Monday, January 27, 2014

This weekends tourny (no pics) rant

After a long weekend of playing some SBG with my new Erebor force (which is basically done at 750 points, minus a few things to add to customize my force a bit more), I got a good handle on how to play them.  Lump them up together and smash the opposing force.  Pretty easy concept.  With my lowest defense being a 6, the survivability of the force can withstand most things, mainly arrows which I thought was going to be a problem.   So for a 3 game tournament, I won 2 and lost 1.


This is going to be a rant/bitching, you have been forewarned.

I have to say that the loss was one of the worst games of SBG I had ever played.  It had nothing to do with my force or my opponent honorably smashing me via tactics or even bad luck with the dice.  I can accept those conditions with a smile and still have a good time.  What it did have to do with was the fact that my opponent cheated his ass off.  Lets go into details shall we...

For starters, his dice were medium green with faded white to clear pips.  Judging by my painting, anyone can attest to my ability to be able to see.  From across a 4 foot table, 80% of the time I couldn't make out what his results were.  6's looked like 4's or 2's,  3's look like 5's, and 1's could've been anything.  Also, they were the only dice he had  (had about 25-40 of them too).  For anyone who plays war-games, different color dice is a must.  It allows for clear understanding of what your rolling for when multiple things are happening.  Basically, what he was doing was rolling a slew of dice and then assigning them how he wished.  I conceded the argument on the fight value (I've always assigned what dice are what regardless, but that's just me, plus the rules were on his side there), but he was also doing this to wound when he's got a str 6 and a str 1 creature.  That's clearly against the rules.  It clearly states on pg 43 "Regardless of how a model directs his Attacks, you must resolve all of one model's strikes before rolling for the next attack".  Can anyone tell me where it says "Roll a slew of dice that no one but you can read, and assign the best results where you want to cause the most damage"?

Next was the 2-hander rules in the errata which clearly states that if you have a model armed with a 2-handed weapon, you can still use a 1 handed weapon so you don't have to incur the -1 penalty to win the fight and you don't get the +1 to wound.  Since he never read the errata (even with it being out for almost a year), he wanted to argue it with me.  Since I didn't have a print of the errata on me, I conceded the point which allowed him to crush my flank with the help of another botch rule (see the next paragraph).  When I got home, I quickly printed up the errata, highlighted that part and shoved it in my rulebook.  It'll be a cold day in hell before I screwed due to someone inability to read and my assumption that people actually read erratas before playing in tournaments.

I think the icing on the cake was his interpretation on how unmanned wargs work.  Apparently, he believed that if you have a warg with no rider, they still count as cavalry which equates to a +1 attack on the charge and a knock down with double strikes on winning combat.  He also equated the rule to include his warg chieftain.  Unfortunately, the rules are once again against him, stating on page 49 of the main rulebook, sub-titled "What is a cavalry model", first line states "A Cavalry model consists of a rider and its mount", meaning that if you don't have a rider on-top of that beast, cavalry rules do not apply unless otherwise stated.  Unfortunately, wild wargs don't have a special rule of knock down on the charge like the spider queen or Shagrat.

By the time his wargs got into combat, we had been arguing rules for 90% of the game, and I personally just didn't give a shit anymore.  I wasn't having fun, and I just wanted to lose to get the game over with.  If your opponent isn't going to play by the rules, than whats the point of playing?  We weren't playing for prizes or any trophies, so I basically said "fuck it, I don't care", and just basically gave it to him.

The game did teach me a few valuable lessons.  Bring my big rule book, highlight certain things in said named rulebook, make sure I have a copy of the errata on me at all times,  refuse to play against an opponent who's dice you can't read, never assume your opponent is playing honorably, and bring the game to a screeching halt when you need to educate your opponent no matter how much he complains.

After the game ended, I remember I've had issues with this guy in the past with him making up his own rules and still playing with dice no one can read.  I've now made a mental note of not to play him anymore.

5 comments:

  1. sorry to hear that your tourney experience was ruined by one player. although the group putting it on really ought to have had a copy of the rulebooks and errata to mediate rules issues. =/

    you should post some pics of your tournament army in all its glory.

    ReplyDelete
  2. What a waste of your time. At least you know not to play him again.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sounds like life, if you can't prove he is cheating, then.... whats more interesting is the fact that if plastic trophies or "prizes" were involved you would have been more vocal about the situation. Your're better than that, you should have called a spade a spade.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You bring up a valid point. Let me ask you, what's the purpose in continuing to tell a cheater he's cheating while under a strict time limit when nothing is being done about it?

      Most wargamers are really cool, and when they do something against the rules, they'll discuss it civilly. 9 out of 10 times, someone is right and someone is wrong and it's handled with mutual respect and the game carries on. For the 1/10 time when no agreement has been made, they either get an outsiders input or let the dice tell us what we should do. When you have a multi-game wargamer who has been playing for a few years show up with barely readable pips on his same color dice, misinterpreting the most novice rules while wanting to argue about everything while the clock is ticking, well lets just say the spade knows he's a spade at that point.

      As far as plastic trophies and prizes go, I would definitely be more vocal to someone's blatant cheating in that situation. Call it what you want, but when you got skin in the game, things are a bit different as opposed to free play.

      Delete
  4. Point taken, thanks for the reply. I think I'd rather let the time run out, and lose that way, than let the cheater, cheat his way to victory. At least it would have been a loss under contested circumstances, continuing to play shows you are the bigger man, but it also fuels his actions. Hope none of us run into this guy again, or at least have the knowledge to avoid him.

    ReplyDelete