Monday, November 30, 2009

A Rant: Warhammer "Personality", or Flaming Douche?

So I was reading some other blogs today, as I often do during lunch-time or when trying to avoid doing any real work while looking busy at my computer. I was thinking about these Warhammer “personalities”…the people that achieve some measure of “fame” in our community. Some I see get their recognition by performing well in competitive environments (i.e. tournaments); others by painting wonderful miniatures; some for being good sources of news or rumors; others by compiling entertaining battle reports; or any combination thereof. I noticed that some of these “personalities” are very pleasant, very encouraging, and seem to genuinely want to do good things for warhammer players. I’ve also noticed that others seem to just want to feed their egos and make their table-top exploits seem a lot more important than they really are. I mean no disrespect to any one in particular. I’ve only met a handful of these “personalities” in person. My opinion after having met them in person was not improved. I just can’t understand people that think they’re important or better than others at a game because they stand on a podium and tell everyone how good they are… Here’s an example, and I mean no disrespect: a player from a nearby club did very well in a tournament event using a Codex that most consider too weak to be really competitive. His blog and forum posts reek of egocentric remarks and thinly-veiled chest-thumping at how his “elite skillz” allowed him to excel with a weak army… But then if you read a little more detail about the games in this tournament, and you find some interesting things: one of the games he played was on a special terrain board with lava in the shape of a chaos star. There were absolutely no passages across the table that did not require multiple crossings of ~2” wide lava moats. This player insisted that the lava be treated as dangerous terrain. His army, almost all skimmers or able to be moved by “alternate” methods, had no fear of the lava, while his opponent lost half his army just from dangerous terrain. Now I ask you…does this person sound like a player with “elite skillz”, or a Win-At-All-Costs douche that thinks that because he can twist the game to allow himself to win, he’s better than the rest of us?

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