First game with my Pups

[raptor1199]

to Skalver

1+ :)

[Einholt]

Ok couple of things to say here, before buying my army I did a lot of reading here in the SW forum and on a few space wolves blogs, mostly space wolves grey, what I came away from those with was that a good basis for a starter army was a Rune priest for physhic defence and shooting at a very low price, a pack of 9 or 10 grey hunters in a rhino per 500 points along with long fangs for flexible fire-power and scouts as their just darned fun, this left me with 200 points for a starter 1000 points list, loving the look of the paulson games thunderwolves I checked the points for a unit of 3 and ordered them, I also recently got a whirlwind and a vindicator to put in place of the TWC in some games as I also love tanks.

 

Now even if that is considered a tournament list (yeah right, there's no razorback spam or torrent of fire spam etc in there) I am for all intents and purposes a newbie, the cheesiest list in the world wont win me games as I still don't know all the rules off by heart or how to apply them in a power gaming sense of the game nor would I want to.

I know a lot about tactics and tournament lists as they interest me, I have been reading 40k blogs for the past year and take away what I can even if I have interest in using it.

 

The store manager told me previously to turn up with what I had and we would build a list then and there, and we would play a game, when I got there that day there was another player who he had build a 1000 point list for about to play the manager ( the manager had apparently forgot I was coming as was about to play the guy with his own army as he had promised me before) I did not have a list to hand but luckily what I had on me tallied 1000 points, the eldar player had already been guided through the set up phase and they had rolled off for deployment and the eldar player had set up, I was then told to get my stuff out and deploy 18 inch's away from him, so I had already missed a part of the game before it even started.

 

Also as far as I could tell the manager and eldar player were not friends, yes I understand I went with a better knowledge of the game but not of the opponents codex or list, therefore I would say we were equally handicapped and had we been allowed to communicate more we could have overcome each others weaknesses by me helping with the rules I did know and telling him what did what in my army list and the store manager helping him and me what did what in his army.

 

Thanks all again for giving feedback and support.

[Einholt]

Soooo.... being prepared and actually reading the rules before you show up is bad? I think it shows preparedness and consideration for the opponent and those trying to show the game. I'm totally baffled by this. You act like he was doing something wrong by actually studying the rulebook first. No matter how many rules he had read, everyone gets stuff wrong. That's why you play a few intro games, to figure out what you're doing wrong. Not becuase you have no clue.

 

Introductory games are for people who haven't played a game yet, or at least for a very long time. If he hasn't played in 10 years, that's around the time 3rd edition came out. If he was from the 2nd game, he may as well have never played, it's a whole different game.

 

Personally, if someone came to me and wanted an intro game but hadn't read the rules and wanted them spoon-fed, I'd tell him no. I'm not a babysitter, and it's quite honestly disrespectful and childish to expect it.

 

And please explain to me how repeating rules that he was just told is rules lawyering? That's just good memory, better apparently than the one who told him in the first place.

 

Knowing the rules and knowing when to adhere to them is a different thing. It seems this game had a huge difference in relative rules knowledge between the Eldar player and the OP. As such the guy running it naturally would coach the Eldar player more. You are all so quick to assume the store manager and the Eldar player (who hasn't been involved in the hobby for 15 years) are bosom buddies. Is it impossible to consider that he might have been trying to make sure that an obviously outclassed player actually had some fun during his first game instead of getting his ass handed to him?

 

I think the store managers behaviour was certainly far from exemplary but so was yours. You wanted a proper, competitive game of 40k.

 

Thunderwolf cavalry and a rune priest in a rhino for an introductory game, I am still laughing that the store manager even bothered to let you play instead of telling you to go home and picking 2 units of grey hunters, a unit of blood claws and a dreadnought off the shelves and giving the guy who had showed up with the appropriate mindset for the introductory game a game that might make him actually want to stay in the hobby.

 

Again, baffled. Is there some list of available units for beginning players?

 

While I will certainly concede the possibility that the OP just happened, either through beginners luck or a particularly inciteful first reading of the codex, to choose an army which very strongly correlates with one of the most powerful tournament lists for Space Wolves, surely you can also concede that it seems reasonable to assume that since the OP reads and posts on this forum that he was well aware that the list he had chosen was a highly competitive one.

 

If you will at least concede it was a competitive list then you will, hopefully be able to see how the store manager might feel that bringing such a list to a beginners game was a bit of a cheesy move (I am not arguing that the OP did so maliciously, but the end result for his opponent is the same anyway). Probably the store managers main mistake was assuming this was deliberate instead of incidental which it seems to have been. The OP, presumably, brought a strong list because he wanted to play well, not because he wanted to give his opponent such an unmitigated drubbing that he would never want to play the game again. The store manager probably made a valid (but hasty) assumption that it was a case of a pretty well informed player wanting to steamroller a noob and the OP, by his constant quoting and inflexibility with regards to the rules did nothing to disabuse the store manager of that assumption.

 

Its an introductory game, you let things slide, you let people take back moves, you let people use their fun abilities, you cheat a bit to give the underdog a chance. Getting tabled in turn two by some internet power list in your introductory game is not a fun introduction to the hobby, that you showed up with an army and a play style that suggests that is the experience you wanted to give your opponent suggests you had a totally inappropriate mindset for the game.

 

In intro games you most certainly do NOT let things slide, not rules in any case. You'll be reinforcing misconceptions. Better to break bad habits immediantly, for the beginner's sake. But especially you do not let a seasoned player instruct a beginning player in false rules, particularily when they'd been shown them just a few minutes before. And I didn't see anything about not letting people take back moves or use fun abilities. Not sure where you got that assumption from. If anything, his comments about reminding the opponent of morale checks and cover saves makes me think he may have been doing more to introduce his opponent than the supposed "expert".

 

No, I do not agree with your assumptions at all. I only help people who try, you seem to think it's acceptable to make others do your work for you.

 

You are failing to see this from the store managers perspective. He sets up an introductory game for two players, he puts them on a table with no terrain, why? so they will learn the basics of shooting, what happens, one of them sets up all his troops hidden behind a sideways rhino. The SW player, in that moment, frustrated what the store manager was trying to achieve. When he is trying to teach the eldar player to use his psychic powers, the SW player insists on nullifying them with a rune priest hidden in a rhino again getting in the way of the purpose of the game, to teach how various abilities work. When he reminds the eldar player to use bladestorm (after he had to teach the eldar player about it in the first place) the SW player won't let him use it because he sees interpreting the rules strictly as more important than letting the eldar player learn which abilities he has at his disposal. I suspect if the store manager had been able to articulate these frustrations instead of just getting in a huff because of them this could easily have been solved.

 

Introductory games are all about letting people use the rules, the SW player played a denial game, he denied his opponents shooting, he denied his opponents psychics, he denied the guy running the game the flexibility he needed to make sure the eldar player learned about and would remember to use the abilities of his army. He didn't do anything wrong, it just seems to me that he failed to grasp what the store manager was trying to achieve and unwittingly frustrated the store managers goals at every point.

 

It sounds like nobody had fun with this game, the Eldar had no fun because his only experience was of everything he tried to do being prevented, the store manager had no fun because one of the people in his introductory game was playing in a highly competitive manner which prevented him from giving the other player a fun first game and the space wolf player had no fun because he failed to realise the game was a learning game and that everything he did, while in accordance with the rules, was getting in the way of that purpose.

 

So many people in this thread are so quick to villify the store manager. It is expedient to just blame one or the other sides but then the OP ends up without a local store to go to and the guy running that store ends up with a bad name. Be a bit more creative people, try to comprehend that it could just have been a case of a couple of misunderstandings, poorly communicated that ended up in a bad situation for all involved. The OP seems to me to have been overly competitive for what was supposed to be a friendly, learning game. The store manager didn't deal very well with that situation but that doesn't make him a bad or malicious person.

 

So let me get this straight. you show up with thunderwolf cavalry and a rune priest in a rhino for blah, blah, blah.1

 

Nice try Mr. Store Manager guy. Einholt already has exposed your douchebaggery, no need to add to it.

 

If I am the store manager simply because I can view things from his perspective then everyone else in this thread must be the OP by the same ridiculous logic.

 

I responded to Wildfire because he responded to my post, and did so without needing to attack me personally. The OP himself seemed interested in finding out if anyone else could see a different perspective on the events, I provided one possibility. The over simplistic, one guy is right, one guy is wrong, one guy is good, one guy is evil nature of so many of the responses in this thread is despair inducing. Start with the assumption that everyone involved is basically a good person. Now try to figure out what went wrong.

 

So if the OP is basically a good person, and if the store manager is basically a good person, and if the Eldar player (despite his heathen xenos loving ways) is basically a good person then how the hell did they all end up having such a bad game? Just saying the store owner was a dick leaves the OP without a store, the store without a customer and the Eldar without an opponent. Thats a lose situation for everyone involved.

 

The idea that the store manager digs up his mate, who hasn't played 40k in 15 years, the two of them conspire to pretend not to know each other, the eldar guy prepares a 1000 point army and they both do this just so they can eventually waste a few hours out of their lives just to have a laugh at some random person trying to take part in the hobby is laughable in its convoluted and twisted logic yet that is basically the explanation most people here are positing.

 

I could have chimed in with the same simple "Yeah, that store guy was a real B)" responses as many have but that doesn't help the OP in any way whatsoever. Depending on where he lives avoiding that one store could mean cutting himself off completely from his hobby. That is not a helpful response. It is an easy and safe response to make but it is not by any means a useful one.

 

Missed this the first read through, actually I did have fun, getting to see rules in action and roll some dice was great, the eldar player similarly had fun I think, he actually got off a lot of psychic powers ( I only successfully nullified one), he totally wiped out my scout squad in one turn with bladestorm+dire avengers and whilst he was rolling 28 or so dice I was chuckling away, just the same when the I failed all my saves :D

We only got to play three turns and wiped out about an equal ammount of each others armies, called it a draw, shook hands with a smile and arranged to meet again for another game, I however felt the experience of the evening was taken away from somewhat due to the manager and his snipey comments etc.

[Einholt]

Well I went back again this week, I went in an hour before my game to do some "painting" and made the effort to speak to the manager asking him how his week was and just talking about stuff outside of the hobby and to be honest he seems like a nice chap and I think I may just have caught him on a bad day last week.

Unfortunately my opponent didn't turn up and I got a 2 turn game against a kid with tyranids, spent most of the 2 turns telling him what dice to roll and what he needed to hit / wound but next week if the eldar player isn't back the manager is going to give me a game, overall a *much* better night minus not really getting a game :P

[Kassill]

Well I went back again this week, I went in an hour before my game to do some "painting" and made the effort to speak to the manager asking him how his week was and just talking about stuff outside of the hobby and to be honest he seems like a nice chap and I think I may just have caught him on a bad day last week.

Unfortunately my opponent didn't turn up and I got a 2 turn game against a kid with tyranids, spent most of the 2 turns telling him what dice to roll and what he needed to hit / wound but next week if the eldar player isn't back the manager is going to give me a game, overall a *much* better night minus not really getting a game :P

 

 

Glad to hear it all turned out well in the end! I'll raise an ale to that! :huh:

[Wildfire]

Well, Skalver, I would say that you and I have very different ideas about how to teach the game to someone. I guess I can see where you're coming from, you seem to be coming from the angle of getting someone interested in the hobby from scratch. I'm assuming that a player who already has enough of his own models to play a 1000 pt game is interested, and would prefer to teach him the proper rules before he picks up bad habits/misconceptions. But I also don't have much to do with new gamers, most of my friends are in their 30s and 40s. Even if they are new to 40k, they are for the most part experianced gamers and pick up things much faster than the teen set.

 

I will say I disagree with you here, but in certain circumstances your views have some merit.

 

I still maintain that from the original post, the OP appeared to have been playing strictly but considerately. If the manager had a problem with it, he should have handled it by pulling the OP aside and explaining his goals for this game.

 

Well I went back again this week, I went in an hour before my game to do some "painting" and made the effort to speak to the manager asking him how his week was and just talking about stuff outside of the hobby and to be honest he seems like a nice chap and I think I may just have caught him on a bad day last week.

 

Always a possibility. Glad to hear things look like they'll work out after all.