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Hey guys.

We all know that the warhammer hobby often captures the hearts of a lot of odd folks, lonley folks and maybe just.. yea the odd ones out. What is the weirdest experience you've had, playing against another person?

Id like to say ive been through hell, but ive honestly never ever met anyone who was crazy personally.

Had an incident over 10 years ago which still sticks in my mind a bit.

Back when Games Day was a thing, the local GW ran an Apocalypse game, the theme being "this is all just for fun, but every model you kill gets you a penny off your GD ticket". To be honest, it wasn't meant to be taken seriously, at the very most you'd get £2 off, which the staff were happy to do seeing as you've spent the whole day here and are more likely to buy stuff as a result.

Anyway, it's a good long table, has to be at least 10". I have a Basilisk set up at one end and fire all across at a squad of Marines at the other. Back then, the Basilisk had the Barrage rule, meaning enemies wouldn't get cover bonuses from intervening terrain, only if they were physically in it.

The Marines' owner suddenly kicks off when I tell him he won't get any save against the shot, complaining that as there's a Valkyrie in the way (a good 3" from both the Marines and the Basilisk), he should get cover. I showed him the Barrage rule, at which point he gets rather livid and calls over the store manager, who seemed a bit irate at being pulled away from the till. He takes one look at the rule and agrees with me. The other player then starts complaining that as his Marine squad is gone, they won't be able to charge some other unit and get a few pence off his ticket, and was rather sour throughout the day.

The clinch? I was about 14 at the time, he had to be at least 50.



Additionally there was another incident a couple years back, the FLGS ran a small 12-player tournament. Nothing big, 3 games and a £10 buy-in. One of the players brought a typical FotM list; Knight Castellan with all the trimmings, 2x Guard Battalions for the extra CP and a couple of Russes. Needless to say he swept the tournament, but it was only the last game where I played him I found out why.

His strategy consisted of using Move Move Move to advance his Guardsmen onto objectives very early in the game. He would move, advance, then in the Shooting Phase, use MMM to just move and advance the same amount as before, which seemed a bit odd to me. His overall excuse consisted of the following
- Overly confusing references: "if we look at the Tyranid FAQ this gives us precedent to use this rule here, which the as shown by this Errata leads us to here..."
- Seemed to be using a language barrier as an excuse; His English was excellent, but did seem to falter when I was explaining a counterpoint.
- Another excuse was "Well I watch these guys (not sure who he was referring to) on YouTube. They do this tactic and they're some of the best in the UK so it must be legit", which to be honest means sod-all.

He won the tournament; while he got a points reduction for that match it couldn't counter the number he had achieved using the tactic in the previous games, but what struck me was how serious he was taking it; every game he treated like the LVO, measuring the opponent's moves to the mm, regularly calling the TO to check as well.

To be honest, I had a rather fun game so didn't think much of it afterwards. Wasn't until a week or so later I receive a random message from him on Facebook (we weren't even friends on there), claiming to have a number of additional sources to back up his claim, sending over a couple PDFs for me to read. I just ignored him, life's too short to be wrapped up in game arguments like that.

Seizure.

Before I knew what one was. Was playing my old Genestealer Cult army against Ultramarines, my opponent was a little amped up.

He was talking about how he could gun down my Genestealers before I could get into charge range, then he repeated the assertion, then he repeated it again. Then he started stammering, his face shriveled up like a prune and then he was on the floor shaking uncontrollably. Kicks over a table, knocks down a wall of blister packs, everything goes to hell.

We happened to be right down the street from a fire station, which happened to have an ambulance and EMT squad on site. They came into the store with a stretcher and cleared the area - pushing 4 gaming tables out of the way, people's miniatures were everywhere, they were stepping all over the merchandise just to get to the guy. Much pewter and plastic crack was destroyed that day.

Now, what was remarkable about the whole situation - people were still trying to buy stuff as this is all going on. There's a dude shaking on the floor, EMTs are telling people to leave the store, and a line forms at the cash register. The store manager was helping the EMTs but the kid at the register is still ringing people up. Along with that, there's guys squatting down to retrieve their miniatures, asking medics to hand them models.

Nothing too weird lately, as I more than often play with my club, instead of the hobby store. But, we have one local who just is a horrible person to play against. frequently is late for scheduled games, leaves the game early if he is loosing, argues constantly etc. Most folks have just chosen to not play games with him, as it's not worth the hassle.

My last game with him, was one part of the stores Vigilus: War of Beasts campaign. He showed up 40min late to the game, his excuse was he was busy arguing with someone on Facebook. He then endlessly complained while deploying that the narrative mission was unfair for his army, and other issues and such. I just said feth it, I don't have time for this, and packed up my army. Only time I've done that before/during a game.

Another situation was at the same store for a Shadeglass underworlds tournament. There was a glass trophy on the line, so I brought my A-Game. It was season 2, and I was playing Eyes of the Nine (in a score denial, passive game plan style). In the final game which decided the event winner, I played against an aggressive Iron Skulls player. His entire strategy, was to fun at me, and score points for engaging my fighters. But, my objective deck didn't rely on fighting at all, and all my power cards were about repositioning and shenanigans. Won best 2/3 and in the last game, I scored 12vps to his 0, mostly through just denying him from scoring anything and playing cagey. Also, through him not playing well at all.

At the end of the game, he stormed out yelling "I don't play like that, I play for fun" or something to that effect, and immediately left and didn't stay for the awards. The manager had a word with him the next time he was in for poor sportsmanship.

I had an opponent sit me down and read me through the Blood Angel codex to try to explain to me that there isn't a Blood Angel captain with a Jump Pack to insist that Blood Angel captains CANNOT have a Jump Pack. I wasn't even the one playing Blood Angels; my DW captain just happened to have a BA shoulder pad.

For me it was my first game not against one of my friends, where me and my buddy took our little 500pt collections to the local game shop to play a bigger game while our parents hung out downtown.

We wound up playing against this like 45 year old adult man who was hyper rules lawyery and extremely interested in making sure he won this game against two thirteen year old children fielding such highly competitive units as el classico "one of every heavy weapon long fang squad".

At one point, I was trying to charge his eldar with Ragnar and he grabbed the ruler, measured the distance and the roll and declared I was like 1/32 short of making the charge roll and just explained in this super loud shouty tone "You can only charge if you get to base. to base. CONTACT!"

Among our friends, that became kind of a rallying cry whenever someone declared a charge against anyone else. BASE. TO BASE. CONTACT. usually emphasising each period with a thump of the table.

Weird, sad adults who feel a need to emotionally validate themselves by winning a game against children will never fail to amuse me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
There was also a necromunda campaign where we encountered a man who was just immensely, VISCERALLY pleased that he had figured out a way to 'solve' the game.

We had like 6 interested people show up for the campaign, this guy being one of them. His 'gang' was two models, both space marine scouts with heavy bolters, running as Goliaths.

They were the gang leader and the gang heavy weapons guy, and the gang leader had a skill or somesuch where he could do his activation twice.

the way necromunda works by the rulebook is that pretty frequently one player can choose the mission, and sometimes the missions are rolled for randomly. This player calculated that he had something like a 45% chance to play a particular mission if he always chose to play that one when he got to pick, and the mission was like "destroy this container with this defensive statblock"

Any game he got to pick the mission (or that mission was randomly rolled) he would win in one turn by double activating and taking four heavy bolter shots at the thing in the center of the map, almost certainly destroying it.

Any game he didn't, he'd immediately concede and allow his opponent to win.

He accumulated enough victory points to "win the campaign" after about 4 hours of play, over which everyone but him played 2 games total (plus whatever games they 'played' against him) and he "played" 12 games.

He smugly declared himself the winner, packed up, and left.

To this day it was the weirdest display I have ever seen out of a tabletop gaming experience. It felt like one of those people who plays video games to just load into a particular map, jump at a corner of the map in just the right spot where you can clip through the wall and just sit there invulnerable and make the game last forever untilt he other players quit and you are declared the winner by default.

My weirdest wargaming experiences... Sure I've played some unpleasant people and cheaters, but I'd hardly call them weird. No, the times I think are weird are;

First ever game of 40k. Played against some old dude, who absolutely demolished my trash list, being a 16 year old with a limited collection. He was alright about it, I bought the excuse of "I didn't know you were that inexperienced, sorry." The weird part was that after his turns, he'd leave for a smoke break and tell me that I could take my movement phase while he was gone. That struck me as a little weird.

However, weirdest game was playing against Ultrasmurfs. Yes. THE Ultrasmurfs, while I was living on Kingston Ontario. One of the gents there has a lovingly converted army of Ultramarines, where the head of every model has been replaced with a smurf toy head. Couldn't help but laugh whenever I said "Eldar rangers; target Papa Smurf" Papa Smurf of course being Guilliman.

Damn. ive thoroughly enjoyed reading each of your stories.

 techsoldaten wrote:
Seizure.

Had something like that happen at University. I ran the wargaming club and we had a few kids from the local secondary school show up. I was like "Yeah, let 'em play". They were alright, you know a bit socially awkward and whatever but just schoolkids.

One of them had a seizure like you describe, just sort of stammering mid sentence and then falling over. We caught him, and laid him out on the ground, and luckily he came round quickly, but it was the first time it had happened to the poor chap, he was really scared. Ended up having to contact his mam and so on. Made us reconsider having non-students there, because of insurance, unfortunately.

I've been lucky in general that I can't really remember much in the way of weird behaviour from other players though. I had one very bad game of 8e in a GW store that put me off the edition but I would say it wasn't much other than run of the mill unpleasantness. Most people I played against were pretty sound.

I’ve seen someone feint when their Bretonnian Bus* suffered mass rubber Lance syndrome, then get hideously flanked and ganked the next turn.

He was a weird, weird kid. And he was faking it. We knew, because anytime he’d start losing (quite often), he’d claim a migraine and quit.

*a usually deadly Deathstar type unit, but very much all eggs in one basket type affair

My utterly weirdest one I cannot really say, as it would probably doxx me, so I'll leave it at that and say they guy was kinda national news and even had a TV documentary on Channel 4 about him and his brother and what happened to them. This was also the first we had known about this when we saw it on TV too.


I've seen a lot over the years. The standout one at the store back home that I got into this hobby with was a guy called Steve. Steve was 2 years below me at school and wasn't particularly all there on most days (once, walking into our German A Level class during the Remembrance Day silence shouting "HELLO NICOLA!" (the German teacher) and her desperately trying to tell him to STFU). So Steve got into a cycle of getting banned from our local GW, but you see- our store was a training store for the area so had quite a high turnover of staff. So what Steve would do was wait until a new staffer was on duty, talk the talk then get invited to games night, do something to get banned, rinse and repeat.

So, with the context out the way, let's have some classics from Steve:
When playing his Eldar, he had some War Walkers behind some terrain and claimed they could see over it as he had tilted them upwards. He got a bit argumentative and the staffer told him to go outside and go behind the building across the street. If he could see over it, he could have LOS to my stuff. He then shut up. Some other things happen (can't exactly remember what, this was near 20 years ago...) and his WWs get destroyed. He then lobs them into his case, now Steve didn't have a case with foam in it, he just had a toolbox, they are the old metal WWs so they shatter into their component parts. In a future incident with these (after they had been stuck back together, this wasn't against me, mind...) Steve then attacked them with clippers, cutting their limbs off and chucking them in his case as he was in the process of getting kicked out.

Another incident was him getting into an argument over his Falcon's damage. His opponent had rolled a 1 on the damage table, this was circa 3rd ed so it was "Crew Shaken" aka "may not shoot" (the next result up was "may not move or shoot"). Steve was convinced with the conviction of Johnny Cochran that it was "may not move". He is playing a friend of mine and they eventually ask me as a 3rd party what it is. I show Steve the rulebook and still he persists. He bellows out at the top of his lungs "IT. MAY. NOT. MOVE!", at this point the staffer having his lunch in the back takes notice and pokes his head round and bans Steve (again).

He had the reputation for stretchy measuring as well. One such time was when a friend of mine was playing him and fired on his Avatar with a Meltagun (3rd ed, before you jump in with an "ackshuallllly...") and it is only just in range, like at the very limit of its range. Steve then in his turn moves the Avatar up to fight the squad. He has to roll difficult terrain for both the move and assault move. Both rolls in total came to 11", yet the Avatar was magically in range. Steve then gets into a mardy about how he has rolled EXACTLY 6 and EXACTLY 5, now there were a few spectators for this game, so you had enough witnesses to tell him he should not have been in range. He wasn't having it.

Then you had the incident when the Tau were first released. My friend Tom is playing against the shiny new Tau with his TS army (3.5 codex, so an uphill battle already) and has his Sorcerer Lord behind a small terrain piece, out of LOS and ready to charge the Tau next turn. Now, this was a bit of a busy store and Steve wanted to set up his game. I don't know how, but without anyone noticing, Steve "borrows" said terrain piece for his own game and Tom's Sorcerer Lord, now in LOS gets shot off the board. The Tau player must have also conveniently "forgot" there was a piece of scatter terrain there, cementing the reputation of all Tau players for years to come.

There's probably some more, but those are the ones I can remember for now.

 Thadin wrote:
However, weirdest game was playing against Ultrasmurfs. Yes. THE Ultrasmurfs, while I was living on Kingston Ontario. One of the gents there has a lovingly converted army of Ultramarines, where the head of every model has been replaced with a smurf toy head. Couldn't help but laugh whenever I said "Eldar rangers; target Papa Smurf" Papa Smurf of course being Guilliman.

That sounds weird. But also hilarious! Glad that not every story here is a bad one.

omfg what a persistent guy, that steve :

This wasn't at a store or even Warhammer, but I've just been reminded of it and it's at least model related, definitely counts as weird.

Before I played 40k, I made model aircraft. One day I was showing off my collection for a Scout badge, then left the models on the side as we went to play games.

We then find out one of the planes is missing (Richthofen's red triplane), it turns up broken and in the toilet.
The Leader calls everyone up and asks who knows what happened to my plane. This kid comes forward and admits "yeah I flushed it, don't know why", as it it's just a normal thing you do.
He was very autistic and even at the time I wasn't bothered, the absurdity of the situation washed all of that away.

I then met the kid (now an adult) again a few years later at another gaming club. Neither him nor his parents seemed to remember me at all, and we had fun playing Betrayal At Calth together.
Nothing got flushed this time!

 Grimtuff wrote:
My utterly weirdest one I cannot really say, as it would probably doxx me, so I'll leave it at that and say they guy was kinda national news and even had a TV documentary on Channel 4 about him and his brother and what happened to them. This was also the first we had known about this when we saw it on TV too.

You can’t leave it like that!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
My utterly weirdest one I cannot really say, as it would probably doxx me, so I'll leave it at that and say they guy was kinda national news and even had a TV documentary on Channel 4 about him and his brother and what happened to them. This was also the first we had known about this when we saw it on TV too.

You can’t leave it like that!

Was he like a serial killer or something ? I agree you can’t leave us like that, the people have a right to know !

Only weird thing I ever saw, was a woman with two children walking in, screaming and cursing at an adult man. And making him leave without his army, and then the store owner packing the army up for him.

Never saw the person ever again in the store, and it was like year 2 of 8th ed.

 Grimtuff wrote:
So Steve got into a cycle of getting banned from our local GW, but you see- our store was a training store for the area so had quite a high turnover of staff. So what Steve would do was wait until a new staffer was on duty, talk the talk then get invited to games night, do something to get banned, rinse and repeat.

I swear I watched a YT video yesterday about GW horror stories and this Steve guy was mentioned.

I guess my weirdest gaming experience ended with someone being arrested for trying to have me and a friend of mine killed.

Background: I had a friend a long while back who had an older sister that had been molested by someone, and later molested by a therapist her parents had taken her to.

The parents were very well off, dad was in aerospace, mom was a cardiac surgeon, they pulled in a combined income well over a quarter million a year and had stocks.

Well, my friend's sister became a hot mess that routinely set of Giger counters and he became a gamer. She started hanging with the badest boys possible and became a real alley cat.

She had something against her younger brother for no valid reason and the punk boys she brought home usually threw some verbal abuse at him.

One night i was at his place getting ready for a game (It was a star trek ship game) and her latest punk threw some abuse at her brother and me. I threw it back and he decided to kick my nerd ass for talking gak to him.

My friend and i both tore into him and he got the worst of it, by a long shot. He was drunk or stoned and it didn't improve his coordination.

While he was down we both maybe hit him in the face a few more times than needed and kicked him in the groin and other areas. My friend had had enough of her boyfriends abuse.

Well, about 6 weeks go by and a cop shows up on my door and tells me he has to inform me the police have evidence of a credible threat to my life. I go to the station and it turns out my friend's sister and her boyfriend were planning to kill my friend and me. The punk wanted revenge for having 'two nerds' bust him up a little (We both pounded his face a couple times while his head was on the floor and really busted his nose bloody.)

She figured with him dead she'd get all her parents money when they kicked eventually.

The guy they were trying to buy the gun from had a younger brother facing a drug rap and prison time, and he contacted the DA when he was asked to get this punk a gun in order to get his younger brother a lighter sentence.

The punk got 35 years, part due to his record. My friend's sister got 5 after testifying against him.

So yeah, I went to a tabletop star trek wargame at a guys house one night and ended up with someone trying to have me murdered. Weird.

 Matt Swain wrote:
I guess my weirdest gaming experience ended with someone being arrested for trying to have me and a friend of mine killed.

Spoiler:

Background: I had a friend a long while back who had an older sister that had been molested by someone, and later molested by a therapist her parents had taken her to.

The parents were very well off, dad was in aerospace, mom was a cardiac surgeon, they pulled in a combined income well over a quarter million a year and had stocks.

Well, my friend's sister became a hot mess that routinely set of Giger counters and he became a gamer. She started hanging with the badest boys possible and became a real alley cat.

She had something against her younger brother for no valid reason and the punk boys she brought home usually threw some verbal abuse at him.

One night i was at his place getting ready for a game (It was a star trek ship game) and her latest punk threw some abuse at her brother and me. I threw it back and he decided to kick my nerd ass for talking gak to him.

My friend and i both tore into him and he got the worst of it, by a long shot. He was drunk or stoned and it didn't improve his coordination.

While he was down we both maybe hit him in the face a few more times than needed and kicked him in the groin and other areas. My friend had had enough of her boyfriends abuse.

Well, about 6 weeks go by and a cop shows up on my door and tells me he has to inform me the police have evidence of a credible threat to my life. I go to the station and it turns out my friend's sister and her boyfriend were planning to kill my friend and me. The punk wanted revenge for having 'two nerds' bust him up a little (We both pounded his face a couple times while his head was on the floor and really busted his nose bloody.)

She figured with him dead she'd get all her parents money when they kicked eventually.

The guy they were trying to buy the gun from had a younger brother facing a drug rap and prison time, and he contacted the DA when he was asked to get this punk a gun in order to get his younger brother a lighter sentence.

The punk got 35 years, part due to his record. My friend's sister got 5 after testifying against him.

So yeah, I went to a tabletop star trek wargame at a guys house one night and ended up with someone trying to have me murdered. Weird.

Holy Gork & Mork have an exalt for the level of crazy involved

Umm... yeah. You win.

I doubt anyone can top that.

That wins the "most fethed up wargame experience" ever.

Many moons ago I brought my newly painted Salamander army to the first store I had been frequenting. Another regular showed up and noticed my new army. He said he had just recently finished an army as well and suggested we play a game. I agreed, then he proceeded to unpack his 2500 point "Space Marine bike army" which consisted of dozens of SM bike sized My Little Pony toys that he had glued bases, shoulder pads, and weaponry on. I was quite young at the time, and lacked the ability to politely decline. That was the day I was absolutely tabled by an army of ponies.

Very embarrassing day, as we had set the game table up on the sidewalk since it was nice out and the store was packed.



Oh yeah then there was the 500 pounder who would come into the store and flip open his laptop to sap some free wifi and look at furry porn. He also frequently wore a leather jacket with a big naked werewolf lady on the back. I noticed many customers catching a glimpse while checking out the gaming area and you would never see them again.

 Midnightdeathblade wrote:
Many moons ago I brought my newly painted Salamander army to the first store I had been frequenting. Another regular showed up and noticed my new army. He said he had just recently finished an army as well and suggested we play a game. I agreed, then he proceeded to unpack his 2500 point "Space Marine bike army" which consisted of dozens of SM bike sized My Little Pony toys that he had glued bases, shoulder pads, and weaponry on. I was quite young at the time, and lacked the ability to politely decline. That was the day I was absolutely tabled by an army of ponies.

Very embarrassing day, as we had set the game table up on the sidewalk since it was nice out and the store was packed.

Funny you should mention that...

 TheWaspinator wrote:


https://www.patreon.com/m/2796010/posts

*Helicopter rotors in the distance*

I'm mentioned this one before.... but,

I used to play with a REALLY nice guy, but he was also a basketball player that would come to games night directly from basketball practice, still wearing his ball shorts. The guy also didn't wear underwear.

He was tall enough that the gaming table was just a couple inches lower than his crotch, and on a number of times he'd nock over models with his manhood. I had to bite my tongue on more than one occasion to keep from laughing.

Went to a Warmachine tournament once where a guy scooped and spent the whole time he was packing up verbally abusing me for being a WAAC-er because he didn't believe waterfalling combined attacks existed.

 cuda1179 wrote:
I'm mentioned this one before.... but,

I used to play with a REALLY nice guy, but he was also a basketball player that would come to games night directly from basketball practice, still wearing his ball shorts. The guy also didn't wear underwear.

He was tall enough that the gaming table was just a couple inches lower than his crotch, and on a number of times he'd nock over models with his manhood. I had to bite my tongue on more than one occasion to keep from laughing.

Lemme guess, they played Slaanesshi Daemons w Noise Marine support.

 Thadin wrote:
My weirdest wargaming experiences... Sure I've played some unpleasant people and cheaters, but I'd hardly call them weird. No, the times I think are weird are;

First ever game of 40k. Played against some old dude, who absolutely demolished my trash list, being a 16 year old with a limited collection. He was alright about it, I bought the excuse of "I didn't know you were that inexperienced, sorry." The weird part was that after his turns, he'd leave for a smoke break and tell me that I could take my movement phase while he was gone. That struck me as a little weird.

However, weirdest game was playing against Ultrasmurfs. Yes. THE Ultrasmurfs, while I was living on Kingston Ontario. One of the gents there has a lovingly converted army of Ultramarines, where the head of every model has been replaced with a smurf toy head. Couldn't help but laugh whenever I said "Eldar rangers; target Papa Smurf" Papa Smurf of course being Guilliman.

The UltraSmurfs still make appearances as a ringer army at the tourneys at Nexus!

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Went to a Warmachine tournament once where a guy scooped and spent the whole time he was packing up verbally abusing me for being a WAAC-er because he didn't believe waterfalling combined attacks existed.

Not going to excuse the abuse, but the 'waterfall' CRA/CMA was terribly explained. I met quite a few people over the years that didn't understand it or believe the rules were meant to work that way.
Towards the end of Mark 2 there were quite a few absurd combos of abilities that people would try to demonstrate without really understanding (or being able to explain), and just referred to rules infernal posts while simply stating that things worked that way now.

One of the things that really turned me off on the game was a press ganger showing up and deciding he needed to convert the usual game nights into basically a boot camp for tournaments, showing off the most absurd exploits the rules allowed to get people 'in the right mindset.' Didn't help that he was deliberately poaching players for events at another store as well, trying to shift people from what was a local store for most of them to a place 30 miles down the road (which for me meant an hour+ travel time rather than 45 minute travel time each way), and undercutting sales of the LGS in favor of this other shop.

He also convinced people they needed to use the felt bits pushed by PP's Steamroller scenarios, rather than the actual terrain on hand in store, which infuriated me, because they look like gak and undercut part of the point of playing a miniatures game.

That was definitely one of the weirdest experiences, especially since I couldn't figure out why. He was from another town entirely, and neither store was local for him. 'Ours' was technically closer, but I guess he just liked the other more.
But the 'you've got to learn it right' attitude sucked a lot of the fun out.