played: how can you play to your very best and try to mitigate the risk of hurting someone's feelings over a game?

I am happy to find a player to push it to the max (within game rules!), socially acting badly lends no advantage to a game and pretty much guarantees no repeat games so being nice and civil is a reasonable and necessary part of play.

How can ruthlessness within a game not be construed as being how you are in real life? I feel they do not reflect one another.

You are my peers and experts, there is a lot of love for game and to truly "play to win" appears to have a stigma attached that is only reserved for life and death situations.

I think that against a random stranger at a game store there is really no way to mitigate the chances of being confused with a TFG/WAAC other than talking over what you want/expect from the game before you get down and play

some people game to win, some people game to immerse themselves in a game world, some game to drink beer and make Pew-Pew noises while pushing plastic toys across the table (or any combination of this and other reasons)

playing a hard core competitive list to the best of your ability may not be compatible with fun for them and if its not fun you risk being branded a WAAC (although plenty of folk will understand and merely choose not to play you again)..... and that's not counting the few (?) who always think the other player is a WAAC if they win no matter how poor the list or lucky their dice rolling was

In a more regular setting if you are a regular winner (either based on skill or list) you should probably explore alternate (weaker) lists to minimise the chances of a TFG accusation, you'd still get your competitive kicks but more from the in game manuvering/strategy rather than the pre-game list building.

Remember there may well be people who just can't get better at the game... most of us do have limits to our skills (whether gaming, maths, languages, sports etc) beyond which it is difficult to go (eg because it needs more practice than we have time for, because they don't have the maths or language skills, they don't have the money etc)

Traditio wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
Play against someone who feels exactly the same way about the game as you do, wants the same thing from it. Simples! As the Meerkat says.

I once played in a doubles game of Infinity where one of my opponents made the statement "I want to blow up that man in the goat suit with this missile launcher." His partner could just not get his around why someone would want to do something like that, it had absolutely no tactical value and was a waste of a use of a powerful weapon. His colleague's answer was "how many opportunities am I ever going to get, in my life, to blow up a man in a goat suit with a missile launcher?"

I was just, a few hours earlier, playing a sniper game...in which my predominate goal was to ignore my sniper rifle as much as possible and shoot people with my side arm. They have assault rifles? Oh yeah? Well I gots this hand gun!

Doctadeth wrote:The other way to look at this is how can we have a game, which both the casual player and the competative player both enjoy? The whole problem is that WAAC/competition play is not very compatible to casual play, Why don't both go and find other players who actually engage them in their chosen areas.

Gaming itself, for the casual player, is about the fun, about the spectacle, about not the conclusion, but the journey there. If you end up having your board wiped on turn 1 or turn 2 because you either cannot bring an optimal list,, cannot afford the army of the month, or you aren't a good strategist, shouldn't mean you have to essentially try and dial up your game, because thats just typically what a casual gamer doesn't want.

I exclusively play british tanks in World of Tanks. Many in the lower-mid tiers are... not good. My latest acquisition was a Churchill Gun Carrier. Possibly the crappest tank in the game. Not saying there wasn't a lot of frustration with it (including the time a teammate called out to the enemy team, "Hey, an actual Churchill GC! You can tell your grandkids you got to kill one, at least once!") but also a bit of fun and satisfaction as I got to learn it's (many, many) foibles and how best to employ it.
I like that kind of thing, trying different things and 'learning' them, seeing how well I can do with them and pushing myself, which includes, bear with me, playing to win. I think more balanced games make this style of play more viable, more enjoyable, maybe not so much of a one-sided affair. The exact level and type of personal satisfaction might be debatable, if you can do well with poor resources in an unbalanced game, and someone with more experience should be able to do better with any level of resources, but I think it's not quite the same as - like Doctadeth and others say - getting utterly kerbstomped in every game just 'cos you didn't listbuild just right.

TheAuldGrump wrote:

privateer4hire wrote:
One fix is to replay the match but switching sides.

I offer to do this in Kings of War fairly often, typically after I crush the opponent.

I do this for two reasons - the first is that it lets me play with something different.

The second is that I can find if the army does have a vulnerability that the other player will need to address.

(The third, unmentioned reason - it means that I can crush them with their own list.... (Joking))

Other times I can offer advice to new players before the game because it is obvious - when the enemy army is nothing but Hordes being the most frequent. (Maneuver is everything in KoW.) You need small units to protect the flanks of your larger units.

Another reason is working with my girlfriend to help her get a handle on Orcs.... New army - and I don't normally play orcs either. Things have gotten... squishy, on both sides. Orcs do not play a lot like our dwarf army. We went three months with nothing but draws when our dwarfs fought each other - so she started a new army.... Orcs have slaughtered dwarfs. Dwarfs have slaughtered orcs. Both armies have slaughtered each other in the same battle. The carpet would be running red if miniatures could bleed.)

The Auld Grump - I had the orc army for years, just planning on using the minis for Pathfinder....

The way to bridge the gap - teach 'em how it works! That's got to be some kind of win-win: the 'casual' player gets to know more about their chosen list and what it can do in the framework of the game, and the 'competitive' player gets more of a challenge to test against. Although, in case there's anyone who hasn't picked up my train of thought yet, it'll work better in a balanced game with more tactical nous, where the viability of each troop choice and army list doesn't swing so madly.

 screaminskull wrote:
Ah I didn't say "touch" I said "control".

That's even worse. If I have to stand there saying "move it over there, no, more to that side, a little more..." for the whole game then I'm just not going to play.

 Jimsolo wrote:

 r_squared wrote:

"How can we have competitive play without being confused with TFG / WAAC?"

 Pacific wrote:
Play against someone who feels exactly the same way about the game as you do, wants the same thing from it. .....

There we go, that's the answer to the original question. Nice one.

So how do we go about playing the game in an inclusive community that welcomes more than one type of person, rather than becoming a clique of elitist d-bags who only play with 'our kind' of people?

No idea, that's a different problem altogether. I'd imagine it'd have something to do with not being an elitest douchebag if it can be helped at all?

 r_squared wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:

 r_squared wrote:

"How can we have competitive play without being confused with TFG / WAAC?"

 Pacific wrote:
Play against someone who feels exactly the same way about the game as you do, wants the same thing from it. .....

There we go, that's the answer to the original question. Nice one.

So how do we go about playing the game in an inclusive community that welcomes more than one type of person, rather than becoming a clique of elitist d-bags who only play with 'our kind' of people?

No idea, that's a different problem altogether. I'd imagine it'd have something to do with not being an elitest douchebag if it can be helped at all?

It's pretty easy actually, but it requires going one step beyond the initial discussion about play-style and entering into a gentleman's agreement. Perhaps something similar to:
"If I bring my cheeze to fight your cheeze this week, will you use some lists I write up to play a scenario of my devising next week?"
Or some similar exchange of preferred game styles.

Also, as long as the folks are friendly and there are enough of each type of gamer (this assumes a relatively large player pool), it's not necessarily clique-inducing to mostly/only play against folks who are looking for a similar playstyle.

I am gonna jump in on this.

The 40k rules/game design lend themselves to this sort of nonsense. Games where opponents face off require balance. Games should come down to player skill / making less mistakes than your opponent.

Take WM/H for example. Are there bad match ups between casters? Yep.

Will a new player taking Haley2 (one of the most powerful casters in the game) win against a tournament player playing something like Scorscha2? Most likely not.

It's all about balance across factions with player skill being the ultimate driver of performance. When you have this with CLEAR rules, you tend to get out of the mindset of WAAC players and TFG mentality.

Now there will always be TFG's its just nature. However it has nothing to do with the list they bring in a balanced well thought out game.

It bugs me to know end when people talk about "fixing" their game by limiting what people can and can not bring. Shouldn't you expect the game maker to play test and figure this stuff out before they sell you a $100 rules book? Shouldn't you demand of the people your giving hundreds to thousands of dollars a year to, to get their collective heads out of their 4th points of contact and write you some rules that make sense?

I don't mind a system with imbalance when everyone has access to everything. In a video game, if a Pokemon is strong, you can go catch one. If a fighter is strong, you can go select hi at the character selection.

War hammer 40k is horribly unbalanced, and the balance is constantly changing. So forcing people to spend hundreds of dollars and hours to get the "new" units is not easily available to everyone... So when someone's models are invalidated due to a shift in the meta, what is the point in someone experienced enough to clearly understand the gross imbalance and crap rules to say "suck it up scrub, you should have bought a new codex and 1500$ of new models"

So when there is gross imbalance, unfair broken points values and the person with a bigger $$$ wallet has an advantage, it means that the true result of the game is not solely or even mostly determined by skill, which means "WAAC" is a fraudulent and hollow win.

Only when everyone has the same expectations (like months of lead up to a tourney vs rolling up to a random person at a club who can't afford new models when his codex is screwed) can the imbalance of $$$ and poor rules be negated and wins mean something.

If some players loose for any reason they will blame it on WAAC or TFG.

Its a social game with some unsocialized players.

 screaminskull wrote:
I think the inclusion (in 40k) of the following rule would alleviate a lot of the bad feeling of facing ridiculously overpowered lists.
The rule is;
NO DANGER - (as in "There's no f****ing danger I'm standing here facing that for the next 3 hours")
Before the first unit is deployed roll off. Winner chooses which army they will control.

This a nice idea but not really practical for pick up games. For the most part I'm happy for my friends to handle my models, they know how much effort I put in to them and they take care of them when handling them.

Some random kid at the local gaming store who brought their own models bouncing around together in an unpadded plastic bin, I don't really want them touching my models. It's bad enough when my opponent decides to "help" me by removing my casualties for me. I also don't want to be moving my models for them if they are using my army, that just sounds horrible.

But against opponents you trust, I think it's a great idea to swap armies... not practical as a general rule though.

Yeah, I'm in the "I don't want to risk handling someone else's models" camp.

 Jimsolo wrote:

 r_squared wrote:

"How can we have competitive play without being confused with TFG / WAAC?"

 Pacific wrote:
Play against someone who feels exactly the same way about the game as you do, wants the same thing from it. .....

There we go, that's the answer to the original question. Nice one.

So how do we go about playing the game in an inclusive community that welcomes more than one type of person, rather than becoming a clique of elitist d-bags who only play with 'our kind' of people?

Step 1: "It's okay to not like something, you don't have to be a about it."

That's the only step. Do it forever.

You see just as many TFGs and WAAC players using fluffbunny lists. If anything, it's more prevalent there because a lot of these guys have less experience playing in the competitive scene.

The character of the game kind of depends on how you approach it. If a player views a game of 40k as a test of intelligence and overall worth, then he isn't going to have fun no matter what army he's running. If instead you view it as an experiment to see what kind of tactics Army A uses effectively against Army B, it can be a lot more enjoyable.

As competitive players, it's important to recognize the opponent's interests. I'll usually ask people if they want to play a full-on optimized army, or if they want something with a goofy theme, and have both types of lists ready. It's kind of hard to accuse someone of being TFG, interested only in grinding your face into the ground, if he's offering you a choice in what kind of power level you'll be facing.


One potential response to this would be that intentionally handicapping yourself in a game is stupid. It depends on the venue...for tournaments obviously people expect strong lists. For a casual game over beers with a friend, if he's not a competitive player (in which case it can be a hell of a lot of fun to test out experimental competitive builds in a failure-safe environment), you'll probably have a more entertaining experience is you aren't just stomping his face the whole time.

A lot of the flak against competitive armies comes from the fact that many of them are simply boring to play against; in that case, it's a legitimate criticism outside of tournament settings. Decurion is a pretty good example - it's downright boring to play against. Serpent spam is another one. Gunlines, of course, are never fun to play against. Given a choice, I'd rather use a suboptimal list against another suboptimal list than an optimized army against one of the aforementioned builds, even though the power levels are the same.

This is just my personal opinion on why 40k seems to have more 'player issues' that other game systems.

GW plc are not interested in game play.They just want to sell product in the short term.
GW plc use special rules and point values to constantly change the balance of the game to drive sales.

The amount of investment to get a playable army in 40k can be huge compared to other games.
So the players may expect a much higher return from the game play than they actually get.

This results in the name calling IMO.

Well written games with proper amounts of play testing allows more people to enjoy the game in more ways.
It does not stop people having anti social attitudes towards their fellow players.
But they do not facilitate and reward this type of behavior like the poorly written rules of 40k does,

Lanrak wrote:
This is just my personal opinion on why 40k seems to have more 'player issues' that other game systems.

GW plc are not interested in game play.They just want to sell product in the short term.
GW plc use special rules and point values to constantly change the balance of the game to drive sales.

The amount of investment to get a playable army in 40k can be huge compared to other games.
So the players may expect a much higher return from the game play than they actually get.

This results in the name calling IMO.

Well written games with proper amounts of play testing allows more people to enjoy the game in more ways.
It does not stop people having anti social attitudes towards their fellow players.
But they do not facilitate and reward this type of behavior like the poorly written rules of 40k does,

Yeah pretty much this. These arguments are only a 40k thing. Anywhere else there's no such thing as WAAC and TFG if just a jerk player. Only in 40k is it blurred and degenerates into an argument of banning things. You still run into scrubs (Sirlin definition) in other games but never as bad as in 40k.

Ok, did not read every post so apologies if this has been mentioned.

The early versions of GW minis games were intended for a game master to moderate. It was a 3 player system. The game master would set up the battle or scenario and the players would play. I ran demos at cons many times and the battles were amazingly close and fun because I would specifically create forces that were able to interact with each other and give both players options and challenges. This is the classic story telling style of battles.

Current versions of minis games have done away with this. The variety of forces able to be chose by players can create some serious mismatches during a game. The best example was a game of WFB played years ago when my opponent could only be hit by magic weapons, and I did not have any magic weapons in my list. Another example would be someone taking no anti tank weapons and facing a lot of armor, or the player who takes a lot of anti armor weapons and runs in to an army with no tanks.

The method I choose to take a balanced force to be able to deal with most enemies usually loses. Why? Because a lot of people maximize one area, so if I have a force able to deal with all threats, it is not good at dealing with a lot of the same threat. The answer is then to play again and recreate my list choosing items to counter what my opponent brings.

I have told the story in the past about the last few games of WFB my friend and I played. He built a demonic army that was all blood demons. Blocks of 30, and he had 5 of them. I used my high elf army which had a range of archers, spearmen, swordmasters, and cavalry. The classic combined arms force. It was a 2000 point battle. I lost 2400 to nothing in 3 turns. (banners and table corners added to the points) His tactic consisted of moving forward.

Next week I took my dark elves to face his same army. I built multiple blocks of witches, and had corsairs with a banner to cause frenzy or some such. He approached and my elves sprang forward and utterly butchered his entire force. In seconds. Each of his blocks had the entire front rank wiped out and he never got to roll an attack back. ( this was previous version) The result was the same points but this time he lost.

We stopped playing. I understand the people who like building lists. I used to build Magic decks. It is fun.

I prefer playing a wargames. And that means I have something to do after the game starts besides just setting there and watching my list win or lose. I want to have to make decisions and roll dice to affect the result, not just buy models and build lists.

I am not trying to insult the people who are competitive players. I spent a lot of years cursing them and considering them the bane of the hobby. Now I understand that there are 2 distinct hobbies using the same models. My personal opinion is that I love one aspect of the hobby and would rather do my taxes than play the other style. While I NEVER play them, I do respect the guys who can make a deck or army list than can utterly splatter an opponent in minutes. I can do this too, but it is not a lot of fun to me. And I can assure you it is not a lot of fun to be splattered in seconds. I played a game where I lost about 75% of my army before I took my first turn. That was one hell of a magic phase thrown at me let me tell you. Imagine placing a Hot Pocket in the microwave, starting to play a wargame, and being finished with your game before the timer beeps and that pretty much summed up that battle.

But, to each his own and it is great we can all choose to play how we want to.

The problem is that competitive players have much better games out there but, for whatever reason, want to stick with 40k and try to shoehorn it into a playstyle that it doesn't support, arguably has never supported and by intent never will support.

If I want a competitive, fairly balanced game I'd get a lot more enjoyment out of Warmachine. Yet I constantly think of playing 40k because it's NOT meant like that (I do play Warmachine, I like it but sometimes it doesn't feel right), but people still want to try. I see the local 40k players trying to do tournaments and stuff and I shake my head because the game doesn't support that style, and yet they try.

If the people around me who play 40k played casual, narrative type of games I'd have no issue. But they want to pretend they can make 40k competitive, and try to play it competitively, and the game breaks down so I see no reason to bother trying to play in that manner in a game that won't support it properly.

That's it, isn't it? Ultimately there are still too many guys trying to pound nails with a wrench, while arguing how the wrench could be better optimized for nail driving. Meanwhile, hammers sit in the toolbox.

People can use wrenches however they want. But IMO there comes a point at which you need to step back and say "Okay, I really am not using this thing for its intended purpose." And it's amazing how many issues fall away with that simple acceptance. IMO.

 gorgon wrote:
That's it, isn't it? Ultimately there are still too many guys trying to pound nails with a wrench, while arguing how the wrench could be better optimized for nail driving. Meanwhile, hammers sit in the toolbox.

People can use wrenches however they want. But IMO there comes a point at which you need to step back and say "Okay, I really am not using this thing for its intended purpose." And it's amazing how many issues fall away with that simple acceptance. IMO.

I understand that people might like 40k's look or aesthetic or lore. But I think it's silly to try and pretend that the game is suitable at all for competitive play and try to shoehorn it in. It's a big reason I can't justify playing again, because the locals around me seem to want to try that. If they were really laid back and were doing a narrative campaign or low-key league, I'd be a lot more eager to throw down some cash to get an army. But as someone who would play fluffy/casually I cannot justify the money when people around me are dead set on pretending 40k can be made into a competitive game and want to play in that manner and ignore any alternatives that would actually give them that.

WayneTheGame wrote:
These arguments are only a 40k thing.

What?????

I have run into WAAC/TFG in every game I have ever played from AD&D to WH40k.

 Anpu42 wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:
These arguments are only a 40k thing.

What?????

I have run into WAAC/TFG in every game I have ever played from AD&D to WH40k.

Literally every game ever.

 Jimsolo wrote:

 Anpu42 wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:
These arguments are only a 40k thing.

What?????

I have run into WAAC/TFG in every game I have ever played from AD&D to WH40k.

Literally every game ever.

What I think he probably should have said is 'more of a' rather than 'only'.

You definitely get it in some games more than others. SAGA I have encountered precisely zero TFG, but I have some in Infinity and some in Bolt Action. I haven't played in a 40k tournament since 5-6th edition, and even then it was a 'narrative' event (with team rather than individual scoring) so I assume less likely to attract full-on competition players.

I think the following criteria determine how likely you are to meet an arse in a tournament:
- Age demographic; it's not exclusive but I've found you get a lot more younger people trying to prove their manliness than someone who is 50+ and happily sat there playing while puffing on an electronic cigarette (would have been a pipe at one time, but this is 2015). It's generally the teenagers and younger guys you get strutting around behind the board, leaning over and making exaggerated movements.
- Type of game; ties in with the above, you definitely seem to get more aggressive, unpleasant games with sci-fi setting I have found. The whole thing ties in with poorly painted and prepared armies (where if they are painted at all, it is to bare minimum spec) and when they seem to care very little about the minis they are pushing about the tabletop. It's worse when that lack of care is often extended to your own minis, too.
- Rule mechanics. Perhaps part of the reason I have not met TFG in SAGA is because the rules are so clean, so finely balanced. If there is only one, clearly understood interpretation of a rule, no nasty 'loopholes' or combinations of things that don't seem in the spirit of the game, then the chances are you will be on an even playing field and both players will enjoy it as a result.