This is long ans copy and pasted from my post on dakka.
I think I'm ready to share my one and only "friendly" local game store story. I was invited out to play Armada by a guy who moved to town recently to marry his girlfriend he met on the internet. He adds me on facebook and I only take a quick glance at his facebook page. No images of him stand out just internet memes and stuff I only glance and say I'll get a good look at him in the store.
He claims to be a newbie during all of this who has only recently started the game. After we establish contact through the flgs community facebook page we start setting armada battle terms.
It's been months since I've played the game so I tell him I'm a little rusty. I say I want a 300 point game (forgetting 400 is standard). He messages me saying he went over with 9 points over and asks me if its okay. I say sure its a friendly game only if I can go over too. He got mad at first but I think he misunderstood me and I say only up to the 9 over he is at and calms down.
The next day he messages me and asks if its okay if we don't play with objectives since he is a newbie and it confuses him. I say sure but something is going off in my brain about how specific of a request this is. I know as a rebel player I often need to play to objectives depending on my list, but maybe he is geunely trying to learn. At the same time how can you learn if your not abiding the rules? I allow him this but have a bad feeling. I bring a back up list that's got some more potency than my nwbie friendly list.
My list was a Rebel Assault Frigate, Nebulon B, and the Mon Calamary Torpedo Frigate. A very light casual list. I also take some A-Wings and some upgrades here and there like the paragon and the enhanced armaments to try and use my side dice. It's decent but fluffy. Just in case I bring a Mon Calamari Cruiser which is the rebels Star Destroyer equivalent since my bad vibes were on full. I was not going to cheese it out. Also I only had Wave 2 ships and am vastly behind in upgrades and only collect rebel ships so some stuff was not available to me. Not that it mattered since I wasn't net listing. The Mon Cal Cruiser was my insurance since he said we might have time for two games and if I needed to up my list a little. I didn't bring the full breadth of cheesy upgrades for it though and was just going to use what I had in my casual list on it.
Two days before the battle I remember I want 400 points and ask if its cool. He says no and gets mad and taunts me a little over this. He also says one other person is coming and I have to fight with him in a 2 on 1 again a bad sign of him power gaming since two strangers who just meet for the first time ever are not going to coordinate well. On top of this he asks for no turn limit since he wants a pure blast them game.
The day before the game he shows me a picture of his case and he has almost two of every ship in the game Imperial and Rebel and all the new ships as well. And front and center is a great big Star Destroyer. I say to myself he won't use it. What kind of newbie is this? I don't upgrade my army and give him the benefit of the doubt despite getting weird vibes.
We meet and immediately something is really off about this guy. Most nerds I know are pretty reserved folks they don't talk much to outsiders and its really hard to get in with them and their cliques. Can't say I'm an exception or the old guy who turned up was an exception. The old dude clearly was a newbie and barely knew how to use a maneuvering tool. The other guy says he watches tournament videos. In my head I say this is weird since he claims to be a newbie now he claims to have watched the national finals and yes he brings a net list just for such an occasion.
My fears are founded when he plops down that ISD, an Imperial Raider with Moff Tarken in it and is clearly net listing the gak out of his army. My list was a casual list that HAD to play to objectives perfectly to stand a chance against the firepower of an ISD or needed perfect micro.
We are setting up the table and talking. He loves to talk about himself a lot. Most people don't spill their guts out and he is an intense starer but many people like him. My dad drove me up there and I see him lingering around a lot watching my opponent. I said we would be x amount of hours and told him when to be back to pick me up. <y dad leaves but comes back a few times within the hour to check on the weird as feth guy.
Anyways when my dad leaves the first time we talk a bit and introduce ourselves. Then he is searching for a word saying he dressed up as Darth Vader for kids in some ward of the hospital and can't remember the name. It was one of the most important aspects of his life and kept boasting about this and how much joy he brought them. I think this is cool at first but he rally really keeps boasting about this and for someone who did ti for most of his life can't seem to remember it's called the terminal ward.
I tell him "yes it's called a terminal ward" He looks at me with those fething weird eyes and stare and looks me down. He says this and I quote "I worked in the terminal ward and it emotionally devastated and destroyed my mind and soul. I've just never been the same." This is one of the first things he says about himself right after we meet him. I have extensive training in psychology but even without that I would hope this would set off alarm bells in most peoples heads at this point.
He also claims to have cancer and it kind of explains his sickly look. I give him one massive benefit of the doubt since I have no way to yet prove he is lying but I'm getting the feeling he is a compulsive liar and I start to formulate some plans to catch him in some lies. Politely to him I say its great he volunteered and I'm sorry to hear about his cancer ect.
He had a very subtle nervous tick this entire time and with his rather alarming stare its creepy and unnerving. Yet he has a sort of charm and has a few people he is acquainted with very faintly. I don't know how much they know of him but I suspect they have no idea about him.
We're about to play and the weird guy starts to talk. He says how he hates X-Wing and can't put it into words. So I ask if its the power creep and he says not really. Only a little. He hates how rigid it is. In armada he says he can take out any and all rules he wants and customize the game to the way he wants to play. He says customize it to the way he wants to play, but I get the sense he is using it to power game the system and make his own rules. We'll see how right I am soon in the farce of a first game. He makes one last backhanded comment "I don't like playing to objectives. i don't feel a game is a victory unless I kill everything and remove it form the table". Right off the bat this is the first big sign I'm at minimum dealing with a douche since eh games the system from the get go.
I put this out of my mind to focus on the game and I know I'm going to lost. So I plan with the cool old dude on my team. As I figured I didn't tell him everything about how the army was going to work. So I went for a bum rush and he went for a cautious approach.
He was a straight up cheating bastard. If I made a mistake from being rusty I let him know and he fixed the mistake to his damage or card effect ect. He knew every rule for his Imperials perfectly and also I caught him cheating with his firing arcs. He was measuring the arcs from the sides of the vessel and not like an arc. SO basically he could shoot his frontal guns almost completely behind him the way he was doing it which is ridiculous.
I point this out and he gets mad. I ask the newbie for support who is no help as he is a newbie and not sure who is right. This is actually his first game. To try and keep things friendly he makes a few "mistakes" and I catch him. I say ah this is a casual game I'll forgive ya and let him do his thing. I make a few mistakes and this is the line I get when I ask if I can just forgive them this round since I did it for him. He turns to me with anger n his face and his creepy eye stare "No. I don't do that kind of stuff for anyone. I don't let that happen." In my head I'm like then why did you accept mine if your such a rule stickler. So I caught him once more in his greed. At this point I amped up my attitude. No more mistakes. No more mercy.
He was getting rules blatantly wrong, he was rolling accuracies on his dace and he loaded his ship with as much blue as possible meaning every fething hit did tons of minimum damage. In the actual game rolling accuracies never does damage unless you have specific upgrade cards for specific effects and while he did have one of the cards it only affected blue dice and not every other dice int he game. So blatant cheating. I tell him this and look in the rules.
All game I call him on BS from the point of game face on and he looks in the rules. I am usually right but he still refuses to accept a lot of rulings and bitches when I look at the rules, but when he needs t look he gets all the time int he world. I try and look for the accuracies thing but he is impatient and its over so I resolved to let it slide until next game.
He never once fessed up to rule breaking unless caught. At this point I was starting to hide a few of my own advantages.
So he agrees to let me make a new list. And this time its 1v1. Cool old dude is not sure what happened and isn't sure who is right. I make a new list and bust out the much better list (but not the best I could have brought). It will have to do. Mon Calamri Cruiser with Ackbar and a few upgrades, rebel assault frigate, and the mon cal torpedo. Not ideal but I think I can make it work.
Cool old dude says he has to go soon but will watch until he goes.
I'm stuck along with the creep. He comes back in boasting about how great the Imperials are. At this point I'm beginning to dissect his mind a lot and get in there and I'm afraid. I ask him about his collection and how big it is he says this "Yeah my wife says I have a large collection of minis and have been really invested in this game." I caught him in a lie since he said he was a newbie player who had never played. I had at that point caught him lying all night and was getting a very clear idea of what I was dealing with.
I can't find the rules in time to support my firing arc claims and accuracy die so I have to play at a big disadvantage again since the star destroyers arcs are nuts the way he is playing them and he was getting impatient. I look at his list. I'm also at a big disadvantage from accuracy damage since he auto damages me every turn when he shouldn't be and accuracy effect spams me at the same time. It's definitely going to be an uphill battle. He let me make mine first and then made a counter list and metagamed it. I knew he would and he fell into my trap. Without his precious net lists he would be nothing.
I deploy the Torpedo Frigate in his face and go right up in his face and make an actual error. Should have shot at his general when I had the chance and not the ISD and would have killed it and perhaps won still would a been hard, but I had to plan for contingencies. The second mistake I had made was putting the enhanced armaments on the rebel assault frigate. Last game he had the repair station this time I have it and its surrounded by asteroids. He is an aggressive arrogant person who thinks he is always right so I figure he will charge at me like a noob and his the asteroids and debris fields. My third and biggest mistake was putting my rebel assault frigate on the right too far away form the action where it didn't shoot once all game. If I had not made that mistake I would have beat his cheating ass. But I was rusty from not playing for six months or if I had my uber list I would have taken him down or if he had not been a cheating bastard.
He still didn't want to play to objectives (gee I wonder why).
The torpedo suicide runs him and does outstanding damage to him and he is getting mad. I see hi face change into this horrific face of anger and rage while i'm chill. He can't believe this is happening. Then it moves off the board and is gone. I even get a little cocky myself "Typical Imperial Doctrine". The next few turns proceed with me dishing out more damage than his vaunted ISD, transport, and talking can mitigate. If I had the gunnery teams here and more support cards it would have been over by turn 4. My Mon Cal has also taken a beating and my rebel frigate is a non factor since he is too far. I'm a few damage away from dying.
Cool Old Dude is still here and watching. I bro fist him and he laughs and say rebel tactics are prevailing. Then the freaking cavalry arrives his own acquaintances show up to play Armada too and they are rules veterans. Quite quickly they all take my side of the rules debates, but I'm in a bad spot due to my own tactical blunders. Still some of the damage had been done by the cheating and could not be so easily removed since it had been so long ago. My Mon Cal goes up a lot of wounds and shields and he is starting to shake and get angry and his tick is getting worse.
I let this line drop "I'm definitely not leaving the store without buying something today since I really need to update my army." This makes him mad and he look me in the eye with the same creepy stare.
With the fire arcs on my side me and ackbar pound the gak out of him. On turn 5 and 6 he rams through the debris fields and asteroids and takes him down to 1 health. His fighters came boba gett and other heros and take me out. He ISD was one wound from death and he was real worried. If my rebel frigate had survived the fighter swarm it would have gotten it and all his vaunted power and then I would have won if not for time limits being off. As it was he rigged all the games from the start.
He calms down and says that was all according to plan. I call him on his BS and said you didn't expect most of that to happen since you veered into the asteroids to run away from the Ackbar Cruiser. He was really scared he was going to lose. I tell him I didn't bring my fully good list since I can't afford too much and haven't had reason to want any since no one plays me anymore.
He says I have shown him new cheese. Cool Old Dude stuck around for the whole thing and didn't seem to happy to see the donkey-cave had been fething with him all game. I'm waiting for my ride and treating this more like an interesting social experiment. He keeps creepily offering to give me and/or the old dude a ride home and we obviously don't want to be murdered so decline.
He keeps hanging around me and looking over my shoulder keeping a real good eye on me. I know he wants to see what I'm buying so he can power game next game which will never come. He says bye like 8 times and never leaves. Finally on the last time he says bye and I make sure he leaves the store and see the door shut. I wait 10 minutes and make sure he doesn't come back into the store.
I go up to buy the new Liberty Mon Cal Cruiser in stock. I go up to the counter and I hope to god I'm wrong. I'm getting out my debit card and I vaguely hear the store door open. Then he is right fething behind me at the counter. He is taller than me looking right over my shoulder... "That's a very nice Liberty class cruiser your buying. Best thing you could add to your army really..." Same creepy as feth look and smile on his face. I turn around pissed off a little and give him the dirty eye to get him to back up. I hide my pin code as well since he might have also been there to look at that. He had also grabbed a pop to buy on the pretense of wanting something.
I know right fething now something is seriously wrong with this creeper and intend to investigate a lot of his claims when I get back home. He leaves the store again and I hope to god he didn't slink back in to creep me again. I tell my dad about this and as we talk about this over the next little while I begin to notice he has the behavior patterns of a sociopath. I hope to god I'm not right. I tell my dad who is experienced with the real worst of society and while he doesn't know all the scientific terms he says something about the man was off as soon as he seen him. He says he also looked like a hard core cocaine addict.
I check the guys facebook profile and it says he has only been here for a few months allegedly he moved here to marry his girlfriend. I go back to last years posts and no photos of anyone or announcements. No pictures of any girlfriends, friends, or certainly a wife or wedding planning details.
The only shred of truth the guy told me all night that I can verify is he dressed up as Darth Vader last year, but he wasn't with sick kid he was with his coke buddies according to my dad at least from their drugged out picture of them with guns and knives and one in a clown costume from last year I have to agree he is extremely creepy as feth.
Instantly unfriend him, leave all the FLGS groups I'm in since he could see me there, block his ass, and tell everyone I know about him to watch out for him. No one at the gameshelf knows much about the guy either and he rarely shows up or talks much.
I don't treat these a a loss. I don't even treat these farces as a game. He is one fethed up person who creeps me out. The way he tried to almost hug me from behind at the counter and look over my shoulder was the creepiest moment of my life so far by far.
Anyone got some bad stories to top this. There's more tiny details I'm forgetting more lies and rule breaking but suffice to say I think I've given it enough justice. So anyone got a more fethed up story? >
He also kept trying to ask where me and the cool old dude lived. I didn't tell him much but if I had known what I had from the start I would not have even said that.
The same day I went to this flgs a little before the opponent showed up I was talking to a Tyranids player and his friends and hitting it off. We were talking about the new GSC and I was complimenting his paint job on his regular Nids and mentioning how my friend also plays nids. Then I mentioned I play Tau and then he says "My Tyranids don't like you. I don't like Tau." Then he and the rest of them wouldn't talk to me anymore.
Suffice to say I'm not keen on going back to this "friendly" flgs to play games and it's the only one that is close to me like an hour across the city. It costs a lot of money for me to get in to the town and I'm not rich so it took a lot of planning and cash to get into town for this one day and my first day ever. I do know the owners of the store and they seem like the only nice humans in there and they give me discounts on a lot of stuff since I'm such a frequent customer. If it wasn't for that I probably would start shopping online more.
There are only two other flgs in my town and even further drives. One of them the owner hates my guts. I went there when I was younger and he seen that I was a kid and had no idea what kind of money I had or anything. I was looking at the newest edition of 40k Core Rules. It might have even been the collectors edition (I was a 40k noob at the time) but was interested in getting started. I asked him why the book was so expensive in a kind of joking way. Then he looks at my clothes and my dad who is a rough outdoors men type and not the richest looking guy and says "You need to be a rich person to be able to buy this." I don't think it occurred to him that I had enough money to buy it on me and was just trying to start up a conversation. So I left the store that very instant me and my dad. I went back there a few years after again to try and get an anime dvd and he was just as rude again. I don't know what he has against me but my friend gets along with him great apparently.
Subject: Re: gangs of Commorragh!? 
Fri Dec 23 2016, 23:06
