Monday, October 26, 2009

Please. Don't be That Guy! My first and probably only rant


Ols School here,
While you may not have seen a guy looking like the photo in your FLGS, there often are those guys who we would call D bags that have decided to join our hobby. I happen to know a few and while at times, watching them can be more entertaining than making your cat chase a laser-pointer, there comes a point where it just gets old.
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For instance, if you built your list after watching another player succeed with it repeatedly and then copied his list down to the tinyest peice of wargear: You might be a DBag.
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If you have been proxying broken models which are also the inappropriate models for what you are trying to represent ... and you can clearly afford to buy the correct ones or at least can convert them, but you are too lazy (and they are only primed or in whatever condition they were when you found them somewhere over a year ago): You may be a DBag.
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If you join a conversation about lists or tactics that you were not invited to and then interupt with something like "XXXX unit is so gay" and then jabber on with something unrelated about how great your army is, then you might be a DBag.
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If you marginally beat a freindly person's fully painted army with your above mentioned models and then brag about how you may move on to another army because you are just 'too good' with the army you are pretending to field: you probably are a DBag.
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I am not writing this post to try to be a comedian and I am not trying to hurt those who have poor painting skills or those who proxy based on economics, no, those are perfectly fine excuses. I am writing because there are those out there who came to this hobby to contribute nothing and use the rest of us like a dog uses a person's leg. They do not care about our hobby or how much time we have put into making great looking, functional armies and they really hate to lose to our 'gay' units and have a coniption fit when they lose, often taking it out on the poor store manager with some vague rules fudging. Overall they ruin the fun of a bunch of guys getting together to have fun with their spacemen :)
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With that off my chest, I ask you, do you have a Dbag story you would like to get off your chest, so you can move on with your life? Do you have a hilarious DBag story? Are you a former DBag (hopefully not) who has seen the error of their ways? Am I totally off base by posting this and am I hurting the hobby? This is the place to comment, your feedback is welcome.

9 comments:

  1. Oh, I so get where you are coming from. Unfortunately I have a lot of Dbags locally, the only saving grace is that most of them congregate together and shoot thrills up each others legs.

    I hope that your rant and the one I posted yesterday will help open some Dbags eyes to his problems.

    If nobody speaks up nothing will ever change.

    I may start carrying a video camera with me to the LGS, just to show Dbags how ridiculous that look and sound.

    I've decided to make my tales from the soapbox a regular part of my blog.

    Jim

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  2. Everyone has had atleast a minor d-bag moment. No one likes it when their little men die and once in a while tempers flare.

    I find that taking things in stride and letting others actions speak for THEM and them only. They're making their bed and they'll have to lie in it.

    That being said, the proxying/lazy/nonpainted b/c I play too much WoW approach to 40k is weak as shit in my opinion.

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  3. Okay, so.. Let's say my "signature move" when I win is to jump on the game table spraying champagne all over my opponents models whilst doing the chicken and screaming profanities at the top of my lungs, destroying countless models in the process by way of shoe stomping. Does that make me a dbag?

    If so, that's not my signature move.

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  4. Thanks for the feedback guys. To me there is nothing worse than seeing these guys get off on ruining our hobby and I hope I didn't seem like a Douchebag myself posting this up. I know there is little that will ever change the fact they are there, but sometimes it feels good to let it all out.

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  5. Hey, ya' gotta vent sometime. I've only been in the game a year and I've spotted a few in the game stores myself. Right now, it's just funny. But just like with any type of gaming, eventually those full-of-douche-baggary get on your nerves. Just do us all a favor and don't end up in court for breaking someone's face. =)

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  6. Well, the benefit of being a very large and obvious U.S. Marine tends to curb most baggery that comes in my direction, but it still happens around the store. I find the best way to do it is to cultivate a good group of players and play often with them and with new guys, encouraging good sportsmanship, but not being a nazi about. You will find that we have a healthy dialog of friendly shit talking at the table, but far from some of the things that I have written about. I think the best and most pro-active way to combat it is to take some of the things we blog about and bring them into the store. I may start hosting DFG conversion clinincs in the store I go to. Maybe those kind of things will encourage the wayward kids to change their ways and adopt a sincere attitude toward our hobby.

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  7. Or just wait it out.. It seems like the people that think they've mastered the game on day 5 don't stick around long. =P

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  8. Took my kids to a tourney the other week, their first ever. Right away this punk starts telling them how his Raven Wing army could drive up and wipe out half of their BA armies right off the bat, trying to impress/intimidate them, even though he was not playing that day because 'my dad left with my army in the trunk'.

    A younger guy but old enough to show some manners, if he had any. I kept civil though I did tell him he wrong about a lot of what he was boasting about. He lurked around half the day, and I kept an eye on him when he would loom around my army box. Irritating, to say the least, and a doure experience for the kids trying to have fun playing warhammer.

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  9. I think that guy had some mental defects, legit ones. I was four seconds from punching him in the face. We have a mr. obvious kind of guy in our store too. He'll say random super obnoxious shit like "Oh it looks like you have a bunch of terminators, terminators are different from regular guys because they have a better armor save!"

    This guy was the same. I wanted to choke him out.

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