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Well yeah, all fines go to the center of the board and when you land on free parking you get that pot. That's how everyone does it, right?
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Dec 22, 2014 10:20
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TheSmilingJackal posted:*You mention later that he gets rules wrong a lot, but it came across as him being a dumbass more than someone who is actively cheating. So I assume stupidity over malicious until told otherwise. Other gamers ascribing ignorance to a clear pattern of lovely behavior is something that a lot of cheaters count on, though. Kai Tave posted:Building a shitstomping army or Magic deck or whatever and rolling all over everybody may be, on a certain fundamental level, the fault of the game designer for allowing you to put together such a thing but past a certain point if that's the only army or deck you ever play with then you, the player, bear some responsibility for deciding "I'm going to keep doing this thing that guarantees my victory as hard as possible, gently caress what anybody else thinks or how little fun they have playing against me." Agreed, I remember thinking about getting into Rage when it first came out. One of my friend's friends had been talking it up, so I figured I'd buy a starter deck and a couple of booster packs, then have a couple of friendly games. He had spent hundreds of dollars on the game and built an uber-deck, which easily trounced me and my friend's deck. There was literally no way I could win with the cards I had---he made clear the different ways he was able to lay the hurt on me during the game---and I wasn't going to buy a shitton of cards just for the chance there might be an enjoyable game in there. Dude couldn't understand why I didn't feel like having a third round against him and called me a quitter. Maybe Rage was unbalanced as hell, but taking advantage of that against newbies, gloating, and then whining when they don't find the game fun? Dick move from beginning to end. This was the same guy who decided he wanted to run an impromptu D&D game one day since there were several of us there who were reminiscing about our high school gaming. He decided to start the adventure by making my PC, the cleric, under orders from his temple to go to the local tavern and convince two people to sign up on a quest. I wasn't given any money to make this happen, and the temple wasn't offering any free services or favors for it. I just had a map that supposedly led to treasure. They had to want to go just for the adventure of it! So basically he decided to go with the lamest adventure hook of all---an old man approaches you in a tavern---and made my PC the old man in the tavern. 
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Dec 22, 2014 11:57
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ibntumart posted:So basically he decided to go with the lamest adventure hook of all---an old man approaches you in a tavern---and made my PC the old man in the tavern. Stuff like that can work, but only if the whole group is in on the joke.
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Dec 22, 2014 13:17
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Sadly, we weren't. Shortly after that his GMPC (who was his favorite PC in some campaign he played long before I met him) showed up as the head of my temple to bitch my PC out about not recruiting the other PCs correctly. He warned us outright that this guy would mop the floor with us easily if we attacked him for some reason (we were openly discussing straight-up assaulting the NPC shortly after he was introduced). The rest of the game consisted of a lecture from the high priest and something about why we should go find the treasure as a favor to the temple. That was as far as we got. He decided ending on a haranguing was a natural stopping point for the session.
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Dec 22, 2014 13:46
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AlphaDog posted:Back in the '90s, I played M:TG with some guys who had the houserule "once per turn, when you could play a basic land card, you can play all the basic land in your hand". It was silly and fun and let you get lots of huge monsters and spells out (I haven't played magic since ~1999 and this would have been a few years before that, so don't ask me for details). I wouldn't want to try to play "seriously" under those rules, but it was a fun game to play while drinking and chatting. From what I understand, this houserule is so common that there is actually a semi-official name for it. I forget what that name was, though, because I learned about it after I had stopped playing Mt:G. All I know is that I was surprised to learn that wasn't actually how you played the game.
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Dec 22, 2014 15:40
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YF19pilot posted:From what I understand, this houserule is so common that there is actually a semi-official name for it. I forget what that name was, though, because I learned about it after I had stopped playing Mt:G. All I know is that I was surprised to learn that wasn't actually how you played the game. I don't remember if it was a house rule that everyone at my middle school played with, or if we legit thought that was the rule, but that's how everyone I knew played when I first got into Magic. It was a big surprise when someone showed me the actual rule.
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Dec 22, 2014 16:24
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Lucky Guy posted:I don't remember if it was a house rule that everyone at my middle school played with, or if we legit thought that was the rule, but that's how everyone I knew played when I first got into Magic. It was a big surprise when someone showed me the actual rule. Swamp, Mountain, Dark Rit, Dark Rit, Dark Rit, Phage, Accelerate. Good game, want to play again?
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Dec 22, 2014 16:34
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Kai Tave posted:Building a shitstomping army or Magic deck or whatever and rolling all over everybody may be, on a certain fundamental level, the fault of the game designer for allowing you to put together such a thing but past a certain point if that's the only army or deck you ever play with then you, the player, bear some responsibility for deciding "I'm going to keep doing this thing that guarantees my victory as hard as possible, gently caress what anybody else thinks or how little fun they have playing against me." Blaming the game designers for designing a bad game then turning around and blaming someone for not having fun playing against unbalanced armies by going "so what's the other guy supposed to do, suck more so he can be on your level?" is disingenuous as hell. If the game is unbalanced and badly designed then yeah, maybe Captain Winsalot should own up and acknowledge that he's winning by exploiting that and not because he's the True Alpha Nerd. I'm not trying to be disingenuous, and I don't see a conflict between my two points which were in short: unbalanced games are the fault of the designer and unbalanced games are not the fault of the players, even when those imbalances are exploited. If you want to argue that last bit, I want to say that I understand where you are coming from, but we'll just have to agree to disagree. I just don't find the player to be the one ultimately at fault. If the guy with the unbeatable army is using it to pound newbies he is being an rear end in a top hat, no disagreement there. The poster wasn't a newbie. In fact he highlighted two other players as newbies that had only been playing for a year, implying that he had been player for longer than that. The store owner wasn't accused of having poor sportsmanship or being a sore loser, either. Doing both those things makes you an rear end in a top hat, no disagreement. I did say that if he is cheating that everything else doesn't matter, but the poster didn't say the other player was cheating. The rules fumbling was not brought up by the poster in conjunction with his first complaint about the unbeatable army. I brought it up because I thought it might be cheating, but wasn't sure because the poster didn't accuse him of cheating. A lot of people are saying "but if he does this, this and this other thing, he is clearly an rear end in a top hat!" I agree, but the poster didn't say he did any of those things. *sorry about calling people "that guy" and "the poster" it's hard to check names on my phone. 
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Dec 22, 2014 16:56
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YF19pilot posted:From what I understand, this houserule is so common that there is actually a semi-official name for it. I forget what that name was, though, because I learned about it after I had stopped playing Mt:G. All I know is that I was surprised to learn that wasn't actually how you played the game. We called it "land drop." A lot of times we'd play speed games, where we'd use land drop and draw three cards every turn.
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Dec 22, 2014 18:05
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Nietzschean posted:Well yeah, all fines go to the center of the board and when you land on free parking you get that pot. That's how everyone does it, right? Yep, and that ends up making an already long game even longer, cause fistfights, divorces and make people never speak to each other again. It's just always ends up being 'oh Monopoly, we hadn't played it in a long time, let's break it out' Three Hours later: 'Oh that's why we never played it that often'
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Dec 22, 2014 18:40
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I wonder, have anyone ever had a good experience with a DMPC or long-term party ally? I mean, you can always tell the story is going to go bad when you hear 'And it's his favorite PC from X campaign' but has that poo poo ever gone right?
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Dec 22, 2014 19:17
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TheSmilingJackal posted:I'm not trying to be disingenuous, and I don't see a conflict between my two points which were in short: unbalanced games are the fault of the designer and unbalanced games are not the fault of the players, even when those imbalances are exploited. If you want to argue that last bit, I want to say that I understand where you are coming from, but we'll just have to agree to disagree. I just don't find the player to be the one ultimately at fault. Who gives a poo poo if he's rolling newbies or not? Cheating doesn't have any bearing on it either. If the only way you're willing to play a game is with the most unbalanced win-at-all-costs army you can even in a casual play environment...we're not talking a tournament setting or something, just "hey do you wanna play a game, oops looks like you can't do anything to beat me, wanna go again?"...then past a certain point that's still lovely sportsmanship. Going "well I'm not going to suck more just so you can have fun" is the mark of an rear end in a top hat, whether or not the exploits he's using happen to be legal. Accusing YF19 of being "whiny" for finding that situation to be lovely and unfun is dumb.
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Dec 22, 2014 19:23
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Night10194 posted:I wonder, have anyone ever had a good experience with a DMPC or long-term party ally? I mean, you can always tell the story is going to go bad when you hear 'And it's his favorite PC from X campaign' but has that poo poo ever gone right? In my old Shadowrun game, the GM imported one of their old PCs in — but they were an irritating shitheel everyone, including the GM, hated, so they were really just there to get made fun of and murdered in incresasingly gruesome ways (and survive by popular demand.) That's really gotta be the only way to do it.
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Dec 22, 2014 19:29
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Night10194 posted:I wonder, have anyone ever had a good experience with a DMPC or long-term party ally? I mean, you can always tell the story is going to go bad when you hear 'And it's his favorite PC from X campaign' but has that poo poo ever gone right? Dagni the stereotypically drunken dwarf cleric was a DM-run permanent fixture of the party to compensate for an otherwise complete lack of party healing. All he did was play buddy cop, answer the occasional question to do with dwarves or history or whatever, and pretty much just stayed in the background to let the real PCs come up with the ideas and do stuff.
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Dec 22, 2014 19:30
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I used to bring a very high level DMPC of mine into some campaigns, but he was really all about being a magic shopkeeper. "Gill's Mystic Archives - If you can cast it, we carry it!" He only once came out of retirement during when a campaign involving Orcus went very very wrong for the party. He showed up and laid some buffs on the party, as his franchise on that plane was in danger.
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Dec 22, 2014 19:39
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The most amusing was a mini-campaign ran by my cousin, due to a lack of communication, somehow we were short a rogue - we had a cleric, a sorcerer, my ranger and a barbarian, so my cousin rolled up one. The Rogue was a mute half-elf who owed the party cleric's temple a pretty massive favor so she ended up following along to save the cleric's neck. My cousin kept it in character - as if someone asks the rogue a question, he would gesture, point, stomp his foot, and make use of a lot of non-verbal cues . He made the character mute as so he's not as likely to start bossing or leading the party around. And as half the party characters had little common sense or didn't put in ranks for spot or sense motive, the Rogue also served as commentary on the general stupidity of the party. At one point we had to figure out who murdered our initial quest giver, as someone removed most of the guy's body parts so he couldn't be rezzed without True Resurrection. A visitor came by, helluva suspicious - smells like sulfur, shifty-eyed, and not too phased by the grisly murder. The visitor went on to explain he was suppose to come to get something very important from the quest giver, and was afraid the death was a result and asked us to search to see if very important item was still there. Out of character we knew the guy was up to no good, but decide to play as the dice lay - which turned out every one except the Rogue failed their sense motive check, so our party happily looked for it, and took a grimy looking chalice out of an obviously mystically sealed room with holy emblems every place, while the rogue made increasingly frantic gestures at us the entire time but we were too busy figure out how to get the chalice out as it was clearly a magical, not a rogueish deal. Visitor gets his chalice and went on his merry way and soon as the door closes, we finally paid attention to the rogue. And end result was: Rogue: *Gives the entire party the double bird* Barbarian: What? Rogue: *points to where the visitor left, makes throat-cutting gesture* Sorcerer: You saying we shouldn't have trusted him? Rogue: *Nods* Barbarian: So why didn't you try to tell us?! Rogue: *glares - points to own throat, then dopeslaps the Barbarian* (and my cousin had the general plot split between whether we sussed out the visitor's up to no good, or in this case, being stupid enough to give him the chalice)
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Dec 22, 2014 19:44
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Night10194 posted:I wonder, have anyone ever had a good experience with a DMPC or long-term party ally? I mean, you can always tell the story is going to go bad when you hear 'And it's his favorite PC from X campaign' but has that poo poo ever gone right? I've had a couple, actually. I'll post the others later, but years ago I was playing in a group that was magic-heavy, and we had a tagalong whose name eludes me. The DM played him as being somewhat retarded. Before you kick off, he did it quite well... he basically portrayed the guy as tough but not very bright, though well-meaning and aware that he wasn't very bright. Turns out it was all an act and the guy was actually a minor noble and quite bright. As an analogy if you know the character, he was a bit like Danilo Thann from Forgotten Realms... a nobleman who acts like a silly spoiled fop but is actually quite bright and capable, he just puts on the act so that people discount him. He saved our party from a wipe during an ambush and was really well done all the way through. He ended up being a huge asset for us diplomatically because we didn't treat him like an idiot, and so he went to bat for us with other influential NPCs.
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Dec 22, 2014 20:01
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TheSmilingJackal posted:I'm not trying to be disingenuous, and I don't see a conflict between my two points which were in short: unbalanced games are the fault of the designer and unbalanced games are not the fault of the players, even when those imbalances are exploited. If you want to argue that last bit, I want to say that I understand where you are coming from, but we'll just have to agree to disagree. I just don't find the player to be the one ultimately at fault. The problem with this in mtg is that nobody likes losing access to their cards, and while the three latest sets that come out are always heavilly balanced against all those other sets eight ways to sunday, people don't play standard unless they buy very commonly. It's not like chess where the game never has a new piece, the jester, that can only move based on a die roll or some other poo poo like that, and sometimes the new stuff interacting with the old stuff just breaks because you can't really balance it to everything that came out in the past. The playerbase understands that and if they play magic casually then sure it's alright, but you have to gauge how to play other people based on what they do. You play against newbies you have a deck that doesn't do anything fancy except maybe poo poo out a lot of tokens. You play against standard people you'd try to do a standard deck, You meet legacy people then you get to play your fun no holds barred deck with almost no rules. The problem is when people get sperglordy and bust out their $5,000 legacy deck that includes 4 black lotus proxy every mox and would have any person go "... Aren't those cards banned for being stupid in general play?" and use it against the baby to the game who just nods and accepts it and goes home and throws everything away. "Oh hey we're playing friendly muligan right?" "Yeah we're all friends here!" "Ok *shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle* OK I'm ready oh look I have chancellor of the tangle in my starting hand I get a green oh hey I have a forest I get a green oh I use my two green to channel and cast emrakul I win good game" Technically legal, but this marks you as "idiot who doesn't grasp basic casual gameplay with other human beings and should never be played with again"
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Dec 22, 2014 20:20
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Night10194 posted:I wonder, have anyone ever had a good experience with a DMPC or long-term party ally? I mean, you can always tell the story is going to go bad when you hear 'And it's his favorite PC from X campaign' but has that poo poo ever gone right? In that long-rear end 20-year campaign I joined late in its tenure, the DMPC was the pilot of the PC mercenary crew's ship. It let the GM throw in his two cents when we were sitting around the breakfast table Firefly-style and talking out missions and plans, but once we went into the field they stayed off camera and out of contact for the most part, and occasionally be the cavalry. It was a good balance; the GM got to have an in-character voice on the PCs' side but was never giving orders.
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Dec 22, 2014 21:26
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Years ago, I had a supervisor who I had somehow turned on to Magic. I can't remember how, but he was curious to try it. I picked up two starter decks, and we'd play against each other with just those. No boosters, no "I brought my Zendikar Vampire deck just to show how good I was." Just a couple Mirrodin Besieged starters. It was fun because the decks were even-ish, which meant he had a chance to actually learn how to play and figure combos out for himself.
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Dec 22, 2014 21:31
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Forer posted:"Oh hey we're playing friendly muligan right?" "Yeah we're all friends here!" "Ok *shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle* OK I'm ready oh look I have chancellor of the tangle in my starting hand I get a green oh hey I have a forest I get a green oh I use my two green to channel and cast emrakul I win good game" Technically legal, but this marks you as "idiot who doesn't grasp basic casual gameplay with other human beings and should never be played with again" This sums up why I no longer play MTG with my group regularly as we have 3 people who just do not understand what freindly game means. We just want to shoot the poo poo and toss dumb cards at the board for 10 turns then everyone turns everything sideways and sees whats left when the dust is settled. turn 2 infinite tokens, turn 1 everyone dies to fire; decks mulliganed to perfect hands are not fun, jesus christ. TyrsHTML fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Dec 22, 2014 |
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Dec 22, 2014 21:32
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JustJeff88 posted:I've had a couple, actually. I'll post the others later, but years ago I was playing in a group that was magic-heavy, and we had a tagalong whose name eludes me. The DM played him as being somewhat retarded. Before you kick off, he did it quite well... he basically portrayed the guy as tough but not very bright, though well-meaning and aware that he wasn't very bright. Turns out it was all an act and the guy was actually a minor noble and quite bright. As an analogy if you know the character, he was a bit like Danilo Thann from Forgotten Realms... a nobleman who acts like a silly spoiled fop but is actually quite bright and capable, he just puts on the act so that people discount him. He saved our party from a wipe during an ambush and was really well done all the way through. He ended up being a huge asset for us diplomatically because we didn't treat him like an idiot, and so he went to bat for us with other influential NPCs. My group is large but really fluid - several members work retail, and others have families and so can't make games regularly. Because of that I've had some luck with DMPC type characters and can throw my two cents into the ring on how they can work effectively. One - fill a niche. The most successful one I ever had started off because the party lacked a frontline fighter and hired a Merc to help them fight a giant Remoraz. He was eaten, managed to cut his way out, and was promptly eaten again while the party brought it down with spells and arrows. They kept him on, and eventually asked him for a backstory so I gave them a one off "8th son of a noble in the primogeniture society that they happened to be living in, took up merc work to pay his bills." He kinda became their party mascot (it was 3.x D&D and most of them were playing outlandish PrC's) and they thought he was great. He was also 2 levels lower than they were and eventually one of the characters took leadership so he could specifically be their henchman. He worked well because he had just enough personality to be memorable (he was a stoic fatalist) without being too directly involved, he was high enough level to be useful without ever overshadowing the party, he filled a niche they needed, and at the end of the day he was on their payroll, so they decided when and how he'd see use, not me. Those are my rules for DM run characters of any sort, and I don't have to worry about railroading my own campaigns that way. If you're playing some kind of D&D derivative, fill a niche that is expected to exist in a party but no one likes to play, usually healer or tank, and make sure that they can't overshadow the PC's. Most importantly NEVER make decisions for the group from your pulpit. Most "DMPC's are always terrible stories" begin and end with the DMPC being more powerful than the characters and railroading them on the plot wagon.
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Dec 22, 2014 21:45
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I think I did a couple FoW stories in the murphy's rules one, but I have a few fun ones that aren't necessarily rules exploits for this thread. Usually one thing you'll see in FoW mid-war games is that people will run german armored companies because ZE GERMANS and the fact that you can flesh out an entire company for sixty dollars with all the bells and whistles. My brother and I made the mistake of making a Russian infantry company our first project, and eventually I moved on to Canadian infantry company with a heavy recon element because I enjoyed that aspect of the play. We at one point had a game that I will call Rommel Must Die. It was a huge urban battle with two 2,000 point armies, so it was a huge pile of tigers and panthers in a city versus a horde of Canadians and Russians. You can get hero characters with special rules in Flames of War, and one of the german armor players took Rommel because he knew that I loved to wheel up with my recce at the start of the game and brutally gun down anything that wasn't dug in with waves and waves of suicide armored cars, and Rommel gets a bunch of special movement and survival rule that makes him virtually unkillable. It's almost been five or six years so I don't remember all of the details, but I remember a few key moments that made the game absolutely hilarious- The british armies get the universal carrier, which is just a little tracked towing vehicle with a machine gun in the front that can be upgraded to have a .50cal on it for a negligible amount of points. In addition, these UCs count as half-tracked and recon, which means that in road terrain they can move 16" and recon gets one free move at the start of the game (or something like that, my rules knowledge is a little hazy.  )In addition, the Canadians get a special rule where if the squad leader is killed then another one of the units is the squad can take his place. In other nations, besides the germans, if you lose your command stand in a squad then that squad cannot move anywhere and can only shoot. This means that Canadians can assault and die and continue to push without concern as long as you make your morale checks to not rout. This makes my little recon guys even more deadly because they come in groups of three and you can't split fire from a single tank, so they can only wipe out one or two of these little half track swarms at once, and if one survives then it can continue to rove around machine-gunning things to death with impunity. Now by the books and conventional thinking these were almost entirely useless for this game besides just capturing objectives and shooting up what few infantry there were that were meant to escort the tanks, but the .50cals have one funny thing that is highly abuseable- The PZIVGs that they brought to escort the tigers have a side armor one less than the penetration value of the .50, which means that a .50 can hurt them on the side. It requires them to roll a 1 for their armor, and then you have to roll a 5 or 6 on your firepower check and you can cause the tank to bail out, which puts it out of the fight for a turn. This is a hard pair of things to get, but when you're getting ~15 shots it's not as big of a deal when you just have to hurt four tanks. Bailed tanks cannot defend themselves in an assault, which was critical for our plan to really hurt them. I coordinated with my brother and he bought a Russian sapper company and a t-34 company to attach to his infantry. He then put the sappers onto the t-34s as tank riders, which is usually a horrible idea that will get all of your infantry killed, but we had a dastardly plan that was just going to swamp the drastically outnumbered German tank companies with targets. The first turn started and my universal carriers were already on top of the enemy, and they instantly shredded their two 88mm guns, four half tracks that had not deployed their infantry (they were supposed to be on the offensive and instead we just counter attacked out of our defensive positions,) and one of their recon squads that was intended to tangle with mine. I at the doubled my Churchill tanks, infantry, and towed AT guns straight down the road at them, which was an extremely slow moving force, and my brother at the doubled his t-34s with sappers and Russian infantry blocks up one of the parallel roads that was no longer covered due to universal carrier destruction. At the end of that round the only targets I could harm were the PZIVGs on the side armor, and Rommel's armored car. At the end of our turn I declared, "I will have Rommel's head on a Maplewood pike."  They spent their turn on the 'offensive' bogged down in universal carriers, didn't move any of their troops at all, and wiped out maybe half of my little machine gun carriers. None ran away, and the player with Rommel sent him barreling down a side street to escape the Canadian recon onslaught, because if he lost Rommel and then his PZIVGs his tigers would instantly run away without a scratch on them. I diverted two of my five surviving trios of universal carriers to chase after Rommel, and started shooting him up. His veterancy and special rules saved his rear end and I got a few hits that failed to kill or disable him, but it really put a fire under his feet to get his company commander out of danger. Meanwhile, I at the doubled my churchills and infantry into firing range of the tigers and PZIVGs, which gave them an extremely alluring and dangerous target that was getting closer and closer. I also at the doubled all of my towed 6lber AT guns to the various streets to cut off Rommel's escape so that he was boxed in between antitank guns and machine gun half-tracks. The t-34 company with sappers chilled out behind some buildings drinking vodka before their upcoming suicide charge. My other three UC squads lit up the four PZIVGs and managed with a stroke of luck to bail out three of the four, which meant his firepower was drastically reduced. He made a last ditch effort to save Rommel by smashing his tank through the carrier swarm towards Rommel to get one shot off at the carriers pursuing him, and managed to kill one of the six. Meanwhile, his tigers were spinning around shooting wildly to try to pick off all the flies surrounding them that continued to machine gun anything that moved in that city block and were once again bogged down in the sticky maple syrup blood of Canadian recon troopers, unable to move due to the fact that it would reduce their rate of fire. They used their special German movement rule to consolidate and basically circle the wagons, because the hammer was moving in on them and their goal at that point was no longer to take the city, but have Rommel successfully withdraw while his soldiers die in a blaze of glory. The next turn, the Canadian infantry spilled out from behind their Churchill tanks in an at the double move straight at the German armor, which would put them in assault range the next turn. The Russian infantry spilled through the streets and buildings in a trio of gigantic unstoppable blocks, especially because they didn't have any artillery to deal with them. The T-34s poured through the infantry formations with the sappers riding on them, surrounding the tigers and bailed PZIVGs in a massive blot of tanks and men with anti-tank bombs. My UCs chasing Rommel moved in and started firing their .50s at his rear armor, and once again with his heroic luck he survived. Meanwhile, the bailed PZIVGs continued to get blasted from all angles by my stupid little carriers and could do nothing to stop their impending doom. Their turn, the tigers didn't move and instead opted to just shoot all of their guns at the T-34s, killing almost all of them in one fell swoop, but their role was done. The command stand, the commissar, and enough sappers survived their transport explosions to bail off, fail their first save, get a stand executed by the Commissar, and then pass their second morale check. The Russian infantry maneuvered over the burning T-34 wrecks to get in assault range, and the Canadians closed in with their Churchills in tow for a complete envelopment of the German armor. That shooting phase Rommel did not get out of range of the .50s because he was trying to stay out of the line of sight of the 6lbers occupying his escape routes. This meant that I got to shoot at him for full rate of fire at no movement penalty, and ended up ventilating his armored car. His luck ran out and I got to remove the armored car turret and replace it with a fire/smoke token to mark him as destroyed. The assault phase rolled by and the Germans got horrendously swamped. The PZIVGs died without a fight, with the one survivor running away after all of his bailed companions got overran by the Russians. The second german player's four tigers, which included his command vehicle, were attacked by the Canadians and failed to kill enough to pin them and stop the assault. Rommel's four tigers were assaulted by the remnants of the T-34 riders and were turned into scrap with 90% losses done to the Russian sappers. After that game those two players never started with their equipment being towed or with their troops deployed inside of their transports whenever they were playing me. They also started buying more armor and artillery instead of trying to depend on the tiger swarm to carry them in the fights that used to just be armor vs armor (since it is the cheapest to buy and easiest to model/paint.) I also have a story about the RUSSIAN SPACE MARINES if you guys thought this one was fun. 
Commoners fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Dec 22, 2014 |
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Dec 22, 2014 22:47
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Commoners posted:I also have a story about the RUSSIAN SPACE MARINES if you guys thought this one was fun. Catpiss Thread 2: Just Post
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Dec 23, 2014 00:57
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Man, ya'll need to stop fighting over this stuff. It's simple: owner played a tourney level list in casual play, and expected everyone to bring a list to deal with his army. He'd use this list to curb-stomp the newbies, and anyone who came with a "casual" list, and then gloat about it. On top of this, a lot of the rules that were being misinterpreted were done in a way that benefited his army and his play-style. I don't attribute malice to playing a powerful list, nor to getting rules wrong. What ended up happening was every week, for two months, having to "have it out" every time I brought up a rule that we had been getting wrong. Like his whole bit with "you have to bring up every rule before the start of the game," basically hinting that if there was a rule that we did wrong, unless I laid out a litany before the game, we should keep playing it wrong. Before my little "enlightenment" most rules arguments ended with "owner fiat" rulings, rather than people actually looking up the rules. On top of that, it was in this period of time, since I was actually able to be a regular player again instead of on-again-off-again that I saw how he was, as a person -- a jerk at best, an rear end in a top hat at worse. Now, I agree with the sentiment of "I shouldn't expect my opponent to cater to my army." That's unfair, especially considering in most casual FoW play, you really don't know what your opponent is going to bring. However, this guy, the owner, was expecting us to play to his army. That the armies we brought every week needed to be armies built to beat his army, otherwise we shouldn't complain when we lose. We needed to cater to him. Here's a quote: quote:I bring the same list every week so that you will know what I'm bringing. You should be prepared to play my army every week. If you bring the wrong army, that's your own fault, and nothing I can do about it. In a vacuum, this quote is innocuous. An owner who brings the same list so players, especially new players, can know what to expect is a good thing. Unfortunately, I cannot convey the smugness with which this line was delivered, every time he delivered it. He wasn't implying some benevolence of "I'm the friendly game store owner who helps people learn the game," rather he was saying "You need to play my game." I think between my building the paratrooper list, but mostly with my rules hounding, I started to find the chinks in the armor of this list. But, I never "beat" the list. Nobody has ever "beaten" him. He does not "lose". Either he wins a game, or it's a draw "that could go either way, but my side would've won eventually." I can't say he was a sore loser, because he never "lost". He would also display a certain level of animosity whenever I wanted to play a 1-on-1 game with someone else. Now, I don't begrudge the owner playing 2-on-2, either, as it's helpful when he's trying to play and run the store at the same time (but that still bogs the game down either way if his partner doesn't know what it is he's trying to accomplish). I was getting burned out on the high-points, multiple army stuff being played every week for four months, so this is more just me than him. Unfortunately, this is a situation that was created by the owner in how he relegated tables out, we would end up with one table and four people wanting to play a game. So, I will concede this, a few of these things, as TheSmilingJackal pointed out, are innocuous, in and of themselves. I dealt with power lists and trying to field sucky armies before, but still had fun (I ran Sisters of Battle for a time when they weren't really that great). Ignorance of rules vs. malice; again, usually what I presume, and usually what happens; look how many of us goons have just admitted to thinking a common house rule in M:tG was an official rule, because that's how we were taught to play. 2v2, high points games: sometimes it's just fun to break out the big toys, I personally was just getting tired. But, I guess what's hard to convey to me is the smugness of the owner, and just his general attitude about it. It wasn't "oh, oops! you're right, this was wrong." It wasn't "we have these house rules," as there were no house rules. It was "we should keep playing it the way we have been, because that's the way we've been playing," in which rules arguments are settled not with a rule book, but by owner fiat, and anybody who disagrees is shut out. This is a point I should emphasize, as the owner wanted most rules arguments to be settled with his ruling, which would lead to him contradicting a rule that is easy to look up, but that's not how we play it. We didn't have house rules, we had house rulings (and the house always wins). There's a litany of other things I can go into, things that just clicked after this whole incident, and me realizing just who the owner was. Things like, not ordering products from companies other than Battlefront because he deemed them "inferior" sight unseen, even if he could get them through his supplier. Dragging his feet to support a new game everyone is interested in playing. Bad mouthing regular customers (who were actually nice people, not "horror stories of retail") behind their backs, when they leave the store. There are layers to this onion, too many to get into here. So while I'm already posting a wall of text, let's finish this puppy: Stage 3: The People's War (Actually it'd be the mobile war, when the tanks and armor are finally amassed for the final push) So comes the end of our story. I already shared the quote I wanted to start out with, but whatever. After the whole "table" incident, I resolved to look for a new gaming group. The owner has been reasonably successful with his business, and the nearest two gaming stores belong to him. Besides, they close early on Saturday, in an attempt to force any other Flames of War players to come to the "main" store to play (such was John's story). However, Jay is getting ready to ship off to the army and wants a big send off, and he's a nice kid, so I'll stick around. Also, a few players who have been absent for a while would show up, and it'd be cool to hang out with them for a while. So, I figure, in a month, I'll just bite the bullet and go to the next city over and find out who is there. Most of the major rules "fighting" had ended, but there was still a spat or two here and there. I stopped playing 2v2 battles, and tried to focus on 1 v 1, and playing people other than the owner (and having actually sat out, refusing to play once or twice). Shortly before the big send off, I get some awesome news, I'm moving, too; got the job offer for where I am now. I don't have to bother looking for a new LGS, at least not for now. The big day comes, a huge 3 v 3 battle. Nothing serious, just fun and shits and giggles, that sort of thing. Naturally, the owner brings his usual list. I brought my paratroopers, because I'd started to like them, and I knew the store owner would bring his same army. So, we get started and almost right away the owner flubs a rule that I had told him about before. It is in this moment that I learn, I am not the first person in this group to realize we've been playing wrong, or to point it out to the owner. In fact, one of my teammates, a player who had stopped playing regularly about a year prior to this, was much quicker than I in pointing out the owner's misstep, and the whole scene played out almost verbatim to what I had to deal with for the past few months, including the owner's insistence that he give his fiat ruling instead of looking it up in the rule book. The owner has been fielding this list for years. And nothing else, always this list. And he's always had issues with the rules. The only other person who wouldn't shut up about it, or allow himself to be brow beaten had stopped playing the game altogether, because this arguing was not fun. There were several arguments, owner was being liberal with his measurements, and there was a hill that was "cross country" for the owner's team, but "difficult going" for our team when we got to it (the owner wasn't consistent about terrain types, which seemed to change depending on whose team was in the terrain). Naturally, the game came to a draw. Actually, my team had captured more objectives than the owner's team, but you see, we hadn't beaten them, and there was one objective that they would've taken in the next turn, and had things continued their side would've won. That sort of weasely bullshit the owner always pulled to show that he didn't actually lose and he was still the alpha player, because he would've beaten you eventually and here's how he would've done it, in detail. Again, something he would do every game that he didn't outright win. I felt better after that game. I felt better because I realized I wasn't the only one to figure things out. I felt better because now I had no obligations or ties to this store or the group of players here. My friends were going their separate ways, and so would I in a few short weeks. I was free from this, it was finally over. The next three weeks, I only played one more game against Dan, but acted as observer/judge to the games that Dan and Alex played - on the "grown ups table", because they were the only players who showed up, and no way the owner was going to swallow his pride to play with them. Though for the Day: (upon learning of my new job) "They're going to kidnap you and you're going to get raped by goats! Yeah, that's what they do over there, you'll be raped by goats!" (upon me telling one of the other players where I'll be moving to) "Yeah, they're going to tie him up and he's going to get raped by goats! We'll never see him again because he's going to get raped by goats!" (last weekend actually in the store) "Looking forward to getting raped by goats? Oh, don't forget if you want to order something I can ship it to you. Like, there's some guys in Brazil who order Heroclix all the time from me. Just give me your address and I'll let you know what the shipping is and I can send whatever you want over there." (as I'm about to leave for the last time) "Have fun getting raped by goats!"
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Dec 23, 2014 05:22
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What job do you have where this guy thinks you are going to be raped by goats?
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Dec 23, 2014 06:24
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He's going to travel back in time to the 70s and be a Chilean journalist, I suppose.
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Dec 23, 2014 06:39
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I'm guessing his job probably involves him traveling to the Middle East?
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Dec 23, 2014 06:48
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There we go. Your first post teased hints of douche, but this is some full frontal douche right here. That's what this thread is all about. I may still find bits of the tabletop war gaming culture confusing, but this picture of an rear end in a top hat is goatse in its clarity. Speaking of goats, what on earth was your new job?
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Dec 23, 2014 06:49
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Professional goat rape victim, apparently. 
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Dec 23, 2014 06:54
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I teach English to grade schoolers in Taiwan. Yeah, I don't know how that connection was made, and it was way more off-putting than even Dan's "nice village" concentration camp.
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Dec 23, 2014 07:17
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What does Taiwan have to do with goats? that's... bizarrely racist because it doesn't even make any sense beyond "Foreign country = bad"
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Dec 23, 2014 07:51
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Probably because "raped by goats" is just utterly random and hilarious to him, right up there with any combination of monkey, cheese, or weasel.
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Dec 23, 2014 09:30
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the_steve posted:Probably because "raped by goats" is just utterly random and hilarious to him, right up there with any combination of monkey, cheese, or weasel. Kurieg posted:What does Taiwan have to do with goats? that's... bizarrely racist because it doesn't even make any sense beyond "Foreign country = bad" Probably a combination of the two. A lot of people would get Taiwan confused with Thailand when I told them about it, and with Thailand having a less than stellar reputation about sex trafficking. So, monkey cheese + casual racism + "them orientals" + ignorance about what is and isn't a third world poo poo hole = kidnapped and raped by goats is funny, lol.
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Dec 23, 2014 15:20
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SOVIET SPACE MARINES will be a shorter story. The Russians get the T-60 light tank that has a stat spread that puts it in an odd place. It is survivable enough to be basically immune to standard infantry, but not enough armor to stand up to actual antitank guns or enemy tanks reliably. It is fast enough that it can chase most things down, and because it doesn't have recon abilities it is dirt cheap. This makes it effectively a slightly-better-than-infantry-in-every-way tankette that makes it one of the more point efficient hard counters to infantry. One of the guys pointed out that for about every three German infantry stands you could afford one T-60, and that it was effectively the WH40k equivalent of a bunch of space marines tearing into some imperial guardsmen whenever they showed up. We had one game where a player took the Italians against my primarily light tank force. The Italian company he made was made of mostly useless Italian tankettes and motorcycle mounted infantry, but what we discovered is that the Italian tankettes are really, really bad, and you are basically paying for the unit veterancy instead of a useable piece of armor. It was the first time he was using the army, and what we soon discovered was that the Italian army was really poorly balanced and basically overpointed for everything they had, so playing them was more about losing heroically than ever really being able to win battles (except when you roll extremely lucky.) They even had a random table you would roll per platoon to determine their morale and skill, and for the most part you would get a bunch of worthless reluctant conscripts instead of trained or veteran units that you paid the points for. When the two high mobility armies hit each other it pretty much turned into a massacre. The Italian tankettes couldn't reliably hurt the T-60s in their frontal armor, so they had to drive up and get their sides and rears. Meanwhile, the T-60s could penetrate the Italian armor from the frontal arc. I made a huge line abreast of T-60s that just continually plodded forward while the Italian company dissolved. The game ended with almost no losses on the Soviet side with very few actual tactical decisions besides "Roll forward at a constant pace while shooting," and it was enough of a massacre to cement their nickname as Soviet Space Marines or Russian Power Armor. I never really had any other opportunities to use a massed formation of T-60s just because of how inflexible they were, but whenever I would attach them to any of my Soviet battalions the shop regulars on the other side would start making 40k jokes about them. On a slightly different note about that shop- It was a really nice shop that only had a few toxic people who were put in line really quickly whenever they would step out, particularly by our drunk-in-public volunteer firefighter retired marine that was always fun to be around. You would see people regularly show up with their kids and the regulars would be willing to play team games with them, introduce them into the hobby, help people build armies, etc. I think part of it was that we had a crowd that was willing to openly poo poo talk and call people out for their problems instead of being introverted, snide, and pointlessly confrontational. Toxic people would either be corrected on the spot or would find themselves presented with open disapproval, but the few that did actually do a self check and corrected themselves would be welcomed back as long as they continued to behave. For everyone that is having problems with lovely shops, don't be afraid of being banned for being fair and confronting people and calling them on their bullshit. For the most part shop owners are afraid of losing business from alienating their bad regulars, but don't realize how much business they're losing from more normal people who would gladly get into the hobby without going in, seeing a bunch of cheeto stained neckbeards who smell like onions and cat piss leering at them, and then leave while going, "Well, I guess I won't get into that hobby ever if those are the people I have to interact with." The shop owner at that shop was pretty passive and would only kick people out for things like ruining the tables, drinking alcohol without trying to hide it (our belligerent alcoholic marine would keep it in a brown bag and would try to make sure the younger gamers weren't watching when he'd take a few swigs,) or being actively lewd/offensive to others. Peer policing is what kept the people there good, and it was a family environment both in that we all got along or tolerated each other and people were willing to bring in their kids/spouses/nongaming friends to look around or get introduced to the hobby. Be the change that you want in the gaming community and expel or correct the lovely people, and if the tables are turned on you for trying to make the place more welcoming then gently caress that place and let it be a lovely den of lovely people that is going to fold. Chances are that if you feel something is wrong (and you're a well adjusted human being) then it likely is, and that other people will have noticed the exact same things you have but are too meek to point it out. If you aren't correcting terrible nerds you are an enabler and part of their problem. Commoners fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Dec 23, 2014 |
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Dec 23, 2014 19:12
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I feel the need to mention that my family never played with the free parking money house rule, and generally thought it was a dumb thing. Of course, we still played Monopoly so I can't be that smug.
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Dec 23, 2014 19:48
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The only house rule I've ever used is in Betrayal at the House on the Hill, where in the first printing the room tile for "Underground Lake" was mistakenly labeled as belonging on the top floor instead of the basement. We ignored the errata, preferring the impossibility of an underground lake somehow being about ten feet above the study.
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Dec 23, 2014 20:03
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Betrayal sounds like a fun game, but apparently it had a huge errata list.
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Dec 23, 2014 20:24
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Betrayal is like playing Candyland before you get to play one-round of Cosmic Encounter or something. A lot of set up and it may be essentially random.
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Dec 23, 2014 20:57
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| # ? May 22, 2024 00:32 |
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This thread is dangerously close to rekindling my passion for wargaming. Though not 40K (Warmaster is still cool, though).
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Dec 23, 2014 21:51
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