I payed too much money to not take it seriously.

Fun is serious buisness.

Then there's a 4th type, which IMO can be but isn't always as bad as the WAAC types... the Militantly Casual player. The type of person who gets upset and in some cases may behave as badly as a sore loser when you violate their unwritten rules of X-Wing. They may even go as far as having a fit when you don't let them take back a move or fix a mistake. Or sit and sulk when you use a tactic that they consider cheap or cheesy.

I know exactly how you feel - but maybe that's a price worth paying - let it slide for a game and show up with the rule card or FAQ next week, it can wait

I payed too much money to not take it seriously.

Fun is serious buisness.

Fun is too important to take seriously.

(...to butcher paraphrase Oscar Wilde on the subject.)

Then there's a 4th type, which IMO can be but isn't always as bad as the WAAC types... the Militantly Casual player. The type of person who gets upset and in some cases may behave as badly as a sore loser when you violate their unwritten rules of X-Wing. They may even go as far as having a fit when you don't let them take back a move or fix a mistake. Or sit and sulk when you use a tactic that they consider cheap or cheesy.

I know exactly how you feel - but maybe that's a price worth paying - let it slide for a game and show up with the rule card or FAQ next week, it can wait

I'd also add that the Militantly Casual player is possibly transgressing the social norms of 'Fly Casual' even more than the WAAC types are.

Fundamentally, 'Fly Casual' is the Star Wars/X-Wing articulation of Wheaton's Law.

I guess the rule of thumb is to know your social environment. If you're at a tournament with people you don't know, who are not new to the game (ie. being socialized into the X-Wing playing community), then 'Fly Casual' is just about taking your losses and victories with grace. If you're with your mates at the pub or at the FLGS, then 'Fly Casual' has a deeper meaning which allows you to bend or blind-eye the rules in order to make the game more fun.

That's basically how i understand it. I never take my mistakes back when offered, but i don't expect my opponent to do the same if i offer them. At the end is a rule of conduct that everybody follows differently, and i think it is much more positive to come with a positive attitude, than thinking that your opponents are there to get you whenever they do something that you wouldn't do. Just take a step back and think about it for a moment. Everybody is there to have fun.

That's why i think drawing lines is unhelpful, because X guy is not the same guy when playing a tournament than when teaching a newbye or playing a casual player. While we are not unpolite or unrespectful to our opponents, and we atleast have in consideration that we are all human beings trying to have fun and win games, there shouldn't be problems. But more often then not, from my experience the problems arise from different group of players that antagonize each other, and has a lot more to do with personalities or group politics than somebody not abidding by the rules correctly, or abidding too harshly in somebody.

Yes there are guys who have kind of unacceptable behaviours, but that's one out of one hundred in my experience. It's not something that extended to really raise black flags.

I understand your point about the namecalling to broadcast a code of preferable code conduct (shameless copy paste so i don't need to think on english too much ), but much of what i read in this thread is completely out of touch with how it plays out on reality, or full of unhealthy prejudice towards players who enjoy the game more like chess, than like Party (or whatever boardgame you play with your friends when drinking some beers and having a laid back and fun time), which at the ends it only works to disassociate the community. I think as it is presented in this thread, is completely toxic to the community.

I payed too much money to not take it seriously.

Fun is serious buisness.

Quite the industry aswell ;p

So for you 'Fly Casual' is just about maintaining one's temper?

No. I think it means taking the game as a game. I remember playing more than one game of 40k where the other guy wasn't rude, or anything. But was still less than fun to play against because he was very very serious about it.

To me it's all about attitude, you should be a good sport, not lose your temper, be personable, make jokes, ect...

I would hazard that most of us prefer to be a part of a community, which operates by unwritten rules in which we are able to show each other social graces

A community is the group I play with on a weekly basis, not the people I run into at the World Championship, or Regionals or even GenCon.

You can not expect someone you don't know to abide by the same unwritten rules as you, because they most likely have at least a slightly different set of rules then you. Since they have no way of knowing what yours are, there is no way to expect them to abide by them. There is also no way you can enforce them.

Even the term Fly Casual doesn't mean the same thing to all people. So if you're at some major event with people from many different places, even if one of them is wearing a Fly Casual Tshirt, you can't assume that they'll play a given way.

If you're with your mates at the pub or at the FLGS, then 'Fly Casual' has a deeper meaning which allows you to bend or blind-eye the rules in order to make the game more fun.

I'd argue it doesn't have a deeper meaning, but a better understood one for that group. But even then don't associate Fly Casual with bending or breaking the rules in the name of fun. That may be how you play, but that is not how every group is going to play, and you have entered the realm where you are in a way claiming your opinion on the matter takes the authority of a moral statement.

In my group we tend to play pretty competitively and by the rules, because to us that is more enjoyable than playing fast and loose. That does not however mean my group is playing Wrong, or not Flying Casual, it just means we value the game in a different way than you.

What we're seeing here in our (friendly) disagreement is that we're all coming from different gaming cultures - which are broader assumptions about the expected code of conduct in each of our environments.

I'm socialized into X-Wing in the Portland gaming community. Portland, overall, is an extremely laid-back place. It's funny how I noticed that the people from across the river (Vancouver, WA) are a little more hard core. They're also really good, maybe because they're more hard core. I don't know; I'm just expressing my limited observations. So, maybe being stricter and more legalistic is a hard-knocks way to make you a more competitive player.

Point-being, there's probably some regional variation in the interpretation of 'Fly Casual'. I'm also seeing a lot of people here saying how 40K players are more hard core than X-Wing players. I'd hazard that age/maturity is also a factor, with people becoming more casual with age/maturity.

Ironically, I think that the generosity of Fly Casual exists in a large part in order to socialize new people into the game. Once you're fully socialized, you probably don't need 'Fly Casual' in regards to bending/blind-eyeing the rule, because the one who suffers from the letter of the law would just take the hit without any grumbling. 'Fly Casual', at that point is just about being graceful in defeat and magnanimous in victory.

So, maybe being stricter and more legalistic is a hard-knocks way to make you a more competitive player.

That's correct. Whenever i am teaching a new player, after maybe one game and i see how he does, i ask him if he wants to play tournaments or leagues (most of us do), then i start offering advice, and the first one is to learn the rules and to abide always to them (token placing, movement order, etc).

I am sure you had seen people moving their 5 Ties at the same time, then taking action and stuff like that. I permit that in casual games or against newbyes, but that's actually illegal, since it gives you a measurement advantadge before actions. That little stuff, while people who think of the game as less than an mental exercise, may mean nothing, but it is important and certainly adds up. The moment the player is removed from that unintended tool, he will perform way worse since he does not have the measurement tool he used before. He needs to practice withouth it.

Knowing the rules well, the dials, etc, allows you to play better the game, since you can make decissions based on factual game mechanichs than gut feelings, even tho, guts can be important when trying to guess maneuvers from your opponent, but you need to know the rules and the dials before to know what to expect.

Or for example, i won my last game against a Fat Han with Jonus brothers, by placing Jonus in a spot where the most optimal move from Fat Han would force him to land on top of an asteroid, giving me a full turn to shoot at him, which i desperatly needed (one defender was at 1 health point, Jonus at 2, the another at 2). And this was after a full game where i was denying him actions because he was a Push the limit Fat han, and switching between my bumping defenders to divide the fire taken, while jonus had to take a detour after taking too much damage.

I don't know, for me only the mental exercise itself to achieve it was awesome, and my opponent and me had a great time. At the end, he did the maneuver i guessed and it allowed me to finally take the game, while he was laughing asking me if i did it on purpose, congratulations on cheeky play, and continue playing the next game.

The enviroment also matters a lot, you can try to play competitively and learn, but if your area most people are very casual players, you won't learn much from your practice games. If you live on a area with a lot of good players, you will have a bigger fountain of knowledge and practice games to improve with.

I do not know, it is like pretty much everything in life, you will get better the more you do it, and how seriously you take it.

So, maybe being stricter and more legalistic is a hard-knocks way to make you a more competitive player.

That's correct. Whenever i am teaching a new player, after maybe one game and i see how he does, i ask him if he wants to play tournaments or leagues (most of us do), then i start offering advice, and the first one is to learn the rules and to abide always to them (token placing, movement order, etc).

...

I do not know, it is like pretty much everything in life, you will get better the more you do it, and how seriously you take it.

I don't disagree with any of that. I would just add that while winning is always nice, it's not the be-all/end-all of the game. If it were, this would be a zero-sum game in terms of fun. If you won, you would have fun, and your opponent would have anti-fun because he lost.

But it needs to be a positive sum game, whereby the loser has more fun than if he didn't play at all. That fun has to come from somewhere, and part of it is having the opportunity to win, but also from the experience itself being fun beyond the prospects of winning/losing. The interaction with your opponent (and any people who may be standing around) has to have added-value in and of itself.

I'm not sure how to quantify that, but I would say that it's encompassed by the 'Fly Casual' ethos.

What we're seeing here in our (friendly) disagreement is that we're all coming from different gaming cultures - which are broader assumptions about the expected code of conduct in each of our environments.

I'm not sure we even disagree really. I'm not saying you're doing it wrong. I'm saying that we most likely don't approach the game the same way, in all situations.

Lets say I was in Portland and happened to visit your LGS, I wouldn't know any of you so I couldn't make any assumptions on how you played the game. But it wouldn't likely take long before I started to get an idea on what the local house rules are.

If I saw it was common to drop focus or evade tokens after the fact, I'd accept that's how you all play and not try to make you all play differently. Likewise if you were here and found that most people tended to play fairly strictly by the rules you shouldn't (and I don't think would) expect us to change how we play to suit you.

It's a bit of When in Rome...

But when you're talking about Tournaments the whole thing changes because we may very well not be on anyone's home turf, so the house rules you play with or the ones I play with are no longer in effect. The only thing in effect at that point is the rules as written.

To me Fly Casual cam be summed up with a quote from Blast from the Past...

But it turns out, his short and simple definition of a lady or a gentleman is, someone who always tries to make sure the people around him or her are as comfortable as possible.

Well said, VanorDM.

Of course, if you were new to my FLGSs (I semi-regularly attend about three of them), I'd probably be even more casualler than I would the regulars. Then again, if you identified yourself, I'd probably cut you less slack.

I love this game and my husband and I play all the time at home and with friends. We love to play the game to have fun, to play in the spirit of the movies. It is always just a good time, spending time with friends and making jokes and telling stories about growing up loving the movies and books. I think that is the way it should be played.

We went to and played at a tournament at local game store yesterday and I couldn't believe the way the judge was acting. He was rude, shouted every third thing, and I'm pretty sure he was cheating. Why not just have fun? There was a kid there, playing for what seemed like is third or fourth time after getting the game. He was very excited and I happened to play him after he played the judge. I noticed that he wasn't taking actions and asked him about it; he was convinced that he couldn't take an action unless he performed a green move. When I let him know that he could and that it would help his game he seemed surprised; when I asked if he was using actions during his previous game, he said 'no'. So, unfortunately the judge, who had no problem jumping down the throats of all the other players to rules lawyer the heck out of the game, didn't help this kid out, because it wasn't in his (the judge's) benefit. It's too bad; I hope it doesn't tarnish this kids wanting to play the game. (Worst part - there were six games going, the judge played against three children who seemed to be just starting out, and he won.)

Its too bad that people act like that. The store we played in was a nice place, but I don't think we will be going back. Hopefully the children he played against, don't start to act that way hoping it will get them a win.

and I'm pretty sure he was cheating.

The fact he was playing at all is more or less cheating. The TO and/or Judge is not supposed to play in tournaments. There's too much conflict of interest for them to play fairly. Plus unless it's a very small event, they are going to have to put their game on hold to deal with issues. Which is not fair to the people they play against.

So what you had there is just a plain old skull-in-rectum type.

Is that guy the store owner? If not I'd talk to the owner about it and point out how that guy is going to drive people away with is behavior.

I don't mind the TO or judge playing at all, on local friendly tournaments, at the end rules tend to be "judged" by more than one guy in that kind of tournaments, if handled at all. Of course the pairings etc if he is also the TO, but i don't make that big of a deal out of it. In case the tournament was bigger, sure, there is more at stake.

About that judge. Well, he was pretty dumb, at tournaments, even if you are going for the win, you help the newbyes instead of just playing a game, tell them about rules, and even advice that would turn out against you, just so they learn a little and atleast have a good time. You are pretty likely to get the win anyways, so why care, specially on little tournaments with swiss pairing only, where you only know that if you win all matches, you win the tournament.

and I'm pretty sure he was cheating.

The fact he was playing at all is more or less cheating. The TO and/or Judge is not supposed to play in tournaments. There's too much conflict of interest for them to play fairly. Plus unless it's a very small event, they are going to have to put their game on hold to deal with issues. Which is not fair to the people they play against.So what you had there is just a plain old skull-in-rectum type.Is that guy the store owner? If not I'd talk to the owner about it and point out how that guy is going to drive people away with is behavior.

There is no rule against or reason for not playing in a small local event. It's a little silly to ask someone to forfeit thier free time to run a small event. You just won't get as many local events organized if that is the expectation.

and I'm pretty sure he was cheating.

The fact he was playing at all is more or less cheating. The TO and/or Judge is not supposed to play in tournaments. There's too much conflict of interest for them to play fairly. Plus unless it's a very small event, they are going to have to put their game on hold to deal with issues. Which is not fair to the people they play against.So what you had there is just a plain old skull-in-rectum type.Is that guy the store owner? If not I'd talk to the owner about it and point out how that guy is going to drive people away with is behavior.

There is no rule against or reason for not playing in a small local event. It's a little silly to ask someone to forfeit thier free time to run a small event. You just won't get as many local events organized if that is the expectation.

Quite the opposite, there's a rule where the TO can play in all Casual and Competitive tournaments, provided there's a second TO (so he can't do that at Worlds, Regionals or Nationals, for example).

The TO may participate in a casual- or competitive-level tournament for which he is responsible only if there is a second Tournament Organizer present. This second TO must be announced at the beginning of the tournament, and is responsible for all rulings for games in which the primary TO is playing.

There is no rule against or reason for not playing in a small local event.

Yes there is as was posted above. Sure that rule doesn't have to be followed, but it's there for a reason and the example posted is the reason why it's there.

It's a little silly to ask someone to forfeit thier free time to run a small event.

No it's not, there's plenty of reasons to run an event and not take part. For one it's more fair, playing may be very unfair to everyone else, because when someone has a rule question either it doesn't get answered by the TO, or else that game is put on hold.

Running events is not always enjoyable, but you aren't doing it for the sake of enjoyment, you're doing it for the sake of everyone else's enjoyment. It's like being a DM in D&D.

Also, given a choice between an event like the one posted about above and less events... I'd rather have less events.

With any competition, people will have different ideas of what is casual and what is taking it too seriously.

I was dating this girl a while back. We got together with her sister and her sister's husband for Labor Day or some such and they set up a volleyball net. We batted the ball back and forth for a while. I got tired of chasing the ball and suggested we establish some boundaries and actually play THE GAME of volleyball. I was roundly chastised for being too competitive. I never played on a volleyball team outside of afterschool clubs although I'd taken volleyball as a college PE elective. I just wanted to play the game, though, and have some point to what we were doing. I certainly wasn't improving my health with what they considered exercise.

I was with the same group when I attended a grand opening employee night for the new ice rink where I'd been hired as an instructor. I'd been basically raised IN ice rinks and conscripted into service as an instructor at age twelve. Hockey was life. We got on the ice for public skate. It was August and I hadn't skated since the previous winter. I was just enjoying skating. I was told to stop showing off. I CAN show off on skates. I wasn't. To them, I was.

Now you're probably thinking that these people had issues. Boy Howdy, you're darn right. But don't think that doesn't apply to X-wing. One could wax philosophical/psychological about Star Wars/sci-fi fans in general and the stereotypes of being picked last for physical competitions and the resulting personality issues, but having issues with competition isn't only a serious problem in the nerd world.

I teach a class for adults who want to learn how to play hockey, or start playing hockey again if they haven't for a while. Now, these guys are all adults, they all have some level of hockey/athletic experience, and we run into the same darn issues when the scrimmage starts.

As games go, I think X-wing lends itself to more "casual" (I dislike using that term) play.

In general, games that are well-balanced, and offer prizes for winning that are not exclusive beyond repaints or early releases are where you can find the best environments.

I've played HeroClix since it started, and it is the marked antithesis to this.

I've also spent time around people who play other games that I don't, and I'd have to rank things like this:

Magic

Yu-Cki-oh!

40K

Pokemon

HeroClix

Monsterpocalypse

Battletech

Star Wars Miniatures

X-wing

I've either seen these played or played them myself in both tournament and non-tournament engagements at more than one, if not several venues, in two or more states, so take all that for what it's worth.

I'd rather have a TO play, with or without a second TO available, rather than assign a bye due to uneven numbers of players.

I love this game and my husband and I play all the time at home and with friends. We love to play the game to have fun, to play in the spirit of the movies. It is always just a good time, spending time with friends and making jokes and telling stories about growing up loving the movies and books. I think that is the way it should be played.

We went to and played at a tournament at local game store yesterday and I couldn't believe the way the judge was acting. He was rude, shouted every third thing, and I'm pretty sure he was cheating. Why not just have fun? There was a kid there, playing for what seemed like is third or fourth time after getting the game. He was very excited and I happened to play him after he played the judge. I noticed that he wasn't taking actions and asked him about it; he was convinced that he couldn't take an action unless he performed a green move. When I let him know that he could and that it would help his game he seemed surprised; when I asked if he was using actions during his previous game, he said 'no'. So, unfortunately the judge, who had no problem jumping down the throats of all the other players to rules lawyer the heck out of the game, didn't help this kid out, because it wasn't in his (the judge's) benefit. It's too bad; I hope it doesn't tarnish this kids wanting to play the game. (Worst part - there were six games going, the judge played against three children who seemed to be just starting out, and he won.)

Its too bad that people act like that. The store we played in was a nice place, but I don't think we will be going back. Hopefully the children he played against, don't start to act that way hoping it will get them a win.

In the spirit of full disclosure I was the the afore mentioned judge, as I was pressed into playing at the last minute to avoid folks sitting around who travelled just to get the dreaded bye. I didn't want to but I got thrown a curveball and I did what I thought was right at the time. As for being rude, if trying to run, play and keep things rolling so to facilitate/ensure the mechanics of the event were being done correctly, then guilty as charged. However, I greeted everyone and annoucing time checks etc. with a voice that tends to project but shouting is a bit overstating IMO. Running this type of event at any level is not necessarily an easy task and I adhered to the current rules.

Now we come to the part of your post that troubles me most. The pairings for round one were random and knowing the youngling was new, at every turn I explained the mechanics of the game and what he should as he was confused about using Marksmanship as an action among other game mechaincs where I made sure he regenerated shields with R2 after a "green" manuever but I guess you missed that. After we finished our match I spent time with him giving him tips on how he could fly his build and pointed out the synergy with his pilots but again perhaps you missed this minor effort in my part.

Based on MoV, I drew my son next, who is no rookie and is a very solid player for being 14. My next opponent the same situation a very good pilot and knows his Interceptor build in side and out unfortunately he faced a bad matchup but wait you think I'm cheating. I flew against this young man before at other event and again he's no rookie. Its funny how the whole rules lawyer thing was brought up when I corrected how Dark Curse's SA worked against the same young man who you claim I wasn't helping.

Lastly I approached the young man with our host to make sure he was awarded the full set of templates to encourage him to play more and that he felt like a winner at the end of the event but you may have missed that as well. Along with offering to stand aside to let other face off in the finals but two of the other top 4 had to leave for other time commitments.

It's clear we have gotten off on the wrong foot and I'd like for that not to be the case moving forward, as I enjoy this game immensely and we really do not know one another for Saturday's event to cast a long dark shadow.

Edited for grammar.

Good to know. I was fearing this thread was hitting the next stage of a Ribann thread...

I guess the question is, what do you define as "win at all costs?"

Every tournament or tournament prep game I am for sure going to bring one of the squads that I think I can play the best/gives me the best chance of winning and use all the best tactics that I can think of in game. (Or at least something I want to prove can win games).

If an experienced player forgets an action and the game is still too close to call, I will most likely not remind you. Etc, Etc.

That's the sort of attitude I think I expect all players to bring to all tournaments or tournament squad preparation games. There is a competitive aspect to the game, and tournaments are competitive environments. I mean, it IS a head to head competition game. There are plenty of Team Based games that allow much more casual feeling, and many less upset feelings when you lose, since you lost with your friends to a random series of event cards that wiped your team.

That sort of player is not something I think people should be upset about. If you want to get into a game in depth (which is one of the most rewarding ways to get into a game), you have to get pretty serious about it, especially if you want to win.

Do you more so mean "Players that rage or attempt to cheat when they aren't winning"?

These types of players I don't often see in X Wing. Maybe 1 out of 100. The worst I see is players (including myself) getting kind of quiet and shut off when a game is becoming very difficult to win. Though, for me that usually means I've gone into hyper active find a way to win mode (within the confines of the game rules).

tldr;

X Wing is a head to head competitive game. This means you feel the most reward when you beat your opponent, so naturally you do your best to win at all times (barring circumstances like going easy on new people or wive's).

There are plenty of Team Based games where players aren't pitted against each other, but instead some pre-built system. These sorts of games provide plenty of reward without too much seriousness (though if you hate losing, you'll probably take it serious too. But at least you lose together!).

On another note, I definitely think it is important for people to get serious about SOMETHING at least once in their life.

Albeit a game, a job, school, raising a family, starting a business, growing a garden, taking care of your sick grandma/parent, brewing beer, being a great friend, being a great parent, making models, reading books, writing fan fictions, writing songs. The list is endless.

Even if you aren't serious about "normal things" and are just REALLY serious about a game or weird hobby, you are doing something right. (As long as being serious about a game doesn't ruin the life of your wife/child because you spend all your money on said game. Seriously, do your best not to ruin someone else's life.).

There is no rule against or reason for not playing in a small local event.

Yes there is as was posted above. Sure that rule doesn't have to be followed, but it's there for a reason and the example posted is the reason why it's there.

It's a little silly to ask someone to forfeit thier free time to run a small event.

No it's not, there's plenty of reasons to run an event and not take part. For one it's more fair, playing may be very unfair to everyone else, because when someone has a rule question either it doesn't get answered by the TO, or else that game is put on hold.Running events is not always enjoyable, but you aren't doing it for the sake of enjoyment, you're doing it for the sake of everyone else's enjoyment. It's like being a DM in D&D.Also, given a choice between an event like the one posted about above and less events... I'd rather have less events.

The example given is not a reason for not having player TOs in events, it's for not having bad TOs. It's not even example of that as clearly there are two sides to that story. According to the TO's account there is nothing improper. TO can have his own biases beyond just his own benefit regardless. There is no reason for a TO to ever have to make a rules call in their own game, nor is there an inability for the TO to deal with the rare occasion in which they are called away from table for any real amount of time.

A dedicated TO for a 6 man event casual level is just overkill and not needed via the event rules.

Vanor did you actually read the rule that was posted above you?

Yes I did, but apparently you didn't.

"The TO may participate in a casual- or competitive-level tournament for which he is responsible only if there is a second Tournament Organizer present."

No mention of premier level events in that statement. In Premier level events the TO isn't allowed to play period.

So yes it is against the rules for a TO to play, unless they have a 2nd one to judge their games. Again that doesn't mean the rule has to be followed, but it is there and it is quite clear.

Also, regardless of who's side of the story is more correct. It's clear that someone walked away from that event with a very bad taste in their mouth.

I truly feel badly that player/s left with an NPE on Saturday and it is my hope this won't lead to any lasting bad blood.