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There are three that spring to mind. My first game in a new country and at the local independent game store, Saturday or Sunday morning gaming session and it was an all against all with about half a dozen players per side. One staffer began looking through my miniatures and picking out conversations and old models as being unacceptable citing an apparent Games Workshop rule that OOP miniatures weren't allowed, even though in a couple of instances I was able to pull the same miniatures off their shelves that were apparently banned. The full-timer/owner upheld the ruling though (basically by shrugging indifferently and so apparently giving tacit approval in spite of physical evidence to the contrary in some cases, the GW "No OOP" rule was also flatly refuted by GW staff a friend queried it with at the same time) and I played through the game although my heart really wasn't in it and funnily enough never went back.

The last night before moving to a different country 700 miles away. One of my mates offered to buy a few of my figures he really wanted, but I declined as I wanted to keep them. Whilst I was out of the club briefly saying goodbye to some other friends my miniatures somehow found their way from my case into his. As I'd spotted them in there, I naturally took them back along with an equal number of his as compensation telling him that if he didn't like it he could tell his parents and I'd let them know why (he was a year or two younger than me and we were both in secondary school or sixth form, I returned them before I left as I never really intended to take them).

On a completely different note, there was very briefly a bit of a thing at one stage in the early-mid 1990s for experimenting with hybrid computer/table-top games in some quarters. Laptops were just becoming a practical option and the idea of using a computer to handle the dice rolling and record keeping obviously appealed to some. Unfortunately in the case if the game concerned (it was a Napoleonic campaign iirc), it was painfully slow with literally hours between turns, I can recall noting that it took 6 real hours to play 4 hours of game time, which only equated to one or two turns. It was a good social experience for younger me, but the gaming side of it was essentially non-existant. With a better rules system we could have genuinely made the actual marches ourselves and still had time to play out the outcomes! It was an interesting experiment. Not one that was repeated in our club though. (I can also remember the guy running it commenting "War is 10% action, 90% waiting around", the obnoxious teenage me replied "But the bit we're doing is supposed to be the 10%, isn't it?")

Edit: I probably should clarify that the vast majority of that time was spent waiting for our turn(s) to happen, if we spent that time actually doing something it wouldn't have seemed so bad, but we literally did nothing whilst waiting for our turn to come up, apart from wait for the few minutes our turn took to decide upon, but then we are talking about the days of 286 laptops...

Playing WFRP and 40k in school back in the day. I always had lucky dice in WFRP, and other RPG's. Sadly, the GM didn't like me so even when I won, was the only PC left, I would get killed at the end of the game. This happened again, and again, and again...

And then playing 40k against racist people. Not fun,ended up in a fight that I won and then got suspended from school for...

Moral: find people you get on with to play against!

The one I feel rather dirty about was a wee one-day Necromunda "tournament" in GW Glasgow. Using the Underhive edition, so early 2000s, I think.

The victory condition was whoever's gang rating had increased the most won. All territories and the like were rolled on the day., I honestly, under the scrutiny of the staff, rolled two Archeotech Hoards and a "player chooses". So I took a third.

In the post-game sequence of the penultimate game, I rolled 6D6 for the income from all three of those Hoards, and spent the huge income on power weapons, plasma guns, more gangers, etc, and beat everyone else's total gang rating increase by a huge margin.

Three games
A 6e game where a player wouldn't quit whining about wanting to play a certain scenario with nightfighting and his prebuilt list, went all WAAC, and threw a fit when I accidentally rolled too few dice, started yelling in my face and set off a panic attack.

Dude still tries to get me back into playing with him and it was the coffin nail for me playing 40k. There were other factors leading me there, but that was a no-going-back situation.

A frostgrave game at my house, friend keeps saying he wants to play. We set up terrain, dude got drunk and we never made it past wizard phase on turn one.

Last story is long winded.
Ran an RPG campaign, one dude is changing jobs, can't play. We give him a happy sendoff. Two weeks later, dude is wanting the rest of the group to change to his dates. We try and he then cancels last minute. This deal goes on one more time and we just move onto our normal day.

Dude throws a giant fit saying we abandoned him. He wanted in games without telling us a day. It came across like he wanted the group to hold off all games until he was free to play.
Campaign I wrote a book for was canned because of fething drama.

First (and last) game of Warmachine, way back in 2003/2004.

I was a total NooB with some Khador. Went to a Black Lion Games in Edinburgh to find a game.

Got involved in a three player battle. Sadly, my opponents saw it not as a chance to show a newcomer the ropes and deliver some coaching, but an excuse to beat the snot of a NooB.

Left such a bad taste in my mouth I never played again, and wound up flogging my stuff on eBay.

Seriously. What sort of knobber enjoys wailing on NooBs like that?

It wasn't super bad, but it was the worst for me so far.

It was at a small (I say small, but there were 20 something people) tournament my lgs held, it was their first ever in fact. I had a reputation for trying to play Mono-Daemons, but the list I had built for the tourney didn't run well in a practice game, so I threw together a random force of World Eaters CSM. One of my friends at the lgs also went to a 2nd store to play rather often, and he mentioned me there once or twice, nothing bad but like asking for advice to help me since I'm new. One of those guys happened to play Grey Knights, and got super excited that he was gonna be able destroy me at this tournament. Well tourney day arrives, I end up playing against said person round 2, with the random CSM list, not Daemons like he thought I was playing. There wasn't a single incident that made it bad, but the whole time he was bragging super hard and was assuming all my units were Daemons (even my Cultists), and was just super assumptive that he would absolutely destroy everything I had (which he was right, but cause I didn't have a good list, not cause Daemons). There was one thing which kinda ticks me off now that I know about it, but he ran Draigo, who I assumed was just a good HQ choice like Kharn for me, who I had. So not knowing anything about him, I just threw my Kharn at him, to which Kharn got eaten. If I'd known about Draigo before then, I probably would not have thrown Kharn at him.

And this guy's attitude tilted me when I went into game 3. I was against a BA player, so I though "Oh this should be a good game, it's another melee army, it should be pretty fun," till I get drop-pod spammed and my whole army dies to flamers -a Daemon Prince and a couple of Helbrutes. I ended up just conceding and going home cause the one guy's attitude coupled with getting pretty much instantly tabled felt really bad. Turns out I won the raffle for some pretty cool dice though, the store owner messaged me and told me after I'd already left.

For the life of me, I can't figure out what the fun is in "noobstomping". I'd rather coach someone to be a formidable opponent, THEN earn a victory. Not only that, but it strikes me that if you are used to easy wins vs. novices, the first competent player you come up against will reduce you to tears. I guess I just don't understand that logic. From what I understand, the same guy who fethed me over at that tourney was showing new players 40k in 5th Ed and ran 1K Sons rhino rush rapid fire spam. Class act.

I think this game was at least a contender for worst experience. I was planning on playing a game with a friend, but do to lack of tables and someone else also wanting to play we said sure, lets do a 2vs2. Sadly one of the worst people in the store joined in (this was official GW). We just went ok, as refusing this person basically guaranteed not being able to play for the rest of the day with how the GW was arranged and opening hours.

To set the scene, we had four armies. I played CSM, my friend SM, the other person GK and the last person to join Daemons. Now we already knew there were going to be CSM, SM and GK as I was supposed to just put up more Chaos Marines in a 2v1, so paring GK and SM seemed natural. This was fifth edition GK as well, nice and strong against a somewhat weaker Daemon dex at the time. But Daemon player which was also a bit TFG insisted that with some WD changes his Daemon list was actually very good (the WD changes were decent but he just was an awful tactician). So against me objecting (he had other armies) he wilfully played Daemons against Grey Knights. I thought fine, but just let me deploy opposite to the Grey Knights.

Deployment went like a dream, we rolled second on initiative. Letting me easily deploy across from the Grey Knights to protect the Daemons. Then to top it all off we seized the initiative! I thought cool, a nice hard strike to take the edges of the opponent. I have never been so wrong. Daemon guy had deployed close to me and I didn't think any of it during the time, cover favoured deployment like this if we went second. Now this guy immediately moves all his Daemons diagonally across the board in his movement completely blocking my line of fire, and worst of all heading straight for the GK army. I was going like WTF are you doing man and (important to note: he had not stopped bragging about his list the whole time) he said he was going to show those GK who was boss. Well we all saw what was coming and this wasn't some dumb kid, we were all 17-18 year old and familiar enough that even Daemon guy should have seen the stupidity.

What followed was both the shortest and most agonizing game I have ever played. He locked me into the corner with his moving, refusing to move an inch aside, not even allowing me to shoot for the most part as I could't re-position or without giving cover saves on things like plasma shots. Of course he never made it across against all the specialized anti-Daemon fire from the GK and the shooting of a whole other additional army. What follows can only be described as some sort of hissy fit. It was over in less than 10 minutes. All the bragging and douchery about how awesome he was just ended in screaming about OP GK. He was in a state between rage and crying, or angry crying. Everybody looked over and the three of us just looked at each other awkwardly and silently (we knew he was going to lose). Then, the familiar story we all have heard about someone anger throwing/breaking their models back into their case happened. In 10 minutes I lost like two guys and he had been wiped due to his awesome tactics. The three of us ended the game there while the other guy left. I didn't feel bad for losing as it wasn't really my game to lose, but the GK player felt really awkward due to what was directed at him. We laughed about it later and never saw the Daemon guy again (the GW closed down not too long afterwards due to budget cuts). Thus it will remain my worst game but also that event that we all remember as the GK player making a Daemon player cry and quit the hobby, which sounds hilariously bad with all the GK deployment cheese you heard about in those days if you don't know this story.

The worst gaming 'experience' wasn't a game related one, it was just the owner of a pretty cheesy Tau-list that made me actually go Berserk in a GW-Store.
Now, i only play for a couple of Years now - maybe 2-3 years. So i consider myself still a noob or at least a pretty unexperienced player. Since the release of traitor legions and the 'finishing' of my World Eaters army, i wanted to take my army on the big stage - i.e. away from my FLGS to a GW-Store in the nearby major City. I called in and asked if they could find a nice, friendly player to play against my lore friendly & thematicly sound World Eaters CSM army. On the weekend the next week i arrived at the GW store to see an army - Tau - with 4 Riptides and a Stormsurge. Everything but a pleasant surprise.

I expected a "hammering" on my end, maybe to survive 2-3 turns before my inevitable end. But my World Eaters got first Turn; a real good chance to get off a couple of turn 1 charges and Threaten his battleplan to "shoot me into oblivion". So, my Chaos warband including 3x3 bikers, Autocannon havocs, a termicide unit & a juggerlord with Claw & Burning Brand of Skalathrax & my Auxiliary of 3 Maulerfiends & 3x3 Spawn and, last but not least, a second juggerlord with the Berserker's Glaive not only had turn 1 but also could move before the game - 2d6 inches can be a lot. And, for some reason this dude didn't knew that. So, he didn't deploy completely on his table edge.

My first turn, all my units had moved up at least 7 inches, my bikes and both of my juggerlords moved up 10 & 11 inches. "Bingo" i thought to myself. He wasn't able to cease so i had a good shot at charging a couple of units - overall, i had 2 units of spawn, all 3 bikes squads & my solo juggerlord with the Glaive in Close combat in this turn - 6 turn 1 charges messed with his plan. And, he showed his emotions quite clearly. He raged & threw dice around. "What a lovely chap" i thought to myself. After having some lucky rolls & and 1 awesome shooting phase with my Burning Brand Juggerlord that killed an entire squad of marker drones, a really angry red Glaive-Lord-dude that chew threw his Stormsurge like a hot, blood-encrusted knife threw warm butter & a couple of Riptides & drones locked with Spawn & bikes in combat i called my turn 1. His turn 1 was basically damage control & the attempt to destroy my Maulerfiends & the troops. Unfortunately he shot the Alpha-Maulerfiend - so 2 Attacks on the charge for the other 2 Maulerfiends who made their saves and now were really, really angry.

In turn 2, i killed his Stormsurge and 2 Riptides and he threw the game - but he also threw a miniture of mine. You were able to see, that he was used to winning & losing against a sub-par army that wasn't about winning tournaments made him really really pissed. No Epic handshake, no eye contact, no banter - he was mad af. And somehow he decied to blame me & insult me, push my miniatures around a pointing out how badly they're painted. Now, i don't say i'm good at painting - but they're good enough to sit on display in my FLGS. And my newly painted & converted burning brand lord is actually my best painted model - so he decided to break the code of honor & conduct and break my model. Now, i'm normally i nice guy - i work in as a psychiatric / mental health nurse. But when you destroy my property i can be everything but nice - but thankfully one employee defused this highly explosive situation by throwing this guy out. It was probably the last time i played in the GW-Store - at least for a while. And definetely against Tau - never ever again.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

Spoiler:

I think this game was at least a contender for worst experience. I was planning on playing a game with a friend, but do to lack of tables and someone else also wanting to play we said sure, lets do a 2vs2. Sadly one of the worst people in the store joined in (this was official GW). We just went ok, as refusing this person basically guaranteed not being able to play for the rest of the day with how the GW was arranged and opening hours.

To set the scene, we had four armies. I played CSM, my friend SM, the other person GK and the last person to join Daemons. Now we already knew there were going to be CSM, SM and GK as I was supposed to just put up more Chaos Marines in a 2v1, so paring GK and SM seemed natural. This was fifth edition GK as well, nice and strong against a somewhat weaker Daemon dex at the time. But Daemon player which was also a bit TFG insisted that with some WD changes his Daemon list was actually very good (the WD changes were decent but he just was an awful tactician). So against me objecting (he had other armies) he wilfully played Daemons against Grey Knights. I thought fine, but just let me deploy opposite to the Grey Knights.

Deployment went like a dream, we rolled second on initiative. Letting me easily deploy across from the Grey Knights to protect the Daemons. Then to top it all off we seized the initiative! I thought cool, a nice hard strike to take the edges of the opponent. I have never been so wrong. Daemon guy had deployed close to me and I didn't think any of it during the time, cover favoured deployment like this if we went second. Now this guy immediately moves all his Daemons diagonally across the board in his movement completely blocking my line of fire, and worst of all heading straight for the GK army. I was going like WTF are you doing man and (important to note: he had not stopped bragging about his list the whole time) he said he was going to show those GK who was boss. Well we all saw what was coming and this wasn't some dumb kid, we were all 17-18 year old and familiar enough that even Daemon guy should have seen the stupidity.

What followed was both the shortest and most agonizing game I have ever played. He locked me into the corner with his moving, refusing to move an inch aside, not even allowing me to shoot for the most part as I could't re-position or without giving cover saves on things like plasma shots. Of course he never made it across against all the specialized anti-Daemon fire from the GK and the shooting of a whole other additional army. What follows can only be described as some sort of hissy fit. It was over in less than 10 minutes. All the bragging and douchery about how awesome he was just ended in screaming about OP GK. He was in a state between rage and crying, or angry crying. Everybody looked over and the three of us just looked at each other awkwardly and silently (we knew he was going to lose). Then, the familiar story we all have heard about someone anger throwing/breaking their models back into their case happened. In 10 minutes I lost like two guys and he had been wiped due to his awesome tactics. The three of us ended the game there while the other guy left. I didn't feel bad for losing as it wasn't really my game to lose, but the GK player felt really awkward due to what was directed at him. We laughed about it later and never saw the Daemon guy again (the GW closed down not too long afterwards due to budget cuts). Thus it will remain my worst game but also that event that we all remember as the GK player making a Daemon player cry and quit the hobby, which sounds hilariously bad with all the GK deployment cheese you heard about in those days if you don't know this story.

Guilty secondary SM army next to the Grey Knights... Though... I think it were my Eldar. I remember something about those Tzeench Flamers and a unit of Dire Avengers being killed. Due to some of his tiresome LOS donkey poop. Not sure, it's been... 7/8 years. It was a bad game, I don't feel bad for the guy at all though. He was quite a TFG and tended to cheat... a lot. But this was the last time we ever saw him at a GW.

The worst time for me was when he (The guy I quoted) and I went to a friendly team tourney, meaning it was mostly normal lists, no power lists. It was quite fun until we met the TFG WAAC players in a game against us, CSM and Daemons. They were the sort of people that just did their best just to piss you off. Stuffing as many Riptides as they could into the tiny lists, and all out whining about every single rule. The match absolutely ruined that day for me. Never had a onesided match as that, except the one mentioned above.

Read through this thread cringing then realised i had my own to offer-

Not necessarily a gaming experience but as a new player (november) i chose to play TAU for the simple reason of; they look cool asf and they're the models i wanted to paint.
As i buy models for the "rule of cool" my lists are (by tau standards) fairly uncompetitive. And yet im bombarded every game with "tau are cheese" by the guy with invisible Guilliman, by the guy with an invisible squad of teleporting wraithguard with soulburst, by the guy who decides not to tell me he has the avatar of death and then states i should have read his list when he drops it where his suicide jet bike thing died.
The worst though- was the hissy fit 2-3 (one of which a staff member) veteran eldar players had when me and another tau player dared to argue that signature systems were not limited to one per army, they did this in such a hostile an arrogant way that it has truely tainted my view of 40k and the type of people it attracts.
This rule was cleared up by the manager who contacted a GW rep and other tournament organizers to clarify.... obviously we received no sort of apology (which if id have shown the same kind of arrogance they did, i would have been quick to issue)

My worst experience was my very first game, played a random pick up game as a guy was looking for an opponent and I figured to hell with it time to get a game in... So I'm pulling my units out of my carry case and I hear "My armies ready" look onto the table to see 3 Imperial Knights in a 1250 point game... You can imagine how that game went, I was quite close to just quitting the hobby after that game... Luckily I didn't but yeah... It SUCKED

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
First (and last) game of Warmachine, way back in 2003/2004.

I was a total NooB with some Khador. Went to a Black Lion Games in Edinburgh to find a game.

Got involved in a three player battle. Sadly, my opponents saw it not as a chance to show a newcomer the ropes and deliver some coaching, but an excuse to beat the snot of a NooB.

Left such a bad taste in my mouth I never played again, and wound up flogging my stuff on eBay.

Seriously. What sort of knobber enjoys wailing on NooBs like that?

That's pretty standard for Warmachine in our area, both me and everyone else I know who've tried branching out into it have had the same experience. I went into WMH hearing about how its soooo balanced and soooo much better than 40k and my only goal in the game was to play as many different giant dragon monsters as I could put in a list. So I dutifully picked out the caster who worked the best with that, and fielded all the right support units, and watched a whole bunch of videos about how to play them, and as soon as I showed up to the club they were playing with a mix of unpainted/unbuilt/totally proxied minis, running nothing but the top three tournament netlists at the time.

I believe my first game was against a list that could set up wide strips of line of sight blocking terrain that blocked all shooting and charging through, and the army would just stroll down the board with giant treemen who had a billion HP and defense and just grind your entire army to a pulp. 3/5 players at the club when I was there were playing that exact same list with zero interaction whatsoever, patting each other on the back about how much it was awesome and owned this list or that list.

Never went back to that game.

First game of 40k I ever played, this was back in 2nd edition so going a loooong way back. I had like a few squads of (badly painted) Ultramarines, like I think two tactical squads, maybe a Rhino, maybe some Terminators (I forget). My opponent, who knew I was brand new to the game and was supposed to be running the game shop's 40k night, had Space Wolves. With Wolf Guard Terminators with both Cyclone Missile Launchers and Assault Cannons (as only they could do then). He also brought out an Armorcast Warhound Titan and when I questioned if it was legal because I had never seen it in any of the books, produced its datafax and said "Of course it's legal, it has rules". The details of said game are very hazy to me now, but I recall I teamed up with a second kid who was also brand new (and also had Ultramarines) and we both got wiped off the board. He did not really teach anything.

I also more recently played a "demo game" of 40k where I had 1k points of Chaos (pre-Traitor's Hate so just a CAD) and my opponent used Grey Knights with several squads and a Dreadknight, and decided that we should play one of the Malestrom missions with random objectives instead of a simple kill points game (I had expected Purge the Alien). He was helpful but his choice of army and mission I felt made it very hard to learn the game.

Honorable mention goes to my first AOS game that was using a mission from the Season of War pack, where if you kill your opponent's monster you win the game automatically. I was thrown into using Matched Play with just the box I had (the big army box that was released for Flesh-Eater Courts) so I was forced to split my unit of ghouls into two units of 10 to meet Battleline, and was then informed that I was not allowed to use the battalion that came with the box I was looking forward to using (because it had no points). My opponent fielded Seraphon with a Bastiladon w/the laser crystal and some acid spitting Tyrannosaurus-type dinosaur to my one monster (my Ghoul King on Terrorgheist) and killed him the second turn because I was not aware that you could shoot into/out of combat, so coming from Warmachine I tried to block his Bastiladon's shooting by charging it and the other dino with my ghouls.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
First (and last) game of Warmachine, way back in 2003/2004.

I was a total NooB with some Khador. Went to a Black Lion Games in Edinburgh to find a game.

Got involved in a three player battle. Sadly, my opponents saw it not as a chance to show a newcomer the ropes and deliver some coaching, but an excuse to beat the snot of a NooB.

Left such a bad taste in my mouth I never played again, and wound up flogging my stuff on eBay.

Seriously. What sort of knobber enjoys wailing on NooBs like that?

That's pretty standard for Warmachine in our area, both me and everyone else I know who've tried branching out into it have had the same experience. I went into WMH hearing about how its soooo balanced and soooo much better than 40k and my only goal in the game was to play as many different giant dragon monsters as I could put in a list. So I dutifully picked out the caster who worked the best with that, and fielded all the right support units, and watched a whole bunch of videos about how to play them, and as soon as I showed up to the club they were playing with a mix of unpainted/unbuilt/totally proxied minis, running nothing but the top three tournament netlists at the time.

I believe my first game was against a list that could set up wide strips of line of sight blocking terrain that blocked all shooting and charging through, and the army would just stroll down the board with giant treemen who had a billion HP and defense and just grind your entire army to a pulp. 3/5 players at the club when I was there were playing that exact same list with zero interaction whatsoever, patting each other on the back about how much it was awesome and owned this list or that list.

Never went back to that game.

To be fair, that's supposed to happen in Warmachine. You're meant to fall for tricks like moving your caster a little too far and getting shot off the board because a fraction of your base is visible, or pop-and-dropped with Kreoss or having Sorscha1 move like 18" or whatever. You are supposed to learn from it. If the opponent was a jerk about it, that's a problem, but the game encourages getting beat down hard and fast when you aren't exposed to a trick, so you can learn to watch for it. It doesn't excuse douchebag players, but it's part of the appeal of the game, that it's unmerciful and brutal. Pulling punches doesn't help you improve.

Source: Was nearly turned off warmachine by a very laid back "casual scrub" group who came from GW and wanted to discourage playing powerful casters/units/combos because it was "too good". It made me learn the game incorrectly and I have yet to really recover from it.

Also not me but a friend may have had a "worst" gaming experience last week: Big apocalypse game, hyped as "Fall of Cadia". Imperium vs. Chaos. Chaos turns up with Magnus the Red and some guy had a scratchbuilt (and too large) Khorne Tower of Skulls made from some toy tank with an old GW Battlemasters tower glued on the front; it was larger than it should have been so it hung over the deployment zone by like 3 inches. They ruled to not use Death from the Skies or Flyers, which my friend uses a lot of. His army got wiped off the board first turn by the Tower, and he said screw it and quit the game and raged to me later about it.

Also honorable mention, guy with Stormcast (new rules) told me he had the "worst game ever" when he first experienced the Gorefist from Ironjawz. 3 units of Gore-gruntas charging him first turn and being able to move after killing a unit? (never heard of that rule) made for a miserable experience.

Funny, I created an "opposite" experience from what was typically listed here.
I tend to be pretty competitive and had just taken up Bolt Action as a game.
I decided that for my first tournament, I would not field the strongest cheese I could find because I did not want to leave a bad impression.
Well, I had the living heck beaten out of me due to everyone else taking their lists to the max... what was I thinking??

The bright moment out of all this is that they all then thought I was a sucky player and I had the pleasure of destroying a couple of the resident TFG's in later games.
It is just a mixed feeling to lose to the guy "that never won a game before".
Lesson learned: never take regular troops to a veteran fight.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
First (and last) game of Warmachine, way back in 2003/2004.

I was a total NooB with some Khador. Went to a Black Lion Games in Edinburgh to find a game.

Got involved in a three player battle. Sadly, my opponents saw it not as a chance to show a newcomer the ropes and deliver some coaching, but an excuse to beat the snot of a NooB.

Left such a bad taste in my mouth I never played again, and wound up flogging my stuff on eBay.

Seriously. What sort of knobber enjoys wailing on NooBs like that?

 Just Tony wrote:
For the life of me, I can't figure out what the fun is in "noobstomping". I'd rather coach someone to be a formidable opponent, THEN earn a victory. Not only that, but it strikes me that if you are used to easy wins vs. novices, the first competent player you come up against will reduce you to tears. I guess I just don't understand that logic. From what I understand, the same guy who fethed me over at that tourney was showing new players 40k in 5th Ed and ran 1K Sons rhino rush rapid fire spam. Class act.

I find myself purposefully making mistakes against new players in order to help them have a better chance at winning. Leaving a bitter taste in the mouth of new players only increases the chance that they will quit the hobby or return the favor to other new players. Sadly, that sometimes isn't even enough to help them out, but at least I am trying to not be cheesy and let them make tactical decisions.

Really, it's a matter of character.

Speaking of Warmahordes issues, I have a few. I have ranted about this on other threads here, but here I go again. This isn't just a bad gaming experience, but a bad gaming COMMUNITY experience that is still ongoing :

Bit of back-story: in 2013, I had been playing 40K and Fantasy for several years, but I was thinking about trying the competition to see what it's all about, so I got the starter set and never did anything with it. In 2015, I was aggravated and bothered at some of GW's business moves and decided to jump into Warmahordes full strength so I could keep painting miniatures and playing with them in games. The then only FLGS had a strong local player base, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

Early on in trying Warmahordes, I only ran into one player who was truly helpful in my local area. In my first game, he coached me through the game, and helped my Warcaster assassinate his, taking me step by step to help me learn combos and the wording on spells. I liked him, let's call him Player A. And then I played the other players. Now, I'm not going to complain about losing several dozen games (around 40+ or so) and only getting 3 victories in total (once was the starter game, one was my actual skill, and another was lucky rolls). But several players at this particular LGS (it's not friendly anymore if you ask me) took on the Page 5 mentality of "Play like you've got a pair!" too far in my view. Player A only showed up about once or twice every couple months, so I ended up usually playing the other players who played with shenanigans and that PP attitude justifiying it. But I played on.

I had in most of my games this one experienced player (let's call him Player B) who kept trying to tell me that what I am doing is wrong and that I need to do these other things to try and scrounge up a victory (funny enough, those games I won were when he wasn't watching at any point!). At any point Player B came around, he was trying to "make us better players". I didn't want to be a "better player", I was trying to have fun in my favorite hobby after feeling aggravated at GW's then-recent decisions. But I played on.

There was also this very strong anti-GW sentiment amongst the players. A couple of them were all "yeah, GW is okay. Fluff and models can be cool, but the rules suck", but several were just bitter ex-GW players, and nothing GW could do would ever make them change. They were all "PP rules are so balanced" and "the models and fluff are awesome!" and "GW makes the rules for their latest releases so much better than everything else so you have to buy the new models!" and on and on and on. At the time, these words didn't bother me, but nowadays it just bothers me. But I played on.

Our local Press Ganger (Let's call him Player C) also played here, and he was also employed by the store where we were playing. I never saw him demo the game at any point (that was handled by a couple other players, including both previously mentioned) but he would handle events. At one point, Player C, a hardcore veteran player and official Press Ganger, was talking with Player B about going to another town's store, playing super-cheesy lists they came up with, and "screwing with their meta". This sounded odd to me, but I waved it aside as I was trying to have fun with this players. So I played on.

Later on, I got tired of it. I was playing Khador, which was at the point a weaker army in the meta, and the models I liked weren't competitive. I don't mind losing, but after a year of playing with my skills peaking and no signs of my army getting better, I was getting worn out. And finally, I just quit going. GW started to do some cool stuff again, and I learned that there was a new FLGS in the area So I gave up on Warmahordes. I got the latest core rulebook and Khador starter set for Mk III, but it stopped being fun, and I just couldn't get into the story; the setting is pretty good if you like steampunk (which I am indifferent to) but the story just didn't grab me. I even talked to the new FLGS to see if they had anyone interested in Warmahordes, but I was apparently the only one. I even mentioned that I could try to demo the game to new players, which brought up the topic of Press Gangers, of which our local one was staying in the first store, got reported by the second store, and nothing happened of it, despite the fact that PP's policy stated that Press Gangers weren't supposed to work at a single store and support all of them in their local area!

There was also some drama going on where one guy got banned from the first store, so he and all his friends have now gone to the second, newer store for all their gaming. This guy has put together a bunch of tournaments and events on for GW games over the years, so pretty much all the GW players are at this newer store, myself included.

In that time, I have learned that PP really shifted the meta around, making what was strong weak (which I had bought but not yet painted by the time I quit), made the weak models stronger (which didn't help me since I didn't have enough). And I had noticed that the latest PP models were deemed to be really strong on the PP forums, and now with the latest moves by PP cracking down on online retailers and removing their forums, the hypocrisy has been revealed - PP is doing the exact same things as GW, but their fanboys are unable or unwilling to see it, IMHO.

And another story that is the nail in the coffin: I kept trying to support both stores, trying to even out where I would make my purchases for paints, models, books, etc. This past year, I went back to my LGS (the first one with the Press Ganger) and Player C is still working there. I had grabbed a GW model kit and a couple paint pots, and as he is ringing me up at the register, he flat out CRITICIZES my purchase - "Games Workshop is never getting any of my money again!"

That was it. I went back one more time to use up my last gift certificate from there, and I haven't been back since, and won't be going back again for anything. If a store doesn't like someone BUYING PRODUCT FROM THEM, then I can help them out with that

Long story short, I don't have many nice things to say about Warmahordes's community, one of the LGS in my area, and the folks who partake of both.

Process wrote:it has truely tainted my view of 40k and the type of people it attracts.

Much as this thread is doing for me. (Well, more than usual)

Wayniac wrote:To be fair, that's supposed to happen in Warmachine. You're meant to fall for tricks like moving your caster a little too far and getting shot off the board because a fraction of your base is visible... You are supposed to learn from it. If the opponent was a jerk about it, that's a problem, but the game encourages getting beat down hard and fast when you aren't exposed to a trick, so you can learn to watch for it. It doesn't excuse douchebag players, but it's part of the appeal of the game, that it's unmerciful and brutal. Pulling punches doesn't help you improve.

To be honest, it sounds like what you learn is to be a douchebag player.

BunkhouseBuster wrote:At any point Player B came around, he was trying to "make us better players". I didn't want to be a "better player", I was trying to have fun in my favorite hobby after feeling aggravated at GW's then-recent decisions.

Yeah, that. I don't think anyone sets out with the ambition to be a bad player, but when you have to go on some kind of virtual dogsbody apprenticeship or study course ("I watched all the videos on youtube!") it begins to sound less like a game, less like an enjoyable pastime. It isn't helped if what you learn involves listbuilding - the 'must have' models, minmaxing, killer kombos - exploiting individual special rules, and focusing on petty, nitpicking details.

and now with the latest moves by PP cracking down on online retailers and removing their forums, the hypocrisy has been revealed - PP is doing the exact same things as GW, but their fanboys are unable or unwilling to see it, IMHO.

Oh, you still get plenty of GW fans like that...

I had grabbed a GW model kit and a couple paint pots, and as he is ringing me up at the register, he flat out CRITICIZES my purchase - "Games Workshop is never getting any of my money again!"

That was it. I went back one more time to use up my last gift certificate from there, and I haven't been back since, and won't be going back again for anything. If a store doesn't like someone BUYING PRODUCT FROM THEM, then I can help them out with that

Sounds like an experience of mine, years ago. I'd just started visiting my local GW, enough to be a sort-of regular, and was thinking of starting Salamanders. Meaning plenty of melta weapons. Brought my first multi-melta blister up to the till, and the staff member put on his best Comic-Book-Guy impression. "Tchuh. Huh. What are you buying that for?" My first hint that the guy wasn't going to make my new hobby more enjoyable in the future (he definitely didn't) and that 40K had what I'd come to know as an always-changing meta.
'Meta'. Huh. Short for 'this game is purposely unbalanced.'

Still, it wasn't a big thing. Not something I'd call my 'worst gaming experience'. I've never really had one big blow-out or catastrophe like some in this topic, that I can point a finger at. Just a lot of small niggles and unpleasantries that informed me of the types of games and gamers that I'd rather avoid. (And if you haven't guessed the former by now...) Was it really important if a wall of ogre bulls had individual hand weapons, or hand weapons that occassionally blocked stuff, and why? Is the veteran sergeant's choice of pistol accessory going to make much difference vs. 100-odd other minis? Counting and rolling for and rolling again and picking all these saxons out of the back (or middle...) of a unit is a bleedin' faff - it's not just WFB's special rules bloat, it's Warhammer's mechanics themselves that do my head in. Man, those Ten Thunders have some ridiculous power creep. Just because a fraction of the base is visible - really!?

I've been pretty lucky-I don't have many truly bad experiences. There've been some players with iffy rules readings, some opponents who were kinda rude, but overall, I play in quite a nice shop.

 Vermis wrote:



Yeah, that. I don't think anyone sets out with the ambition to be a bad player, but when you have to go on some kind of virtual dogsbody apprenticeship or study course ("I watched all the videos on youtube!") it begins to sound less like a game, less like an enjoyable pastime. It isn't helped if what you learn involves listbuilding - the 'must have' models, minmaxing, killer kombos - exploiting individual special rules, and focusing on petty, nitpicking details.

one time, I bought Starcraft: Wings of Liberty; by the time I'd "learned to play" to the point of beating the (competitive) training twice, it was bound for the charity shop.

Another bad game I once had was a BA game against a friend. He was still relatively new to the game, having only played a few times but he wanted to try a 1000 point game.
I walked all over him, as I had done the previous few. He took it really well, and it was (yet again) a series of good runs with the dice (passing activation orders on '4's and hitting 50% of the time despite needing '6's) that saw victory through for me.

He was really good about it, as I said, but it left a bitter taste in my mouth, as overrunning him the past few times had. What made matters worse was that later, when I totalled up his list I found that he had been about 200-250 points under. I told him and next time I am going to once over his list to be sure he isnt denying himself by accident again. I cant take roflstomping beginners.

 Vermis wrote:

Wayniac wrote:To be fair, that's supposed to happen in Warmachine. You're meant to fall for tricks like moving your caster a little too far and getting shot off the board because a fraction of your base is visible... You are supposed to learn from it. If the opponent was a jerk about it, that's a problem, but the game encourages getting beat down hard and fast when you aren't exposed to a trick, so you can learn to watch for it. It doesn't excuse douchebag players, but it's part of the appeal of the game, that it's unmerciful and brutal. Pulling punches doesn't help you improve.

To be honest, it sounds like what you learn is to be a douchebag player.

I've mentioned this before, but this was the 2E game that disgusted me enough to quit playing 40K until the Newcrons came out. Sadly, it was against my brother, of all things.

I used to be a big D&D player and wargames were, at best, a side distraction. At the time, I only had the RT01 plastic space marines and a Land Raider I'd kitbashed from a pizza box (with guns from two GI Joe V.A.M.P.s). At the time, everyone in our "club" had latched onto Chaos forces, and I ended up playing a game vs. what must have been a Tzeench force. The main thing I remember was the enemy commander was a Chaos Sorcerer on a Juggernaut, who proceeded to turn my marine force into pink horrors. I think I killed two pinkies, only to discover they turned into two blue horrors apiece.

My opponent eventually popped my entire marine force, either killing them or turning them into horrors. I've hated Chaos ever since, and when I later got the chance to start up a Grey Knight army after I finished my Newcron force, I did it without remorse.

Well...sounds like some cheating happened. Tzeentch sorcs can't ride Khorne Juggernauts. And I doubt they ever could.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Well...sounds like some cheating happened. Tzeentch sorcs can't ride Khorne Juggernauts. And I doubt they ever could.

Quite a few folk used to proxy discs with all sorts of random stuff though, from what I can remember.

My worst experience was when me and another guy had agreed to meet up for a friendly game of maelstrom to try out different ways to play our armies and try units we never used before (he didn't).

He was a Tzeench player and I play Necrons so I asked him to play a game to see what it was like to have these two armies battle. The day before our game he contacted me to see what I was bringing. I was trying out an Overlord/Lynchguard unit, Deathbringer Cult (formation for 2 doom scythes) and a monolith for the fun and other units as well. So he said that he was going to make a "fun" list built around mine so that we could have "even" lists.

So the next day happens, we meet up at local shop and started to unpack our armies. I list off mine 1st seeing as he already knew what I was bringing. He then listed his in which involved 4 Dameon Prices w/ flying and Magnus the Red. His whole army was flying and I only had 2 models that can shoot in the air naturally. So I ask him why this list and he goes on to say "oh crons are broken man. 4+ RP means my Magnus and friends won't be able to take down your army". We then start the game and even from turn 1 I knew he was going to ruin my game.

I told him I never used the Monolith before nor have I tried the O lord w/ Lynchguard and wanted to see how they worked. 1st turn (after getting 20-30 for his pysk powers) he targets my monolith with Magnus strength D pysker powers. He did this till it was destroyed. He then targeted my O lord unit, used some BS pysk powers to only have my O lord and 2 Lynchguard left. (It was a unit of 11). He then gets into CC with said unit using 1 of his D Princes and absolutely destroys them. While all this is happenig he is shouting in the shop prasing how well his list is and how "squishy" my crons where.

On my turn I was moving a unit of warriors and he started arguing at me saying I moved all my models to much and either need to re-do all my movements (warriors where the last unit I moved) or that he would stop playing because of my cheating.
So I bring up that his list is super hard to destroy regarding I only have 2 units that can attack FMC and that they wernt even on the board (still my turn 1 in the movement phase). He then said "well man, you shouldnt be giving people your lists if you dont want your opponent to build something that stops your stupid crons" I then said we were only playing a friendly game that was being used to play new tactics and new way of playing our armies. The arguing goes on for 20 minutes and then the store manager pulls us both. Warns us that we need to calm down or get out. My opponents starts to say I was cheating and all this s**t to make me look like the bad guy (luckily for me the store manager was watching our game and knew what was happening). So the manager picks my side due to what we agreed to play and askd your man why the attitude towards me and why play a hard list in a friendly game.

We go back to the table top, manager is now sitting with us to stop the arguments and makes sure no cheating is going on. For the rest of the game me and my opponent didnt talk, only when we needed to. I ended up winning 13-7 but was close to being tabled due to me only having 1 doom scythe that wasnt in range to be hit by my opponent.

After the game my opponent said I only won by "cheating necrons" and that I was the A-hole not him. The manager then gets involved again, tells your man to pack his army and leave his shop. I havn't seen or heard from that person again and hope I never do. If he was an a-hole at a friendly game I can only imagine him in a tournament.

Wayniac wrote:

To be fair, that's supposed to happen in Warmachine. You're meant to fall for tricks like moving your caster a little too far and getting shot off the board because a fraction of your base is visible, or pop-and-dropped with Kreoss or having Sorscha1 move like 18" or whatever. You are supposed to learn from it. If the opponent was a jerk about it, that's a problem, but the game encourages getting beat down hard and fast when you aren't exposed to a trick, so you can learn to watch for it. It doesn't excuse douchebag players, but it's part of the appeal of the game, that it's unmerciful and brutal. Pulling punches doesn't help you improve.

But then, neither does being ROFLstomped so hard you've no idea what you did wrong or the other guy did right, let alone whether or not it all happened as the rules allow or not.

Whilst they're not for me, I've got nothing against super-competitive games. But surely ROFLstomping any new blood is ultimately self defeating? How is a newcomer meant to learn the ropes if all that happens is the more experienced players use them as a springboard to inflate their petty W/L/D ratio? How is a store owner meant to shift stock if a small group of self-appointed 'top dogs' demonstrate it seems to be a game played entirely by tiny-peened egotists with nothing fulfilling in their lives except the wargames equivalent of getting your mates together to go bully a kid?

If you're running a demo game, or someone's first game (whether post-demo or genuinely 'in at the deep end'), you don't need to easy on them, but taking it at a slower pace, explaining what's happening and why goes a long, long way. I've arguably run more demo games than most, given I was a three time Redshirt. And in each of them, you just explained what's going on, what you're doing, and what your opponent might like to consider for their own turn. Pass on your skill. Don't hoard it.

Worst experience wasn't a TFG or a WAAC player, it was just after Curse of the Wulfen hit and I was getting my second game with my new army, what I got was a run of rediculous luck that put me in third place in a tournament and only got one decent game.

Game#1 my Space Wolves against a visitor's Grey Knights.
We set up and chat while we do it, cool guy, really looking forwards to playing him. Before we roll the first dice his phone rings, curiosity turns to fury as he finds out work has an emergency and he has to get in there, he pulls the foam out of his box and just sweeps his Grey Knights in then storms out.

Match#2 Space Wolves vs Tau, the Tau player is one of my friends at the flgs and something of a rival, our matches are usually tight and brutal - this match was not tight.
I broke him on the first turn and boardwiped him on the second.

Match#3 Space Wolves vs White Scars.
I get my opponent's name, shake hands then he gets called away on a family emergency - I start thinking I'm bad luck to the visitors.

Match#4 Space Wolves vs Necrons.
My Space Wolves have never done well against Necrons, I either lose or grind out a tiny victory, this was a tiny victory but a damn good match. I got First Blood Assault and the Relic, my opponent got First Blood Shooting.
He was high enough on the Scoreboard to take second place, he played it out with the top scorer to see if he could grab the "Unbroken" prize.
Three out of four of my opponents had a really crappy day.

So bad, he shared it twice!

Does sound like a massively unsatisfying set of games, though ultimately nobody's fault. Which probably makes it worse. At least if TFGx3 ruins your day, you've got something to vent at!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So bad, he shared it twice!

Does sound like a massively unsatisfying set of games, though ultimately nobody's fault. Which probably makes it worse. At least if TFGx3 ruins your day, you've got something to vent at!

Or someone.
Mind you, when it gets to three in one event I start wondering if I'm not the issue.

And this is why we wash before Nerd Events (again, only teasing!)