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Law School: Defining the “Friendly Game”

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I have recently noticed a trend at my FLGS of people asking for “Friendly Games”.  Personally, I’m all for friendly games. But shouldn’t all games be friendly?  Barring tournament games where prizes are on the line, we’re all just here to have fun.  Games played honorably among polite, respectful, competent opponents are fun for the players and good for the hobby.  Anything less, well… isn’t.  So why the label?  Why insist on a “friendly game”?  This begs the question – and it’s a question that seems to pop up time and again – what IS a friendly game?  This is a rather broad question that encompasses a myriad of others.  Do the rules of friendly games differ?  Can’t a friendly game still be competitive?  Should “friendly game” status affect what you bring to the table? Is there a happy medium to be found?

 

Do the rules of friendly games differ?

A game of Warhammer 40k is, for all intents and purposes, a competition.  The rules of the game are designed to determine a winner and a loser, not to determine whether everybody had a good time.  The “fun” is really a byproduct of determining the winner.  You enjoy playing the game.  You enjoy making tactical decisions and seeing grand strategies put into action on the tabletop.  You enjoy collecting, modeling, converting and painting your army.  You must, or you wouldn’t be playing this game.  Whether they enjoy one aspect of the hobby or all aspects of the hobby, the vast majority of players bring their armies to the table with the goal of winning that game.  Armies are designed to win, not to “lose less”.  While a “close” game is often the sign of a well fought battle among evenly-matched opponents, it could just as easily be the result of “unlucky” die rolls or a bad list run by a great player.  We design our lists to be competitive because it’s a competition, but a competitive environment by no means rules out fun, friendly games.

Can’t a friendly game still be competitive?

We also know that sometimes “competitive games” get a bad reputation.  Whether its a no-comp RTT or something like ‘Ard Boyz, the term “competitive game” conjures up thoughts of WAAC attitudes, unit redundancy (a.k.a. unit spam), min/maxing, and mindless netlisting.  Competitive tournament play can be a cutthroat way to learn the game.  If you make a mistake, it may cost you a unit, a game, even a tournament – but we grow as players by learning from our mistakes and applying past experience to future decisions.  However, none of this necessarily makes a game “unfriendly”.  Competitive games can be incredibly enjoyable and often opponents who start the game as strangers can walk away from a hard-fought game as new-found friends.  A highly competitive environment can lead to abrasive, unfriendly behavior, and that is primarily due to some players’ inability to manage pressures like stress, playing against strangers (unsurprisingly, many gamers are incredibly shy), prizes on the line, or just simple pride/arrogance.  Some players are better at managing these pressures than others.  Some are downright terrible at it.  But a surly opponent is never a foregone conclusion just because you’re playing in a tournament or league.  Many tournament players are exceptionally friendly and outgoing.  Accordingly we cannot conclude that just because a game is a “competitive game” or played in a “competitive environment” that it will necessarily be an unfriendly, unpleasant experience.

We can’t blame the game itself – a competitive game in and of itself is not “unfriendly”.  For example, few games of chess erupt into heated rules disputes, or one player accusing the other of ‘cheese’.  Accordingly, I offer this definition of “friendly game” – a “friendly game” is simply a game where both players are sportsman-like, play the game fairly, and have fun. At the very least it means one of the players is a gracious loser.

 

Should “friendly game” status affect what you bring to the table?

Competitive games can still be friendly games.  So does that mean instead of talking about a “Friendly Game” what we’re really talking about is a “Friendly List”? Ultimately, this is what most people think of when they talk about “non-competitive” or “friendly” games.

The myth we face is that a “friendly” list is a non-competitive list. A list that uses sub-par units, doesn’t optimize the units it takes, and/or lacks a cohesive strategy. This is utter fallacy! List building is an important and enjoyable aspect of the game.  Developing list building skills is also a huge part of growing as a player.  But ultimately, list building is important because nobody wants a free win.  If you’re not building your list to win, you’re doing your opponent a disservice.

We all know what usually happens when a “friendly” list faces a “competitive” list.  Barring tremendous play errors or spectacular dice-fail, the competitive list just ends up going through the motions while the friendly list struggles all game.  Winning without challenge is no more fun than losing without hope.  A while back I posted this Battle Report of what I consider to be a fairly optimized, competitive Dark Eldar list against what I’d consider to be a somewhat out-dated, non-optimized, Tyranid list. While I enjoyed giving my Dark Eldar a work out, and the Tyranid player was a great opponent, I didn’t walk away thinking “wow, that was an amazingly fun game”. As players, we want to be challenged, we want to see our list triumph over a difficult opponent, not just spend two hours of rolling dice to see how long it’s going to take to reach a nearly-inevitable outcome.

 

Is there a happy medium to be found? 

 

Certainly there are ways to play competitive, enjoyable games that don’t require each and every list to be cookie-cutter netlists using only the very best the codex has to offer.  I believe three such examples are what we’ll call the “fluff game”, the “practice game”, and the “beer and pretzels” game.  The best part is, none of these types of game requires a “bad” list.  But they do require good communication – the players must communicate ahead of time to make these schemes work.

First we will discuss the “fluff game” – a friendly sort of game based more heavily on the fluff, often given a narrative context. Ever tried to run a mono-god Chaos list in a tournament/league environment? Good luck.  There are times, especially for the lore-minded among us, that you just really want to bring that dusty special character off the shelf and watch him go to work.  That can be difficult to justify when you know your character is not that good, or over-priced, and you are finally going to get him on the table just to see 15 insta-death-causing krak missles tear him apart in turn 2.

An appropriate list for a “fluff game” means bringing something in a theme, in the hopes that our opponent will do the same.  It makes for a better story.  Does that make it necessarily non-competitive? Of course not.  Themed lists can still be built with good listbuilding principles in mind – redundancy, duality, adaptability, and efficiency, to name a few.  Theme lists can and should still have a cohesive strategy and be capable of taking on all comers.  You simply limit your choices to those that fit your theme. For example, most of the Dark Eldar experts will tell you the Succubus has no place in a competitive list, that you’re better to just go with an Archon, and they’re right. But on those days that you just want to bring out Lelith Hesperax, a Succubus, and the rest of your Wych Cult sans the Haemonculi, Venoms, and Ravagers, you’re talking about a theme list for a “fluff game”. At the same time, there’s no requirement that you send your Wyches hoofing across the board because Raiders/Venoms are “too competitive”.  When your opponent shows up, the expectation is he or she will bring something similar. Then when my Wych Cult goes to war with your two-big-meks-and-all-walkers Dread Mob, it’ll be a grand tale to tell (we’d call it “kick the kan”), without worrying about people criticizing  my lack of blaster-born, or the dearth of scoring units in the Dread Mob.

Fluff games can be the perfect setting for taking chances and making “questionable” tactical decisions just because it makes for a better story.  Strategically, your Commissar with a Power-fist would be ill-advised to charge Abaddon, and would be better off pulling his unit back and rapid firing the Arch-Traitor. In a friendly fluff game, fix bayonets boys, we’re goin’ in!  And if they manage to bring him down, it’ll give you a story to tell for the rest of your 40k days!

GK Note:

This “hypothetical” sounds remarkably similar to the story of how my Abaddon model got, shall we say, “decommissioned with extreme prejudice” after he rolled a 1 for his demon weapon and killed himself, surrounded by a horde of would-be corpses.  I’m not sure I approve of this example.

Another form of friendly game is what we’ll call “unit practice” – playing a few games with an unfamiliar unit to get a feel for how it plays on the table. Let’s say you just built your DoA Jumper Blood Angels after years of running nothing but Guard gun-lines. You’re not used to deep-striking infantry, feel-no-pain rolls, and the madness of combined assaults. You are going to make mistakes. In a competitive game, you are on your own.  Try.  Fail.  Learn from your failures. But in a “unit practice” game, when you make some bad deep strike choices or get some really unfortunate scatter rolls in your DoA army, i’ll let you reroll some of your deepstrikes just to keep the game close.  And assuming I know you’re bringing a “practice” list, i’m probably going to bring something to practice with as well and expect the same consideration.  The idea is to ‘adjust’ the outcomes of the dice to let the players practice what they need to practice.  “Take backs” are granted liberally.  Whole turns will often be re-done.  And the number on the dice is more of a guideline.  If you’re bringing a Monolith-heavy Necron army for the first time, and I happen to blow up all your monoliths on turn 1, that game was kind of wasted for you, practice-wise, so maybe we change it up some.  Maybe, for example, we fudge the results and leave them unable to move/shoot instead. This is an important style of game to play, both for practicing with units you plan to use in competitive games, and trying out units to test their synergy with your army.  And again, it certainly has no requirement that sub-par lists be brought to the table.  Quite the opposite – the idea is to get practice with the key parts of your army and make the mistakes now so you don’t make them in the next tournament.

The final form of friendly game we’ll discuss is the “beer & pretzels” game, where you add ‘ish’ to the end of everything. You move 6-ish inches, and nobody is going to start getting mad about being 1/4 of an inch away from an assault. We’ve all had this type of game, where the game is just the side show to another discussion, purpose, other form of entertainment. These games are the games we ask for when we’re saying up front, “I want to move my guys around a board, but im not in the mood to really discuss the rules and such, i’m just here to hang out”.   This type of game certainly doesn’t rule out hyper-competitive lists, though you certainly want to take care not to develop bad habits that can spill over into your tournament play.  This type of game can be enjoyable because it simply focuses on the broad strokes and ignores the minute details.  The goal is to minimize stress and maximize enjoyment. Rules disputes are to be avoided like the plague, and this is the perfect situation for GW’s “just roll off” rule.

GK Note:

I shuddered from across the internet as you typed that.  Just wanted you to know.

 

So, what is a friendly game?

Ultimately, a friendly game is a game the players enjoy because it meets their expectations.  Thus the key to a successful “friendly game” is communication between players. Be specific when talking about the type of game you’re looking for, be it a “fluff game”, a “unit practice” game, a “beer and pretzels” game, some combination thereof, or something else entirely.  Communication helps you know what to expect, and helps you match yourself up with opponents who want the same things.  Significantly less fun will be had if you bring a fluffy theme list to a unit practice game, or try to move “six-ish” inches without agreeing that the rules are being treated as flexible guidelines.

 

While I consider myself a relaxed, easygoing player, my default position is that I am going to bring a highly competitive army, and I hope that my opponents will do the same.  But I won’t expect that of a player if I haven’t talked to him about it first.  If we’re looking for a specific gaming experience, be it more competitive, more fluffy or more casual, I think its important that we, as players, communicate this to each other ahead of time.  Doing so will go a long way toward making every game a friendly game.


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