[Brother Armiger]

I've found it's sometimes interesting to share experiences with people online, because it's both a means to vent and joke about it- as well as a means to share how to best handle these incidents when they occur. I'd like to share some of mine, and I'd love to hear some of your own- especially, since as I understand, these types of players are on the rise.

I may also continue to update this with other stories and experiences as they occur or I feel like typing them out. Since I've been interested in this type of hobby since 1995-ish, I've encountered quite a bit. I may also add some good stories and experiences, too- I don't want to destroy everyone's faith in the Imperium of Mankind.

The Sore Loser that Wasn't Even Losing

This dude I was playing against was pretty sour as soon as we deployed. I don't know if he was just bitter because at the time I was rocking a 1000-point IG army because that's all I could afford... or if he was just mental. From the start, all he did was double-check every move I made and every action I took, which really slowed the game down. I gave him the benefit of the doubt, because in my mind for every 'rule Nazi' there's been a handful of cheaters he's had to deal with.

At a certain point while we played, the guy just got on my nerves and I said I had to go to the bathroom. I didn't have to go that bad, but I did need to step away from him because I was a new player to 40k and he was frustrating me. I got a moment, decided to just come back and finish the game, and maybe avoid this guy afterward. He was going to win anyway, and I didn't mind that at all.

When I came back, his army was already packed up and he says to me, "You're using loaded dice". Look, I'm not going to sit and pretend I've never been dishonest in my life, but cheating at a tabletop game isn't even close to where my morals got fuzzy. He goes to the other end of the store and starts chatting with some guy, and the store owner approaches.

Politely, the store owner asks if he can see my dice. All of my dice were the bastards of a dozen board games with some Vegas souvenirs (the only thing I brought home from that trip that didn't require antibiotics). I went to grab them from the dice tray, and they weren't there. I let the store owner look in my bag, boxes, everything. A guy that was nearby, who knew something just wasn't right with this picture, said "Hey, maybe the other guy grabbed them by accident" and made eye contact with me- I figure he saw the dude grab them.

They guy that accused me said I must have flushed them down the toilet, and he made a fuss about his bags and left and claimed we were 'harassing' him. I never saw him again, I was completely baffled, and I never went back to that store because I was too embarrassed.


The Awful Little Children

There's a store with a wide variety of gaming products near my home, where me and a friend of mine get a lot of our stuff and play a game from time to time. As of late, we've had an issue with children at the store. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate kids. I don't want kids, but I like them. Even God-Awful little hellions I don't completely blame the kids, I blame the parents.

So there's a problem with them going to tables, picking up models during play, and then just setting them down. A guy at one table noticed one of his Orks was missing, and a parent just walks over a few minutes later with a broken model and is like, "Sorry, my son must have grabbed this". The guy was like, "Well, the arms are broken- could you at least help me find them?" The parent's response was, "Well you shouldn't have your little toys so close to the edge of the table"... because 'watching your kid when he's grabbing small things he could choke on' isn't the sensible thing to do.

This happens a lot, we have kids climbing up on the tables all the time. Children running about, screaming, etc. A lot of the parents are in the store looking at comics/mangas, posters, and the various other things the place sells. It's just an issue with people coming in, letting their little ones run wild, and not caring about other customers. We've yet to have a tournament that can finish at a reasonable time because the game are constantly interrupted by unattended children.

We also have kids asking about the game- which is cool, because there's a little dude that's always welcome to sit on the barstool near me because he's trying to learn the rules before Christmas when he gets his Space Marines. He's our 'Battle Buddy' and a bit of a good luck charm, so he gets a pass. A few of the guys have given him some older stuff and bought him that box with 3 Space Marines and paints so he can practice painting (and he's pretty good).

Aside from the cool kid, we've brought this up to the store. The people running it responded that we should be 'tolerant' because it's a 'family store'. None of us have issues with this, and we even do our part to make sure no one is swearing and have 'model watch' if one player needs to step away and have a smoke or a bathroom break. We explained how we're trying to be tolerant, and the store owner's wife got involved and told us we're lucky that we're allowed to use the tables if we aren't buying anything. The store owner simply stands there, lets her dictate this, and nothing happens.

This past weekend my friend went to the store and asked if we could start a tournament. He was told they'd be hosting no more tournaments. All the tables were removed except one. When he asked about the status of the tables, he was told that the one table is by reservation only and it has to go through the store manager. My friend called later that night and asked to buy one or two of the tables (not trying to boast, but I have a big enough house and I was willing to host them in my living room, where I could fit 3 tables easily now that my pool table is broken) and the store owner said they weren't for sale and would be disassembled for a different project.

I mean, it -is- property of the Store Owner and it's his business to run as he sees fit. But it seems to me that between his wife and bad parents, he's decided that we aren't 'valuable customers'.

Forge World Whining

I was explaining this to a Brit not long ago, asking if he was having the same issue in his part of the world. As I understand, we're seeing it a lot more in the US than anywhere else.

I've got quite a few items from Forge World, most of them simply cosmetic- I use Praetorian heads for my Black Templar Assault Marines and Tacticals, Imperial Fist Templar Brethren heads for my Sergeants, and some Phobos Pattern Bolters. I'm also intending to get their variant Lascannon and some of their other weapons.

I've been considering a Legion Fellblade tank, but it looks a bit pricey. If someone asked me not to use the Fellblade, I'd understand- the rules for it are not widely available and in the Codex. However, the fact I'd be asked not to use it is part of the reason I haven't purchased one.

The problem is that a lot of players and even game hosts are taking the 'NO FORGE WORLD' thing to the point of absurdity. Some players in the US are pointing to my Templars with the cosmetic changes- from a licensed WH40k company- and claiming that it's 'Forge World' and that it is 'against the rules' or 'unofficial models'.

I don't get it. I could understand if I were laying down Horus Heresy 30k tank or something that isn't covered in the rules, or playing models or special characters from some 3rd-party knock-off company. But this is getting absurd. Apparently, there's this belief that if it doesn't come directly from Games Workshop's store, it's 'not legitimate', even if it's only cosmetic.

I'm not sure how to combat this, but any suggestions would help.

 

[Kharn The Complainer]

Wow. It sounds like you're surrounded by dicks. I would suggest purging them with holy fire. That always works.

 

[Squire]

It's a shame about Forgeworld, I'm also put off buying models with FW rules because of the chances of not being able to use them

Urgh... I wouldn't play in an environment with little kids about.

The opponent you talked about in the first post sounds like a complete waste of time to play against. That experience wouldn't put me off going back to the store though, it sounds like he probably came out of it looking worse than you. Go back and test the water, maybe everybody there knows about him and doesn't think badly of you at all. Even if they do have suspicions if you can play a fun game against someone maybe they'll see you obviously aren't a cheater using loaded dice

I've spent way more hobby time on list building, assembling and painting than actually playing so my experience is limited, but thankfully I've never had to play against anybody unpleasant or unreasonable.

If anything I was probably that guy (or more accurately that kid) back in 3rd edition when I put together an eldar army with the sole intention of crushing all opponents and went on an unbeaten run at the local GW store against the hapless other kids there (and even a couple of adults). I must have won a mini tournament there one time because the manager gave me some striking scorpions and told me I should use them because my army was too cheesy. I started using them but still didn't drop a game and soon got bored of the army. It was a valuable lesson overall, I never cared much for the army or my games because I wasn't invested in eldar fluff and my list had no character at all. Then again... if some of those guys thought a 1000 point 3rd edition eldar army was tough I can only imagine what they think of the game these days...

Urgh, way off topic

 

[Brother Armiger]

Wow. It sounds like you're surrounded by dicks. I would suggest purging them with holy fire. That always works.

Fortunately, each of these incidents has taken place at different locations far apart from one another.

 

[Tyriks]

If they are against using Forge World products cosmetically, what about conversions? Even GW themselves encourage us to try out new ways of building models. Whining about that just sounds extremely childish.

 

[Rush Darling]

I don't think I've met anyone as douchey as the first person you've described. The worst one for me - by no means terrible - was a fairly large young adult playing in my local GW store. He obviously had some kind of mental condition, and I don't mean that in any derogatory sense, just stating facts.

I wasn't even playing the man, there were a few smaller games going on and he was a couple of tables over playing his space marines against an ork player, and getting quite solidly stomped from what I could see.

He didn't seem to mind losing, so much in fact that he took to screaming "Waaagh!" himself whenever anything went the orks way. Which, while mildly irritating after the dozenth time, wasn't the problem. The problem was him jumping up and down whenever he "Waaagh'ed".

Just to reiterate, we're probably talking in the region of 18 stone / 120 kilos jumping up and down both enthusiastically and repeatedly in a small hobby store, which from what I could tell has a suspended timber floor. By no means the heaviest of men, but I'll be damned if it wasn't firmly in the region of noticeable.

Obviously he was asked to stop, to which he'd agree, before getting carried away again. Thankfully nothing fell off the shelves and most players agreed to shuffle their models away from various table edges, but it made for an interesting (and very loud) game of watching my Deldar opponents skimmers wobble across the battlefield, and hell, probably even altered a few dice results over the course of the afternoon.

 

[Brother Armiger]

-'UMIE FAT BOYZ STORY-.

Wow. Okay, I keep hearing stories about Ork players. I've never been against an Ork player, ever. It's starting to sound more common.

Warning, mildly bothersome question incoming:

Are they like the Dark Angels as an army- and attract manchildren?

 

[ntaw]

Okay, I keep hearing stories about Ork players.

Take the internet with a grain (or truckload) of salt, it'll make you paranoid.

 

[The Son of Horus]

As a store owner...

Here's the thing about kids. They're the future of the business. Yes, they can be annoying. I have a "no unsupervised children" rule for a reason (and that reason is that an unsupervised children punched me in the nuts a few months ago...), but I also recognize that the longevity of my business relies not on gamers who use my space, but on the continued support and development of the greater local community. And that starts and ends with parents and kids.

I would imagine that it's not that this store owner doesn't consider you a valuable customer (every customer is valuable in their own way) but is trying to maintain a balance that is very political and doesn't necessarily appear so to the broader customer base. Running a game store successfully is -not- an easy job.

The Forge World attitude is perpetuated by store owners. We can't order it, and we can't sell it, so why would we promote it? It's also heavily pirated. For my part, I believe in allowing you to play with Forge World models if you've bought them. But I can sniff out a recast from a mile away and I require a physical copy of the rules if it's going to be on a store table. That gives everyone a nice middle ground-- if you want to play with the stuff you can-- but it has to be legit and you have to have the rules available for everyone to see at any time. So you don't see a lot of it. But people are happy, on the whole, to play with it here. I allow after-market bits (re: Chapterhouse and stuff like that) on my tables. I do not allow Dreamforge Leviathans or third party models that are clearly intended to be substitutes for things that my store sells as a partner with Games Workshop. As a shareholder with Games Workshop, I am fairly relaxed on the subject-- most store owners who are shareholders won't even allow third party bits because it's explicity competing with our ability to earn a living. I'm just not a hypocrite and am not going to tell people they can't use those bits on GW kits when I myself have plenty of heads from Anvil Industries, terrain from dozens of non-GW manufacturers, etc.

To hit on your first point last-- gaming attracts all sorts of people, and sometimes they have serious issues. It sucks that you had a bad experience with another player, and particularly that they stole from you. But don't let that stop you from going somewhere you like and playing the game you enjoy. If the owner/manager/employees don't do anything about that sort of behavior, that's different-- but any store that's going to be around will take action. Certainly, I don't tolerate theft of any type in the store (and never have had an issue with it) and ESPECIALLY don't tolerate theft between customers. It's one thing to try to shoplift-- that'll get you banned, obviously, if I can prove it. But the laws regarding theft between customers is very different than the law regarding burden of proof from a business-- if I think it's happening I will personally intervene.

 

[Reaper45]

I never understood why people try and use the you're using loaded dice thing.

Don't they understand that 40K is like the one game that doesn't benefit at all from having loaded dice?

 

[Tyriks]

As a store owner...

Here's the thing about kids. They're the future of the business. Yes, they can be annoying. I have a "no unsupervised children" rule for a reason (and that reason is that an unsupervised children punched me in the nuts a few months ago...), but I also recognize that the longevity of my business relies not on gamers who use my space, but on the continued support and development of the greater local community. And that starts and ends with parents and kids.

I would imagine that it's not that this store owner doesn't consider you a valuable customer (every customer is valuable in their own way) but is trying to maintain a balance that is very political and doesn't necessarily appear so to the broader customer base. Running a game store successfully is -not- an easy job.

The Forge World attitude is perpetuated by store owners. We can't order it, and we can't sell it, so why would we promote it? It's also heavily pirated. For my part, I believe in allowing you to play with Forge World models if you've bought them. But I can sniff out a recast from a mile away and I require a physical copy of the rules if it's going to be on a store table. That gives everyone a nice middle ground-- if you want to play with the stuff you can-- but it has to be legit and you have to have the rules available for everyone to see at any time. So you don't see a lot of it. But people are happy, on the whole, to play with it here. I allow after-market bits (re: Chapterhouse and stuff like that) on my tables. I do not allow Dreamforge Leviathans or third party models that are clearly intended to be substitutes for things that my store sells as a partner with Games Workshop. As a shareholder with Games Workshop, I am fairly relaxed on the subject-- most store owners who are shareholders won't even allow third party bits because it's explicity competing with our ability to earn a living. I'm just not a hypocrite and am not going to tell people they can't use those bits on GW kits when I myself have plenty of heads from Anvil Industries, terrain from dozens of non-GW manufacturers, etc.

Man, thanks for your perspective on this. I never would've considered the business side of things. I can totally get where you're coming from.

 

[R_Squared]

Wow. Okay, I keep hearing stories about Ork players. I've never been against an Ork player, ever. It's starting to sound more common.

Warning, mildly bothersome question incoming:

Are they like the Dark Angels as an army- and attract manchildren?

I think youre mistaken. My understanding of the story was that the Space Marine player was the one who was shouting waaaagh and jumping about.

But thanks for trying to perpetuate the stereotype. :grin:

 

[Brother Armiger]

As a store owner...

Because of your insight on this matter, I feel a bit better. If your store will allow me to purchase things and have them shipped- I'd like a link to it. I might be in the market for a bit of scenery.

I think youre mistaken. My understanding of the story was that the Space Marine player was the one who was shouting waaaagh and jumping about.

But thanks for trying to perpetuate the stereotype. :grin:

I believe in a lot of stereotypes. Mainly because, I challenge every person to defy them. All it takes is one to not be a goober, and I change my opinion.

I said myself, I've never played against someone that uses Orks. I have encountered quite a few Dark Angels players, and every one of them has made me cringe and annoyed me.

I will, however, say that the absolute worst players don't stick to one particular army... they get the 'best' army at the moment and drop it whenever something else comes along.

 

[Rush Darling]

Was indeed the space marine player who was causing the issue, although the space marines look like they'd been dipped in the paint pot, so maybe there was some ork under there somewhere.

I generally find ork players to be very pleasant, with an interesting trend towards bearded gentlemen of short to medium height. Their general attitude to games seems to be "Let's throw some models down and see how it goes!" which I find to be a refreshing break from the occasional power gamer.

As a Space Marine player myself I feel the burn from Dark Angels (Plasma hurts my feelings), but my local dangles player is a very good friend of mine so we tend to get along regardless.

I've not noticed much of a trend of power gamers with certain armies, if people want to cheese they'll find a way to do it (my favourite example being a Tyranid tournament list that fields 6 flying Hive Tyrants), but at the opposite end of the spectrum I've had a Dark Eldar player completely re-write his list to give one of my poorly thought out (but fluffy!) armies a fighting chance, which made for a very good game in the end.

 

[The Son of Horus]

Because of your insight on this matter, I feel a bit better. If your store will allow me to purchase things and have them shipped- I'd like a link to it. I might be in the market for a bit of scenery.

Sure thing, just shoot me a PM and we can discuss it. There's no formal link or anything like that-- Games Workshop contracts prohibit online storefronts.

 

[VictorLazarus]

My worst gaming experience was probably in the store I worked at. (which will remain nameless)

I ran the gaming evening every week and there were some generally mean and bullying people. For actual fun games I secretly attended another gaming club on another day.

Some people are just jerks, and it's very vexing when you 'have' to be around them.

Also, I don't like it when people ignore balance. Like when some high roller plays a little kid, smashes his basic troops (which is all he owns) with the best units money can buy. Then thinks he's the hottest tactician in history.

Then again, that's partially the games error. But bad sportsmanship grinds my gears.

MVL.

 

[DaisyDuke]

I remember a game i had back in 5th at Chester gw, I had just gotten back in to 40k having not played since 2nd. I had a low power list with some bikes 2 csm squads a defiler and kharn with some bezerkers. He was playing eldar bike council and then some dire avengers in Falcons or wave serpents. The last turn came around and kharne had butchered all his bikes and psychers. Then he decided it was totally legal to land on top of a bastion which contained my csm squad with his avengers in their skimmer and assault said csm. The game ended a draw due to him contesting an objective on the bastion.
I should have realised at the time but I was a noob and still too amused by the look on his face as kharne had dispatched his unkillable farseer unit.
Don't get me wrong, I am pretty competitive, but i would never bring a waac list to a pick up game with a stranger. Funnily enough I wondered why at the time he made a pretty sharp exit after the game ended. But hey there are dicks in every walk of life.

 

[R_Squared]

.....Also, I don't like it when people ignore balance. Like when some high roller plays a little kid, smashes his basic troops (which is all he owns) with the best units money can buy. Then thinks he's the hottest tactician in history.

Then again, that's partially the games error. But bad sportsmanship grinds my gears.

MVL.

The problem with that situation is, and I have witnessed examples myself, is that it teaches the kids that that behaviour is not only acceptable, but expected. He has planted the seed of the next jerk.

Back when I started out in 40k, owning only a handful of orks from the box set, a big mek with SAG, some lootas and nothing else, I remember playing a guy who regularly turned up to play me using his TWC, flyers and landraiders.
He regularly used these troops, unbound to hammer everyone, and I watched as the youngsters started to emulate his behaviour. He really was TFG claiming to educate people, but forgetting rules when it suited him, or rules lawyering and making the environment an unpleasant one to play in.
I eventually joined a local adult gaming club, which he was a member of and his shenanigans were not tolerated there. I also picked up and started playing x-wing which seems a lot calmer and more balanced.