Tournament Shenanigans

By SentinelJP, in X-Wing

Hi all,

Back after a bit of a hiatus, how is everybody?

So, today I was playing a league match at our FLGS and had the misfortune of being matched up against this one particular individual whose goal it seemed was to pull as many sly and underhanded and downright d**kish shenanigans as he could...

Here is a list of his transgressions:

1. I suspected the game was going to be suspect when he showed up with his list, and he had a different pilot's ship base on his ship. I even offered to let him borrow one of my spares, but he just shrugged it off saying at least he had the correct pilot card. Okay, fair call, Fly Casual after all right?...?

2. He pulled up a chair to our rather flimsy table and proceeded to sit down for the majority of the game rather than stand, which is what everyone else does always, this was not a small man, and every time he reached across the table, the would bump our minis, wouldn't bother placing his template flush in the bases, and basically took every liberty he could with movement and placements... I don't mind the sitting, but at least show some respect to your opponent by standing to move your ships... But no worries, just here for a casual game, okay....

3. He kept asking to borrow my dice. This person had never bought a single core set. He had acquired one set of three red and three green dice and everytime he needed to roll a forth of either he would ask me to hand him one of mine. Now, I'm sorry, but I'm more than a little OCD and a bit protective of things like that, I felt the decent thing to do would be to at least roll it separately so I knew I'd get MY die back, but no, he just scooped it up into his hand and let fly with the rest of his dice, so now I most likely have a mixture of his and mine, what do I know of his hand washing and personal hygiene? If the way he conducts himself in public is any indication, I don't hold any high hopes.... I washed the dice once I arrived home. But again, whatever, just a friendly game....

4. He played fast and loose with the rules. Several times he would forget to take his Recon Specialist action and each round I would remind him, didn't want his ship to miss out on it's two focus tokens after all, and since my motto is to play fair and friendly I figured, hey, I'll remind him, and I'm sure he'll remind me....additionally at one point he picked up his evade dice to roll and dropped one in the table before conducting his roll, it landed on an evade and he said, "there's one" then proceeded to roll the remaining two. I wonder if he would have been so quick to keep the result had it been a blank result? This game was beginning to get less friendly by the round....

5. Fly casual didn't seem to work both ways. Once, and only once, at the beginning of the game I forgot to take Corran's extra attack at the beginning of the end phase, as we were starting to set our dials for the next round I said, "oh, I forgot to take Corran's extra attack, I should have declared it before, sorry about that." I picked up my attack dice and waited for him to give the go ahead or to voice any objection to which he gruffly replied, "yeah, you should have!" I took his tone to mean he objected, so I said, "fair call, I should have declared it, no worries, next time." and did not proceed with the attack. Not a big deal, and of course he was within his rights to deny me the opportunity, but I felt given the liberties he'd been taking I was perhaps due a little slack myself, but okay.... he obviously wanted to play by the rules....

6. He blatantly made up an extra point of damage! At one point, after his attack I removed the appropriate number of shield tokens which left me with one shield on my Leebo. He suddenly turns around and says, "actually I've done five damage to you." Now, I am very pedantic about damage, and I know for a fact he had only done a total of four. How he imagined he had done this extra point I'll never know because we were all looking at the same results on the same dice, but again, in the interests of flying casual I let him have the extra damage, I now had no shields on my ship. No worries.... Right?....

7. He kept trying to convince me that I had to roll for damage when moving through other ships.... No mate, no...

8. He tried to keep adding one extra damage die at range 1 with his Blaster Turret.... Again....no... Please familiarise yourself with the rules....

9. The final straw... I quickly managed to take down his first ship, but his other ship was proving to be more than a little elusive, it lacked the ability to do any significant damage to my ships, and so he kept asking for the time and proceeded to begin running his ship away around the edge of the map to try and mitigate his loss and run out the clock. It was at this point I decided I had flown casual enough for one day, so I hunted him down.... This time I didn't forget Corran's double tap... I finished him in a blaze of vengeful glory....

I wish I could say this was everything, but he also didn't seem to understand how to measure line of sight through asteroids.... Until it came to my turn to shoot, he didn't have enough tokens and asked to borrow mine, and he was basically just rude and unaccommodating throughout the entire match. Suffice it to say, I didn't feel bad about winning that one.

Anyway, sorry, this post went on longer than I intended... Quite a rant there, my apologies. Just needed to let it all out. Does anyone else have any tales to tell from their tournament or league experiences?

Happy gaming!

"Fly casual and remember, don't be a d**k!"

SentinelNZ

Edited by SentinelNZ

Being a League game, it seems to suggest that a TO should have been present.

You should have called the TO. Simple.

No one needs to tolerate what you described.

Yeah. If it was a casual game I' kindly explain to him that the things he did that aren't OK.

If it was a tournament game, call over the TO,

One thing, in a tournament game he could ask that you both use your dice. But then allmdice used would be yours, no risk for mixing them up.

welcome to the real world.

When people do things that are just oppose the rules. I explain to them how the game is supposed to be played and then give then let them chose. We can play by the book rule or we can play by there's. I'm ok with street ball no blood no foul as long as we are on the same page. I can fly casual either way. :-)

My god, he had the audacity to use a chair rather than stand "like everyone does always". Conform or perish!

Seriously though, everyone runs into this type of behavior now and then. If you don't like it call the guy on it right then or let it go. You lets some rules slide and you are hurt when he wont reciprocate. He doesn't wash his dice...I think this post says as much about you as it does your opponent.

Edited by Pogie

Sitting down in and of itself is fine. Maybe he needs to for whatever reason. Maybe he's just tired.

That being said, you do need to be willing to get up to move ships at times to avoid bumping stuff.

OP, sometimes it's better to just take a day to clear your head before posting something like this. :)

I'm sure it was frustrating. The guy doesn't sound like the most pleasant to play against, but certainly wasn't the most egregious of offenders either. A lot of this sounds like he was just very new to the game, and new guys have to be reminded of things like taking actions, or trying to be more precise with movement. Trying to salvage the HWK near the end is just good strategy in this MoV world, and it doesn't sound like he was attempting to slow-play or anything.

On the other hand, you attempting to double-tap Corran after you both started setting movement dials for the next round is possibly the most unsettling thing about this whole story. You clearly are a more experienced player, and if you forgot Corran it's really not cool to ask your newbie opponent to let it slide.

Wow. This forum can really turn on someone just trying to vent frustrations. His opponent flat out did not know the rules and cheated by declaring more than had been done. The opponent may or may not have been new to the game, but he sounded like a very u courteous person to say the least. The OP did forget to double tap, but he didn't push the issue when the opponent denied a mulligan, despite the constant reminders to the opponent about the extra focus tokens. I'm sure that if the OP had forgotten to remind him about it the opponent would probably get mad at the OP!

Ya we've all "those days" haha. Had one where a guy was trying to pre measure with the templates haha. I was like whatever but told him "I didn't care cuz it was casual but next week when the tourney starts he would not be able to do that and others may get mad he even attempted" so gave him a fair warning. Another guy wore a bright red Star Trek uniform obviously I couldn't let him live and so I completely destroyed his list. His dice went completely cold that round and mine were completely on fire haha. He had lost the round before so it was his second loss and he rage quit haha. In my head I was thinking " well that's what you get showing up to a Star Wars tourney with a Star Trek shirt on, come on". So he had it coming IMO.

Think I scared off a guy at the LGS. He had quite a few ships and came to play for the first time. We setup to play a standard game. He built a very different squad and at the time I was practicing for Regionals with double IG. It was basically no contest and as we played I realised he wasn't correctly placing templates down right, explained how to correctly do it and he shrugged it off like it didn't matter. He played a couple games that night and I havent seen him since. :/

My view on those shenanigans:

1. Terrible. No reason he should have a Falcon but no Chewbacca base if he wants to play Chewbacca. What happened to his tile? I can see two reasons to use the wrong tile: the first is to hope you confuse the PS allowing it to act later/fire earlier and the second is to take advantage of some defect.

2. I would not criticize his desire to sit but that is no excuse for sloppy play. Sometimes being on your feet can get hard for a "big man" and at other times a table that seems to be the right height to you can just be too low to be comfortable with. To this last point I get tired of sinks and other things that are too low to use easily as it can require some unnatural bending.

3. Aren't dice one of those components that a player can demand be shared? As in you use one set between the two of you to avoid any unfairness in the dice. You should have just used one set of dice and if that means washing them they are hard plastic and should take it pretty well.

4 & 5. I do believe in reminding people of no-cost things they may have missed. If they have Recon Specialist and then Focus they get two Tokens; you shouldn't need to remind them but at the same time there is no "may" in RecSpec and no conceivable reason not to take two tokens so it should be done. Letting someone keep an "accidental" roll that happens to be good shouldn't happen unless a poor result is kept in the same situation. While I reminding one of Recon Specialist is one thing I do not see Corran the same way although if 'caught' before the planning stage is complete it may be allowed provided both sides can remember the state of the target; forgetting to use Corran when he's got a R3 shot a AutoFel w/ a Focus left and then remembering it after the token is forgotten shouldn't happen.

6. Ok, now this one is definitely a problem. I'm really curious how he thought he did FIVE damage to a ship as those situations don't come up that often.

7. Someone needs to learn the rules.

8. ....echo....

9. Can't blame him for trying to run out the clock but constantly asking for "time! time!" sounds like stalling. I'm almost sorry to say this but the HWK is one of those ships where you could almost demand a concession from.

Not sure why he was short on tokens. Almost sounds like you should have checked is damage deck composition but if he was running Chewie it may not matter much.

A few of these points are very valid and some should be correct but a few are place where YOU need to work on your expectations.

As someone who has played in a tournament then read someone's complaints about my "play" sometimes one should take a good look in the mirror. In my case it was my first tournament ever and taking place more than two hours from where I live in the city of Minneapolis the day after a major winter storm and he was complaining about how I was dressed for the unknown. Never mind him taking forever to carefully plan out his moves to cause my demise only to miss one of my abilities which led to a very bad reversal of fortune for him. Except for that one player I had a pretty good time during the seven rounds of Swiss (no cut) where I ended up 5-2 and in 4th-place out of 36+ players (darn that last table against the one undefeated!)

Just my 2cents I am a newer player to X-Wing and have never played in a tourney. However I've been a competitive player/judge in tcgs for around 10 yrs

1) Is very suspect I would of called the to off the bat.

2) sloppy game play yea it sucks to deal with was he doing it to gain advantage?after a couple of times of asking for care with my models I probably would call a to these ships rant free

3) you probably could of saved yourself a headache by just asking him to put his away and use your set

4&5)Recon Spec I would remind only so many times before my attitude would go to you should know your cards before a tourney. As far as Corran goes did you guys start you clean up first. If you already did sorry about your luck

6) 5 damage ease show me how

7) explain the secondary weapon rules. If that doesn't work call the to

8) while running the clock is a viable strategy repeatedly asking for TIME is a bit annoying

Fly casual bro

As someone who bumps ships constantly, I would rather my opponent say something, and offer to perform my movements/measurements for me, than to annoy them with bumbling.

As someone without a large fleet, if I've got the pilot card and dial, I've borrowed the faceplate before coming to a tournament.

As someone relatively new to tabletop gaming, I had to have Dice OCD explained to me, and did what he did a few times beforehand. After discovering this was actually a problem, but before getting my second set of dice, I had a workable solution: I simply declared what I had rolled, picked a result that both players agreed wasn't going to change, then re-rolled that. This usually resulted in a "phantom" hit that was canceled first, but was less contentious than borrowing their dice.

Fly casual works both ways. He was clearly in the wrong.

If they're not getting the rules, call a TO. That's what they're there for. An impartial judge saying he's wrong goes over better to a new person than an opponent for an innocent mistake, and it gets the judge's eye on them if it was malice.

Running the clock down isn't bad sportsmanship. Running away is always an option. Still, though, checking in constantly for the time could be construed as slow-play.

If they're not new, they should be flagged at future tournaments.

If they're new, they should be educated, both in rules and in spirit of the game.

Wow that's a lot to tolerate. Why didn't you speak up? Sure fly casual and all, but these generally violate most rules of politeness and sportsmanship. He was rude, cheated, obnoxious, and it bothered you enough to vent about it here.

He won't change if you don't tell him why he's annoying.

I can see all but the 'sitting' being vaild annoyances

I've got a serious spinal injury, i simply *cannot* stand for hours.

I sit if i can and stand up for some moves, if im having a really bad day with my back and my ships are right over the other end i'll ask my opponent if they mind making the move for me.

I can see all but the 'sitting' being vaild annoyances

Sitting is fine, as long as you can move your ships on the table without bumping anything. At my LGS the tables are low enough that I can reach quite a ways across it without standing up.

As for the rest, just about any one thing would of been an issue, but all combined I'd report his behavior to the person running the league, and let him or her deal with it.

Especially the part where he's adding damage, or a extra dice or trying to get you to roll for damage when bumping ships. Clearly the guy either doesn't know the rules or is trying to pull a fast one on you. Either way, the person running the league needs to speak to him.

That said...

If you are willing to correct his mistakes, you shouldn't really expect him to let you do the same. Most people would of let you take that shot with Corran, but you shouldn't expect him to let you just because you helped him out.

Indeed, i usually say to new opponents that i'll be as 'easy going' as they like. I can be 'yeah take the action you forgot' or we can be 'letter of the law', its up to them.

My personal house rule for *any* game in my house is that if its 'your turn' and there is a debate that could go either way it goes your way in your turn but then thats a precedent set for the rest of the game and we check the rules out later if we couldnt find it quicly rather than pausing a game for 30 minutes while we try and track down an FAQ

In essence i give my opponent the benefit of the doubt when they make their moves and expect them to do the same to me.

That is pretty crappy. I hate it when you have "one of those players" in your area. I've seen them at different games, but they can just be a jerk.

I think everyone who has played has bumped a table or knocked over a ship - good gravy, I haven't played many games where some ship or other has been bumped by one player or another.

If I sit for a game, and I do (in my area standing isn't required, and sitting isn't interpreted as lazy or insulting in any way), and I have a maneuver on the other side of the table, I'll just ask my opponent to move my ship for me. Maybe we're just friendlier up here in Canada?

If I am worried about mixing dice, or templates, I'll just ask if we can both use mine , or my opponents. No biggie. If my opponent lacked enough dice, I would even suggest using mine and putting his away.

If I was called on some damage that I didn't remember happening, I would probably give my opponent the benefit of the doubt, but it would irk me a bit. Yet I (edit: weight) weigh that against the certain knowledge that I've been wrong in the past, and give my opponent the benefit of the doubt.

I don't think I would have been as put off as the original poster seems to have been, probably because a lot of what he described can be written off as playing against a newer player or just with someone who is used to playing in an overly casual atmosphere. I would just write it off as an awkward round, and move on.

Edited by DanDoulogos

3. He kept asking to borrow my dice. This person had never bought a single core set. He had acquired one set of three red and three green dice and everytime he needed to roll a forth of either he would ask me to hand him one of mine. Now, I'm sorry, but I'm more than a little OCD and a bit protective of things like that, I felt the decent thing to do would be to at least roll it separately so I knew I'd get MY die back, but no, he just scooped it up into his hand and let fly with the rest of his dice, so now I most likely have a mixture of his and mine, what do I know of his hand washing and personal hygiene? If the way he conducts himself in public is any indication, I don't hold any high hopes.... I washed the dice once I arrived home. But again, whatever, just a friendly game....

I'm sorry, but paragraph just jumps out. He asked if he could borrow some of your dice because he doesn't own enough and so instead of just putting all of the dice into a pool for both players, you sit and quietly seethe because he's not rolling "your" magical protected dice separately? Then you make a big fuss of having to wash them? What if he'd asked to use your manoeuvre template because it was nearer? Would you make him wear latex gloves first? Would you spray it with disinfectant?

I understand the frustrations regarding playing new or inexperienced players. I think that perhaps instead of not saying anything and venting on a forum at home, it would have been more productive to politely mention and explain some of the mishaps during the game. That way the play experience could have been improved at the time and the player would have also given his next opponent a more positive experience. Instead, he likely doesn't know what he did wrong and while you feel better for having ranted about it, nothing will change.

Sorry to say it, but the whole part about your opponent having the audacity to touch your dice comes across as very mean and petty.

I feel as though I have played this same person, and maybe could have.

Sounds very framiliar, but all of my issues were at a regional, and I was not the only one to have issues with the guy. I had called the TO , and so had others. Now if hes just a little out of it, sure what ever, but if its a constant thing, the TO needs to step in and guide the player to the rules and Tourny rules and FAQs to maybe reinforce some of the rules.

I don't know if its a "lets see how dumb I can play it to get a different outcome" or just a person that really does not know the rules, its normally pretty hard to tell.

My guy at regional almost won due to some dice skew in his favor and "remembering" to active an ability but never actually doing it. OH well, he is on my "watch" list if I happen to meet up with him again. I will alert the TO to past issues with the player and ask them to stay close if at all possible, as calling them over is 90% going to happen. NOw given people have bad days, I can hope it was and never have to call the TO over, but seeing as out of the 6 rounds played the TO as at his table at least once a match.

Tough luck Sentinel. I've been a judge and demo person for another game for many years and major conventions... Uhg, don't care to think about how long I've spent hovering over tables without actually joining in. I've seen many different types. Likely your opponent needs to brush up on the rules and could have used an immediate pointer... That or he was intentionally abusing your casual play. I prefer benefit of the doubt. Ignorance is easier to walk away from than blatant cheating. Call the judge in immediately if a disagreement arises, don't argue. If no judge, being league play and not a tournament, call another senior neutral party or actually pull out the rule book. It ain't that big a book.

There are some points that ticked you off that would not endear you to my play. I have no problems sharing dice - a hazard of major conventions. I doubt I still have my original bought dice since originally I borrowed dice and now I lend some out to others in need and I have only played in a couple public events for Xwing.

I'm a shaker. Yes, I stand but my hands tremble. I try to warn people. The game I demo has metal minis so it's not been a problem before.

Relax. There is nothing you noted above that should be worth lingering on.