Greetings,
This is going to be one of my rambling notions that end up on here. My first reason for doing this is the fact that the gaming group that I have always experienced have been what people may call 'soft'. By this I mean that we try to have fun for all of us who are playing, we offer advice or allow people to re-do something if they are having a bad game and have made a poor decision. I had never really met many gamers who really did this until I went to Uni (University of Wales, Lampeter if anyone is interested). I found the war gaming society after poking and prodding at the 'Freshers Fayre,' and meandered to it a bit after. I met a number of like-minded people there, but until I started to join in with 40K I never met any of the WAAC fraternity. My first army was Mercenary Kroot as well, so I was kinda letting myself in for a lot of hurt all things considered.
For all of you wondering why I chose Kroot as my first army there were a number of reasons. I do play with a very homicidal and sociopathic play style. Gun lines were for wusses and playing an army that was full of hyper-evolving cannibalistic space chickens was too cool for words in my eyes! After making 500pts of them and I set to learn how to play the game. 3rd Ed 40Kwas a really different animal to 5th Ed 40K. Lots of crazy stuff could happen compared to what goes on now.
So after a few weeks we did a day of 500pts 40K. 500pts, with few restrictions. Against some of the beginners I did well, but then I was hit by a WAAC player. He had a Wraithlord and a unit of Wraithguard in 500pts. I wasn't too bothered, but then he asked what weapons the Kroot had. I had Kroot rifles and a unit with sniper rifles. As soon as I had said that his Wraithlord went from standing proudly in the front lines of his army to cowering at the rear.
I played smilar people in my first year, but they slowly dropped out or left. In my second through fifth years at Lampeter the scene changed. We lost nearly all of the WAAC gamers. Those who were WAAC didn't get any games so they went elsewhere. After we got a rather large following we had a president who started a 4th Ed 40K and 6th Ed Fantasy tournament with the club at Aberystwyth University. We thought there would be a group of like-minded gamers there and that it would be a good weekend to chat and have lots of fun games. Talking online with some of the members I quickly found out that they were out for blood. Preferably ours! Even after telling the members of our club that we were gong to have to play differently we still went in as if we were playing someone at our club. Things didn't go well...
Most of the Lampeter guys went out in the first day or early in the second. We weren't bitter or anything, but it wasn't fun being curb-stomped by any means. Especially not by people who were using every rules lawyer trick that was available to pummel us.
We started playing what we had been doing before the tourney was announced. Paired 500pts games. We made 500pts lists with some restrictions and we used a simultaneous shooting declaration that was alien to the Aberystwyth gamers. What we did at the start of our shooting phase was declare which unit was going to fire at which unit. If more than one unit shoots at a single target and that target is destroyed a unit that has yet to fire can't do so that turn as it's weight of fire helped in destroying the unit even though no dice were rolled. Using this system we ended up having two basic tactics: 1) massed firepower to nuke a unit or 2) sporadic fire over the entire army.
We were getting more and more of the Aberystwyth gamers watching what we were doing as four separate armies were fighting in a combined arms style that they had no idea would even work. They looked at our lists and said that our combination of units wouldn't work in a tournament. We replied that if you look at what armies would have in the real world they would never have all of the biggest and shiniest toys in large enough quantities to do a WAAC army. Hopefully it made them think.
After they had gone and we had had time to think we mentioned about a similar tournament the following year. When they came their lists were softer and most of them were playing for fun rather than trying to pummel us into jelly.
I did ask them why they played such hard lists against us the prior tourney and they said that they did because they took part in the UK Nationals. If they didn't play like that they'd get nowhere. They made it sound more like work than something that you'd do for fun. If that was the case then tournaments weren't for me. I don't like that attitude and it's not a game mentality that I want to enjoy. It should be fun and not trying to beat the hell out of people with something that is obscene.
I still have more to vent, but I'm going to let this one stretch out a bit. I'd prefer not to have too much vitriol in a single post!
Regards,
English Pillock
This is going to be one of my rambling notions that end up on here. My first reason for doing this is the fact that the gaming group that I have always experienced have been what people may call 'soft'. By this I mean that we try to have fun for all of us who are playing, we offer advice or allow people to re-do something if they are having a bad game and have made a poor decision. I had never really met many gamers who really did this until I went to Uni (University of Wales, Lampeter if anyone is interested). I found the war gaming society after poking and prodding at the 'Freshers Fayre,' and meandered to it a bit after. I met a number of like-minded people there, but until I started to join in with 40K I never met any of the WAAC fraternity. My first army was Mercenary Kroot as well, so I was kinda letting myself in for a lot of hurt all things considered.
For all of you wondering why I chose Kroot as my first army there were a number of reasons. I do play with a very homicidal and sociopathic play style. Gun lines were for wusses and playing an army that was full of hyper-evolving cannibalistic space chickens was too cool for words in my eyes! After making 500pts of them and I set to learn how to play the game. 3rd Ed 40Kwas a really different animal to 5th Ed 40K. Lots of crazy stuff could happen compared to what goes on now.
So after a few weeks we did a day of 500pts 40K. 500pts, with few restrictions. Against some of the beginners I did well, but then I was hit by a WAAC player. He had a Wraithlord and a unit of Wraithguard in 500pts. I wasn't too bothered, but then he asked what weapons the Kroot had. I had Kroot rifles and a unit with sniper rifles. As soon as I had said that his Wraithlord went from standing proudly in the front lines of his army to cowering at the rear.
I played smilar people in my first year, but they slowly dropped out or left. In my second through fifth years at Lampeter the scene changed. We lost nearly all of the WAAC gamers. Those who were WAAC didn't get any games so they went elsewhere. After we got a rather large following we had a president who started a 4th Ed 40K and 6th Ed Fantasy tournament with the club at Aberystwyth University. We thought there would be a group of like-minded gamers there and that it would be a good weekend to chat and have lots of fun games. Talking online with some of the members I quickly found out that they were out for blood. Preferably ours! Even after telling the members of our club that we were gong to have to play differently we still went in as if we were playing someone at our club. Things didn't go well...
Most of the Lampeter guys went out in the first day or early in the second. We weren't bitter or anything, but it wasn't fun being curb-stomped by any means. Especially not by people who were using every rules lawyer trick that was available to pummel us.
We started playing what we had been doing before the tourney was announced. Paired 500pts games. We made 500pts lists with some restrictions and we used a simultaneous shooting declaration that was alien to the Aberystwyth gamers. What we did at the start of our shooting phase was declare which unit was going to fire at which unit. If more than one unit shoots at a single target and that target is destroyed a unit that has yet to fire can't do so that turn as it's weight of fire helped in destroying the unit even though no dice were rolled. Using this system we ended up having two basic tactics: 1) massed firepower to nuke a unit or 2) sporadic fire over the entire army.
We were getting more and more of the Aberystwyth gamers watching what we were doing as four separate armies were fighting in a combined arms style that they had no idea would even work. They looked at our lists and said that our combination of units wouldn't work in a tournament. We replied that if you look at what armies would have in the real world they would never have all of the biggest and shiniest toys in large enough quantities to do a WAAC army. Hopefully it made them think.
After they had gone and we had had time to think we mentioned about a similar tournament the following year. When they came their lists were softer and most of them were playing for fun rather than trying to pummel us into jelly.
I did ask them why they played such hard lists against us the prior tourney and they said that they did because they took part in the UK Nationals. If they didn't play like that they'd get nowhere. They made it sound more like work than something that you'd do for fun. If that was the case then tournaments weren't for me. I don't like that attitude and it's not a game mentality that I want to enjoy. It should be fun and not trying to beat the hell out of people with something that is obscene.
I still have more to vent, but I'm going to let this one stretch out a bit. I'd prefer not to have too much vitriol in a single post!
Regards,
English Pillock
This is interesting, given the recent Ork Town league army lists...good grief!
ReplyDelete