1.
Board Game: Bang!
[Average Rating:6.76 Overall Rank:448]
Robert Martin
United States
Atlanta
Georgia
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So we sit down to play a game of Bang at one of these game day events. This one guy sits down grudgingly - not because he wants to play but because he can't stand the thought of not playing a game for more than 10 minutes. The game begins and almost immediately so does the grumbling.
"Why are you shooting at me? That doesn't make any sense! This game has too much luck in it."
The bullets start flying and the guy is the first one killed off. He slams his fist down on the table, says "That's the stupidest game I've ever played" and storms off. Everyone at the table had a good laugh...
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Robert Martin
United States
Atlanta
Georgia
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Another one of these game day events. We sit down to a nice game of Mare Nostrum with some new guy. About halfway into the game he asks me to promise that I won't attack him so he can go invade someone else. I promise. He makes his moves and leaves himself wide open for invasion. I invade.
He turns to me and goes on like a 30 minute tirade about how his personal ethics would never allow him to break a promise like that. And didn't I have any personal ethics and I must be a really dishonest person and how could I live with myself if my word didn't mean anything.
The guy was teetering right on the edge of sanity for a few moments - it was like his whole world vision had been shattered and he was struggling to come to grips with this new reality. Everyone was kind of nervously watching the guy and wondering when the weapon was going to come out but finally he calmed down and we finished the game. I don't remember who won.
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Teh Slipperboy
United States
Allen Park
Michigan
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Our family has a long tradition of Thanksgiving Scrabble. It's a fairly competetive game. My father does crosswords and my brother has a PhD, so they have huge vocabularies. Usually they finish 1-2 and my mom and I duke it out to not be last.
One fateful day my father got to go first. He played a seven letter word and tried to stretch it to go from the starting star to the triple-letter score in the middle right. There are 8 spaces there, so his word wound up one short. He scored quite a few points, anyhow, just over 100 if I recall correctly.
He then spun the board (they have the lazy-susan deluxe Scrabble) to me. I couldn't believe my luck. I not only had a seven letter word, but it had an "S" and I could drop it on the end of his word. I played my word and scored ridiculous points, nearly 200 between the triple score on both our words and the bonus for a 7 letter word.
My father announced that he had played his word in the wrong place and now wanted to move it. I insisted that his turn was over and my play should count. He called me a cheater. I said that if he moved his word, he'd be a cheater. He moved his word and the whole board when he flipped it up into the air.
He left the table. I cleaned up the board angrily then retreated to the basement. Later my mom can down with food because my dad was refusing to eat Thanksgiving dinner with me after being called a cheater.
He didn't speak to me until Christmas Eve. (And no, that's not a record).
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4.
Board Game: Risk
[Average Rating:5.62 Overall Rank:6167]
Geoffrey Engelstein
United States
Bridgewater
New Jersey
Ludology Host
DiceTower Contributor
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Back when my sister and I were around 13 and 15 respectively, we played what became our last family game of Risk.
She was down to just one space and was about to be eliminated. She asked me not to attack her. I refused. She picked up all the dice and left.
We ended there and never played Risk again. I guess that game is officially still in process. Maybe I'll bring some dice up the next time I visit her...
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Kevin McF
United States
Missoula
Montana
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When I first got this game there were a bunch of small hangups keeping us from playing that made it so my wife was asking about it around 9:30 P.M. It had been a long tired day for both of us and I told her that I didn't want to try and explain the rules because either I wouldn't say something clearly or she wouldn't understand and both of us would just get mad. She persisted so I relented and we started picking tiles to put in our trays. When she tried to shuffle them around she said that it must be the dumbest most impossible game ever and that she was going to bed. She spologized the next day and proceeded to kill me the first few times it was played.
I thought of writing a session report, but it would have only been about two lines.
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6.
Board Game: Medina
[Average Rating:7.09 Overall Rank:339]
Malachi Brown
United States
Hermitage
TN
It's turtles all the way down.
“Questions are a burden to others; answers a prison for oneself.”
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At our regular game night one time, a new guy who was passing through town showed up. We'll call him Stan. He was apparently living on a boat and working on sailing around the world... mind you, this happened in Nashville.
Anyway, I had recently picked up a copy of Medina and I was interested in trying it out. We ended up with four players, including myself and Stan. I had read the rules, but none of us had ever played the game before.
On something like the second turn, someone questions the move that Stan just made, wondering if it might put Josh in an overly powerful position.
Stan responds by saying, "Oh, great, I just gave him the game!"
I try to explain that none of us have played before and so we have no way of knowing that, besides, it is only the second turn!
As the game continues, Stan keeps going on and on about how he "gave the game" to Josh.
At the end of the game, I won.
That was odd enough (sometimes players in our group will accuse someone else of "giving the game" to another player as a taunt), but it gets weirder...
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7.
Board Game: Agora
[Average Rating:6.37 Overall Rank:1875]
Malachi Brown
United States
Hermitage
TN
It's turtles all the way down.
“Questions are a burden to others; answers a prison for oneself.”
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After the game of Medina where the game was "given away", three of us, including Stan, sat down to play Agora. Stan and I had not played before, but I had the rules. The other player had played all of once.
A couple of turns into the game, Stan makes a comment that his move has given me the game. I again reject this notion because it is too early to know something like that.
As play progresses I point out that I'm falling behind. Stan actually accuses me of intentionally losing to try to prove him wrong about giving me the game.
I explain to him that I wouldn't do that, and the conversation swells into an arguement where he is adamant that I'm trying to lose just to prove him wrong about making me win.
As it turned out, I believe the other player won, and it was time for everyone to go home. Stan continues to insist that I threw the game to spite him.
We never saw Stan again.
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Malachi Brown
United States
Hermitage
TN
It's turtles all the way down.
“Questions are a burden to others; answers a prison for oneself.”
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The Endor Incident
This is a story where I lost it. Really. I think this was even at my wife's birthday party, where she wanted to play this game.
We sit down to play. I believe we had three 2-player teams.
Things are progessing nicely, and we are maybe a third of the way into the game when my partner and I land on a pie piece space. We are asked a question that is fairly simple and we respond with the answer "the moon of endor".
The player reading the card says that we are wrong because the answer on the card is "endor". They even vote that our answer is incorrect 3 to 1.
At this point I'm getting a little frustrated. I explain that the prior time I played the game we had a very similar question and the answer on the card had been "the moon of endor" and I had only answered "endor". In addition, we were all Star Wars fans and we all knew what the intent of the questions was, but they stood by their rejection of our answer.
I totally flipped out and I spent the next five minutes looking through the cards to find the counter example I had seen before.
After that, the game was aborted. We never played it again.
Maybe I shouldn't get so hung up on something like that, but it really bugged me to be relegated to spending the next 20 minutes landing on "roll again" in the hopes of landing on the same pie piece space we were on due to a stupid, inconsistent technicality.
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Matt Hoskins
United States
OKC
Oklahoma
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When I used to judge M:tg tournaments I saw some pretty terrible behavior. By and large, competitive magic players are normal people with good sportsmanship. The rare exceptions really give a bad name to the rest of the group. At a Pro-Tour qualifier in DFW in 1998 one player made a mistake that cost him the game (he forgot to pay upkeep on a Masticore, which is a very very strong creature in limited play ) The player then picked up his deck, stepped into the corner and hurled his cards into the corner.
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10.
Board Game: Blokus
[Average Rating:7.15 Overall Rank:200]
Richard Cox
Canada
Kingston
Ontario
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Hello:
My name is Punko and I am competitive:
Hi Punko
I have to admit that while playing a New Year's Eve 4 player game of Blokus including my nine year old nephew, I became overly competitive.
Ahh... Oooh...
My sister (playing across from me) started coaching my right hand opponent (my nephew) part way through the game. As she had not blocked all movement by him towards her side of the board, she encouraged him to move to cut me off on my side. she took great pains to evaluate all his moves (on my side of the board) and to logically help him select the best ones. I grew angrier and angrier as my abilities to expand were destroyed.
[i]Yes... I see... >nodding rapt silence spattering of applause and "you can do it Punko" I only wish I could take back that action . . .
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M C
Canada
Lethbridge
Alberta
Trying to think of something witty to put here. Any ideas?
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I was in high school and one of my friends got this game. It was a WWII game with these great minis. This was probably the coolest game I had ever seen. I was so excited to try it out. The problem is that the males in this particular family get REALLY into games and then egos start colliding.
It was me and these four brothers playing. The older two start criticizing the younger players' moves.
"If you go there then HE gets an advantage"
"Why would you attack ME when it's much easier to attack HIM"
and so on...
All the younger kids are too scared to do anything on their own for fear of the older brothers. Soon it's just the two 'super powers' battling it out with their own 'vassal states.' A Cold War develops.
The game descends into cathedral-like silence as these two guys get madder and madder at each other. The kids are playing in fear. I try to make my moves as neutral as possible so as not to ignite the volatile situation into a full scale conflageration. 
I don't even remember if we finished the game or not. One of the older brothers was ready to storm out, determined not to speak to the other older brother ever again.
At this point their father intervenes. He is a trained marriage and family therapist. It was awesome seeing his techniques in action. Everone started out sitting as far as possible from each other with arms folded, glaring across the room at each other. By the end everyone was crying and hugging.
I secretly resolved never EVER to play games with these guys again. This proved to be a major stumbling block for me and boardgames because these were the only guys I knew who were into it. I didn't get into games for ten more years. The funniest thing is that these are two of the nicest guys you would ever want for friends. They'd do anything for each other... except in games like that.
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Jason Farris
United States
Fair Oaks
California
There is a duck in every game. You may not see it, but it's there.
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So, I'm playing Egypt and one of my opponents is playing Carthage. Rather than go for a quick hero, I immediately start building up my defenses as she is an aggressive player. Sure enough, the turn before I'm going for my first hero, she hits my one lightly defended territory and sacks a city. I then threaten to take her out any way possible and she states that it isn't fair and is childish to ruin her chances of winning just because she invaded and sacked my city. I vowed to take her down no matter what the cost. her reasoning was that it prevented me from getting a hero and I shouldn't be upset. My reasoning was that it immediately threw both of us out of contention for the rest of the game. She spent the rest of the game trying to prevent other people from winning, and I spent the rest of it just 2 turns behind the leader. I made a big deal out of it, but only made one attack on her provinces (which was repulsed by my lame die rolls) and let her play king stopper the rest of the game. Rome won because he was ignored. So there's my ballistic threat, which was ultimately just a bluff.
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Chris
United States
Cincinnati
Ohio
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Recounted from my Schadenfreude list: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/3722
"You're playing Kingmaker! God Da** F**king Kingmaker." An actual quote from an opponent in a very long game of ACIV at AvalonCon in the Summer of 1995. He'd been on my nerves all day, and I decided to hurt my own modest position by really screwing him over. It was actually very satisfying, I'm ashamed to say.
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T M
United States
Longview
Texas
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A friend had some dice that just continued to roll poorly for him, so he took one offending die and surrounded it by the rest of the dice. He then lit the offending die on fire and forced the rest of the dice to watch as punishment for offending him. Rumor has it, his dice began rolling better.
This story just kills me. It was originally posted here
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/14667 (see #18)
Kevin Bernatz
(kbernatz)
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Lexingtonian
United States
Unspecified
Massachusetts
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I'm a pretty quiet guy, and always have been. When I was 11 I had this 9-year-old friend who was having a birthday party. All the other kids there were his age. His older brothers had a bunch of games (this was 1979), including Battle-Cry. I went through the rules and explained them, and we started to play. After a while I drew on a rule that would give me a crushing victory, and which I was sure I'd explained, and one of my opponents said that I hadn't explained the rule and that I was cheating. I saw red because this punk was accusing me of cheating to cover his own memory lapse, and I flipped the board and started yelling at him until my friend's mom came into the room.
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mark mellott
United States
Beaverton
Oregon
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Around 15 years ago I had made up a Football boardgame. My brother and two other friends picked players and were all part of one team while I played the opposition all season long. It was basically a dice fest but we all liked it and there was a lot of yelling, cheering and high-fives all game long. So their team does well and makes it through the playoffs and into the Superbowl. After a great 2nd half comeback they were only down 7 points with less then 30 seconds to go. A long pass and touchdown! They were down by only 1 point. Extra Points were just roll a d20, 1-19 is good, a 20 is a miss. My famous last words to Joe, my friend was "Don't roll a 20!". He rolls the die and sure enough..a 20. He picked up the die and ran outside. A minute he came back in and I asked "What did you do?". "I threw that F***ing dice down the street!" To this day we all still make jokes about throwing dice down the street when we roll horribly!
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♪ Isaäc Bickërstaff ♫
United States
Greer
South Carolina
Entropy Seminar:
The results of a five yeer studee ntu the sekund lw uf thurmodynamiks aand itz inevibl fxt hon shewb rt nslpn raq liot.
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My wife loves Rummy games, and this was a game that we played to death a couple of years ago. She routinely won the games, so it wasn't unusual in this particular case that she was about 100 points ahead of me. What was unusual was that this was the first game we had played where we had gone through the draw deck completely and had to reshuffle it.
I had two of the four Robert Louis Stevenson cards in my hand, and I deduced after reshuffling the discard deck that my wife had the other two. She had figured out the same thing, but didn't say anything until we were nearly through the draw deck the second time.
"OK," she said, discarding one of the RLS cards, "I guess one of us is going to have to do this if we're going to end this game."
I stared at the card a moment, then looked at the cards we both had in front of us. I could take the RLS card and go out, but she had enough points in front of her to win the game. If I could hold out for one more hand, though, I just might be able to pull off a win.
I checked the rules, and sure enough, it said that if we went through the draw deck twice, the hand was aborted, no points were scored, and we played a new hand. So instead of taking the RLS card, I drew a new card and discarded another, burying the RLS card.
"What are you doing?" she said. I explained the rule that I had discovered.
"You can't ... you're not supposed to ... that's not right! That's not how you're supposed to play the game!" she said. I tried to defend my decision, but she wasn't much interested in my interpretation of the metagame, much less what the hell a metagame even WAS. She insisted that the rule was there to prevent the game from locking, and that I shouldn't exploit it. We played out the hand, but she didn't have the right cards to form another meld, and were forced to play another hand.
To my wife's credit, she played out the next hand, and won the game. It was a short, brutal affair, and few (if any) words were spoken. She shut me out with a transformation card and vaulted farther into the lead, and then left the table. That was the last time this game has been played.
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18.
Board Game: Rummy
[Average Rating:5.69 Overall Rank:4431]
♪ Isaäc Bickërstaff ♫
United States
Greer
South Carolina
Entropy Seminar:
The results of a five yeer studee ntu the sekund lw uf thurmodynamiks aand itz inevibl fxt hon shewb rt nslpn raq liot.
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To be fair, I should speak of the time that *I* flipped out in a game with my wife.
We play vanilla Rummy a lot, and my wife manages to win nearly every game. I have no idea what her strategy is. She'll sometimes pick up a HUGE number of cards and still manage to go out before me, but when I try to do that, I get stuck with a ton of cards in hand when she goes out. Other times, she only picks up one card at a time, and still manages to score more points than me. I'm mystified, and it frustrates me to no end.
One time, we were playing poolside with my transparent cards (waterproof, donchaknow), and I was growing increasingly frustrated withe my luck. No matter what I tried (see previous paragraph), my wife would go out first, and the score was something like 390 to 5. She went out yet again, when all I had left in my hand was ONE CARD, and I cursed the luck of the draw and slammed the card down on the discard pile. That act was foolish enough, but it was nothing compared to me having to fish the card out of the pool, since it had skipped right off the table between us and landed in the water.
My wife said she wasn't going to play any more with my until I cooled off, and I think my winning response was "Cool?? I'M A FREAKIN' CUCUMBER!!" Of course, I'm waist-deep in a pool as I'm saying this.
Luckily, we HAVE played this a couple more times since then. But she still won't tell me her strategy.
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Ryan W
United States
Reno
Nevada
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Sometime back in the 80s I was on a camping trip with my Mom and some friends. I was maybe 11 years old at the time. Anyway, we start playing Trivial Pursuit, and I land on a pie space. It was orange, which is sports, which I'm generally not very good at. So my mother reads me the question, and I give her this funny look that says "Gee, that's a hard question." So she takes that as a cue and just blurts out the answer, saying "oh you never would have got that." She puts the card away and the turn moves to the next player.
Well, I flip out. I start yelling and ranting about how I would have come up with the answer on my own, and why did she just say it, and I should get another question. I never *said* I wasn't going to answer it. She just assumed I wasn't going to because it was hard. I got so mad, I ran away from the campsite and hung out by a stream in the middle of the forest for a couple of hours.
But here's the catch: I *did* know the answer, because I cheated. I had looked at the answer on the card before-hand, and I was going to act like the question was all tough, but then just pull the answer out of thin air. The reason I was so mad was that my little scheme fell over, but only because my Mom blurted out the answer before I could cheat.
I don't cheat anymore, by the way. Really. I don't.
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Walt
United States
Orange County
California
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I can't believe Diplomacy wasn't first on this list!
So, we had one of those Diplomacy players. The ones who are addicted to stabbing people in the back whether it makes sense or not. Stabbie was playing Germany had just led a grand alliance against the Ottoman Empire. Turkey had gotten reduced to about three supply centers and Stabbie was doing well with around twelve.
I wss playing England, and had gotten some wind about Stabbie's next target: me. I very quietly went around to all the other players, "You know," I pitched, "The real danger is Stabbie, who likes double-crossing way too much. You ought to agree to everything he says, and we can all cut him down to size." Of course, to Germany, I pitched an alliance that would throw my forces off balance so he could stab me more easily.
Blood was in the water.
The GM had gotten wind of the grand alliance, but of course, no one but him really knew what was going to happen--especially me. The GM read my orders first: a direct attack against Germany (Stabbie). Stabbie was delighted: literally jumping up and down in glee thinking the grand alliance would be able to dismantle me in one turn. (And a 6'6" 250 pound [2m 110+kg] guy jumping up and down is something!) Then the GM read Germany's orders, an all out attack on me. After a moment's discomfort at tiny Turkey moving on Germany's rear, the GM started reading the critical orders: France and Russian supported me, and Russia and Italy cut into Stabbie's flanks. He went down to 3 support centers.
He also went off in a huff and refused to play again. It just wasn't fun if he couldn't stab people whenever he wanted!
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Joseph Leonard
United States
McAllen
Texas
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I had the first game of a new Bloodbowl League where another player (new to the game), threw a tantrum after losing. He kept blaming it on my headless lizards! (I'm not a Warhammer nut, and don't care about painted minis or proxy pieces, so long as I can play.)
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Jon W
United States
Aurora
Colorado
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It was in college, around 1991 or so, and I'm playing this with five other guys. We all know each other, some longer than others, but we're all friends. I'm not doing too well, but I manage to persuade ML (who's doing very well) that if he just doesn't attack me this turn (when he might've wiped me out), I'll help him out. There is vociferous objection to this by most of the other players, mostly on the grounds that (a) I had a lot of nukes (though few armies), and (b) I'm not exactly known for being, er, selfless. I pretend to be hurt by these groundless accusations and manage to convince ML not to attack.
My next turn, I nuke two or three of his territories and claim the rest with my armies. He's out. I managed to parlay that betrayal into a win a few turns later thanks almost entirely to his misdirected efforts hurting the other strong player. ML sat there in stunned disbelief for a few minutes while everyone else rolled their eyes, laughed, groaned, etc. Then he lays into me with "you vicious bastard" and "you f***ing lied to me!" sort of stuff. We're all pretty drunk at this point. Anyway, he's furious, and getting moreso by the minute (and bottle). He just felt so...violated. He threatened physical violence (not uncommon for him, but...a bit unnerving) but finally left.
Next day, I head down to his house to patch things up and find out that he and his roommate (also in the game) had been up half the night arguing about the game. ML finally lost it and unleashed all his pent-up rage by smashing his roommate's acoustic guitar against the wall, then storming out to gods know where to sleep it off. I remained friends with him, but I've never since caused another incident involving any smashing of musical instruments, and I confess I'm a little disappointed by that.
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Tim Fiscus
Germany
Landstuhl
Armed Forces Europe (AE)
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I just think that Trivial Pursuit starts this kind of thing by it's very nature. I have a story which, in my group of college buddies, is now known as the "Brad pushed Alex" story.
It took place in an isolated cabin in the Smoky Mountains which my college acapella group (The UNC ClefHangers) had rented for a relaxing weekend. There were a number of "gamers" in the group, and we would often spend much of the vacations enjoying large group games, with one high-stakes-for-money-and-beer Trivial Pursuit game with each section in the group (Tenor I, Tenor II, Baritone, Bass) playing as a team. Alex- the perpetrator - was a Bass. The basses were the most intense of the competitors, having 4 excellent trivia players. The Tenor IIs and the Tenor Is were average to above average, and the baritones... well, they really didn't give a hoot.
Especially Brad. Brad, who always seemed to be high but never was (a goofy, "high on life", infectious smile kind of fellow), greatly enjoyed repeating the questions that were asked in a singy-songy way, emphasising strange words or maybe blurting out semi-sequitur words. Here's an example:
Question Reader: Which contintinent produces the most diamonds?
Brad: (singing) Diamonds are a continent's best freeeeeeind! Iceland and Greenland and ALL-in-between-land!
It was actually kind of endearing and funny, mostly. Except this time, when Brad decided that it would be funny to turn his Broadway-Tourrette's into just throwing out answers to questions. Brad was almost never right.
Alex was not enjoying Brad's little jokey-answers, and asked him (in a "shut up now, dude" kind of way) a few times to pipe down. Brad continued. Alex, growing quite weary, turns his language to a more terse note ("I'm serious, Brad. Shut your *$#&ing mouth!"). Then, comes the Pie Question to the Tenor Is (not Brad's team):
Q: Who was Fred Astaire's famous dance partner?
Brad: (a la Madonna) "Ginger Rogers, Dance On Air!"
Tenors: Um, yeah. We'll go with Brad.
Alex: AAARRRHHHRHHRHH!!!
Brad had unknowingly just blurted out the answer. Alex didn't even twitch. He simply launched himself out of his chair and took Brad out. Alex lost all control, and many of us feared that Brad was going to be killed. At one point, Alex was actually holding Brad over the 2nd-floor balcony as if here were going to drop him, as Brad is shrieking "stop, oh god man are you nuts stop stop!". Eventually, the balance of the group manages to stop Alex the Rampaging Yeti. The atmosphere de-tenses. Then, comes Brad's famous line:
Brad: (while pushing Alex in the back as he is walking away from the scene) "I CAN SAY WHATEVER THE $*$*ING HE** I WANT!"
My memories at this point are vague, but I'm pretty sure that Alex burst into flames.
Anyway, the group eventually put our money in for an "I pushed Alex" T-shirt which Brad wore proudly.
And that's the story.
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24.
Board Game: The Boss
[Average Rating:5.28 Unranked]
Joe Cataudella
United States
New York
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Brooklyn, NY - sometime in the 70's... we were all betwen 13-15 years old. I remember my friend Jack, who was a high tempered Italian, simply threw the chair AT the table after we "fired" him (that was the best part about this game). Everyone became quiet and simply began picking up all the pieces and I said "um, how about a game of stickball instead?".
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25.
Board Game: Ikusa
[Average Rating:7.06 Overall Rank:316]
Wolfgang Kunz
Germany
Wilnsdorf
Wir sind die Woelfe
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I told this story on another Geek-list (It's only a game...) so take this as a proof that there is no make-up:
"... there is the guy that loves to play conflict - games (say, just so, Shogun by MB) and then gets sooooooooo mad when someone dares to attack him that the rest of the game he is cursing and yelling and soooooooooo agressive that everyone tries to get eliminated so that you could leave the game.
And it was HIS copy so we couldn't kick him out and finish the game.
This happened nearly 15 years ago and even if I had often the chance to pick up a copy of Shogun I couldn't because I instantly remembered this MAD guy. >>shudder<< "
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It really strikes me as odd if someone likes conflict - games but reacts in such a way. We heard, that his record on this game was blameless - he never lost a game. After the game I could understand it because I NEVER ever again saw players doing "Harakiri" in attacking one another and leaving their flanks wide open for counterattacking. There was no securing, no fortifying just a "please kill me so that the game is over".
And guess who won? Yep, the owner of the game (Hi Eric), scoring another "blameless"  victory.
I really are not able (after nearly 20 years) to play this game... Any help-groups around?????
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reward for the most entertaining episode. No made up stories though. I will be checking references...
