"Dastardly opponents " Topic

Ok. Everyone is playing nice on the "Have you ever been a rules lawyer" thread.

Now you can unload on opponents whose rules lawyering really frosted your bunions.
Name no names, to protect the guilty.

"frosted your bunions"??

What a quaint expression.

Never game with them more than once – if they want to win that bad I let them. They find they arent welcome again

Never invite them back to the game. In fact I have told one in the middle of the game to leave right then. I have many, many friends who tell me if "this or that" guy is at the club the night they show up they just turn around and go home. I won't let people ruin my hobby for me that way.

Not so much a rules lawyer, but an out right cheat. That was in the early 90's and I don't think he has been invited to a game since.

You certainly understand, Winston, that for these people Rules Lawyering IS war gaming. That is what they enjoy and they feel if they have trashed a game by their conduct it shows their innate knowledge, superiority, higher moral worth than those around them and with whom they game. They'd rather alienate everyone than lose a game or an argument and that most of the time they have a hidden agenda or stalking horse at the back of it all. It's not the game, it's the other players they are attempting to gain personal mastry over.

We had an "intro to the rules" game a couple of years ago.

Right at the end, one of my opponents objected to my movement, saying that my 120mm wide element could not reach his on a charge because my angle was off by one or two degrees.

I have not been eager to game with him since.

Show them the door and make it clear they are not to come back. If someone would ever actually apologize and promise to not do it again my group would probably let them come back.

Remind them what happened to "Little Finger!"

I have been a rules lawyer. And we are all sinners in need of grace.

Having been there and done that, I see it clearly in others. If the game is turning into an actual contest with a winner and loser I am not very keen on playing. I like to create stories. And I haven't played a simple side A vs side B game in I can't think how long.

Been a long time since I, as a GM, asked a player to
leave a game I was running – H'con in the mid-1990's.

But I have done it and would again if the situation
warranted.

I have only one rule: winning is fun, but FUN is more fun !

If anyone does not respect that rule he (or she) will not been sent away and even can enjoy the meal I made for the participants, but he (or she) will NEVER been invited again.

No – but I had one guy play a lousy game and then say "It's just a game", never played him again.

????
If it's in the rules and you point it out….
Sometime, it's interpretation, poor rules layout, no hyperlink index…..to blame.

What I get annoyed with is when a player moves their charge move, I pointed out that it was an illegal move, he replaced the unit so the it's flank was no longer exposed to a unit I had on the side- not really rules lawyering.

In our case, non tournament social games, we defer to host applying house rules, friendly banter, then emailing each other later, pointing out the relevant passage.

I'm gonna kind of guess that not many respondents play 40K :-)

However you define it whether rules lawyering or simply being a jerk, if they care more about winning than being a civil, fun player of games, I simply avoid them.

Get a little testy sometimes with "my unit can fire at you because this handful of guys is standing in the open, but they are in hard cover because the rest is behind that building"

I find the "don't know the rules and misinterpret every single rule to their advantage and make you double check with GM only to be proven wrong for the tenth time in a row and then call you the rules lawyer crowd" infinitely more annoying then someone who knows the rules and makes you stick to them.

War Drone: Exactly!

Korvessa: Usually it is the guy that wants you to follow the rules to the letter, but fudge them a little for him. Rarely is it the guy who willing acknowledges that he can't do something when you have him at advantage.

When I would GM and a player would come up with an interesting interpretation of a rule (not an outright exploitation), I would refer to this principle:

Every moment of pleasure in life has to be purchased by an equal moment of pain." – Danilo Odell, Star Trek: The Next Generation (Up the Long Ladder)

OK, you can do that, but it is going to cost/risk this.

When I play a game, I am similarly inclined to let the creative player garner their advantage, as long as we can reach a consensus on the risk. Jerkosity is rapidly exposed when a player contends that this is the one thing in the entire (game) universe that doesn't have an associated cost. :)

Dear Etotheipoi

I concur. I am quite willing to entertain initiative but there is always an equal or slightly greater risk it will blow up in their faces. It is amazing how many people will not take the risk.

Alright, I actually posted this on the rules lawyer message and then deleted it, because I don't feel the good about what me and my friends did but since you asked for stories like this.

My friends and I were in a tournament game, decades ago, and there was a couple a newbie players in the gaming along a couple of experienced players. Early in the game, one of the newbies a did his move, and then discovered that one the rules didn't work like he thought it did and it basically left him in a really bad position, and asked if he could redo the move. It wouldn't have taken more then 5 minutes to redo it, and wouldn't have changed things for the rest of us, just left him far less exposed position.

Well, one of the experienced players, who was already doing well, complained, that he had done his move and had to live with it, and started a 15 minutes argument that we should not let the newbie player redo his move. He wasted more time arguing against then it would have taken to redo the move, and really rude and insulting to the new player about it. He then ended up getting a call from the judges to get things rules his way.

My friends and I feel that games should be fun, even in tournament game, and this guy pretty much just ruined this poor kids day, just so he could get ahead.

So my friends and I went into ultra rules lawyer mode, called rules checks on everyone, but especially on the jerk of a player. He had mentioned that he had to get to another game as soon as this one ended, so we slowed the game down to the point that he had to either skip his other game or forfeit his position. Which is what he did, he forfeited his position to get to the other game, and then we all shut up and let the game end.
I am not proud of what we did, but I'm pretty sure that if I was in the same position again, I would do the same thing. There is a difference between playing the game by the rules and being a jerk about it just so you can do better.

Had never played Command Decision and I and another gamer who hadn't were asked if we would like to play a game as an introduction by someone who played it all the time.
We were attacking, told you cant do that or that or even that made to attack frontally against a strong position and flanked suddenly by a Panther Battalion from half a table away and virtually wiped out.
Lots of joy on the hosts face as he told us what we had done wrong and how good he was at the game. I walked away the other gamer was livid, had to go back and pull him away.
Actually a very uncomfortable experience due to the hosts absolute joy. Never played him directly again and gave up a Mordhiem campaign he was also in because of his powerplay. He was an ex police officer, I dread to think…….

andysyk – that was rotten of him. I love Command Decision but it is one of the games where you need a couple playings to learn the nuance of the system. If I were running it I would have had the two of you play each other while I just reffed it.

There was one game at Hcon many moons ago, the sides were determined by the GM: all his drunk friends playing one side, all the sacrificial lambs on the other. Far and away one of the worst games ever, at least from my perspective. The drunk guys might disagree.

There was one 40K guy at a tournament, I pointed out something he did wrong. He ignored me. I read him the rule. He ignored me. The tournament judge read him the rule. He ignored the judge. He won the game and the tournament based on this event. I came in second. There was a cash prize, too.

Something does not compute, why didn't the tournament judge invalidate his win? Ignoring a ruling should be an immediate disqualification.

Dynaman8789
Yes that's what I generally do if introducing players to a game.
Ive played Command Decision since. The game he had set up was basically unwinnable from our side he had superior forces defending a town, dug in etc
Just his character, in the Mordhiem game you had to throw after game to determine what happened to wounded figures etc everyone did it at the club apart from he who said he would do it at home.
Of course he always got excellent dice roles and soon had a very capable gang which he delighted in using to crush any noob on table.
Being a gamer doesn't stop you being an arsehole.

Hi Dyna,

Yeah, you would think so. After the judge made the ruling he walked off, apparently he thought the player would obey his ruling. At that point I was so disgusted I gave up trying.

Other side of the coin. In a Force on Force game each reaction fire is a minus one die. I noticed the GM was not applying this rule. It would have been at my advantage to point it out at once, however, I simply stated I had a question for after the round was over.

I guess that it depends on the day. Usually, I am very polite, but sometimes, when I am in one of my bad moods, I am not particularly agreeable to play with.

My worst behaviour was in a 40K tournament. I couldn't win the tournament -an early game lost forfeited all my chances at winning the first slot-, but in my third game I was paired against a newbie. Automatically, even before being presented, I took a dislike of him. Don't ask me why. The guy was perfectly polite. I just disliked him. Commonly, I am very forgiving when playing newbies. Not that time. I wanted to smash his army to bits; I wanted to annihilate it completely. I did it. I didn't cheat. Nor rule-lawyered him. It wasn't necessary. He, simply put, didn't know how to play and I took full advantage of it. To this day I can't explain why I was such a jerk, but at the end of third turn he hadn't a single miniature left on the tabletop. I did win, and while I didn't gloat I was so curt and unwellcoming that the guy picked up his minis in silence and we didn't even cross a word. I think that if he remembers that game at all I am known as "that A-hole!"

There is a guy in eastern pa that plays then quits when he losses, i was kicking his butt in Combat Mission and he quit. Ran into him at the eastern cons and guys in his new game group warned me about him