Well, I posted the suggestions from my last post to the message boards at out FLGS and wouldn't you know it the ONLY people to come out to play were the local power-gamers....I should have seen that coming....Oh well. The way I see it is that they are an important part of the community even if I do not support that play style (and accompanying attitude).
That said, I feel like I need to explain. The way I see it, our hobby has three main parts. Part one is the game itself, and by extension the competition that comes with it. We all want to win and do as well as we can at anything we do...but this can sometimes take over and turn into an evil thing I call the power-gamer. We all know the type, meta gaming, min-maxed units, optimized lists, refusing to use a unit because isn't the "best" choice....you get the idea.
The second part is the hobby. This includes the models themselves. collecting, assembling and painting them, converting them, and of course the fluff, or story, associated with them. This is my favorite part of the hobby, and I know that everyone enjoys seeing a fully painted army on nice terrain more than grey plastic on a tablecloth and rocks. I tend to compensate for gamer creep with this aspect of the hobby, as it is easier to define than the third main part of our hobby...social interaction.
We all enjoy hanging out with our friends. Our hobby is great in that we get to game and hang out all at the same time. Now, there are specific things I want to point out here. Chief among these things is sportsmanship. I cannot stress enough how important it is to understand that everyone takes something different away from our hobby, and this is universal to most things we do in life. I can't imagine some one with a bad attitude keeping many friends around long enough to really enjoy themselves. I can say this, I have fallen into this before, and have been fortunate enough to have friends point it out to me, then give me the chance to change. The second aspect of this is community. We are all part of a community of people that go into their FLGS and participate in events, spend time with friends and support our FLGS and hobby through our purchases there.
I want to point out that all three of these "pillars" of our community effect and react to the other two. If a few people are nasty to others, people withdraw and don't contribute as much to that group. If people don't contribute to one aspect or another, the hobby as a whole gets hurt. Let's work together to make this OUR community a better place and help each other with keeping all three "pillars" in place.
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