On Good Sportsiness

I’ve been musing a lot about sportsiness lately in response to the CounterCharge episode on the same subject.  With the U.S. Masters just having wrapped, I felt it was time to take advantage of my (seldom used) platform at Dash28 to provide my take on what is and isn’t a good sport.

As is often the case with hard-to-define concepts, who is a good sport or bad sport comes down to some version of the famous legal maxim regarding pornography “I know it when I see it”.  The issue with that test is that because it is ultimately subjective and inextricably linked with your personal feelings about the player in question, who is a good sport is wrapped up too deeply with “who do I like?”.  While there may be solid overlap between “who I think is a good sport” and “who are my friends” – the reality is that those circles are not entirely the same in the Venn Diagram of life.  When we think about good sportsiness, we have to try, to the best of our abilities, take out the consideration of who is a “good person/friend/compadre etc.”.

Being a good sport has a lot of correlation to etiquette – so, because I can, I think it’s useful to discuss the history of etiquette – particularly the American version pioneered by Emily Post in the 1920s.  The 1920s, while being the era of robber barons, also represented an upheaval of society – more and more people of different levels of socio-economic status were rising in society, and people were moving from isolated communities to cities full of strangers.  These two trends required “rules” of engagement – both to educate the new era of social climbers who weren’t born into the upper crust and to help the increasing city population manage interactions with strangers.  To that end, Emily Post created a series of rules – do this, don’t do that – as a guide to existing in this new society.

Why in Pannithor, you ask, am I writing about this related to being a good gamer?  Well, it’s not just that I am a pedant, but because I figured it was time to talk about the “rules” of being a “sportsy” player of Kings of War even in the most competitive environments.  I present to you the totally unenforceable and potentially controversial Rules on Sportsiness in Kings of War.

General Thoughts

Before getting into the specific rules, it’s important to consider why do we play this game?  Some play to relax, spend time with friends, show off their hobby, and some play to win.  The point of the Rules of Sportsiness is to have some commonly accepted maxims to ensure that no matter your goal when you play Kings of War (and mine is definitively to win), we all treat each other with respect and empathy.  

As important as why we play the game, we must ask ourselves, how do you want to win?  As I’ve already admitted, I largely play Kings of War to win – I love all my fellow hobby friends, and the community, but I can’t say with certainty that I would play Kings of War if I lost more games than I won.  I know that sounds hubristic, and I recognize that maybe it’s not the most flattering of realities, but I do think that admission gives me some credibility in saying that you can have winning as a primary desire and care deeply about sportsiness and giving your opponent a “good and fair” game.  In fact, I have found repeatedly that the best sportsiness players in our community are often the best players – which to me comes down to a shared understanding of the “right” answer to “how you want to win”. 

And that answer is, I want to win (or lose) knowing that my opponent played their very best game, made every move or action they intended, and, as best I can manage, agreed with every move and action I made. 

Notably, my aim has nothing to do with being the friendliest or funniest guy at the table, and while some may think (rightfully so) that jokes and jibes go into sportsiness, to me, the fundamentals of the Rules of Sportsiness have nothing to do with back-slapping and good conversation (you can look to Dale Carnegie or Emily Post for that), but rather to “playing the game right”. 

Without further ado, lets get into some of the Rules:

Always State Your Intention

This is the basic principle of good sportsiness – clear and open communication about what you want to accomplish (“I want to be 18” away from X”; “I want to move Y to be able to see X to shoot”).  You don’t have to explain why you are doing something and give away strategy, but tell your opponent what you doing as a matter of course.  This maxim, above all others, is usually why I’ve found some of the best players naturally follow the Rules of Sportsiness.  The better you can anticipate your opponent’s intentions, the easier it is to identify and agree to them up front.

Always Abide By Agreements Over Intention

As a corollary to the above rule, if your opponent says, “I am moving X to be outside of 18” of Y”, and you agree, but on your turn, X is within 18” of Y – you stand by your agreement.  The players should fix the movement to make X 18” outside of Y to confirm your agreement, but you should never…ever…decide to take an action where you previously agreed it was impossible.

This may lead to situations where you have to slightly change a facing or position outside of turn order, or even allow a charge or surge with some nudging that would otherwise not work, but if you disagree that a move is legal, the time to discuss is when the move is made – once you agree that it is legal, you must abide by your word – even if both players missed something that makes it illegal.  If this strikes you wrong, you can, when circumstances allow, go back to the point where your opponent was making the initial decision and allow them to change it – but this is often impossible as too many factors have changed since the initial decision.

This fortifies the importance of Rule 1 – if you intend to do something, but don’t tell your opponent, then what you intend doesn’t work for whatever reason…you are rightfully SOL.

Always Answer Your Opponents Questions Fully and Completely…to a Point

Consider:

Player 1: “Am I out of 16” here”

Player 2: “Yes”.

Next turn:

Player 2: “I have wild charge 1, I am charging X because it is within 17” of Y”

Player 1: “$#&* you”

The proper response from Player 2 is: “Yes, but I have wild charge 1”.  Player 1 was stating an intention to be out of charge range – and even though they didn’t ask the exact question (i.e “am I out of charge range here”), good sportsiness requires you to answer fully and completely because you know what they were asking.

However, there are times where you do not have to reveal strategy in your answer.  Consider:

Player 1: “If I set up here, your unit will be hindered if it charges me right.”

Player 2: “Yes”

Next Turn:

Player 2: “I’m going to move my character here to force my charging unit to edge over and avoid the terrain so it is not hindered.”

Player 1: “Oh, I didn’t see that – nice play.”

I’ve been on both sides of this example – and while there is a fine line from revealing strategy and answering fully and completely, you are not obligated to tell your opponent that a clever position will avoid being hindered, or that they are giving up a flank in their positioning.  You certainly can (and I often do when there is nothing my opponent can do to stop it…), but the basic Rules of Sportsiness do not require it.

Allow Your Opponent to Act Out of Phase to Perform Obvious Actions

Examples:

Player 1: “Ok, moving my mage over here to cast bane chant on Z (the obvious target)”

Player 1: “Ok moving to combat” *performs combat* “Oh – crap, I forgot to bane chant – do you mind?”

Player 2: “Of course, go ahead.”

*****

Player 2: Forgets to move mage into line of sight of obvious target(s).

Player 2: “Ok – shooting phase.  My warmachine is going to shoot X.  K – that’s 2 damage.  Oh man, I forgot to move my mage 5 inches to be able to see X – do you mind?”

Player 1: “Of course”

There is a limit to this rule however.  While this rule should be imperative for going back one phase, going back multiple phases may not always makes sense, but if an opponent forgot to move a unit towards a token late game, but it was an obvious and uncontested move, you should probably let them do it, even if they didn’t notice until the end of the combat phase.

Agree What a Cocked Die Is Up Front – and Be Consistent.

Everyone plays this differently, so the best plan is to tell your opponent what you do and do it consistently.  If you opponent does something else, you have an early chance to advocate, but in the end, you are only in charge of what you do – not your opponent.

My personal rule (not that you’ve asked) is that all rolls need to be on the table and must be flat enough to balance another die on top.  And – when in doubt, reroll. 

And now a few anti-rules:

“Following the Rules” Is Not a Get-Out-of-Jail Free Card

This is one idea that came out of the CounterCharge episode on good game play that I disagree with.  On the cast, our venerable hosts stated some variation of the following: “If you don’t allow your opponent to do something they forgot to do, there is nothing wrong with that because you are just ‘following the rules’.”

To that I say, respectfully, that if you are hiding behind the “rules” to deny your opponent to undo an obvious error, then while you are technically playing the game “correctly”, you are not showing good sportsiness.  In fact, I’d argue you are showing bad sportsiness.  If we always require perfect application of the rules, arguably, once you move a unit, you cannot go back to undo that – sorry – we play wargame chess and you are stuck.  But – I think we all know we don’t do that – so I caution you that if “following the rules” is a tool you are using to cover up “being a dick” – you are not being a good sport.

Sportsiness is about the Player not the List

This game has winners and losers.  A part of winning and losing is bringing a list that you know how to play and (if you so desire) is the hardest thing on the block.  If, and only if, you are asked the question of whether you would like to play a list again, should list construction go into a tournament sportsiness score.  If it is not asked (and I would argue it shouldn’t be), you should not consider list construction in judging an opponent’s sportsiness.

That’s it for now, I may come back to this at a later date with additional examples, but for now, I welcome your thoughts (and slings and arrows).  Be well my friends, and remember (in your best CounterCharge voice) never…just…follow-the-rules.