Warmachine tournament mentality and 'WAAC'

Warning, a bit of a rant inside. 

Thread is x-posted at PP forums

I've been mulling about how to write this in my mind since my last tournament but so far, I'm quite burnt out by my local metas tournament mentality with regards to Warmachine. There's a time when you have to question just how EXACTING one should be when playing warmachine tournaments. 

Maybe it's just me venting but sometimes, I feel that the local meta is too 'competitive'. Notice the use of quote marks. 

Now I have no issues with people playing Haley2, eGaspy, Denny, Harbinger etc. IMO, if you're playing the game to win, then you make use of whatever you think are the best resources to do so. If your main focus isn't to win or to play lists you like, then there's no point complaining if you don't win right. 

However, what really really exasperates me and burns me out is the horribly calculative mentality that goes on in the local meta. As a general rule, we tend to play deathclock in tournaments, which is fine. I like deathclock; certainly a lot more than I like timed turns. However, I have no idea when but a year or two ago, it suddenly became trendy to pass the time to deathclock for any possible reason you can think of. 

Need to make a tough roll? Ok, let me pass the clock to you so you can roll ONE DICE. Need to check if your model is within shield guard range? Ok, let me pass the dice to you so you can MEASURE. Need to mark damage on your warbeast? Okay, let me pass the clock to you. 

Every single time I've had this happen to me, I've always mentally and verbally gone 'WTF'. I'm not sure where the people who started these traditions got the idea from or if it's even legally allowed in deathclock. However, it happens to be VERY frustrating to play against. 

I've just come back from a neighbouring countries SR tournament where there were multiple people from Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia. Guess what, the Malaysians and Indonesians don't do this kind of stuff and it's more refreshing to play against them than the local 'competitive' player. 

In fact, the downside of my entire experience during that tournament was with a local player who kept insisting on passing the clock to me so I could mark damage. Now, I don't consider myself a slow damage marker. I literally just tick off the boxes at average speed. And yet, having to do this and constantly remember to just pass the time back to him so he could continue his turn was just mentally taxing especially since this was the 4th round of the tournament. 

Adding to the kicker for that was the fact that the guy basically snookered me the ENTIRE frigging game I had with him by constantly telling me his light warbeasts; pyre troll and stormtroll, were armor 20 due to krielstone bonuses which they're not. Maybe that's my fault, that I tend to believe people when they TELL ME their armor value, which is literally just looking at the card, reading the value and adding whatever bonuses you have. However, considering he pretty much shouted at me when I asked him if he was sure his storm trolls electroleap could be boosted, maybe I just didn't want the hassle of dealing with him.

I only found out after the game while I was going back because I was looking through war room to see his stats (which is something I tend to do after games). I complained to a friend who basically said that this player HAD a habit of doing such things, told the TO. The TO confronted him, he admitted and the end result was...instead of getting 1st place, he got 2nd. (Note, I wasn't in the top 3 anyway so it wasn't me that took 1st from him instead)

Now that seems like an entirely too forgiving 'punishment', which is probably why I'm mulling over this whole thing because I enjoyed the tournament but this whole incident was just very distasteful. 

Maybe the end result is that I'm just not suited for tournament play. At least not locally. I still like playing the game but sometimes, this WAAC mentality is just a drag to play against.