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PhantomViper wrote:

 Sarouan wrote:
To be honest, there are in fact a lot of similarities between "40k player skills" and "Warmachine/Horde player skills"...mostly because the basics are the same.

And what would those similarities be?

Well, the basics of any wargame; list building, knowing your army, practicing, being able to read the opponent's tactics, adapting during the game, not losing from sight game's objectives, "knowing your enemy", mastering the rules, and so on.

Like I said, 40k is more random than Warmachine/Horde (and is also a bit more difficult to "know it all", especially nowadays). You can build more things with Warmachine/Horde since rolling die is quite restricted - but that doesn't mean it can't happen in 40k as well. It's just different. Both have their strenghts and their weaknesses. They also have very specific "views", Warmachine/Horde being more on the competitive by design.

In fact, Warmachine/Horde can also be played casually/just for fun, with "not competitive lists". That can be a shock for some players, but it's true. Not all players (far from it, I'll say) have the mindset of a tournament player.

It's all about the player, really.

 TychoTerziev wrote:
The other options are not very pleasant and are min-maxed like there is no tomorrow. I guess that I have to suck it up and accept the trial by fire. Playing against perfected tourney lists, when you try to learn the game is a bit distracting, but I think I can get something out of it in the long run.

The hard way is tough, but you learn a lot of things quite quickly indeed. It's a bit like "evolve or die".

But honestly, you don't have to...just talk with your fellow gamers about it - they don't have to be acting like total d*ckheads (even if that happens from time to time, but there is no need to waste your time with those) and may be trying other things as well. If they don't, well...at least you tried. Most people are reasonable, though.

After all, the hard way is not suited to all people. Some need to learn at their own pace, and there is nothing wrong with that. After all, it's still a game and you should be having fun with it, not being always frustrated in your free time. You already have work for that.

 tommse wrote:
(especially medium based ones like Harby)

Harby is actually large based.

Dude we started WMH at the same time, his netlisting may be annoyng now but methinks the rest of us will benefit more from those losses than he does from emolating better players.

 HoverBoy wrote:
Dude we started WMH at the same time, his netlisting may be annoyng now but methinks the rest of us will benefit more from those losses than he does from emolating better players.

Yes.

Listbuilding, for all the attention it gets, is only one part of the game. No amount of netlisting will teach you "oh, in this situation, I need to charge my own dude with my caster to dominate the zone and win."

Also, rolling dice really well ; ).

 TychoTerziev wrote:
The other options are not very pleasant and are min-maxed like there is no tomorrow. I guess that I have to suck it up and accept the trial by fire. Playing against perfected tourney lists, when you try to learn the game is a bit distracting, but I think I can get something out of it in the long run.

That's kind of just how Warmachine is. It's built to be super competitive from the ground up (I don't particularly like that fact, but that's not important here). The good news is that the rules are tuned well enough that the gap between hardcore tournament lists and what the average player brings to game night is orders of magnitude smaller than it is in a lot of other games. So you're pretty much playing a tournament list all the time once you figure out something that works for you (that's actually the whole deal behind the infamous "page 5").

About the only "un-fun" list I can think of is eHaley with Gorman and Anastasia, and even that isn't because it's blatantly overpowered (it is very very good) but rather because if it's plan works right the other person essentially isn't playing the game anymore and has to wait 3 turns for you to win.

 Kojiro wrote:

 Mordekiem wrote:

And the most basic concept is still the same. You roll dice and see if you hit based on the skills of the models involved. Then you usually roll more dice to see what happens when you hit.

Here is the first deviation. Yes you do roll dice to see if you hit but your model's skill is only half the picture. If I asked you 'What does a Space Marine need to shoot that...' I don't even need to finish the sentence. In all but a handful of cases the answer is 3+. If I ask you what a Long Gunner needs to hit you can't even begin to give me an answer without knowing what the targets DEF is and where. And that's just the innate rules like cover, concealment, elevation, engaged, stationary or knocked down. That's before you bring in abilities, spells or feats and we're still on the to hit roll. Fundamentally the same yes, but so is driving to the shop for cat food and a high speed pursuit- it's all just a combination of accelerator/brake and turning the wheel.

 Mordekiem wrote:
And everything in your army is based on little models that sit on a table.

Not everything. The decision to use Enliven, countercharge, transfer, Admonition, Self sacrifice, martyrdom and a bunch of other things may come from the models on the table but they're all on YOU the player to use properly. When (and in some cases how) to feat is on you. Focus allocation is on you. Hell the order of activation is probably one of the most crucial skills and again, all on you. Doing these things right are all on the player and have little if anything to do with luck. These things separate the good players from the great and they're why you can't just hand someone a list. There is too much for the player to do.

So yeah, loosely they're the same but one has far more depth to let a player really show their worth above and beyond the army they're running.

Not sure how to respond to this since I'm not sure where you are going with the conversation. Where you responding to me specifically (and if so are you agreeing or disagreeing?) or were you just taking my points and using them to create a new conversation? It seems like the latter but you lost me on the cat food/running from the police thing.

I do like the (slightly) veiled shot at 40K at the end though.