LOLWUT? - "Zealous" 40K Commentary on BoK

This week we're skipping A Winner is You and graduating to its more intelligent cousin, LOLWUT?

Blood of Kittens posted this article today in reference to the DERF-fest over in this Bell of Lost Souls post. In brief, someone on BoLS thinks 40K players are trying to hoodwink their opponents by providing army lists sans detailed army rules.  As a counterpoint, Sandwyrm asserts if you're playing in a tournament, you should probably know armywide rules (e.g. - Shadow in the Warp for Tyranids, Descent of Angels for BA, etc) or ask your opponent if you have questions.

Then the BoLS comment section happens.  Basically this:

Ask Haight about Cygnar's Mk I to Mk II transition sometime.  This is what you get.

Here's where Blood of Kittens comes in.  His article touches on a wide breadth of subjects and is well written (I wonder if the Bad Religion picture is in reference to how much he used the thesaurus on this one), but... LOLWUT?

Here's his opener:

What though the BoLS article revealed was something I and others have tried to put our finger on. It wasn’t the WAAC player the author thinks exists to confuse new players. Instead it is a certain querulous segment of the 40k Internet population that has hoisted up the banner of all things “competitive” in a vociferous cry to change the tone about how we talk and play 40k. This change in tone is moving the cynosure of what we know about Warhammer 40k the hobby into Warhammer 40k the sport, based I might add on false gods. You can find innumerable debates about this issue in any dime store blog and forum across cyberspace. The Internet community tries to use it as a wedge, between those who consider just playing the game is enough and those that derive the most fun from having good sporting time. Enjoyment either way (in of itself) is valid, (with me more on the competitive side) but the move towards making 40k look more like a sport is fraught with problems that go beyond simple game mechanics.

The prose is a little dense, so here's what I'm getting out:

1. Internetz arguments frequently occur between "Win at all Costs" competitive types and "Fun with no Thought" fluff types.  Hyperbole occurs because, hey, its internetz.

2. Blogs like to talk about this (notably, both Blood of Kittens and myself.  Lulz.).

3. "WAAC" players are arguing 40K should be more sport-like.  I wasn't getting this from Sandwyrm (he was arguing that players who go to 40K tournaments should know some common rules before entering the tournament), but I've heard the sentiment before.

4. Blood of Kittens thinks Sportshammer is a seriose. problem.  Article ensues.

Or rather, we travel 2 paragraphs and get a second thesis.  Quoting again:

Like the American political version, our punditocracy thinks it is speaking about the true (without proven statistician analysis) motivations and concerns of the general playing public, but since the average player rarely comments our punditocracy is based on some 40k invisible hand maintained on ego fuel and the screams from the echo chamber.

So basically, bloggers are getting it wrong (much like political pundits), but people still listen.  Strange you changed topic mid-rant, but OK.. I agree.

But what, there's more lulz!

RIP Lulz, RIP...

Not only are WAAC players like pundits, they're also a type of religion (Ohhh.. so they're right-wing pundits. Gotcha!).  Two more paragraphs down, we suddenly get:

The punditocracy is also using an interesting dynamic I will call the Seal Pup Defense (religion without a hyperactive superiority complex to do “God’s Work” isn’t worth following) has recently emerged. Often we hear of the high-minded goal of making all players as good as the unproven morality dictates. It is kinda like gay people being sent to Jesus camps to become straight. The more likely truth is the punditocracy is at its best a first among equals– remember a seal pup with a club is still just a seal pup. As well the punditocracy re-educating methods are more likely just a ruse, because without the seal pups to cull they might actually be exposed for the feckless folks deep down the fear they are. So on the one hand the punditocracy protects itself from reproach while on the other hand it is able to effectively throw off any critique without worthwhile insight.

Ummm... OK?  So you think internetz 40K Tough Guys aren't really all that tough.  This is new?

We continue on this thread, but stumble back to sanity in the next paragraph:

Following the words of the punditocracy will lead you inexorably to the words competitive 40k player in one shape of form. It is no wonder that the punditocracy had to separate itself from the dreaded word WAAC it could have easily been associated with. So it created the competitive 40k player to shape its emerging religion– all religions must have a name for God’s chosen. That is what makes the words competitive 40k player so special, like a self-generated nickname the punditocracy gave itself an easily recognizable name to define itself. You never hear someone say they are a Fluffy Bunny or Hobbyist with such pride and consideration as the competitive 40k player. Instead the punditocracy divides and conquers on this axiom often drowning out voices that threaten. The punditocracy is for the most part left unchecked, with the refrain from others being, “it is only the Internet and no one listens to it anyway”. It does matter though because every time a new player walks into my local store having thrown hundreds of dollars into what the punditocracy told them was the only way to win my local community has to deal with it. I have to sit there and uneducated them not because I am against competitive players, but because the Internet gave them all the weapons to fight a war, but never trained them how to use them. Not to mention many new players realize too late they were never that player the punditocracy thought they should be.

Yes, internetz pundits are stupid.  I learned that the second I read battle college/PP's boards/an article on BoLS about Warmachine (sorry Gentle_Ben and relasine; you have great advice for new players but aren't offering us vets much).  Yes, its intellectually sexy to talk about being a winner/tactics because it scratches a nice competitive itch.  Yes, most people who do so, particularly in the 40K crowd, talk a big game with zero to back it up (oh hai, Yes the Truth Hurts!).

4Chan: A Truly Inconvenient Truth.

Honestly, who cares though?  Its fun to bust on people who get inflamed to the point of irrationality (both on the I R COMPETITIVE side and the U R NOT HOBBY BUDDY side), but I don't think either opinion is doing disservice to the game.  People are talking about wargaming, people are thinking about wargaming, and if they get bad advice, they start looking elsewhere for more august commentary (or, God forbid, think for themselves).

I was honestly gonna leave this head-scratcher of an article alone, as it has some interesting nuggets of truth mixed in with its potpourri of crazy. Then came this gem of a comment:

nyhilApril 26, 2011 /

I think there is a Graduate study in Sociology in this article somewhere…

Ummm... LOLWUT?

A Winner Is You! - Games Workshop Culture

Welcome to A Winner Is You, a weekly segment on aspects of wargaming culture that are "temporally challenged", as the kids would say.

First up: the culture that Games Workshop has fostered in the wargaming community.  Its no secret that the vast majority of people coming to "the hobby" (side note: that term's ridiculous and deserves its own AWIY segment) have come from Games Workshop.  They have a strong presence in the states with their own shops in malls, their IP is in several popular video games, and their games are extremely easy to play.

Little Billy just got his first taste of SPAYZE MUHREENS and is "totally freaking out, man".

This first experience has a lot of nasty side effects down the road, namely in terms of setting social norms for wargaming.  Namely:

- "I play my army based upon its background..." - I get it, I get it... back in the days of yore Warhammer was essentially an RPG product that morphed into the board-game/RPG hybrid that we know today.  Like a lot of RPGs, Warhammer (and its cousin with 39,999 more hammers) gave players a large amount of freedom in how they played their armies.  Granted, the possibility to have "broken" armies existed, but like... that's not roleplaying, man.

Fast forward to today: Warhammer (and 4.0 X 10 ^5 Moarhammerz) aren't RPGs anymore.  Yet the notion that "Well, you really shouldn't play something broken..." still exists.  The problem is, "something broken" is all in the eye of the beholder.  Which brings us to...

- "... and if you don't, you're a POWAH GAMER!!!" - Agreeing to a set of house rules is all well and good, until you try to take your rules of your house. 

For a myriad of reasons, there comes a point where you play people outside of our immediate play group - be it a tournament, a convention, or just to mix things up.  When the stranger your playing pulls out some combination that's contrary to your house rules, all hell can break loose.  And by "loose", I mean dribble out in passive-aggressive torrents.

Bob tried to play a counts-as army with a new gaming group.  Poor, poor Bob.

Since this is a bit of grey area (there's no actual rules governing this), and since most wargamers have the social grace of a toddler, this is usual resolved as passive-aggressively as possible ("Oh, I guess you could do that..."). 

Granted, given GW's "stellar" game design, this could be a completely legitimate complaint (Exhibit A - Teclis) in one of their games.  As someone who principally plays Warmachine, there's nothing I dread more than playing someone who's decided that they are the anointed arbiter of Privateer Press' canon and MUST let me know that my army is totally historically inaccurate as the mercenaries in my army were nowhere near each other before 641... blahblahblahblah.  Thanks C.H. Firth, can we roll some dice now?  On that note:

Dating, hygiene, smoking outdoors - None of these could keep Cornelius from his vigil, ensuring that no one would ever suggest playing Night Lords using the new Blood Angles codex without feeling his wrath.

- "Soft scores at tournaments are a great idea!".  On a scale from 1 to 5, this is an awful idea.

I'm fine with trying to get people to paint their models via other means (requiring painting as an eligibility requirement, door prizes for having a painted army), but having your peers rank your painting/army background/sportsmanship just doesn't work.  Like communism or a 3-way, sounds great in theory but never works in practice.

What soft scores quickly become is a new social way to win.  Play your friends, rank each other high (but give them slightly worse scores than yourself) and rank anyone who beats you in an actual game low.  Yay, a day of "Let's play a glorified board game" became "Let's politic to douche our way into a paltry prize".  Really, it says something about the average wargamer (also the subject of an upcoming AWIY) when getting their egos off by chipmunking people comes before actually playing the game.  But hey, as long as their carefully skewed view of canon isn't violated and you didn't have the temerity to put an unpainted model on the table, the world has their permission to continue spinning.

"You dare beat me?!?!  Sportsmanship score of -3,000!!!"

Its a shame this sort of behavior continues to go on, especially with an increasingly grey wargaming fan base (because really, who else has the disposable income?).  Looking at the comments section of Bell of Lost Souls (Poor, poor Goatboy) or some of the drivel on Dakka Dakka!, this crap continues to perpetuate itself because its "wargaming culture".  No.  Stop.  Bad fatties.  No donut.

Here's a gem from Dakka, taken from a thread regarding whether it was "OK" (side note: never ask the Internet is something is socially acceptable.  Have you seen what goes on here?) to use his blue SPAYZE MUHREENS as red SPAYZE MUHREENS.  chaos0xomega chimes in with this gem:

... In fact, why care about models at all right? Its not part of the hobby or anything, they are just markers for use with the rules. Maybe I should just start using little wooden mannequin dollies instead of actual models. That way I can play them as Grey Knights/Blood Angels/Space Wolves/Black Templars/Dark Angels/Ultramarines/Eldar/Tau/Necrons/Dark Eldar/Orks/Fantasy Empire/Fantasy Ogres/Fantasy Skaven, etc. etc. etc.

The minis, their paint scheme, and their interaction with the rules are important aspects of the hobby. , you're re-enacting battles that might occur in a fantasy setting that took years of thought (and plagiarism!) to create. Space Wolves and Blood Angels don't oprerate and fight the same way. There is a reason they look different, there is a reason they have different rules. Its more than just a difference in paint scheme, etc. You're doing the fluff a disservice every time you codex hop. I'm a bit more forgiving if its a custom chapter, I mean, really they can be whatever the hell you want, but I have a limit to how far I can suspend disbelief.

Emphasis mine.  Yes, God (sorry... "Emprah") forbid someone want to play with their overpriced plastic models using different rules.  You aren't just playing a game, man.  This is serious, like Tron only not remotely at all.

Bravo, chaos0xomega, you've saved the sanctity of Moarhammerz fictional background.  Maybe you'll get sucked into that world someday and get a girlfriend.  Until then, don't quit your day job.