So what was the biggest mistake you ever made at a "club" game?

[syrinx0]

We are not playing our traditional January big battle at our club for obvious reasons. It did spark some online conversations though about past occurrences. 

This was the first big WWII game I ever played. We had about 20 guys playing on a 12x12 table.  I had been an RPG gamer only recently recruited to game some historical events. It was Stalingrad and my German command was all foot units. Losing track of turns, I moved across an open road and ruble filled area in spite being told not to move before the smoke from our artillery would make it safer.  That is when I learned what a "Katyusha" was and what a battery strike could do.  Three companies died almost to the man with only the commander (me) and his squad surviving all strikes.  There was a political unit that the commander could use to improve moral - he decided to send them after me instead.  Granted I really swung that side of the battle at that point but still...

Thirty nine years later any mention of Stalingrad brings that back up. 

So, what was your most memorable oops in a game?

[Daeothar]

Dutch GW Grand Tournament, back in 2008 or somewhere along those lines. So 5th ed 40K rules were in effect (probably?)

First game of a grueling 2-day tournament: I fielded my all metal Necron army (2nd ed style) against an artillery heavy Imperial Guard player. It was a quadrants scenario, and he had a corner filled with terrain, behind which he had put his Basilisks, pounding away at my poor footslogging robots each turn.

Frustratingly, I could not reach, let alone damage, any of his units. So when my Scarab swarms got the opportunity to set up a charge on one of his flanking tanks, I went for it all out. And this is where I learned to respect the effect of flamer templates on swarms; I had bunched up, in a piece of terrain, my 6 swarm bases right in front of a Hellhound flamethrower tank.

Needless to say, my only attempt at taking the fight to the enemy was a huge, flaming, failure, with all six bases dying a fiery death. The rest of the army got itself pounded into the ground by his 2 or 3 Basilisks, the remnants easily swept aside by his Wild Riders charging cavalry units. My army phased out by turn 4 I believe, having accidentally killed maybe one or two of his cavalry, and only those.

It was the worst, and most one-sided, defeat of my long and tumultuous 40K career.

I was very hampered by the terrain and the type of mission, but truth be told, I had also deployed pretty badly, because I did not know the capabilities of his army, and I actually knew better than to match up my poor Scarabs against his Tank of Flamy Death, but I had been doing the math, and it had become a matter of pride to at least kill something of his before the looming and inevitable phase-out. All or nothing, if you will. Obviously, it turned out to be nothing...

What I took home from this battle? The age old adage of 'Know your enemy' took on a whole new meaning for me, and I ended up reading and scrutinising each and every Codex of every army I could possibly run into.

Which helped. Eventually.

But to this day, this particular battle is remembered among the endless, shiny ranks of my Necron cohorts, as the worst defeat in recorded history (and these guys have many dozens of millions of years worth of that stuff)...

[syrinx0]

When we first started playing 40K (3rd edition?) we gamed on a deep tables with too little terrain. The IG crucified all with the big pie plates.  It was a good week to be IG.  We quickly moved to a standard width table and opponents added infiltrators so it wasn't quite much fun.   

We never were into tournament play but as I recall a lot of our smaller games were one sided affairs due to terrain and or mistakes in placement.  Those often ended quickly and set up was fast so you could get a second chance that night.  No idea how 40K plays now.

[Harry Faversham]

'So what was the biggest mistake you ever made at a "club" game?'

Turning up, I only made that mistake once.

 

[AKULA]

Playing a competition game of WRG Ancients 6th Edition (c20+ years about)

My opponent deployed as far back as possible in one corner...I finally managed to get into contact, charging his elite troops, led by his general in the flank..this was it, he was going to be routed....but no, he reached for his rule book, and sat there for 30 minutes thumbing through for some arcane rule....game timed out...no result.

Never played another competition game after that, or any sort of game against that guy again.

[voltan]

With a WRG ruleset your opponent might still be looking for the rule.

No major mistakes I can think of but I did have a habit of forgetting which version of a ruleset I was supposed to be using.

[Cubs]

  I haven't really played any games as an adult, but as a kid it was usually me against my (much older) brother and of course, he beat me almost every time. Worst stupid mistake? Trying to take on his Dwarf hero Slayer with a unit of Night Goblins (without fanatics) - apparently an insanely high Weapon Skill, plus a weapon in each hand, high initiative (higher than them at least), plus frenzy, makes for a perfect Goblin-scythe (they didn't even get an attack in, the front rank kept being slaughtered before their combat round). Or maybe the one where I chose to stand and fire with my Orc archers against his Empire knights and they disappeared in a wet scrunchy charge (apparently Agincourt is harder to recreate than I thought). Or perhaps the time we played a WW2 game and I went scouting round a corner with a Jagpanzer that got taken out by a hidden 17pdr in turn 1. Or the one where my huge Zulu Impi got itself caught in a crossfire between two firing lines of British infantry and then I was so terrified of the reaction fire to a charge, that I tried to turn them around and run away, only to be whittled away to literally nothing without even trying to get into contact.

  It was then that I realised I was a very poor general and stuck to painting.

[FramFramson]

'So what was the biggest mistake you ever made at a "club" game?'

Turning up, I only made that mistake once.

 

Oh yes! There are certain clubs I've been to where this was very, very much the case.

Unfortunately the one at my Uni had me as a sort of captive audience, so that one had it's hooks in my for about a year and a half. That was a very looooonnnnng mistake.

[syrinx0]

'So what was the biggest mistake you ever made at a "club" game?'

Turning up, I only made that mistake once.

 

You definitely did not have a good club to visit.

[syrinx0]

but no, he reached for his rule book, and sat there for 30 minutes thumbing through for some arcane rule....game timed out...no result.

He never would have made it to 30 minutes in our group.  What a poorly run tournament! Yikes.

[Harry Faversham]

You definitely did not have a good club to visit.

Sheffield and Grimsby Wargames Societies. It's not them, it's me...
can't abide wargamers!!!

[Pijlie]

Planning a "Punic" game to try out Hail Caesar (a ruleset without points lists). My buddy and I turned up with our Carthaginians, Iberians and Celts to face the army of the Romans.

The only Punic bit about the Roman Army was that they were Roman. There were Late Roman Cataphract cavalry, half a dozen scorpions, Early Imperial heavy infantry, Late Roman staff slingers, Late Roman armoured archers even the Auxillia were armoured at least as heavy as our heaviest infantry. All superior and anachronistic troop types from left to right, outnumbering our Cathaginians and allies by about 4 to 3 and bringing an insistence with them to field any and every figure they brought to the club.

It was the most boring game I ever played. If not for my mates, I wouldn't have played at all. It ended in a completely predictable defeat and I don't think I ever played against any of the guys on the other side of the table again.

Come to think of it this game put me off Ancients for good. I only ever tried War & Conquest a few times and eventually sold my Classic armies.

[Shahbahraz]

Well, I have had some cracking games at the club, and some cracking games in tournaments (in Oz, gamers are few and far between, and tournaments are really the only way to get to play against folk from outside your immediate area).

One particular game - years ago playing DBM, I decided to take a chance and run a very fragile but highly manoeuvrable Italian Condotta army, 4 generals soaked up a lot of points, but my cunning plan was to use my speed to zoom into position early and attack flanks at critical points. Move 1, I deploy, ready to redeploy, wrongfoot him, and set myself for a smashing attack. First dice for PIPS, 1,1,1,1. Not much speedy manoeuvre happening that game.

[has.been]

Sooooo many to choose from.

But one does spring to mind.
It was one of those Victorian floating warships over Mars games.
I (mistakenly) thought it was, if climbing,
a) Go up a level, then
b) Go forward. 
My allies tried valiantly to warn me I was heading for the cliff face,
 but I wouldn't listen. Even worse I said, (loudly) 'Trust me I KNOW what I'm doing!'

Result = I rammed my ship into the cliff face... Big (I mean BIG!) explosion.
Some 30 years later they still remind me of it.

[Mindenbrush]

I ran a F&IW game where the 'prize' was on an island but I had completely forgotten to provide any canoes or bateaux's to get to the island..............

At the long departed Autumn Assault convention in Gatineau, Quebec, I was scheduled to run a 25mm SYW British and Allied game. Unpacked all the boxes, set up the terrain, laid out the British/Allied forces.............but had forgotten the French  I could not go and get them as it is a 2 hour drive so ended up using a friend's ECW troops for both sides