Pet Hates

[Mike]

I have a couple of pet hates when it comes to gaming.
Clutter on the table being one, I will hold off on the other for now…

What about you peeps?
Anything that when you see it it makes you go all icky/unreasonable ragey/miffed/shocked/horrified etc?

[Paul]

Unpainted miniatures on the table. Can’t stand it. To me, wargaming is a visual hobby. If you’re not going to make the game look good, you might as well play a boardgame. Of course, to each his own, and I will play against someone with unpainted miniatures without complaint or comment, but I really try and avoid it. Luckily, all of my regular opponents are of the same mind.

Those are brave men knocking at our door. Let's go kill them!

[Not Connard Sage]

I have a list.  🙂

Top of the list are smartphone addicts. Have you come here to play, or to tweet your wife/children/mates/bit on the side?

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[Rhoderic]

Hates, no. Too strong a word.

Various things I don’t permit in my own hobby endeavours when I don’t need to justify myself to anyone else nor have to put anyone else in a position where they feel they must justify themselves to me, yes.

 

Mike wrote:

I have a couple of pet hates when it comes to gaming. Clutter on the table being one, I will hold off on the other for now…

28mm? 

[kyoteblue]

I’ll echo unpainted miniatures, but I will play against them.

[Norm S]

Today I discovered that I hate – hate – hate rebasing figures that have been fixed to MDF bases with ‘No More Nails’.

Outside of that, I am pretty much okay with everything. Though I think rolling your dice 50 mile per hour down a table (destroying things in its path and falling off the table anyway) in the hope of getting the right result is a little strange, as is blowing on them or shaking them vigorously above your head before discharging them  and things like eating crisps at the table (greasy fingers) should be outlawed.

Oh – and backpacks at wargame shows should be set on fire … but besides that I am cool

[deephorse]

Anyone who moves tank A, then tank B, then tank C, then decides that tank A would be better positioned 2” further to the left, and that tank B should now be moved backwards a bit, then forwards quite a lot.  In the end no-one knows where those tanks started their move nor how much more than their movement allowance they have moved.  He does this quite a lot!

He also talks whilst chewing food, which I find totally gross and disgusting.  Didn’t his parents tell him not to do that when he was growing up?  But then it seems that so many adults do that these days.

Play is what makes life bearable - Michael Rosen

[Steelonsand]

Seconding most of the opinions above – top pet peeve would be the table detritus – mugs, drinks cans, dice pouches, giant fluorescent day-glo measuring tapes etc etc, crowding the edges of the beautifully modelled scale terrain….. Keep it off the board – Wellington’s headquarters was not located at the foot of coffee stained mug!

Next would be the annoying dice rollers at both extremes – the killer death rollers that use them as weapons, crashing into everything in sight, and then the weird ‘floppers’, who just let the dice fall straight down from an extended palm – probably in some vain attempt to obtain a certain result, by just tipping the die from one side to another – this always leads to the dice descending like bomblets straight down – usually onto fragile bayonet tips or spears …… Aargh!

drives me nutzoid……

[Northern Monkey]

Those gamers that denounce a ruleset as broken as soon as a result doesn’t go their way and poor losers in general, and as NCS says – unless its an emergency put your bloody phone away!!!

My attempt at a Blog: http://ablogofwar.blogspot.co.uk/

[grizzlymc]

I thought primary sources located Wellington’s headquarters at the foot of a huge wine glass. And the giant tapes along the road were one of the reasons why the Prussians took so long to get to Waterloo, that and having to skirt the enormous rule book balancing on the treetops.

[McKinstry]

I’ll pile in on unpainted figures and excessive dice flinging (I insist on a dice tray when I’m putting on a game).

My personal bugaboo is having someone declare a new rule set “broken” because a single, highly specific historical result cannot be duplicated or, as has been said, a favorite gimmick isn’t allowed.

The tree of Life is self pruning.

[Mr. Average]

McKinstry wrote:

My personal bugaboo is having someone declare a new rule set “broken” because a single, highly specific historical result cannot be duplicated or, as has been said, a favorite gimmick isn’t allowed.

UGHHHHHHHHH… I didn’t think I had a “hate” until this.  I cannot STAND that.  “This thing is not to my liking therefore the game must be broken.”

[irishserb]

Drunk gamers.

Had to think about it for a few minutes, as nothing readily came to mind.  But I’ve had a three remarkably unpleasant gaming experiences at conventions, while running games with a drunk player.  That won’t happen again.

[DM]

Pets on the wargames table

[Orcishnature]

The word ‘Fluff’ when it describes the background, flavour and theme of a game that makes me want to buy it and play it.

It is of course fine to describe soft lumps of mysterious material under the bed.

[Private Snafu]

Not so much people complaining that a game is broken but more along the lines of “this game needs that”.  One of our local fellows is obsessed with opportunity fire from all the ASL he plays and if its not in a game you bet we hear about it.  Granted he has softened on the matter after much teasing.

___________________
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https://sites.google.com/site/miniaturemachinations

[warwell]

Using dice as casualty markers. I think it mars otherwise good-looking games.

Pets on the wargames table

Happens a lot at my house. Doesn’t bother me

 

[Ruarigh]

I’m not sure hate is the right word, but some things irk me more than others:

1. My own whinging about dice rolls. It’s alright for you to do it, but once I start I hate myself for it!
2. Not playing fair.
3. That bloke I played at a PBI2 tournament who spent the entire game checking his phone to keep track of the footie scores. Seriously, mate, focus on the game and enjoy that. You can check the results later.

Basically, it’s the things that impede my enjoyment of the game. Anything else is minor enough that it does not spring gazelle-like to mind.

Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

https://envirocitizen.eu
https://emidsvikings.ac.uk/

[Chris Pringle]

Having my precious gaming time wasted by multi-player games where I spend most of the game sitting on my hands because of:

a) poor scenario design

b) rules that only let one player act at a time (card-draw mechanisms and such)

c) the player who is unreasonably painfully slow and whose pointless tinkering holds everyone else up

Chris

Bloody Big BATTLES!

https://uk.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/BBB_wargames/info

http://bloodybigbattles.blogspot.com/

 

[Thomaston]

I have too many hates. One of the milder ones is counters/markers to track the game, I prefer the game uncluttered. It’s ok when it’s done well like smoke puffs to mark damage/destroyed/suppressed units but ‘pinned’ and ‘gone to ground’ markers just kills the visual for me.

Tired is enough.

[Mike Headden]

Pet hates or more accurately pet minor irritations …

People who whinge about cola, coffee, crisps, cakes, dice, measuring devices, et al “cluttering” the table

Casualty markers, status markers and the like camouflaged to the point of uselessness. It needs to be bright and obvious at a glance … it’s a game not a diorama!

People for whom winning is more important than having fun

People who turn up for competitions with only the sketchiest knowledge of how the rules work who then accuse those who have bothered to learn them of being “power gamers”

Rules that add pointless layers of complexity in a vain attempt to achieve a “realistic” outcome – KISS

Rules that are so random that the players might as well roll a die each and decide who won

</Victor Meldrew> 🙂

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

[Hafen von Schlockenberg]

Hmm. Mike, I have to say it’s the opposite for me — I’m closer to Thomaston on the markers. And labels — why spend all that time and effort getting a figure’s uniform right, down to the last button, only to have him drag a big white billboard around?

Same with base markings: “Ah, those grass tufts sure made the base look natural! Now for the finishing touch — a bright red line around the edge”.

I go to great lengths to avoid these things. And yes, it sometimes makes keeping track a bit more difficult — but I’m willing to put up with it. Matter of taste, really.

I second drunk gamers, with this exception: if you want to play drunk, it’s your responsibility to ensure that everyone else is too, so be prepared to hand round plenty of libation — on your dime.

Then everthing ish fine. . . (Hic!) 

[Mike Headden]

“Hmm. Mike, I have to say it’s the opposite for me — I’m closer to Thomaston on the markers. And labels — why spend all that time and effort getting a figure’s uniform right, down to the last button, only to have him drag a big white billboard around?” – Hafen von Schlockenberg

I guess that the difference in my attitude and yours may be down to “getting a figure right”.

Most of the stuff I game at the moment involves making do with the “wrong” figures. Proxies for 15mm Homo Heidelbergensis (Copplestone Picts), 6mm Gutian and Lullubi (mainly stuff from Baccus’ and Rapier’s Egyptian and Greek ranges), 10mm WW2 Soviet partisans (figures from Boer War to Korean War ranges) and 20mm sci-fi RPG stuff(tall 15mm figures to small 28mm). Not much “getting it right, down to the last button” but much more getting something everyone playing can identify.

 

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

[Sane Max]

Most things I can live with. Shrug, dif’rent strokes for dif’rent folks. But I had a mate (and he was a really nice guy too) who was simultaneously very precise, and grossly indecisive, and he snapped my Toleramatic .

He was the only chap I ever got games of Epic 40k with, which made it worse as I loved them ‘Nids. But every turn he would go ‘Right. The predators will assault. These will retreat back to the cover of the jungle… the Imperial Guard will swing round to here’…. and so on for every unit in his army. Then he would stand there and muse… ‘No, actually the Imperial Guard will assault, the predators will head for the abandoned factory and the… no, hey, the Predators will JOIN the Imperial guard in covering the mine and…..’ on and on and on.

After one 5 hour game that got to my turn 2, I had to make a decision never, ever to play him again. He was a really good guy, and still is, but jesus.

Pat

[Thaddeus Blanchette]

My cat hates the dremel.

We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

[Ruarigh]

I just thought of something I actually do hate: wargamers’ use of foreign language terms to define a particular class of unit in army lists. For example, the use of Old Norse bóndi (farmer, husband, yeoman, peasant) as a term for a particular class of warrior gives it a precision of meaning that the Old Norse word absolutely does not have. Worse yet, bóndi is singular, yet it is used as plural by wargamers. Also, it never defined a class of people in the way that it does in army lists. Seriously, if you’re going to use foreign language terms, at least make the effort to get the number right, and preferably try to use terms that the people of that time used to identify groups within an army. /rant over

I’m amazed that this did not spring to mind when first I posted. I have clearly been repressing my ire excessively in this instance.

Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

https://envirocitizen.eu
https://emidsvikings.ac.uk/

[deephorse]

Ah, that reminds me of the Panzer IV / Mark IV pet that that I have.  If you insist on using Mark IV then what is a Panzer IV Ausf. D, a Mark IV Mark D?

Play is what makes life bearable - Michael Rosen

[Not Connard Sage]

deephorse wrote:

Ah, that reminds me of the Panzer IV / Mark IV pet that that I have. If you insist on using Mark IV then what is a Panzer IV Ausf. D, a Mark IV Mark D?

Ausfuhrung translates as ‘variant’. German is such a literal language 🙂

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[deephorse]

I know that, my question was rhetorical. 

Play is what makes life bearable - Michael Rosen

[Howard Whitehouse]

Yes, absolutely.  While I am wincingly aware that some game-related fiction is desperately third rate, that applies to almost everything , anywhere. The colour text that accompanied a game is clearly important to the designers, and ought to be accorded respect by the player.

I do all my own stunts.

[MattH]

Anyone who spells Dreadnought as ‘Dreadnaught’ has to be taken out and shot.

https://shellsplash.blogspot.com/

[Ruarigh]

MattH wrote:

Anyone who spells Dreadnought as ‘Dreadnaught’ has to be taken out and shot.

Even if they are getting in character for a period when that spelling was current? Seems a bit harsh.

Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

https://envirocitizen.eu
https://emidsvikings.ac.uk/

[MattH]

Ruarigh wrote:

MattH wrote:

Anyone who spells Dreadnought as ‘Dreadnaught’ has to be taken out and shot.

Even if they are getting in character for a period when that spelling was current? Seems a bit harsh.

Yes, especially them.

https://shellsplash.blogspot.com/

[Mike]

Must spell it correctly, not to is Heresy!

[Ruarigh]

I can take a hint!

Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

https://envirocitizen.eu
https://emidsvikings.ac.uk/

[Mr. Average]

Even worse is “Dreadnaut.”  Or “Dreadnot.”

I also find myself peeved with “Moral” rolls and the “moral” status of units on the table. It’s “MORALE.”  Yeesh!

[Patrice]

Everything that ruins the fun by reminding me it’s a game with inanimate toys, instead of a wonderful adventure where living characters are actually running around on the gaming table.

This includes:

– competitive players,

– all sorts of rubbish on the table,

– markers which don’t blend in the landscape,

– bases which don’t blend in the landscape,

– gamers who can’t decide what to do and can’t move their characters simultaneously with everyone else as required in my ruleset…

http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/

[Russell Phillips]

I think my main peeve is players that are desperate to win, to the point that they drain all the fun out of the game.

deephorse wrote:

Anyone who moves tank A, then tank B, then tank C, then decides that tank A would be better positioned 2” further to the left, and that tank B should now be moved backwards a bit, then forwards quite a lot. In the end no-one knows where those tanks started their move nor how much more than their movement allowance they have moved. He does this quite a lot!

This is the sort of thing I’m thinking of. Also arguing over everything that doesn’t go their way.

Military history author
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[Mike Headden]

Not really an annoyance, more an amusement, but something I was reminded of by the dreadnaught/ dreadnought comments.

It’s the regular description by players, of their RPG thief type character, as a “rouge.” Is the character a cosmetics salesman, a tub of cosmetics, particularly choleric or maybe extremely sunburnt?

 

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

[Rhoderic]

Dat calvary and dem pharoahs, though 

EDIT: Oh, and dem juggernaughts.

[Author]

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