Troubling Player Attitudes

[Erik Setzer]

Okay, I'll give a fair warning, this will be something of a rant, but not a rant directed at Games Workshop. The only kind of connection that could be made there is that the players I'll be ranting about play at a Games Workshop store.

Short history: The local GW store has seen the playerbase shift pretty much to a beat-your-face-off group, who greet every new codex with combing it in order to find the best way to milk it for a winning army, with people eagerly throwing their money at buying the hottest new stuff to win. So now you have an idea of the mindset there. As a contrast, the players at a local store named FLGS (yes, they actually named the store FLGS) are mostly people who've played for a long time, and are more drawn to narrative style battles, while still trying to be competitive.

Over the past weekend, there was a local gaming convention, which included a Warhammer 40,000 tournament. The tournament was hosted by a local guy who used to run a store and has run a number of tournaments in the past ~15 years. He likes to make his own missions, with a narrative slant. For example, you might have a mission when a primary objective of destroying the other army, and a secondary objective of claiming objective markers, with the two objectives able to be claimed by different players. The idea is that you're not just trying to sweep away the opposing army, you're also trying to grab precious cargo. Another mission would be like the Relic, with a twist, or quadrant-holding (like old-school Cleanse, again with a variation). He did a mission for a recent club tournament that included "passing" the objective almost like a soccer match (though when it's that far outside the "norm," he usually saves it for the club events). Interesting stuff, makes you actually have to think about what you're doing and the army you bring.

I was reading post-tournament comments in the local GW chat. (There was a Facebook chat set up for people at the GW store to discuss random stuff, mostly GW.) Post-tournament congrats were fine, especially as the tourney winner was a player from the GW store with his Eldar Wraith army (pretty much a Wraithhost with a Seer Council attached). Then things started getting bad, with comments claiming "favoritism" in the tournament. I have no idea what the army that won best painted looked like, but there might have been a reason it beat the GW manager's army (which admittedly was quite nice, it was a Haemonculus army with a lot of conversions painted in an Attack on Titan style with the bigger guys). Then claims of the FLGS players being "afraid" to play the GW players and matchups pitting players from the stores against other players from the same store... though anyone who knows about the concept of the Swiss format that looks to pit similarly-powered armies against each other would know why that was done. It was all just coming off as serious whining about another store's players (and guys I'd known who weren't going to try shenanigans just to win a tournament).

This morning, though, came the comment that put me over the edge. I dropped from the chat, and I don't think I'll be spending any more money with the GW store, despite its convenient location:

"any one else notice each of those weird sc's favored armies with lots of troops? and the guy who wrote them was playing a demon factory army?"

This army was made by a guy who constantly tries to create gimmicky power armies and find any kind of advantage in the rules he can (too often getting the rules wrong in the process). If the army he was playing at the GW store on Saturday was an indication, he likely took a Harlequin/Craftworld combo designed to try to use crazy psychic stuff and combos of special rules. I could go on and on with the kind of stuff he tries to pull with armies.

To come right out and basically accuse a guy of setting up a tournament just to make it easier for him to win is ridiculous. For one thing, the guy who did the scenarios would have only been playing if there was an odd number (as he was running the tournament), and when he does that, he always excludes himself from any prizes. So what would be the point of setting up scenarios that he could win easier?

The scenarios are designed to be interesting, narrative, and require actual tactical thinking and a balanced army, rather than trying to blow your opponent off the table. I personally love that concept. It's how the games are "meant" to be played.

Instead of celebrating interesting scenarios that reward people for taking balanced armies and applying tactical thinking, we have a player accusing the tournament organizer of writing scenarios to benefit his own army that couldn't even place in the tournament. And not a single other person, GW store manager included, called him on it.

The guy being accused is also one of the nicest guys I've played in games. Last year I faced off against him in a convention tournament (different con, different organizer), and he was great to play against. Really fun game, and we both let each other correct a mistake where we maybe skipped ahead too fast and forgot to shoot or move a unit or something. A nice, gentlemanly game. At a tournament. Think about the attitude people have about tournament players, now imagine someone at a tournament saying, "Oh, you forgot to do this, you should do that." That's the kind of guy we're talking about here. I actually lost the secondary objective in that mission to him because he summoned some Daemons and I couldn't get in a spot to kill his Sorceror or slay enough Daemons, but I won't blame the mission, as those things were my own fault.

When that level of whining and baseless accusations is considered acceptable, I can't see myself playing games with those people. And as I'm not about to play games with them (or in a store that condones such attitudes), I'm not about to spend money there.

I'm not letting it drive me from 40K (heck, the cheaply made book I just paid $60 for and the realization I needed to spend $500-$600 to get my Marines in "competitive" shape would have done more for that). But I think I'm more convinced than ever that I'd rather play with another group of players, and I'm not about to recommend to anyone I know that they play at the local GW store, until that attitude is corrected.

Am I just being too harsh here? Are such accusations not a big deal?

[Alaric]

To those that dont have time to read the whole shebang: Erik wants to know if anyone else has issues regarding favoritism in their respective clubs/shops when it comes to tournaments.


No. You are not alone Erik. Virtually every painting contest in ours is voted by buddies to get their buddy to win. Tons of 2 faces going for sportsmanship as well. Its just people being people and I doubt it would be much different if u skipped out.

[Erik Setzer]

Actually, that's not quite it... I don't think there *were* issues of favoritism. I can't say for sure with the painting, I haven't seen the other army. Though sometimes painting is kind of subjective (like when I had a well-painted Ork army but it was "marked down" for having units painted as different clans, because, well, that's how Orks were when I started in the game).

One of the claims of favoritism was on pairings. But one group (FLGS) is mainly narrative armies, the other (GW) is mainly beatstick armies. If you go by the idea of a modified Swiss format that pairs like armies for the first round, there's not going to be much crossover. That's not favoritism, it's just different styles. As rounds went on, the groups were more mixed.

The one that bothered me most was the claim the T.O. created scenarios to help his own army, despite the fact he wouldn't score his army in a tourney he's running and only plays if needed to get even participants. He's also a remarkable sportsmanlike player. The person leveling that accusation, on the other hand, is someone who tries to break every new codex upon its release.

I'm upset that such accusations were leveled and nothing was said about them, especially the last one. A good guy was getting his name smeared just because someone couldn't win a tourney with his own shenanigan list. (If it's what I think it was, it wasn't even really a list able to stand the top tourney lists.)

Sorry, trying not to give paragraphs and paragraphs more, just trying to represent things right.

[Fueldrop]

I know the type. They're rare around where I play and have been pretty much driven out by now, but those guys who go for flavor of the month then throw a ****storm when they lose are pretty much universal.

Back in the day I got accused of cheating when my 4th edition codex Eldar annihilated a brand new grey knights list after their codex just came out. The possibility that I'd been playing my army for years and knew how everything worked together simply never occurred to the guy.

[Alaric]

Its all good. Dont apologize for bein yourself. At least you know you have paragraphitis :P anywhoo.
I meant favoritism in general, like you were saying the missions favored his style. I dont envy any TOs that play in their own tourneys for that exact reason. The dude who you are talkin aboot complaining...pretty sure we allll got one of them. We had a guy whos rep was so bad I drove to a different town to play in a tourney (in my tourney days) and they knew aboot him. Funny stuff how that works out. Sadly gaming clubs are not as abundant as we would like.

[Subexarch]

Sadly, there are people who are just like that. There is no way they could have been beaten fairly. It's utterly inconceivable that they were actually outplayed by a more knowledgeable or clever opponent and it is 100% guaranteed that they won't bring this up to the person they are spreading their toxic slander about. Instead preferring to disparage them from the relative safety of social media or their circle of friends. That way there is no way they can be proven wrong. Or punched firmly in the face.
These people exist. In my experience they are eventually driven off by level headed, polite people who refuse to take part in their passive aggressive shenanigans, or the perceived slight they have suffered leads them to stay away from future events.

[Erik Setzer]

I actually thought the beat-face mentality of play would be driven off, but it seems to have spread to most of the players at the store. Aside from wanting to play other games (not just minis games, stuff like D&D and some board and card games as well), I and a couple of friends had already started playing at another store. I'm hoping something makes them come around to their senses, but eh... at least I still have plenty of people to play games with, and the kind who *want* to play narrative battles based around a Troops-centric army.

[Fueldrop]

If you insist on being a "Beat-Face"...

1) Have an Ork Warboss.
2) Name him "Boss Beatface"
3) ???
4) Profit!

[Denzark]

As you describe it they sound like an unpleasant group. Although in the interests of fairness, the internet allows people to make whinging sweeping statements anonymously thus acting as a de-facto 'brave pill'. Arguably (not trying to play devil's advocate) someone could say that we are only getting one side of the story from you and that you are just doing what they are doing!

Irrespective of my pedantry though, to call someone's integrity is particularly crap, especially if a.) The accused has gone to all the effort of creating the tournament. And b.) The individual or his mates didn't actaully win so accusations of preferential treatment are unfounded.



I think the only way to resolve accusations like this is to call them out on it in the forum in which they were raised, telling them they are wrong and out of order, and actually come across as veiny throbbing phalluses for doing such a thing.

You may wish to include a link to this thread as well.

For my tuppence it sounds a good call that they are being bang out of order.

[Erik Setzer]

Can't provide a link. It was in a Facebook chat between people who play at the local GW store, only people in the conversation can view it (strangely, I can't even view messages from before I dropped myself from it). It was supposed to be to discuss events and stuff at the GW store.

Some of the people aren't bad outside of the games, at least from my limited non-game interactions.

An FLGS player won best painted, I'm still not sure what his army looked like. A GW player won the tournament, though, with Eldar. Given the nature of the missions, I think Space Marines could have dominated, but as they'd come out the day before, it wasn't considered fair to let people bring a codex that most of the participants wouldn't have had access to yet (and some of the SM players might not have been able to afford it yet).

I did call out the worst comment on the chat, but not sure what happened afterward (I was told he apologized for his comment), because I dropped from it. There were some other things that were bugging me, but those aren't really relevant here, and I took them up with the appropriate party so he knew my concerns.