Defining Cheesy

[BlackSheep]

I think that it's unfortunate that you now have to plan your whole list against one army rather than design a balanced list and do well. For example, armies such as High Elves and Vampire Counts are very hard to deal with unless you make a list specificaly for them. Then what? You may do well against other lists, and you may not. On the other hand, I don't think that armies that speak to their strong suits are neccessarily cheesy, but I do think there are cheesy army lists and strategies, but they can always be beaten. I simply find it sad that you have to make an anti-list to deal with them.

[BFGMidwesternPrisoner]

Originally Posted by 2000AD

The following post is inspired heavily by one of the most quoted proponents of competative gaming, Dave Sirlin (Link to his website)
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There'll allways be people whose aim is to win and at the opposite end of the scale are the people who just play for the sake of the hobby. Most of the time they're happy playing no matter what. The people playing for the sake of playing just enjoy the experience, while the players playing to win take joy from either winning, a hard fought equal game or a valuable learning experience showing what they need to improve.

The annoying players are those that lie around the half way mark that want to win, but will call any tactic they don't like 'cheap', 'cheasy', 'beardy' or whatever word they want to use. They'll moan and whine about how they only lost because the opponent was cheap and how they didn't play to the spirit of their army, but what they can't accept is that, more often than not, the player that plays to win is often the better player.

Warhammer is a game. It knows no defination of fair or unfair, cheesy or uncheesy, beyond the one simple black or white boundary:
Obeying the rules or breaking the Rules.
As long as the rules are obeyed then anything goes. The person playing to win will use any means necessary as long as it falls within the rules of the game. The person who cries cheesy builds his own set of rules on top of that and limits what he can do.

Chances are a few months later a tactic that was once called cheesy will be easy to beat, but the player who declared it cheesy will still lose to it because rather than try and think of a way to counter it he just called it 'cheap' and tried to take some percieved morale high ground. Meanwhile the players playing to win have probably found more strategies that take the game to a higher level, beyond the old tactic, and which will no doubt still elicit calls of 'cheesy' from the so called 'non-beardy' players.

One group of players are constantly learning and improving, another is stagnent and makes excuses for why it loses.
Which are really the better players?


If you want to play just to have fun then you're going to have to do one of 2 things:
- Find other people like yourself and play them.
Or
- Accept that if you play someone who plays to win then you'll probably lose. Don't whine about beardyness, just try and have fun, even if you're getting massacred.

WELL SAID.


I will admit, sometimes power creep seems cheesy (IE ASF on HE, etc)... BUT keep in mind
1.) At any given point someone is always the nice new book, and someone is the oldest crap book. So it's cheese, but it's cheese on one of those diner wheels that rotates around so every patron gets a slice sooner or later.
2.) That's GW's deal. It doesn't make a PLAYER cheesy for playing with something GW made and they're just using fair and square. I might blame GW, I'd never blame the player, anymore then you'd blame a soccer or basketball player who had nicer shoes, or a (American) football player with better pads on his team.


In all honesty though, Warhammer has always been more a game for fun miniature use then a realistic game meant for fair competition. It's more figure skating then soccer. More interprative dance then boxing. If you want to play a truly fair and even game, play chess. Or play any of the miriad number of computer games out there that are strategic in nature (and actively patched for side balance monthly by their companies).


Warhammer and the GW lines are best viewed as fun first, and accurate measures of competative skill second. As such calling anyone playing something fair cheesy is like calling a figure skater cheesy because they did an unconventional but legal trick. It's not the same as a boxer slipping a chunk of iron into his glove.

[Nikblade2005]

My opinion is this;

Players who accuse other players of being cheesey are cheesey.

-Nik

[TheCuttingEdge]

Truthfully, the only people that could be defined as cheesy in my opinion are the ones that take no joy in playing the game, win or lose. You feel like you're not even playing a human being. They don't even make small talk beyond conveying rules or actions to you. Although i will quote a player who's army was featured in the White Dwarf a few months back, he also happens to work for GW:

"There's no point in playing the game if you're not at least trying to win it, and leaving out units because they're too "cheesy" isnt always in line with the character of your army. Play to the strengths of your army! That's not to say win at all cost, though. I'd much rather lose a close game than totally destroy my opponent. When I write up an army list, it's always after i've read through the background. This gives me an idea about what the army is all about and how each of the units is suppoed to work in a game. More importantly though, it gives me ideas about how I can transfer all that theme and character into how i paint or convert the models in the army. Also, any models that are so awesome I must paint them go in the army, regardless of how good they are in the game."

I wholly agree with this. My Wood Elves are based on the concept of the shadow fey. Coeddil the Treeman ancient, gripped by madness from exposure to Morghur leads the army. I painted darker greens for them (Orkhide, Catachan). I have 2 spellsingers which fluff fine, as it says that the forest spirits of the Wild wood deeply covet the ability of the spellsingers. One of the spellsingers is a converted brettonian damsel, as in the wood elf background there is a mention of the Wild Hunt overrunning a Brettonian settlement accidentally, with all being slaughtered save for the duke's daughter, who was spirited away to the forest by dryads.

No matter what, i always find a way to humor what is happening in the game, and i suppose thats why my games are always great. But ultimately it comes down to your opponent. If they don't care about the fun, dont expect a fun game and massacre the CR@P outta them for their horrible attitude.

[NecroNid]

In my opinion "cheese" is cried in two instances. One is opponents that have different opinions about how the game should be played. When two people that just want to have fun meet they don't care about army lists and play anything. No Cheese. When two people that play WAAC(win at any cost) face off against each other they don't cry cheese because they are both playing hard core lists. "Cheese" occurs when the non-hardcore player meets the WAAC player. This is because one player wants to have a good time and the other wants to win, period. Usually the WAAC player will stomp the other leading to bad feelings between the two.
The other instance is what we call the WB player(Whiny B****). This player will scream "Cheese" whenever your units beat his, especially his "pet" unit/character, or pretty much whenever he doesn't win. The best defense against this player is to simply not play him. I know it can be difficult when you are at a store or club with players you don't know but I would recommend playing the game, chalking it up to experience, and refusing to play the WB player again until they grow up a bit.

[Sir Theobold the Lame]

That rock, paper, scissors quote is genius.

I dont like it when people tailor their lists against specific opponents, to me that smacks of gamesmanship, but at the end of the day if a list is legal then its fine by me. I play games for a challenge so its all good.

[HappyJim]

Originally Posted by 2000AD

The annoying players are those that lie around the half way mark that want to win, but will call any tactic they don't like 'cheap', 'cheasy', 'beardy' or whatever word they want to use. They'll moan and whine about how they only lost because the opponent was cheap and how they didn't play to the spirit of their army, but what they can't accept is that, more often than not, the player that plays to win is often the better player.

Cant agree with this one, i think the annoying players are the ones that slap down half their points in a single model and brag about how great they are at playing warhammer, these are what i call the MDTG players. Now i dont pretend that players dont call cheese whenever a unit is used they dont like because these people do exsist, i know i guy i used to play did this regularly, i think a best time was when my exalted daemon was called cheesy because it was a flying terror causer (i was playing TK..) yet in another game the guy turns up another time with totally tailored skaven list (at his omission). This guy really was a waac player, so this in my experience it was never the middle group that caused the problems, it was always the top, its a rare thing for me to call beard these days, i just make a note not to play people that share my views on the game.

Warhammer is a game. It knows no defination of fair or unfair, cheesy or uncheesy, beyond the one simple black or white boundary:
Obeying the rules or breaking the Rules.
As long as the rules are obeyed then anything goes. The person playing to win will use any means necessary as long as it falls within the rules of the game. The person who cries cheesy builds his own set of rules on top of that and limits what he can do.

This is usually something said by a person who confuses warhammer with Yahtzee, these players will want rules of social behavior obeyed yet are these really rules in warhammer? Of course! are they written, of course not, really isnt WAAC just a form of bad social behaviour?

Chances are a few months later a tactic that was once called cheesy will be easy to beat, but the player who declared it cheesy will still lose to it because rather than try and think of a way to counter it he just called it 'cheap' and tried to take some percieved morale high ground. Meanwhile the players playing to win have probably found more strategies that take the game to a higher level, beyond the old tactic, and which will no doubt still elicit calls of 'cheesy' from the so called 'non-beardy' players.

Do not WAAC players do the same, do they not claim they have the moral high ground because it dosnt say you cant do this? Really as i said with social behavoiur within a game isnt this just something that players expect from a game. Really people only obey the social code that suits them, isnt this really the bottom line.

One group of players are constantly learning and improving, another is stagnent and makes excuses for why it loses.
Which are really the better players?

This is just arrogance at its height, the problem here is that it sets one player better than the other, clearly one is not better than the other and really this type of attitude is what creates half the problems. For personally i found WAAC abit like perberty, some people just finish before others.

If you want to play just to have fun then you're going to have to do one of 2 things:
- Find other people like yourself and play them.
Or
- Accept that if you play someone who plays to win then you'll probably lose. Don't whine about beardyness, just try and have fun, even if you're getting massacred.

The thing is that warhammer isnt a spot, it is just a game, i cant think of games such as risk that are ever taken as seriously as warhammer. Now i personally hate 40k but this is a example or truth growth of WAAC players, i have two dwarf gunline players in my local GW, no the funny thing is they both player 40k which they claim is more tactical, one uses a Imperial guard tank company, one uses a orc army with lots of tanks, i dont know about you but i dont see the growth in playing style. Perhaps the problem is that so many people dont get fanatsy and play it likes its 40k?

[2000AD]

Originally Posted by HappyJim

Cant agree with this one, i think the annoying players are the ones that slap down half their points in a single model and brag about how great they are at playing warhammer, these are what i call the MDTG players.

Yeah, they're annoying, but they're a different kind of annoying to what I was trying to illustrate.

Now i dont pretend that players dont call cheese whenever a unit is used they dont like because these people do exsist, i know i guy i used to play did this regularly, i think a best time was when my exalted daemon was called cheesy because it was a flying terror causer (i was playing TK..) yet in another game the guy turns up another time with totally tailored skaven list (at his omission). This guy really was a waac player, so this in my experience it was never the middle group that caused the problems, it was always the top, its a rare thing for me to call beard these days, i just make a note not to play people that share my views on the game.

I'm guessing WAAC means Win At All Costs, right?
This is more like the kinda player i was trying to illustrate, the player that wants to win, but will hinder themselves by being unwilling to use viable tactics because they think they're 'beard/cheap/etc.' and assume that their own decisions on what's 'beard/cheap/etc.' will apply to everyone.

This is usually something said by a person who confuses warhammer with Yahtzee, these players will want rules of social behavior obeyed yet are these really rules in warhammer? Of course! are they written, of course not, really isnt WAAC just a form of bad social behaviour?

Well technically rules of social behaviour are outside the purview of Warhammer. They are decided by the location where the game is played and vary from place to place, so as a wide reaching game trying to include such social rules in Warhammer is an exercise in futility.
Is playing to win bad social behaviour? Frankly no, and to suggest so is ridicolous. Warhammer is a game, and as such winning is a fundamental part of playing it. Is trying to run the fastest in a race bad behaviour? Is trying to tactically outclass the opposing team in a football match bad behaviour?
If you're a football manager and you say playing strikers is 'cheap' and you refuse to use them, then you'd be laughed at. So why is Warhammer any different?

Do not WAAC players do the same, do they not claim they have the moral high ground because it dosnt say you cant do this?

Not really, as for most WAAC players moral high ground is irrelevant. They're playing to use win and if the rules say they can do something then they do it.
If in a bizzare world the Olympics allowed performance enhancing drugs to be used, then no doubt the the ones that didn't use drugs would say they had the moral high ground over those that did. Chances are though that the drug users would be the winners and no amount of moral debate is going to change that. They played with the same rules the non-drug users did, that's all the morality that enters into it.

Really as i said with social behavoiur within a game isnt this just something that players expect from a game. Really people only obey the social code that suits them, isnt this really the bottom line.

Kinda. Going back to the scale of [Play to have fun-----Play to win] I was using earlier, again it's the people in the middle causing the problem IMO. The people playing for fun and the people playing to win will not cause much comment on their opponents playing style. The people in the middle however, by callling their opponents cheap/beard/etc are trying to force their own opinion on the opposing player, they're assuming everyone should follow their own 'moral high ground' in addition to the rules of the game.

This is just arrogance at its height, the problem here is that it sets one player better than the other, clearly one is not better than the other and really this type of attitude is what creates half the problems. For personally i found WAAC abit like perberty, some people just finish before others.

Arrogant it may be, I wont try to debate that. What I will say is IMO it's the truth.
Take a group of players who solely play to win and a group of players who want to win but will cry beard at stuff they don't like. Restrict them to just playing against their own group for a year and then put the two groups together to play each other. The result is almost a foregone conclusion, the WAAC group will massacre the "cry beard" group.
And that's because during the year the 'cry beard' group were putting up their own fences to hinder their developement as players, the WAAC were exploring the game, experimenting, trying the unknown, finding counters to supposably 'unbeatable' tactics/armies, they looked at what was 'beard' and instead of refusing to use or play against it, they found out how to beat it.
They're going to be using tactics and armies the 'cry beard' group never even considered and no matter how much bleating the "cry beard" group does about 'cheese' or 'we have the moral high ground' it wont change that they got beat by the better players.

The thing is that warhammer isnt a spot, it is just a game, i cant think of games such as risk that are ever taken as seriously as warhammer.

Well I can't remember there ever being a Grand Tournament of Risk. Maybe if there were serious competative tournaments we'd see more serious Risk players.

Now i personally hate 40k but this is a example or truth growth of WAAC players, i have two dwarf gunline players in my local GW, no the funny thing is they both player 40k which they claim is more tactical, one uses a Imperial guard tank company, one uses a orc army with lots of tanks, i dont know about you but i dont see the growth in playing style. Perhaps the problem is that so many people dont get fanatsy and play it likes its 40k?

There's no denying there's not much difference in style there. However if that's a style that they can win the majority of their games with then there's not much pressure on them to change their style.
However the beauty of Warhammer is that with the infinate variety between armies and regular changes in army rules, it probably wont be long till someone figures out a way to beat those armies. And when that happens you'll have the true test for a player.
Someone playing just for fun will accept defeat, but probably continue playing the same army the same way because that's how they like it, and that's fine because as long as they have fun their goal is met.
Someone who plays to win will now have the challenge of figuring out how to beat the new army and that's what someone of the WAAC mentality enjoys: A challenge.
Someone who cries 'cheap/beard/etc.' is just making an excuse to try and sooth their ego. They wont accept they got beat fair and square and as such will dismiss it. They wont change, they wont improve, but they'll continue to think that they are playing to win, in their mind they'll think they're better than the player that beat them. The very 'rules' they devised and adhere to will hold them back from being the player they think they are.


--------------------


In addition I'd like to point out something not brought up in my previous posts.
The very best WAAC players are the ones that also play some games just to have fun as well. (again this is inspired by the articles by Dave Sirlin)
In a quick summation of the linked article the main reasons why WAAC players will also play just for fun are:
- Research. If you only ever play the safe option you'll never know if it's worth taking the risk at the right time. Likewise if you dedicate yourself to playing one way you might never find out there's a better way to be playing. Playing just for fun allows you to test new ideas in an environment where there's no risk.

- Limited local player pool. Sure, in your area you might be a class above everyone else, but if you constantly demolish everyone then that's going to wear down even the most adamant 'just for fun' player. If the only options available to you are:
A.) demolish everyone once and then no one wants to play you again
or
B.) play for fun and keep playing week in and week out, bring out the big guns only when needed.
then obviously B.) is the only real option.

[HappyJim]

Originally Posted by 2000AD

Yeah, they're annoying, but they're a different kind of annoying to what I was trying to illustrate.

I'm guessing WAAC means Win At All Costs, right?
This is more like the kinda player i was trying to illustrate, the player that wants to win, but will hinder themselves by being unwilling to use viable tactics because they think they're 'beard/cheap/etc.' and assume that their own decisions on what's 'beard/cheap/etc.' will apply to everyone.

A waac player wouldnt limit himself by a list, that is restricting your chances of winning, a waac player is the type who going to show up with karl franz on dragon with a few stanks. You are getting the two confused, i personally wouldnt use certain armylists for the pure reason i dont enjoy using them, yes i am limiting myself tactically, but i do this so i can enjoy a game of warhammer.

Well technically rules of social behaviour are outside the purview of Warhammer. They are decided by the location where the game is played and vary from place to place, so as a wide reaching game trying to include such social rules in Warhammer is an exercise in futility.
Is playing to win bad social behaviour? Frankly no, and to suggest so is ridicolous. Warhammer is a game, and as such winning is a fundamental part of playing it. Is trying to run the fastest in a race bad behaviour? Is trying to tactically outclass the opposing team in a football match bad behaviour?
If you're a football manager and you say playing strikers is 'cheap' and you refuse to use them, then you'd be laughed at. So why is Warhammer any different?

Problem is you cant compare warhammer to a game of football, difference is football in say the champions league pays decent money, you paid to win, sorry but when was the last time you got paid to play warhammer. Frankly i cant agree here, clearly it isnt good social behaviour to turn up to someones house minus beer and slap down the most powerful army unless this is the style of play agreed upon. Your getting optimzied lists confused with power gaming which is the huge problem, their is nothing wrong with say bringing a bret army full of knights to a game, its the more extreme builds that create issue.

At the end of the day, what is the point in winning if you had no fun?

Not really, as for most WAAC players moral high ground is irrelevant. They're playing to use win and if the rules say they can do something then they do it.
If in a bizzare world the Olympics allowed performance enhancing drugs to be used, then no doubt the the ones that didn't use drugs would say they had the moral high ground over those that did. Chances are though that the drug users would be the winners and no amount of moral debate is going to change that. They played with the same rules the non-drug users did, that's all the morality that enters into it.

the thing is, this whole posts seems to come from a waac player who just dosnt know he is one, clearly the idea here is that playing to win gives you the moral high ground? please again we compare to sport, warhammer isnt a sport, nor is RISK. I do find the anaogly to drug using to WAAC, its pretty amusing, not far from the truth, indeed, the idea that people need something else win rather than natrual abilty suggest that weak players will play in this mannor.

Kinda. Going back to the scale of [Play to have fun-----Play to win] I was using earlier, again it's the people in the middle causing the problem IMO. The people playing for fun and the people playing to win will not cause much comment on their opponents playing style. The people in the middle however, by callling their opponents cheap/beard/etc are trying to force their own opinion on the opposing player, they're assuming everyone should follow their own 'moral high ground' in addition to the rules of the game.

Your scale is flawed, clearly its not the players in the middle, its players at the top making unfounded and rather arrogant comments on how people play warhammer, my only reason for posting here is defend the way i play warhammer, whats yours exactly? moral hogh ground. Maybe im lucky because i have only meet one person who makes such cheap shots, its not a term generally used .

Arrogant it may be, I wont try to debate that. What I will say is IMO it's the truth.
Take a group of players who solely play to win and a group of players who want to win but will cry beard at stuff they don't like. Restrict them to just playing against their own group for a year and then put the two groups together to play each other. The result is almost a foregone conclusion, the WAAC group will massacre the "cry beard" group.
And that's because during the year the 'cry beard' group were putting up their own fences to hinder their developement as players, the WAAC were exploring the game, experimenting, trying the unknown, finding counters to supposably 'unbeatable' tactics/armies, they looked at what was 'beard' and instead of refusing to use or play against it, they found out how to beat it.
They're going to be using tactics and armies the 'cry beard' group never even considered and no matter how much bleating the "cry beard" group does about 'cheese' or 'we have the moral high ground' it wont change that they got beat by the better players.

Wishful thinking more like, compeletly unfounded more like, its these kind of comments that get me, the problem is people think because they have basic maths skill they are a great player, they clearly are not. Again your cofused as to what a WAAC player is, the term is pretty simple, i cant understand the confusion. I think before this part of the post i actually had a willingness to listen to your opinion and discuss it, obviously your to up your own arse.

Well I can't remember there ever being a Grand Tournament of Risk. Maybe if there were serious competative tournaments we'd see more serious Risk players.

Yeah good one, atleast i made a comparsion to a social game rather than a sport, the most funny thing is your pay for a GT, you get paid to play sports

There's no denying there's not much difference in style there. However if that's a style that they can win the majority of their games with then there's not much pressure on them to change their style.

Maybe i must be a competitive player then because i win most of my games, but im not i just enjoy playing, its funny that if i enjoy playing warhammer i cant be as good as waac player.

However the beauty of Warhammer is that with the infinate variety between armies and regular changes in army rules, it probably wont be long till someone figures out a way to beat those armies. And when that happens you'll have the true test for a player.
Someone playing just for fun will accept defeat, but probably continue playing the same army the same way because that's how they like it, and that's fine because as long as they have fun their goal is met.

Yeah this is true to a point, still i wouldnt class your averege GT army as a test of my skill, nor is list tailoring, this is just a test of common sense, reading and maths. At the end of the day if i wanted to face that style of army i would go to the GT's. The problem is many of these type of one phase wonder lists tend to either win big or lose big

Someone who plays to win will now have the challenge of figuring out how to beat the new army and that's what someone of the WAAC mentality enjoys: A challenge.
Someone who cries 'cheap/beard/etc.' is just making an excuse to try and sooth their ego. They wont accept they got beat fair and square and as such will dismiss it. They wont change, they wont improve, but they'll continue to think that they are playing to win, in their mind they'll think they're better than the player that beat them. The very 'rules' they devised and adhere to will hold them back from being the player they think they are.

Their are challenges i just see as pointless, as i said before, when i was younger i played to win, taking the best of the best units/characters/combos, now, speaking as someone who played on both sides of line i can personally say using things like BT, dragons, etc never makes for a good game, one will come out on top and the destroy the other army (because of huge points sink), same as against a army not prepared.

You may think that "playing to win is different" to "WAAC" all costs, it really isnt, i just wish people would stop hiding behind im a competitive player, taking no brainer choices makes you a better person/player than me, i dont think so.

[frozencore]

In my gaming group we have a distinction between win at all cost and cheesy.

Trying to win at all cost by finding a rules exploit or such is considered beardy.

Cheesy is another term entirely. Cheesy for us means that someone's list can essentially play itself. A cheesy list is one that takes no skill to play.

Generalship is the key there. If your opponent pulls off a crazy maneuver you have never seen before out of skill and practice I would be fine with it. In fact something like that would be great because I would have learned something from the game. A tooled up rock/paper/scissors army that takes no skill is what we frown upon.