Felt really bad (batrep)

[march10k]

I had a game tonight against a new space marine player.  As is common with new players, he had a scattering of models, no real focus...most of what he had was not uncompetitive, if used properly.  It was a slaughter.  1500 points because he left his stormraven at home.

 

IIRC, he had some 2+/4++ named character captain with coup de gras special rule on his power weapon? I'm sure you know the guy...he was accompanying a thundernator squad.  There were three grav cents.  He had a drop pod full of sternguard with no upgrades except a missile launcher.  One tactical squad in a rhino with a missile launcher in a rhino.  One dev squad with a lascannon, a missile launcher, and two plasma cannons in a rhino.  An empty razorback.  A MM speeder.  A dread.  I think that's it.  So no really terrible units...but no real organization, no redundancy, and no plan.

 

I had pasquisher with two LRBT wingmen (lascannon hulls) on top of a skyshield.  Two squads of forward sentries with autocannons and chimeras.  Two demolishers.  Four (2x2) naked armored sentinels.  One eradicator.  

 

The table was a ruined city (yay for forward sentries!) and we rolled up a KP mission randomly.  He made some comment (no doubt based on a previous game against a weak IG player [this is why I felt bad...I've been playing IG for 17 years...he's like 20 years old and just picked up 40k a few months ago]) about how russes drop like flies.

 

So I stuck the skyshield in between two ruins and spread out the three tanks on top to prevent a pod strike on top of the skyshield, then put stuff in both ruins as bubble wrap.  He walked the thundernators across the board.  He started the cents at the front of his deployment zone, then retreated with them after losing one to a demolisher shell, then advanced and immobilized that demolisher after losing the second cent.  He started the devs inside their rhino, then unloaded them on turn one...ditto the tactical squad.  He fired both multimeltas at beyond 12" a combined four times against AV14,  and never got them into 12" range because he didn't jink the speeder until after it was already shaken and he never advanced the dread.  He podded the sternguard on one flank, then proceeded to use them to shoot at sentinels in spite of being 4" from a squad of my joes with nothing but those ten men between the sternguard and the skyshield with pask on top.  

 

In other words, he never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.  We called it after five turns when he had the tactical squad (still in his deployment zone) left and I had lost the eradicator, three guardsmen, and three sentinels.

 

Does anyone enjoy winning a game like that?  I went to the store dreading invisible flesh hounds or unkillable tomb blades, but this was actually worse for me.  No joy in winning the first game I've played (outside of NOVA open) in six months...sad panda.

[Raven6826]

You need to focus on the positive side of what sounds like a stressfully successful game:

 

1. Your opponent has learned that figs on a table top do not equal an army.

 

2. He has learned to guess ranges better.

 

3. He prob watched in awe as you vaped unit after unit... He will remember. You only learn best after you learn you know nothing... Right grasshopper?

 

So, focus on the good! Also try to remember this game next time you play a rookie... Rather then blush you could try to help the next kid. Suggest how to best deploy, or suggest not shooting untill he closes the range.

 

It's all about fun, you had no fun winning... Perhaps looking at defeat by design next time? Give the kid targets to kill , teach him to be assertive..

 

 

Id say the lad could be fun to play... If you want it to be. This hobby will die unless we have more teachers and less power spammers.

 

Just a thought from a grey haired old duffer who played his first game when God was young and dirt was new.

[librisrouge]

This is why I like to plan my games out. Do I want to bring five knights or a Russ spammed IG list? Oh, the only available player is new? Well then, platoons advancing with mixed armored support and an experimental unit or two it is (I have been wanting to give those ratlins another try.) Most players in my store would handle my meanest list just fine but the new guy would be creamed even if I played badly. I don't mean that to brag, I was once that new guy getting creamed. However, I decided to learn from it, as I hope the player you beat does, and it made me better in the long run.

 

In part, this happened because I stuck around afterwards and talked it over with the nicer opponents that creamed me. They gave great advice, I tried things out, and it helped both up us improve.

 

Hopefully, both of you will do the same.

[greycat]

As long as you were polite about it and explained what you were doing its fine. In a way its good. I used to be cocky as well. I thought tyranids were terrible and easy to beat simply because I'd played against some bad players. I ended up getting utterly smashed by my friend with a trygon spam list. It made me a better player because I learnt not to underestimate any army despite what the general view of the codex is.

 

When I play against players like that I tend to try and help them as well. Give them advice and explain why they should do things that way.

[Emicus]

You need to focus on the positive side of what sounds like a stressfully successful game:

1. Your opponent has learned that figs on a table top do not equal an army.

​ Not sure how 'GW fails to even moderately balance their armies' is a positive

2. He has learned to guess ranges better.

No need to guess, teach him to measure instead Measure at any point, any time.​

3. He prob watched in awe as you vaped unit after unit... He will remember. You only learn best after you learn you know nothing... Right grasshopper?

Having spent (likely considerable) time and money on buying cool things and painting them up, it can also be a bummer to get destroyed in the game and not understanding why.​​

So, focus on the good! Also try to remember this game next time you play a rookie... Rather then blush you could try to help the next kid. Suggest how to best deploy, or suggest not shooting untill he closes the range.

Good call, it's a challenge to not 'play for him/her' though. I've got a new guy at the club atm and while I haven't played myself I've been trying to give advice when he's been playing. It's a struggle to not say 'don't be an idiot, you'll lose doing that', and even harder when he complains about bad (dice) luck after the game.​

It's all about fun, you had no fun winning... Perhaps looking at defeat by design next time? Give the kid targets to kill , teach him to be assertive..

Id say the lad could be fun to play... If you want it to be. This hobby will die unless we have more teachers and less power spammers.

Just a thought from a grey haired old duffer who played his first game when God was young and dirt was new.

I love d​irt! It's where I stomp my enemies...

[Emicus]

It's a learning experience March10k, stomping newbies is never fun but you didn't do it on purpose. I bet a tenner the result will not be the same time the next time you play a fresh-faced youngling with stars in his eyes and 'interesting' unit choices. Asking about list/experience beforehand is a trick that can be employed.

[CyderPirate]

I've been on the receiving end of a few of these beatings, and I've divied out a couple as well.

 

The best thing is to have a chat after the game, and suggest what he could have done differently, how he might have used his units. Ask him what he struggled with, what he felt he did well etc. He'll pick up a lot, and you'll feel more like you're fostering a future adversary rather than just clubbing a baby seal.

 

When I've played against new players, if it looks they're making a silly choice - starting the devs in a rhino, for example - I've asked why they're doing it, and had they thought of doing x,y,z  instead - and explained why the other options might be a better choice. These are usually players I already know pretty well, so it doesn't tend come across as me being patronising, and the mistakes are usually borne out of misunderstanding the rules, or not really being aware of something. In the case of the devs, for example, he might not have realised that they don't have to start in the rhino, or that they'd only be snap-firing (and the plasmas not firing at all).

[HenricusTyranicus]

I've been playing for about 9 months....most of my games have been on a small scale between me and a couple friends. However, I played one pickup game at a GW. It was my third game of all time. I had imperial guard with no vehicles except a chimera. My Opponent had the new Necron codex a week after it came out. 

 

I think I may have killed about 7 warriors while my whole army got wiped out. 

 

Really, really tough experience. But I learned from it, went home, played more against friends, got some new models, studied the rules more, and now I'd bet on my army properly built against any codex except for a really cheesy eldar player. My point being, cheer up! He probably learned from the experience. Now go wipe out some veterans too. 

[Prot]

It's all relative.... I probably would have played my own army differently to be honest.

 

The character he was using was probably the worst in the new codex: Sicarius! The "greatest" swordsman of Ultramar (he's terribad). He's better off with a generic character, of if using CAD Ultra, take Tigurius.

 

Funny though I just played an Astra friend with a Necron Decurion I was practicing the list for a tournament. He's a veteran player too.... he knew I was using this before hand, and I was one model away from tabling him, and I felt bad.... did he do anything wrong? I can't say, but in the beginning of the game I was getting hammered (as is often the case against Astra) and then it flipped horribly in my favour.

 

I felt terrible and have not fielded the Decurion since. (His armies are so bad at close combat that's what usually does it to him.)

 

So here we have a different situation, 2 players, playing armies they've played a long time... and I still felt really bad. So it happens all the time, no matter the skill/experience level. The only thing I would have done differently as I said was I probably would have 'dumbed down' my army a bit.

[WarriorFish]

Nobody enjoys a tabling (unless it's That Guy...), so it's best to avoid them. Obviously you can't control the dice and you shouldn't stop trying to win (either in game or list building) but you can talk with your opponent. After a game is the best time to discuss what went on, what went wrong, what could have been done better and what was awesome. Good for both players and a way to get more enjoyment and 40k from a game ;)

[march10k]

I think there's a mistaken assumption out there that I had knowledge of who and what I would be playing against, and that I just proceeded to stomp the guy. Actually, neither is accurate. The shop is 30 minutes from my house and I just dropped in looking for a game with a fixed set of models (that I pared down to the points level he could field...leaving in the useless eradicator in the full knowledge that I was facing ultramarines), this was not a prearranged matchup. I was also coaching him a lot every turn, not in terms of target priority, but more in terms of his own capabilities. He didn't know how far the speeder could move and still shoot, etc. Even after four or five reminders that multimeltas get that bonus D6 within 12", he never moved his dreadnought up, it died where he deployed it, while it hung two shots at armored sentinels (neither penned from 14" away!) So there was a lot of "hey, you should really move that MM up the field to get that autopen rolling," and so on.

I didn't spend all night going "wait, stop, you don't want to do that, do this instead," (might as well sit at home and play two of my armies against one another) and quite often I didn't know why he did what he did until later...it's not that he misestimated the reach of his grav cannons, it's that he misread it as 48" in the back of his codex (that's how ignorant he was: 48" range on grav cannons!)...he thought he could retreat out of demolisher range and pepper me with grav cannons from his board edge. From my perspective, he was just going into VP denial mode, making me devote more longer ranged resources to the task of killing the centurions...long ranged resources that would then not be available to target his other stuff, like the dreadnought. In his place, I would have attacked the demolisher with the centurions, not retreated from the demolisher, but that wasn't really enough of a mistake for me to try to talk him out of it, I could see a logic in it, just not one I'd agree with.

What I found kind of frustrating was that he didn't seem to grasp even the basics of target priority. Given the choice to charge my eradicator or charge one of my demolishers, even after having for three turns been shelled by both of them, he ignored the demolisher and hammernated the nova cannon instead. ?!? That's not an advanced concept... Between that kind of stuff and the shrugging off of advice like "gee, if you move your dreadnought 3" closer to the sentinels, you'll have a hard time failing to penetrate, but you really should be trying to leapfrog past the sentinels and kill the tanks that are obliterating your power armor," it was worse than just a bad beating for him, it felt like a willful rejection of the learning opportunity. I didn't have fun, and he didn't get better.

[march10k]

I've been playing for about 9 months....most of my games have been on a small scale between me and a couple friends. However, I played one pickup game at a GW. It was my third game of all time. I had imperial guard with no vehicles except a chimera. My Opponent had the new Necron codex a week after it came out.

I think I may have killed about 7 warriors while my whole army got wiped out.

Really, really tough experience. But I learned from it, went home, played more against friends, got some new models, studied the rules more, and now I'd bet on my army properly built against any codex except for a really cheesy eldar player. My point being, cheer up! He probably learned from the experience. Now go wipe out some veterans too.

Heh...I've been playing IG since 1998...and the new necron codex...ouch. A single unit of six tomb blades singlehandedly gutted me while the rest of his army just ate popcorn and watched. Those bikes took all of my entire army's shooting for the whole game (except for some pasquisher potshots at the monolith), in the end losing one model, while gleefully shredding my list. Killing 7 warriors, that's better than my tally

[Raven6826]

I think there's a mistaken assumption out there that I had knowledge of who and what I would be playing against, and that I just proceeded to stomp the guy. Actually, neither is accurate. The shop is 30 minutes from my house and I just dropped in looking for a game with a fixed set of models (that I pared down to the points level he could field...leaving in the useless eradicator in the full knowledge that I was facing ultramarines), this was not a prearranged matchup. I was also coaching him a lot every turn, not in terms of target priority, but more in terms of his own capabilities. He didn't know how far the speeder could move and still shoot, etc. Even after four or five reminders that multimeltas get that bonus D6 within 12", he never moved his dreadnought up, it died where he deployed it, while it hung two shots at armored sentinels (neither penned from 14" away!) So there was a lot of "hey, you should really move that MM up the field to get that autopen rolling," and so on.

I didn't spend all night going "wait, stop, you don't want to do that, do this instead," (might as well sit at home and play two of my armies against one another) and quite often I didn't know why he did what he did until later...it's not that he misestimated the reach of his grav cannons, it's that he misread it as 48" in the back of his codex (that's how ignorant he was: 48" range on grav cannons!)...he thought he could retreat out of demolisher range and pepper me with grav cannons from his board edge. From my perspective, he was just going into VP denial mode, making me devote more longer ranged resources to the task of killing the centurions...long ranged resources that would then not be available to target his other stuff, like the dreadnought. In his place, I would have attacked the demolisher with the centurions, not retreated from the demolisher, but that wasn't really enough of a mistake for me to try to talk him out of it, I could see a logic in it, just not one I'd agree with.

What I found kind of frustrating was that he didn't seem to grasp even the basics of target priority. Given the choice to charge my eradicator or charge one of my demolishers, even after having for three turns been shelled by both of them, he ignored the demolisher and hammernated the nova cannon instead. ?!? That's not an advanced concept... Between that kind of stuff and the shrugging off of advice like "gee, if you move your demolisher 3" closer to the sentinels, you'll have a hard time failing to penetrate, but you really should be trying to leapfrog past the sentinels and kill the tanks that are obliterating your power armor," it was worse than just a bad beating for him, it felt like a willful rejection of the learning opportunity. I didn't have fun, and he didn't get better.

Ouch.... You have at times the unenviable duty to shatter delusions. I hope you find your next game fun. I don't suggest for one minute you did anything less than your best to try to get him to see his errors. I kinda know what it's like to play folks like that.

May your next opponant give you a game you both relish!

Best of luck to you sir!

[WarriorFish]

I'd only say you should hand hold someone entirely new to the game. After that they should be allowed to make their own mistakes, best way to learn and that. Plus as march said you can't read your opponent's mind to know that he's actually making a mistake rather than plotting something. Although much rarer than That Guy the one who doesn't want to learn can be equally difficult albeit in a different and more "friendly" way. If you bring the horse to water it's not your responsibility to also make it drink. The essential rule still applies: don't play someone who isn't enjoyable to game against.

[Frater Cornelius]

If I face a newb, I handicap myself on purpose. Sometimes, I get less points without telling him. Sometimes, I let rule mistakes slide if it benefits him. I always re-roll cocked dice that benefit me and let him count cocked dice that benefit him or let him re-roll cocked ones that do not benefit him, like terrain checks or half an inch of charge distance.

I also have fun lists as a backup. I rarely whip out my competitive stuff against newbs. Both of us want to have fun and I do not enjoy crushing newbs when I had the opportunity to make them enjoy their game.