It's early Sunday morning on the start of day 2 of the tournament. My unsipped coffee is scalding my hand when I hear "pairings are up!" and look down to see a big steaming shit on my phone. I had paired into a player with a reputation - someone that I had a horrid experience with at my last GT. Thankfully, this weekend would not be a repeat.
To say this player brought an unsporting attitude would be an understatement - he was downright hostile. Across the 3 hours of our game, even small interactions were painful. From pregame onward, he did not extend the barest courtesy of explaining what his army does. And, as the game progressed, he would not mention what effects are being resolved or what he's doing in the moment (even when rolling dice, which is exceedingly bad form). These kinds are players are called WAAC: Win-At-All-Costs. Despite support from other players at dinner, I was still feeling off and decided to drop from day 2.
I didn't speak about the experience much, but my friend eventually encouraged me to reach out abt. my experience with him, so I had spoken to the TOs. As a result, this player had been spoken to as well and was at risk of being carded for his conduct. One of the critical moments last event, and this will be important, is that he gotcha'd me with a stratagem that lets him shoot back out of sequence - this would've been a catastrophic mistake for no material gain. I got the TO involved and he let me undo it when I made it clear that was not communicating his rules.
So, this weekend, I was pretty nervous going in. To his credit, he was really trying to set a good tone. But... as the game went on, he became increasingly frustrated by small things. He really began to tilt. At one point he, tada, forgot that my wraithguard can shoot back at anything and targeted some chip damage to them. If done, this would have been catastrophic to his turn and board position. Breachers were lined up to shoot and had not yet resolved, if he plinked me with 1 or 2 wounds I would be deleting his key shooting before they could shoot me. This was Obviously not the outcome he was intending to create, so I told him: "hey, no, do not shoot those stubbers at my wraithguard. I will just obliterate your breachers that haven't shot yet." In the moment it didn't even occur to me that this was a repeat of our last game, just reversed. To me, I just wanted to do the right thing which was not let my opponent massively blunder for trivial gain against me. I don't play gotcha-hammer - it cheapens the win.
Once we got to my next turn, his frustration from... loss of score, board position, getting beat by a queer girl, whatever, got so bad that he had to walk away from the table and just told me to put the score in. (again, to his credit -- if you cannot behave the right thing to do is to remove yourself from the situation. he did the right thing here) He eventually cooled down enough to come back to the table, and we talked through the remainder of the game. I had him by 22 points, potentially more. Afterwards he even made himself vulnerable a bit and opened up about how he sees the game and why my open, exploratory, and intent focused playstyle is frustrating to him. Beyond the hostility, he seemed to believe that the Correct way to play the game is extremely tight, no undos even if the board state is unaffected, no shifting models around to premeasure. If he wasn't trying to angle shoot every advantage beside that, then I could see the consistency here. The thing is: playing a highly sporting game by intent is how it's done at the highest levels - the world teams championships mandates this, and the best of the best play openly, above board, and in trusting collaboration with their opponents. I don't care if that's how it's played at LVO - I've heard 10 horrible things about the LVO champs for each good thing. I want to do better and play better, and play in a community that values the same.
So anyway, that's how I beat the top XXX (redacted, less than 200) player in world rankings.