I'm sure all wargamers have come up against a sore loser before. That person who throws their toys out of the pram (and sometimes models off the table) when things aren't going their way. I personally find this to be the single thing most guaranteed to ruin a game. Sure you can have bad dice rolls, everyone does from time to time, but there is no need to mope about it, you can't win every game.
I have suffered from many bad dice rolls, sometimes spectacularly so, but I try not to let it spoil the game for me or my opponent. I will sometimes get worked, up as many wargamers do, but this is usually down to frustration. What I never do is treat my opponent badly. If they beat me then kudos to them. I will always shake their hand after a game unless they have been consistently cheating and acting up.
I had this problem whilst playing at the weekend against an opponent with Tau and an allied detachment of Eldar. I was using my Chaos Marines with Imperial Guard allies and the mission was Purge the Alien with Hammer and Anvil deployment. He got first turn and seemed overly sure of victory but within two turns I had wiped out all of his Eldar, got first blood and destroyed a Devilfish. This is when he started to turn sour and began whining and arguing every time I tried to do anything. The game slowed to a snails pace due to having to constantly check the rulebook and codices to show him rules.
He called my Heldrake, which didn't arrive until turn four, and Khorne Lord (armed with the Axe of Blind Fury and Burning Brand) cheesy and broken because they stopped his cover save shenanigans. At one point he charged my Lord and a unit of Berzerkers with a Farseer and 4 Warlock's and didn't think it was fair when they were cut to pieces! What did he expect to happen?
Every time I had a bad roll he made a point of going over to a nearby table to point it out to other people and try to rub it in. It didn't bother me but seemed completely unnecessary. When my Lord passed his invulnerable save from a Railgun he complained again saying it wasn't fair.
In the end he refused to play on having only 3 Fire Warriors and a Riptide, who was on a single wound, stuck in combat with my Lord so the game was ended early with a 15-3 victory. When someone came over to ask him how the battle went he sighed and said 'As expected. His army's full of cheese'. What? So much for the confidence he had at the start of the game.
If my opponent had persevered and gone for some easy kill points then maybe things would have been a bit different but he instead decided to give up and complain about everything. In the end I had a Rhino and a Chimera that could have earned another two easy kill points for my opponent but he had decided to spread his fire against my army, rather than focus on taking down troublesome units.
This was the same guy who had beaten my Imperial Guard with his Tau due to continually passing his disruption pod saves and made sure to gloat about it afterwards. I found out after reading through the Tau codex that he had been cheating which made this victory all the better.
Ultimately though, it wasn't a very fun game and that's what I play wargames for. It left me with a bad feeling about my opponent (who is older and has been playing 40k longer than me) and the game overall. Going out of your way to make your opponent uncomfortable and frustrated doesn't make anyone want to play against you again.
It is just a game, win or lose, it doesn't matter as long as you had fun doing it.
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