If you have a scan down my Batrep history, you'll see a bunch of posts for some big-ass APOC games. Now I'm a pretty sound guy to have on your team for Apocalypse. After all, I'm a fairly solid macro tactician, I like a giggle and I'm usually laughing too hard at what my stupid Guardsmen/Tau/Chaos Smurfs are doing today.
So we had a small APOC game (6k a side) set up for Sunday. Mark has considerately put together the concept of using spearhead formations in combination with the standard list to 'limit' the amount of overpowered shite on the board. We could all take 1 superheavy. We could all take tankhunters and stuff like that ... it was a very solid idea and worth stealing people.
Now we'd made the mistake of playing on a Sunday which is like open season down the club. This means that POPLAR (not his real name) turns up ... which is cool, and we quickly work at accomodating him.
He's on my side with Foot Eldar, to compliment Marks Mech Eldar and my mixed Guard. So Mark and I strip out 500pts each from our lists and the Chaosmarines we're facing get a Warhound Titan - standard stuff.
No problem. We've all agreed the deployment, we win deployment and I discuss with Mark and we opt to go first (they steal initiative with a DEldar 4+)...
POPLAR - A background
I've had lots of chats with 'poplar' before and he seems like a sound guy. He's got his hangups, a mite pedantic and with the tension to go for a condensending tone - but overall, he's good. He knows his WW2 stuff inside out, and as a fairly keen WW2 anorak I really enjoyed chatting with him before, I've even played alongside him and he was fine before - I mean he's not like a barrel of laughs and he tends to pick every fight rather than just the one's he's right about - but that's ok. Something happened on the way to the gamestore on Sunday though ... and I'm struggling to forgive it.
...And then...
Then the sighs begin. Before we've even started the game, Pat's sighing. He's complaining that he's gonna get nuked on turn one because his footdar are in the open. (Talk about bringing a knife to a gunfight - what did he expect?!? The irony being that the DEldar/Berserker quite happily massacred all the Elder in close combat ... and hence why they hit my lines with FNP!)
He's complaining that I'm pointing out that he can't put his footdar down where he wants because our (Mark and My) tanks are in the way, and so he has to put them in the 'non' deployment zone - which he can't... He's complaining about, well everything...
In short, he's being a douche. I now intimately know what that word means.
The game starts and a mechanised assault attacks his guardians. It's DEldar and they were born to it. He starts folding (and wittering and whinging) and frankly getting on my wick. To make it worse he's contesting every law abiding assertion. I'm interjecting with appropriate one's like "Did you make that out of cover?", "You get a cover save." etc and he's just wringing his hands and making his own bad bad luck.
At this point we should have taken him aside and said 'put up or shut up' but we didn't because we're English...
And so it continues. My guard mortars and basilisks and everything have nearly nothing to shoot at because the Eldar are getting very slowly eaten by DEldar and WorldEaters and everything is in combat! I knock out his armour pretty much turn 1-2. Mark shuts down his heavy hitters and 'he' continues to die badly against warriors in raiders.
Anyhow. End story, we lose. But six hours of his constant complaining, bitching, whinging (I'm not rolling until they listen to me - no shit he said this!) and shouting has run me ragged. I would rather turn around and walk away - back to my kids and wife - than spend another 6 hours in the company of that douchebag.
He didn't even have the decency to apologise for acting like a complete grinch the entire 6 hours.
At one point I had the following bizarre conversation:
Him "They're gonna kill them and then consolidate - it's useless!"
ME "No, its great, cause then you just shoot them"
Him "NO, because they'll consolidate into them."
ME "##NAME##, it's FIFTH edition, they can't consolidate into combat with another of your units ... so it's good, yeah?!?"
Him "Oh..." returns to sulk-mode.
So, no I didn't enjoy my all day Sunday game, because of the behaviour of one guy who selfishly decided to bring all his home problems to the table well, just be miserable.
The positives...
That said, I did play 1750pts of my core army, which is going to go to Mansfield for the Blogwars and it performed admirably. Pask works, he missed his lascannon every turn, but the S9 Battlecannon is very nice. The 'clumps' worked well (although they lacked a good close combat edge ... but I was charged by Wytches, Incubi and Lesser Deamons in a single turn and they held it together. The Devildog is great... attracting lots of attention and threatening everything. I just need to work out what to do with my vets/platoon command and use them aggressively or reserve them.
But hey, this wasn't a real game...
The only question-marks were the lack of a close combat threat beyond roughriders ... and whether lascannons on the Sentinels are really worth it. After all - autocannons are awesome against rhinos ... but I think lascannons give me more targetting flexibility for punking heroes, obliterators and other things like that!
Guard might be able to exploit some options in Spearhead, but the combo of mechanised assault (three units first turn flank) AND sky storm (deep strike skimmers and assault off them) is just pure murder for the Dark Eldar... making them seriously powerful.
The mortars were awesome. The best APOC level purchase - The Stormsword was a revelation! A S10 AP1 pieplate that ignores cover. It killed absolutely everything - leaving 1's and 2's of a unit straggling along. We just couldn't kill them.
So all in all, my Sunday would have been a tighter game, a closer game and a funnier game without the addition of the 'on the day' guy. It would also have been an enjoyable game.
Grrrr....
What's your experience of playing alongside or against players like this... have you been caught in an APOC trap like this? Let me know...
