Home Forums General General Temper Tantrum

Viewing 8 posts - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #33318
    Avatar photoAlvin Molethrottler
    Participant

    So, what’s the worst temper tantrum you’ve thrown during a game and what was the reason? I’ll go first 😉

    When I got into gaming (as a teenager) my first army was Vikings and we played using WRG 6th.

    Situation: My mounted on a horse General was caught and killed by some light infantry and as a result a heated debate began (did I mention my friend and I had just discovered the delights of Carlsberg Special Brew?). To cut a short story shorter it was pointed out to me that Generals on horseback move at mounted infantry speed and that that was slower than light infantry. This rule trumped my “real world” assertion that a guy on horse can easily outrun a man (over short distances).

    My reaction? Incandescent with good sportsmanship rage I smashed my General flat with a tape measure and threw the model into an open fire, I then traded the army for a bottle of whiskey at the very next club meeting.

    The ironic kick in the teeth? The bloke that got the army took it to Vapanatak and the bloody thing came third in the best painted category! Oh ye Gods of Fate, never once have you smiled upon me when you could sh*t in my cooking pot instead!

    So there you have it and if you post to this thread saying you’ve never had a temper tantrum whilst gaming you is telling porky pies.

    #33319
    Avatar photoNot Connard Sage
    Participant

    I got all stompy on an Airfix M3 halftrack (well, what Airfix supposed was an M3 halftr…never mind) when I was about 15. The details escape me – it was 45 years ago.

    Not my proudest moment, but I have grown up a bit since 🙂

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

    #33320
    Avatar photoOtto Schmidt
    Participant

    Dear Alvin

    Good question.  The only time I guess I really got that irrationally angry was when I left Napoleonics.  This was in 1974 and I had  a huge army of Scruby’s. I was gaming with a toxic group of gamers, all Napoleons (or who at least through they were). I was at one game we had set up at 8 am  and by 2:30 we had gotten to move 2.22, that is not even a quarter of the way in to the second move. Now, I had a cold and a fever and was feeling awful and I had a headache, and the game had been one of out and out arguing and insults since the start.

     

    This was normal. All the games with this group consisted of 90% of the time arguments over the rules, over meanings, and over whether  the 443rd Messkit repair battalion of the Old, Middle, Young, over around and through Guard” would EVER have done this or was even capable of having a morale check.   By 3 pm we still hadn’t finished turn 2  and I had had it. I got up and said that I was quitting and going home. When everyone asked me about my stuff, because most of the table was my figures and terrain I said “Keep it, it’s yours! I’m out of war games!” and I walked away.

     

    I had quit wargames.

    Well obviously my resolve did not last, and after about six months I went back, but I resolved never to play or paint Napoleonics again. Since then I have reneged thrice, and each time I found that it was as if I was back with that toxic group of gamers. I decided it was something about the period, and I finally eschewed them forever. I thought it might be me, so several times I would watch Nappy games at conventions but not play. Nope, not me, it’s them. The same degree of Toxicity just wells out of the game.  My theory is that every Napoleonic rule set is an “all French are +3 in everything” which means the non-French players are always under the gun, always at a disadvantage, and the French go ballistic whenever the other guys seem to even up the score and might actually win.

     

    The only other times I got really mad was at a game store where we were putting on a modern game with lots of scratchbuilt models and troops, some Warhammer guys came in, started setting up at the next table and threw their coats and backpacks over our stuff , damaging some troops, and at a convention where one hideously fat gamer decided to take a shortcut across a roped off floor game of Lepanto and crushed under foot a dozen or so galleys. But that’s all understandable anger.

     

    Otto

    #33325
    Avatar photoMike
    Keymaster

    Don’t really recall the details but I think it was due to some rules situation that resulted in game failure because of bad luck.
    Though I was in my teens so more prone to such outbursts.

    However it happens more frequently on consoles when the stupid ******* button does not work!

    😀

    #33359
    Avatar photoSteve Johnson
    Participant

    I can honestly say I’ve never had any. I’ve seen plenty though and just thought to myself it’s only a game…

    #33370
    Avatar photoDM
    Participant

    I don’t think I have ever had on. Closest I think was a big bout of “passive aggressive” after playing (I use the word loosely) in an incredibly poorly devised campaign game for which I drove at “sparrows” from one side of the country to the other and BBC and basically sat by myself in a room (the umpire had each command separated) doing sod all (my campaign orders required that my forces drive in the opposite direction to “the action” and there was no way for my force to be recalled) for 8 hours before driving home again.

    Best one I ever witnessed was the last game of our school club where my friend and I deployed heavy air and artillery strikes to wipe out a German armoured force in a WW2 game. One of the German players totally flipped and tried to upend the table. We dragged him away but a few Tigers (his models fortunately) did hit the floor and got trodden on in the mêlée

    Kind of summed up the game though 🙂

    #33371
    Avatar photoOtto Schmidt
    Participant

    Dear DW

    Well I thought I was in the worst campaign ever! Compared to the one you were in mine was a breeze!

    Humorous story about “flipping the board.”  One day we were playing a game of Axis and Allies, and one of the players was super-snotty and super cocky, so we carefully played against him and frustrated his every move, and discovered that he was playing fast and loose with the rules. He got so angry he “flipped the board” sending pieces flying all over the hotel room.  He later was quite ashamed and embarrassed and apologized. We told him to think nothing of it, and let it go. Then we turned it into a positive in our group  and the statement  “I flipped the board!” became a euphemism for “I quit” or “You got me, I concede.”  The apotheosis of this came at our late June convention “the Weekend.”  One of our group, call him “George”  at the con had set up a rather nice double-blind Axis and Allies game, but the Allied player just couldn’t get the hang of it. So about two hours into the game he comes sauntering up to our table and the Ump is frantic that he not see the board. He said not to worry, “I flipped the Board.”  The umps eyes bugged out like a cartoon characters and he had visions of having to sweep the floor for pieces for the next three days. That was hilarious enough and we told him what the guy had mean’t and George said he packed up all the pieces neatly.

    The saga continues, at last years Weekend, the former ump, now a player in the game at one point when he wasn’t doing well said “I’m thinking of flipping the board.”  We all had a good laugh. “George” said “well– if you’re going to do that, let me gather the rest of the convention around here and they can play like the bridesmaids at a wedding gathering around to catch the bouquet when the bride tosses it.”

     

     

     

    Otto

     

     

    Otto

    #33384
    Avatar photoThaddeus Blanchette
    Participant

    You’re going to flip the board, Alvin, but I really can’t recall ever having pitched a fit at the gaming table. I get vocal and scream “Fuck me!” And other like obscenities, sure, but always laughing and always angry at the dice gods, never the players. Although I am not as poetic as Largartija Mike, I have a mouth as foul as a syphilitic whore in a dockside knocking shop. So I have been told to turn down the language, and I do my best when this occurs.

    That’s about it.

    Then again, I don’t mind losing, as long as the game is fun. A well fought losing battle is just as interesting to me as one in which I win. So it’s rare that I get riled by the game.

    I have been riled by players’ who bring politics to the table and then get offended when I reply in kind.

    I remember one game in which I and my history prof from UW Madison attended in south Illinois in the 1980s. We were playing ACW and the guys on the other side of the table were waaaaaaay too into the Confederates, if you know what I mean. Their schtick was spouting all sorts of Civil War Confederacy rhetoric, role playing as it were. When they got to the part about the “happy darkies in Dixie”, my prof and I had had enough. The prof started in about southern treachery and how we needed to hang corn-pone traitors from every bridge in Dixie.

    Our opponents immediately took offense. The prof said “Oh, excuse me. Listening to you gentlemen I thought role-playing was acceptable at this table. Or do you really mean to say that you think the enslavement of African Americans is a noble cause?”

    Then I started in with the best fire-breathing abolitionist rhetoric I could muster, complete with some of the more fire-and-brimstone choruses of “John Brown’s Body” every time my boys advanced.

    We had a blast, with the Prof playing the hard-bitten U.S. Army professional vet and me the political appointee, frothing-at-the-mouth abolitionist volunteer general. It even affected the game after awhile ( we were beating the good ol’ boys handily, anyhow), when I sent one of my regiments haring off to liberate “contrabands” and burn “the Devil’s cotton” at a dockside warehouse. Of course, this pissed the prof off something fierce because he claimed his general had a buyer for that cotton back in Pittsburg and he was getting a percentage on the deal.

    🙂

    That’s why the ACW can be difficult at conventions in the U.S. Unlike the ECW, the losing side still has its partisans and they tend to run off at the mouth.

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

Viewing 8 posts - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.