S4E33 - Bad Tournament Etiquette (with Andrew & Bazuso)

Well, thanks, guys, for having me back.

Excited to be on the show again.

I think for me, like, [clears throat] I view this game as kind of like poker.

Like, if anybody plays poker, right, there's, like, math to it.

There's an element of, like, mental gymnastics that you're doing.

You're trying to put yourself in the mind of your opponent.

You're trying to figure out how they're reading you and, and what you're gonna be doing.

And I ask the question because different things make different people kind of tick, and I think there's, like, kind of a right way to play a competitive game so that both people can leave the game feeling, you know, generally satisfied and like they had a good gaming experience.

And just, you know, you go to these events, and you talk to people, and you hear stories about things that happen in games, and there's always a lot of kind of head-scratchers that pop up.

And so I just figured I'd ask the question, like, what are some of the either oddest behavior, um, or kind of maybe unsportsmanlike behavior that you've seen in games? And people had, I think, like, pretty varied answers.

I thought of a couple after sending the message, so I can kind of kick us off.

But I think one of the things that it happens all the time, even at high-level play, is just mistracking of resources.

And even at top tables, like, I've seen people, it's like, "Oh, I'm gonna call a heroic move with the Witch King." And then it's like a 10-minute debate between you and your opponent on, "Well, you can't do that.

Witch King's out of might." Look, it can get complicated, right? There's times where it's like, "Oh, I'm gonna call a move." You change your mind, so maybe somebody's, like, marked off a might, and then you gotta add it back.

Like, there are some times where it's kind of honest mistakes.

But, you know, I don't see it with Fate very often, because I feel like Fate, you're usually...

Some heroes only have one, or if you have three, you're kind of rolling all of it sometimes.

So doesn't seem to be an issue there.

But, like, Will, if you're in, you know, going against a magic list, I've seen that get mistracked.

And I think might's the biggest one.

I think a hero like Aragorn with the free might gets miscalculated, like, more than any other hero in my experience.

Because it's like, "Oh, I'm gonna use the free might to call the move to start the turn.

Oh, I'm gonna use the free might to call a combat or call a strike." And I, I think it's sometimes just kind of an honest mistake, but I'll call that out as, like, a specific issue.

And, you know, for me as an opponent, I write everything down, right? And I'm confident that I'm basically tracking my stats and my opponent's stats at all times.

And so to have to stop my competitive, like, brain from thinking about my next one, two, three, four moves to, like, convince somebody that they're wrong on tracking the stats, it's just really frustrating.