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Well for starters I don't think you should be disheartened. Its still the game we all love albeit, with some new rules to previous editions.

Also I think you're looking too much into the aspect of all comers lists with very standard builds. Shame on you. You're a guard player, you should know you can build quite a few highley competitive lists from guard to keep opponents on their toes.

My main point I want to make is that specialised lists will have great advantages over all comers lists. An infantry only army will get an advantage where an all comers list takes anti-tank weapons which are now wasted (and they don't come cheap). A gunline guard army will out shoot nearly any army regardless of lists. A mech army with lots of tanks will beat an all-comers list since they didn't bring enough anti-tank firepower. This can also be turned on you though. You'll be in trouble with infantry only if you're opponant has plenty of anti-infantry firepower for example.

As far as i'm concerned a player has a general skill in the game but also a skill at playing a certain type of list and again at facing a certain type of list. It's no good sending me to a tourny with a mech list because I blow at it. While If you give me a well built gun-line with some artillery I can clear out objectives from a distance and win without moving. This is coming from a guy who finds the artillery options useless with the exception of the manticore.

Another point i'd like to make is that just because your list is specialised doesn't mean it can't be an all-comers list. Guard infantry builds can field the guns and units to take out anything they need to. Using storm troopers you get delivery methods for melta's for example. You can still build an all comers list from a specific style.

Because of the varity of lists I feel that skill is still the main factor in the game. If you take an all-comers list and they take an infantry heavy army (to continue the infantry example) you have to make the best use of your anti-infantry guns as possible and redirect your anti-tank guns to targets which pose larger threats or have high point values.

The reason skill seems to be diminished and luck playing a larger factor is that most players play with the current generic styles. A very important point to raise is that this style changes from place to place. I played an american space marine player who used three land raiders. This caught me on the back foot since the people at my FLGS generally avoid putting too many points into super strong units. I drew but it was a mistake on my part that i'd redirected some guns from one Land raider heading towards an objective I held to one which was heading towards my lines. If I hadn't it wouldn't have been contested and I would have taken the win. I can only see this mistake after the game. In that situation I could easily make that choice again.

Building a list tailored to your play style is a skill in its own. I can't follow the current mech guard trend because It doesn't work for me. Because of that, I catch people who expect to face a mech army off guard. Luck is a contributing factor for how your list draws up against your opponants and will always be that way. People try to minimise that by making an all comers list to begin with but it only takes one stubborn player like myself who says 'no, i'll play how I want' to start mixing the lists up. I didn't know anyone to take Storm Troopers when I first started playing at my FLGS but theres a few players trying them and a few who found they don't work for them and stopped. Now a few of the players tailored their lists to take on a unit of storm troopers hiding in woodland. What happens when I don't take them?

The whole game is based on luck of the draw, luck of the dice, a players skill at controlling their army deployment and movement, target prioritizing, objective prioritizing, skill and experiance at facing certain armies, experiance at facing certain lists, good old bluff's (both with your list and tactics on the table top) ect. Theres no way any one person can master everything. Consider the bluff aspect. How do you know a certain unit is a bait unit? Look at poker players. All expert players can be fooled by a good bluff. Sometime the best can be fooled by the less experianced. The skill AND experiance of a player in 40k makes the difference in the battle. That bait unit might be a trap, it might not. If you took the bait before and is was a trap, you're likely to think the same again. What if just by chance this opponant didn't realise and hadn't intended it to look like a bait unit? That could alter your game plan in a big way even though this opponant is less experianced.

Theres too many possibilities to simply class a person as a skilled player or not. I personally feel that every player is different. Each player has they're own strength and weakness' and this is before the lists come into play. A new space marine player could beat me by sheer fluke without knowing how to control their army. Skill is what help me prevent this from happening.

Okay, so, after taking in many thoughts and ideas and sayings of many things by many people, I've now updated this theory. It's a lot cleaner now.

You can view a more printable copy of this by clicking here.

Luck and Skill in 40k v.2

LUCK

For the purpose of this theory, luck is a catchword for all of the uncontrollable variables in a game of 40k. In a tournament, this includes the order in which you play people, the list they bring, the terrain setup, etc. Of course, luck also refers to the results of individual die rolls, whether it be for mission or first turn, or for whether a meltagun penetrated armor on a vehicle.

In any reasonable game of 40k, your ability to win is going to be based on destroying (or in some other way neutralizing) your opponent's units. After all, you can not win a kill point game without killing units, and you can not win an objectives game without removing your opponent's units from the objectives. In any given event in a game, luck (especially die rolls) is going to be the determining factor of if you destroy an opponent's unit or not. The game was purposely designed in such a way that you can not ever see an opponent's unit destroyed without dice determining if they were destroyed or not. Unlike chess, which allows you to destroy your opponent's units with movement alone, 40k is solely dependent, then, on how you roll the dice.

You can do things to lengthen the odds of failure, or shorten the odds of success, but you can't remove dice as the primary mechanic of the game, and thus can not remove luck from its core.

SKILL

Just as luck is the overarching idea of uncontrollable variables, so is skill the the idea that represents all controllable variables. Skill includes such things as building a powerful list, and using them to their maximum effectiveness on the field.

Given that luck is the primary mover in the game, skill's role is entirely devoted to altering luck. Its role is predominantly to shorten your own odds of success, while lengthening the odds that your opponent succeeds. For example, if you move a meltagun that was out of range of any target in such a way where they are now in range of the target, the odds that you successfully destroy that particular target with a meltagun is shortened from a 0% chance of success to something much better, depending on what exactly you shot at. Likewise, if you move one of your units out of LOS of all your opponent's weapons (and they didn't bring any barrage), the odds that your opponent will be able to destroy that unit just lengthened from whatever it was before down to 0% (barring other circumstances like deepstriking units which can suddenly acquire LOS out of nowhere).

Remember, that this also counts list-building skill. If you have a Land raider, and your opponent does not bring anything with S8 or better, then the odds that the vehicle remains on the table the entire game are incredibly short. Likewise, the more you have on the table, the more power you have over changing the odds. You can not exploit the bad luck of your opponent if you have no units on the board, nor can you mitigate his good luck.

THE EFFECT OF LUCK

Better players may be able to get more odds-bending power out of their units, and thus can do more with less, but while the percentage of the power based on the maximum power may go up, it can never exceed the actual power, which is based on the aggregate of units on the field. After all, if someone has half their army blown off the table turn 1, they have half the potential power of their opponent. They can still win the game if, for example, they are able to get 100% out of their 50% while their opponent is only able to get 10% out of their 100%, but the maximum possible has still been determined by the luck of how hit, wounding, cover, armor penetration, leadership, etc. rolls go.

More obviously, there are several individual die rolls, over which no player has control, that can be very key rolls, and not just if one critical shot managed to destroy its target or not. This includes things such as which player goes first, and when the game ends. Most people can recall a game in which one person would have won a game, except the roll to continue ended the game one turn too early, or one turn too late.

THE EFFECT OF SKILL

Skill allows you to change the odds of luck in an attempt to control the effect of luck. If a vehicle is destroyed or not is determined by luck (after all, if you can't roll above a 2 on a vehicle damage chart, you will never destroy a vehicle), but you can make the odds of a vehicle destruction result go up with skill (such as moving several meltaguns into melta range of the vehicle, compared to only shooting a single lascannon at it). Thus skill is able to affect the results of any particular event by making a certain outcome more likely.

A better player, then, would be able to more exactingly move the odds in whatever direction he so desires. In the end, though, it's not that more skill makes the "best" result, happen, rather more skill makes the more "desired" result more likely.

This is because, 40k being based on dice, the purpose of skill is risk management. Being a risky player is not inherently better or worse than being a conservative player. If it is direly important that you destroy two of your opponent's vehicles over the course of two turns, it makes no difference if you shoot 6 lascannons at one on one turn and then 6 lascannons at the other on the second, or if you shoot 3 lascannons at both targets for both turns. In the case of the more conservative decision (the first one), you are more likely to destroy one vehicle on the first turn, while with the more risky, you are less likely to destroy either vehicle in a single turn, but you are (much) more likely to destroy both on the same turn.

Furthermore, riskier play comes with its own costs. The riskier you are, the more that the results of your actions are based on the uncontrollable factors of luck. If you roll poorly, you are likely to have less to show for your choices than the more conservative player. On the other hand conservative play also has its own cost. Being able to win REQUIRES you to roll dice, so rolling fewer dice comes at a premium - the fewer dice you roll, the more that the particular outcome of those dice matters, as you're making less use of the law of large numbers. Also, the more you focus your odds on fewer enemy units, the more likely that that one unit is to die, but the less likely that you do more damage over all (loss due to overkill).

The style of play one has plays odds in different ways, but ultimately, neither has any impact on the fact that it's still luck at the heart of it all.

If skill has no impact on luck itself, and luck has an impact on the game, then what impact does skill have on the game? In the end, while skill will not make results more favorable over the course of a game, skill will increase the chances that you have more relatively positive results. Luck is still the determiner, but a player can make more rolls where the end result is more likely favorable results. In short, player skill makes luck kinder. Said another way, skill allows a player to play the odds better.

RELATIVE SKILL

As a player's skill improves, they are able to make the battlefield more and more accurately reflect the odds they want to play. It does too, of course, also effect the odds that they want to play. Poorer players will tend to make decisions that, if successful, will have less strategic gain, and if they fail, will have more grave strategic consequences (much less their ability to fix odds one way or another in future turns).

This means that if you were able to completely control for the uncontrollable variables, the only determiner of the game would be the relative skill of the two players. The better player would gain more from success, and lose less from failure. Of course, if you had two players who played at exactly equal skill level for any given game, AND all other variables were controlled for, the end result would always be a draw. The likelihood of victory, then would be determined by the relative skill inequality of the two players. The more one player played better relative to the other, the more likely it would be that they won the game.

But this relative skill between the two players is not, in fact, the only determiner of outcome, because there is this whole set of uncontrolled variables which also have an impact on the game. As mentioned, if the players are of very different skill level, the relative skill of the two players makes a big difference on the outcome. As such, when you have a gross disparity of player skills, player skill has a bigger impact on who wins a game relative to the uncontrolled variables.

Remember, it's the relative impact of relative skill that's important here. Take, for example, two players who were perfectly equal in skill. They had the same list, playing on a symmetrical board, playing the same odds just as successfully. In this case, the only determiner of who wins the game would be luck. If one player only rolled 6's and the other player only rolled 1's, there is a 100% chance that the lucky player would win. Likewise, if both players were equal in skill, the result of who won could be determined by just a single die roll.

If you control for one factor, it becomes less important to the outcome as the other factors. Likewise, as you control for all controllable factors, then controllable factors become less important to the outcome of the game as uncontrollable factors.

As player skill approaches perfectly equal in any given game, the impact of skill on who won or lost is less. To put it another way, the closer you are in skill level to your opponent, the more that the outcome of the game is determined by luck*.

SKILL ADVANCEMENT

If luck is the prime determiner of games, then, the only way to improve your chances of winning at all are to become better than your opponent. The wider you can force the skill gap, the more skill will be a determiner of the outcome compared to luck.

The problem with skill advancement, however, is that it has diminishing return. The more that you can lengthen or shorten the odds of a particular event occurring, the more difficult it is to continue to lengthen or shorten those odds. If you really want a vehicle dead, the shortening of the odds by bringing in 1 meltagun where there was once zero is enormous. This is comparatively easy to do. However, if you're already a skilled player, and already have 20 meltaguns in melta range, being that little bit extra skilled so that you have 21 present isn't actually increasing the odds of a dead vehicle by very much.

Furthermore, just shortening the odds is not actually necessarily the sign of a better player. In the above example, the better player would likely apply 10 meltaguns to two vehicles rather than 20 onto just one. In this case, the person who shoots all 20 at a single vehicle is suffering from overkill. While the short player is insignificantly more likely to kill the vehicle they shot at, for one dead vehicle, the "risky" player is still very likely to have 2 dead vehicles as the end result of their shooting**.

As such, skill advancement doesn't really allow you to shorten or lengthen odds further (although it does this too), so much as it allows you to shorten them to exactly how short you want them, and lengthen them to the extent that you want them lengthened more exactly. As you get better in skill, the more likely that you are actually playing the the odds that you want to play.

In the end, though, you're not, over all, getting "better" odds, you are just getting more "accurate" playing of odds. This gets harder to get better at the better you get. Furthermore, it doesn't have any bearing on the actual effect of the die rolls (only shortness and length do, and even then, it's not an actual predictor).

What, then does the impact of playing exactly the odds you intended to have on the actual results of any given event or the game as a whole? None whatsoever. This means that luck is an independent variable of skill (which we already knew).


THE EFFECT OF SKILL ADVANCEMENT AND LUCK

If skill allows you to play odds better, and if the better you get, the less getting better allows you to play the odds better, this means that the better you get, the closer you get in skill level to your opponent***.

As the closer you get in skill level to your opponent, the less skill matters, and as the higher your skill level gets, the less difference there becomes in skill level, we can conclude that the end result of increasing your skill level is to lessen the impact of skill on your games, and to increase the role that luck plays in determining the outcome of your games***.


THE MORAL

This theory, then, means that the more one advances in skill at playing 40k, the less they will see their games determined by their increase in skill, and the more that they will see their games determined by luck. For a person who wishes to advance in skill, this is naturally frustrating. At whatever level of skill one notices that luck is becoming a bigger factor, at some point, they are likely to hit a level where the game is just too much about luck for personal taste.

There are a few paths open to such a gamer:

- Play more conservatively. With determined skill, you can reduce the impact of luck on your own decisions. As mentioned, though, this comes at a cost. Furthermore, you can not control how risky your opponent chooses to be. In the end, the player will see them win more games when their opponent's dice were bad, but continue to lose games due to luck when their opponents are not. More conservative play may slightly increase the threshold of winning, but in the end, the meek often lose to the bold.

- Quit. If a person can not stand losing a game because of luck, then they shouldn't play a game that's based on dice.

- Engage in selective reasoning. Some players may choose to discard the effect of luck altogether from their games. They may come up with very elaborate and complex theories with regards to why they lost a game - after all, if they can't win or lose because of luck, then there must be some other reason. Of course, the accuracy of any such theory is immediately suspect, as removing luck from a game whose main mechanic is based on dice is unlikely to be particularly accurate, regardless of how much said hallucinations comfort the thinker. Furthermore, such theories tend to be as ugly and based on fallacy as they are ultimately useless. If that doesn't bother you, though, believe in whatever you want.

- Change one's aesthetic. 40k can't be a game based solely on skill and tactics and still leave the player sane - 40k just isn't actually that deep of a game. One way to handle this is to change what one is looking for out of 40k and the way that they engage the game other than purely skill. It's not to say that if a player "gives up" on skill that they won't still get better at the game slowly over time (indeed, it would be hard not to). The point, however, is to tread a different path.

This may take on the form of purposely handicapping one's self, or mixing things up in some other way (I won with the best units in my codex, now can I win with the worst?). It may take on the form of placing a greater element on the hobbying aspect, or it may take on the form of placing a greater emphasis on the social aspect. It could also even be a change within the game itself, whether it's learning to relish the chance factor, rather than decry it when it goes against you, or whether you play to take epic photographs and write narrative battle reports. While 40k may not be the most tactically complex game, there is an awful lot to 40k other than just playing odds.


FOOTNOTES

* Footnote removed due to causing confusion.


** A player can manipulate the odds, but there is always cost associated with any decision. No player can make all odds short. For example, in order to shorten the odds of destroying one vehicle, he has to lengthen the odds of destroying a different vehicle at the same time. A player has a set amount of power in their list at once. How they choose to pool and spend that power does not change this. They may be able to reduce the impact of luck in any one event, but in 40k, this reduction comes at a strategic cost (depending on the particulars at the moment, but also due to general principles like overkill). After all, no one would advocate always only shooting 100% of your army at a single opponent's unit every turn. Plus, just shooting 100% of your army at a single unit does not guarantee its destruction.

As such, the better player is not the one who reduces the impact of luck the most, but is the one that plays the odds the best.


*** Unless you just continue on playing against much worse opponents, of course. Assuming that you continue to play against opponents of roughly the same skill level, the skill level difference between the two of you will decrease as you all get collectively better. The skill difference between basically new players is huge between someone who has literally never played before, and someone who has played a couple of games. The skill difference between a seasoned veteran and a seasoned veteran who has a couple more games worth of experience is likely to be very minimal

(I'd like to thank ArtfcllyFlvrd, Kilkrazy, Redbeard, jmurph, ElCheezus, nyenyec, and Relic_OMO for their contributions to this piece. Some of their comments can be seen here)

war is just as much luck as tactics. Worthless runts of units become inspired to do amazing feets of brilliance while the arrogance of supposedly vastly superior veterens leads them to failure.

War is like the role of the dice, all tactics do is make the chances of getting lucky increase.

This is why I think luck has little to do with winning and losing.

Scenario 1:

You and your opponent get 3 squads of basic troops, no HQ, no heavy support, no elites, not fast attack. Just basic troops. You set them up 12 inches a part from each other, with no terrain no cover. Now, play a game. The game set up and played in this scenario (which is an actual scenario from Necromunda) will highly depend on luck. There is no cover, you are already 12 inches apart from each other, whoever rolls first is going to unleash havoc on their opponent and I have pretty much eliminated army list builds from being a factor because I say you just get 3 basic units.

Now, 40K is not played like Scenario 1, it will be played like Scenario 2 (which I will explain later). There are so many factors in 40K, a typical game goes like this:

Scenario 2

You and your opponent build a detailed army list, with a concept of overall how they will play out in the game. So, before you even lay down terrain, pick sides and deploy you already have a plan on executing certain tactics with models that have specific attributes in game. Then you lay down terrain. You roll for sides and you think that side B will give your certain specific tactics for this game and your army list a better chance of crushing your enemy so you chose side B. Then you decide to keep something in reserves, deploy your forces and so forth. Every decision you make has a reaction, has meaning, and either furthers your chances of winning, or puts you in a position to lose. Sometimes you can force desired reactions out of your opponent. Then you have mission parameters. Objective based, total annihilation, pitched battle, dawn of war, or perhaps custom missions you have made up. These also factor into how a game is played. You are executing every action with a purpose, the dice roll only adds in a small randomness. You have a 16% (roughly) chance to roll each number on a D6 specifically. In a game of odds, that is actually not too bad. Consider gambling, playing the lottery, and other games of chance that have much larger odds.

So, scenario 2 is more likely how you are going to play 40K. Sure, luck will come into play, but in the grand scale of things luck plays a smaller role than anything else in general. There will be times where bad luck changes how a game may pan out or not. However, that is more of the exception to the rule, than the rule itself. I do play with a guy who has super bad dice rolls, but I saw him stomp his opponent out last game. I mean after turn 3 the Tau were pretty much destroyed and all the Tau could do was try to contest objectives to force the game into a draw. It was an Eldar Vs Tau game and the Eldar player had super bad dice rolls but still won. Part because of army list, part because of strategy, and part because of how each opponent played off each other. Now the dice rolls did affect the reserves, that luck did play into that, and the Eldar player rolled some serious bad shooting, but still ended up winning.

I just cannot buy into the concept that luck has that big of an impact in a game of 40K. If you find yourself losing tons of games, you should first ask yourself why that is the case rather than chalking it up to your opponent is more lucky than you. You need to learn from past games what to do, and apply that in future games.

Yes, there are certainly a large number of things in a given game of 40k outside of the die rolls. The question is, what is the purpose to all of these decisions? Yes, you can generically say "it helps you win", but why does it help you win?

The answer is because the steps you take are designed to kill your opponent's stuff, whether it's so that you can gain a kill point, or whether it's to stop your opponent from contesting an objective, or whether it's to blow him off of one so that you can sit on it yourself.

As whether you kill something is always determined by dice, every one of that huge pile of different things you're talking about, whether it's decisions in the list-building phase or decisions in deployment or movement or target priority (among many others), exists for the purpose of shortening the odds that you destroy your opponent's stuff (or in some other way neutralize it). Thus, skill exists to change your odds.

If you're losing a majority of your games, it's probably because you're playing the odds wrong (for example, not bringing any S8 or better weapons are playing the anti-AV14 odds very wrong). More skill can help you with this, but the actual determiner is still luck.

Otherwise, no one would ever bet on long shots.

Solid post, Ailaros! It's detailed and meticulous and easily understood.

I am gonna go a bit off topic here and use my examples in WHFB. They still apply in 40K though.

We play you deploy 1 unit at a time, until all are deployed. I love putting my Lizardmen temple guard + slaan smack down in the middle of my deployment zone and then watch my opponent either put his power units in front of it, or avoid it. I know every single time I am going to filed a Slaan and so do my opponents (you would be dumb not to) so it is not like I am going to surprise them when I deploy my Slaan. So, instead I gladly deploy him + temple guard first to force my opponents hand at deploying his power units. Then I can counter deploy my flanks accordingly, or drop a 50 model unit of Saurus warriors with spears so they get the horde bonus.

Now lets bring up my skinks. They are pretty much a throw away unit. Cheap, not really that tough, and not really all that powerful. However, they do have jungle poisoned weapons. Which means if I roll a 6 to wound you are wounded regardless of your toughness. So, my STR 3 poisoned attack can wound anything on a 6....Here is the strategy of the dice roll. Blow guns get two shots, skirmishers can march and shoot. That means they can move 12 inches, and each model can make two attacks with blow guns which are poisoned. So I can field like 20 skink skirmishers, deploy them like scouts, and march them and shoot and get two shots and anytime I roll a 6 automatic wound via jungle poison. If I am rolling 20 dice and half hit, so 10 wounds out of those 10 I am going to roll some 6s. So, yes I am playing odds, but 16% is pretty good odds, that is 1in6 (D6-duh) and it will happen.

I am still going to say, that in war gaming (outside of things like risk) dice rolls are crucial at points, but overall make up very little of who determine who wins or loses. With the exception of every now and then yes a dice roll may determine a game if both opponents are equal in skill, play into each other's hand, and get about the same dice rolls. I just don't see that being a common outcome.

Delete

Nurglitch wrote:So, what you're saying is that when I decide to move a unit into difficult terrain and the unit only moves 2", the real determiner is luck?

What else would it be?

I mean, yes, you took a calculated risk going into cover. You knew there was the chance that you would only move 2", but if you decided to do that, it was for a reason (like to get cover saves). This is a great example of playing the odds.

If what's important to you at the time is to move as far as possible, then the odds of getting bogged down by cover may dissuade you from entering it. If what's important is getting cover saves, then you will probably play the odds a different way for a different result. If what you want is to go forward in a straight line, then the odds of getting bogged down will mean a third thing altogether.

How far you move in difficult terrain is determined by luck, because you have to roll dice to see how far you move. You have no real control over how they come up, but you DO have control over where you want to move, and if you want to take those risks.

It's all about risk management.

Nurglitch wrote:I just thought I made bad decisions. I feel better about myself now.

Good.

Anyone who thinks they are making bad decisions, when really they are just rolling poorly, should take a step back and really look at how much the dice are determining things.

Nurglitch wrote:Ailaros:

So, what you're saying is that when I decide to move a unit into difficult terrain and the unit only moves 2", the real determiner is luck?

Thank god for that. I just thought I made bad decisions. I feel better about myself now.

No, I don't think that's what he's saying.

While his original OP was contentious...if you took it at face value (like I did)...

His new theory is quite simple. In fact, this whole thread could have simply said, "In a game of 40k, if you excel at controlling all possible factors that can be controlled, the elements that you don't control will have the biggest effect on determining the outcome of the game."

That's like declaring that bananas have a yellow peel. While now acceptable, I see nothing insightful or worthy of discussion there - because the "uncontrolled" factors are no longer limited to dice.

So basically, when I approach a gaming table, if I have built an exceptionally balanced list, if I'm exceptional knowing how to apply it, and I play well and make few mistakes (and my opponent does the same)....then the biggest determinant of the game's outcome is going to be my opponent's army, how fit my army is against it, what the table and terrain look like, and how we both roll dice.

I agree. You really can't *disagree.* Feels like this is now a thread to state the obvious.

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Nurglitch wrote:So how is luck the real determiner if it's all about risk management? Maybe in US, risk manages you...

Because risk management will not blow up an opponent's vehicle, nor get your reserves in on time.

The determiner of things in 40k is dice. The realm of skill is manipulating the odds (risk management). Risk management is not a determiner of the game, it is the core of skill.

As risk management basically = skill, risk management follows under the impact of skill, as outlined in the theory.

Dashofpepper wrote:That's like declaring that bananas have a yellow peel. While now acceptable, I see nothing insightful or worthy of discussion there - because the "uncontrolled" factors are no longer limited to dice.

So basically, when I approach a gaming table, if I have built an exceptionally balanced list, if I'm exceptional knowing how to apply it, and I play well and make few mistakes (and my opponent does the same)....then the biggest determinant of the game's outcome is going to be my opponent's army, how fit my army is against it, what the table and terrain look like, and how we both roll dice.

I agree. You really can't *disagree.* Feels like this is now a thread to state the obvious.

I agree, it is all rather obvious now that I've gotten rid of such muddling words as "mistake" and more clearly defined "skill".

The more useful part of the theory, I think, is that once you accept that the better you get, the less control you have over the outcome, then what?

Ailaros wrote:
This theory, then, means that the more one advances in skill at playing 40k, the less they will see their games determined by their increase in skill, and the more that they will see their games determined by luck. In the end, 40k isn't actually that deep of a game, and one's pursuit of skill can only go so far. For a person who wishes to advance in skill, this is naturally frustrating.

Why? This isn't based on supporting facts.

Ailaros wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:So how is luck the real determiner if it's all about risk management? Maybe in US, risk manages you...

Because risk management will not blow up an opponent's vehicle, nor get your reserves in on time.

The determiner of things in 40k is dice. The realm of skill is manipulating the odds (risk management). Risk management is not a determiner of the game, it is the core of skill.

As risk management basically = skill, risk management follows under the impact of skill, as outlined in the theory.

I think we are all starting to agree, and may be talking in circles now. I haven't overly disagreed with anyone on this thread all too much, but I still think luck is a small part of the game and that you win or lose based on your decisions, not dice rolls. Risk management can really be seen as Army List management in my opinion. Do you twin link, or perhaps field an autarch in your Eldar army so you can get a +1 to your reserves roll? Do I spend points giving my squads melta bombs, grenades, or do I drop wargear in favor of fielding more models? Do I chose war gear or abilities that allow for reroll on failed rolls? Then obviously you know jump troops move 12" and can assault 6" and have short range weapons, and can be given wargear like melta bombs. So, you can use jump troops to assault vehicles rather quickly and take them out, or whatever your tactic is. I am trying to make a point that you must totally use all the attributes to the maximum of your troops and other units. Each of them have a pretty specific framework of attributes to work with.

Now in game, going to cover is hardly a bad thing. In fact, if you don't take advantage of cover saves I would say you are missing out. So, if you roll a 2 on your difficult terrain test and do not make it into the woods, that wasn't a bad move. You should still get with in cover soon, and maybe a bit unlucky because you are now behind in turns, and games only last so long. So, time is also a factor, and a calculated risk.

Ailaros wrote:
The more useful part of the theory, I think, is that once you accept that the better you get, the less control you have over the outcome, then what?

Uh....I don't think that's quite true.

There's a difference between these two statements:

Statement A: The better you get, the less control you have over the outcome of the game...
Statement B: The better you get, the more relevance "luck" and "random" factors play in your game.

Statement B is true, but is not the same as A. For Statement A to be true, both players would have to be perfectly equal in dealing with controllable factors, play their game with perfectly equal skill, and either make no mistakes on either side, or make equal mistakes of magnitude.

Since that situation can never happen (Ever heard the phrase, "There's always someone better than you?") basing your real life expectations or future plans on a hypothetical improbability is illogical.

"There may come a time in the future when technological breakthroughs are so advanced that no one on earth needs to work, and all of life is completely devoted to self-indulgence. What's the point of going on?" While hypothetically possible, it is improbable, and basing actions or conclusions on that situation are also illogical.

The statistical probability of your opponent at the table NOT being either better or worse than you in the set of "skills" defined here is so tiny that it is not worth consideration. The exception would be if we were to program two supercomputers and unleash them on each other in Vassal.

So....

The better you get, the MORE control you have over the outcome of the game, while factors not under your control become more noticeable in influencing the outcome.




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Ailaros wrote:
one's pursuit of skill can only go so far. For a person who wishes to advance in skill, this is naturally frustrating.

Could you elaborate on this?

My existence in 40k is to continually elevating my skill, in part by casting the net as far and wide as possible (both around the country and around the world) looking for players who might be better than me and teach me something - intentionally or not.

Exactly how far can the pursuit of skill go? There is someone who is the best 40k player in the world. There is not yet an adequate system for determining who that person is. I believe that I'm near the top of the heap - but I am still in learning mode, improving my skill mode, becoming more proficient with the factors under my control....by merit of being human, no one is my equal. They are superior or inferior to some degree in tactical ability. The "degrees" may be of small enough measure to establish "peer groups."

I'm honestly curious what you believe the hard cap on the pursuit of skill to be. Perfection? Something less?

DarknessEternal wrote:

For a person who wishes to advance in skill, this is naturally frustrating.

Why? This isn't based on supporting facts.

Very well, perhaps its not frustrating to everyone who wishes to advance in skill.

Crom wrote:I still think luck is a small part of the game and that you win or lose based on your decisions, not dice rolls.

But the success or failure of your decisions is based exclusively on luck. Just making a good decision doesn't mean that your decision will lead to success, or a poor decision to failure. It's the dice that determine.

Dashofpepper wrote:Statement A: The better you get, the less control you have over the outcome of the game.

For Statement A to be true, both players would have to be perfectly equal in dealing with controllable factors, play their game with perfectly equal skill, and either make no mistakes on either side, or make equal mistakes of magnitude.

I'm not sure why this misunderstanding is persisting.

In order for the statement "When you are perfectly equal in skill, you have NO control over the outcome of the game" requires players to be perfectly equal in skill. What I'm saying is that AS you get better, your control level decreases". Really, the pertinent part of this theory is the relationship between skill and luck when the players are NOT of equal skill.

Dashofpepper wrote:The better you get, the MORE control you have over the outcome of the game, while factors not under your control become more noticeable in influencing the outcome.

What?

You can't have your control over the game increase in the percentage that your control is determinant AND factors beyond your control ALSO increase in percentage of determination at the same time.

Dashofpepper wrote:

Ailaros wrote:
one's pursuit of skill can only go so far. For a person who wishes to advance in skill, this is naturally frustrating.

Could you elaborate on this?

Actually, no, I'm going to eliminate it instead.

I was thinking about something else when I wrote that, so that actual phase doesn't make sense. To make it make sense, I'd basically just be repeating the sentence before it.

But the success or failure of your decisions is based exclusively on luck. Just making a good decision doesn't mean that your decision will lead to success, or a poor decision to failure. It's the dice that determine.

Well, since we are talking about overall tactics, and there is a plethora of things you do outside the game before the game starts, which require zero dice rolls, I will have to respectfully disagree. This is just my opinion, so it is not right nor is it wrong. Here are some in game instances where dice rolls do not play a factor at all.

I have seen many games where this was not the case. I have seen players have totally crap for shooting rolls and still win. The only time this is the case is if everything else is even. Army list, table position, tactics, terrain, and so forth are larger factors than dice rolls. There are also plenty of things you can do that do not involve dice rolls. I like getting a unit of skyclaws and put a wolf guard battle leader in there and have them jump all over buildings and near other cover. A lot of times just having the presence of them and the fact that I have been known to melta bomb the hell out of vehicles I can force my opponent to move away from them. This is a controlled move, with no dice rolls, and the outcome is that I am flushing him out like hunting a rabbit. Except my skyclaws are my hound dog and m opponent is the rabbit.

Another example I do is cover valleys of cover. By valleys of cover I mean if two or more large obstacles of terrain are the the table I know vehicles will use them for cover and the low open points between them. I simply point my long fangs in a position where they can utilize cover and anything that wants to hop from out of that cover and advance towards me has to face a crap ton of long fangs. Again, no dice rolls needed for this, and this is a tactic of table control. Where I am controlling the outcome of my opponents moves because they are avoiding LOS from the massive long fang squads. This forces my opponent to make a choice. Go in and face the fire, or take the long way around and use the cover, but the long way is going to waste you a whole turn or two getting to where you want to be. All the while my skyclaws are harassing everything else that is behind cover, all the while taking advantage of cover myself. No dice rolls required, until I actually attack, and even then I have minimized my dice rolls to be most probable in my favor.

Holding an objective and going to ground. Get a +1 to cover save, and if you have enough troops in your troop unit you can hold that objective for sometimes the whole game.

Obfuscate LOS with transport vehicles is another tactic that needs no dice rolls. I load up a tactical squad in a Rhino, they get to the objective, disembark and the Rhino is now used as sacrificial cover, obfuscating them from heavy weapon or assault fire. On top of that only if they roll a 6 on the damage table the vehicle will remain there all game. I actually read a battle report where a player did this. He moved his Rhinos up to the objective, disembarked and turned his Rhinos sideways to create more cover and then just camped behind them. A valid tactic, worked out in his favor and no dice rolls were needed.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying luck doesn't influence a game, it does. I just cannot agree that luck is a deciding factor in every game and that luck is a larger factor over everything else. If I had to write a hierarchy of game elements which help you win, I would propose it be something along these lines:

Army List > tactical skill > opponent's skill > luck

We all know the phrase don't bring a knife to a gun fight. Your Army List is exactly this. I think this has the largest factor on win and lose and your tactical skill with said army list goes hand in hand. In fact on some level they should be in the same category as there is lots of tactical skill in building an Army List. However, sometimes just fielding the right unit out weighs tactics. If you field paper and I field scissors, well, you got a very up hill battle against me the whole game my friend. So in other regards Army List trumps tactics, but that is due to knowing your opponent as well. So, there is a bit of luck because you are guessing what your opponent fields. Next your opponents skill out weighs the luck as well. For all my non dice tactics listed above, my opponent could counter them by the same non dice rolling tactics and we would stalemate, or use paper against my rock. So, their luck has little to do with that. Now, last, but not least comes in the dice roll. If everything pans out and you have built your army a certain way and executed your plans utilizing the attributes given, then luck should not be an issue. Then there are those games where you just can't roll what you need, ever. Then luck may come into play and become a large factor, but averaging out how much luck affects games in your overall record, I still stand by my opinion it is the lowest factor in your win to loss ratio.

Deleted

Okay, I read your main post and the first few pages, but not all. Maybe someone has gone into this in the meanwhile and all of my points will be moot. First off, you have an issue with you hypothesis:

Ailaros wrote:The theory, in brief, is that 40k is actually a tactically limited game, and once you achieve a certain level of skill, your skill becomes relatively insignificant compared to luck.

So, to break it down, one of the things that's important to know is that this is relative. The outcome of any given game is determined by factors that are relative to each other between the players. For example, if you and your opponent both brought the same lists, then list-building errors are extremely unlikely to be a determining factor in the outcome of your list. In this case, things like how the two players use the list, or how the dice roll are far more likely to be determinant, as the lists are relatively insignificant, being equal to each other.

First off, you come out with this theory, but it is not based on anything other than your own opinion. You then go on from this as your springboard with a whole lot of conjecture that only works if your original theory is true. This is backward. A theory needs to derive from observable evidence, not the other way around.

Ailaros wrote:So, I'm working on a theory that's been mulled over in my most recent battle report, and I wanted to drag my net of input wider than just my regular readers.

I read the report. Dice rolling was not as large of a factor as you believe it was. You were playing against a list with significant advantages against your own. Among them: mobility and resilience to damage. Higher end tactics in this game revolve around the use of reserves and outflanking, neither of which you used (he didn't either, but at least he had access to them). These are important to mitigate concepts like an 'alpha strike'. You purposely chose to leave yourself open to a known strategy with your list choices.

Ailaros wrote:The better a player gets at 40k, the smaller their mistakes are. Their lists are good, so any list-building errors are going to be very small. Their movement is good, so any movement errors are going to be small. The smaller the errors are, the less likely they are to effect the outcome of a game relative to other factors. For example, forgetting to bring any anti AV14 is much more likely to impact the game than if you accidentally drove a piece of AV14 within 48" of a model armed with a missile launcher.

Here is another part where you made a statement, and have used that throughout your posts as if it were true. First off, I would say that skill would not change whether mistakes are large or small (did we even properly define how small 'small' is?). Skill would directly correlate to the number of mistakes you make. The relative size of them would be determined by your opponent's skill in exploiting them. A bunch of 'small' mistakes will lose you the game.

Ailaros wrote:How the dice roll is always going to be random (unless you're cheating), but even though they are not predictable in any given roll, they are still constrained (it's not possible to roll a 13 on 2D6), and they are controlled (it's not possible to get better at luck). This means that the relative luck between the two players is going to produce a set advantage to one player or another in any particular game. Now, if everyone always rolled exactly on average, this would be a relatively insignificant factor (such as the significance of luck in chess), but as it is, that's not the case in 40k.

You start off correct here, but quickly veer off course. Dice rolls will be random, but luck is definitely not linear across skill levels. You are forgetting a key factor that comes with skill: effective list writing. When you build redundancies into your list, you ensure a measurable outcome. The example opponent you played had a single Manticore, a model that directly counters a significant amount of your army. Yes, he could have rolled only a single missile each shot, and had wild scatters, but what happens when you bring three? Suddenly, the entire impact of these choices will greatly change the game, most notably because of the limited size of the table (meaning only so many shots are required to cover your army). On another note, the fact that it was not deployed directly behind a piece of terrain and firing indirectly the whole time is another impact (in this case player skill comes in with tactical analysis). If he has a single unit that will reliably destroy yours, he should make every effort to ensure that all four rounds of potential shooting occur. End of the day, this is just a single example, but I think you can see how that could extend to others and to the game at large. Dashofpepper's example of various numbers of Orks assaulting 10 Space Marines is another example of this. Build your list right, and luck actually stops being a factor (yes, it exists, but it is so ridiculously mitigated that it can be ignored).

So you see from here, two imperfect sub-theories were chosen by yourself as the fundamental building blocks of 'luck becomes the determining factor':

1) The incorrect belief that luck and its effect on a game is linear accross skill levels.
2) The concept that the better you are, the smaller your mistakes become.

I look forward to your response.

Dashofpepper wrote:
So....

The better you get, the MORE control you have over the outcome of the game, while factors not under your control become more noticeable in influencing the outcome.

I agree with this statement 100%.

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Ailaros wrote:
one's pursuit of skill can only go so far. For a person who wishes to advance in skill, this is naturally frustrating.

Could you elaborate on this?

My existence in 40k is to continually elevating my skill, in part by casting the net as far and wide as possible (both around the country and around the world) looking for players who might be better than me and teach me something - intentionally or not.

Exactly how far can the pursuit of skill go? There is someone who is the best 40k player in the world. There is not yet an adequate system for determining who that person is. I believe that I'm near the top of the heap - but I am still in learning mode, improving my skill mode, becoming more proficient with the factors under my control....by merit of being human, no one is my equal. They are superior or inferior to some degree in tactical ability. The "degrees" may be of small enough measure to establish "peer groups."

I'm honestly curious what you believe the hard cap on the pursuit of skill to be. Perfection? Something less?

Uh, I don't think he means there is a cap on improving oneself for the purpose of improving, but, rather, that there is a point where any returns on improvement become negligible in terms of how many wins you get.

I can point to games that I have won, and yet can call out mistakes I made in that game. Clearly I can improve my skill and work on eliminating those mistakes. But doing so doesn't make me win that game anymore than I already have. Likewise, I can point to the games where I've played well, yet some factor outside of my control has meant that I did not win. Improving my skill in those cases is also unlikely to have netted an extra win. It's not that there is no room for improvement, but that the tangible gains from that improvement get less and less. The intangible gains - the human desire to improve ourselves - are still there.

Honestly, I think the real cap on pursuit of skill is when you realize that pursuing perfection is taking the fun out of the game. When your pursuit of perfection means that you're too good to play many local games with people because they're tired of always losing. When the pursuit of perfection means that you're constantly striving to solve that last weakness in your list, rather than embracing the challenge of playing with a weaker list. Refer back to that article I posted before, about the phases of the gamer. I've kind of hit that point. I know I can play with the best, I know I can make rock hard lists and crush people. I've got a wall of trophies in my basement... but I'm tired of it. I'm tired of playing games against the same handful of lists. Razorspams and TWCs, or whatever the meta of the day dictates. I'd rather play my warbikers against my friend's Ultramarines in a campaign in the basement than try to solve the meta for the next tournament.

Ailaros wrote:

Dashofpepper wrote:The better you get, the MORE control you have over the outcome of the game, while factors not under your control become more noticeable in influencing the outcome.

What?

You can't have your control over the game increase in the percentage that your control is determinant AND factors beyond your control ALSO increase in percentage of determination at the same time.

Which is why you're missing coefficients to the equation that should be the underlying principle of your hypothesis....


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Nurglitch wrote:

It might help to think of Warhammer 40k as a race between two runners in utter darkness and both armed with flashlights. It might not.

If the skill aspect dictates the relative speed of each runner and the kind of flashlight, and the luck piece is your likelihood of tripping and falling. =D

List building and codex choice are number one in games of 40k. if your list is crappy then you most liklely will loose.
Strategy comes in at a close second to list building.
Luck runs third place though if you are playing a horde army luck plays far less of a role than it would in an elite army. Any game with dice involves luck. Thus.... the dice.

I've heard Warhammer also disparagingly dismissed as Rock-Paper-Scissors which is somewhat also ironic given that the presence of random variables such as dice specifically deny categorical analysis as a combinatorial game. It combines the features of both games, but the fact is that it's a game, and games come down to the players making choices. Whether they're making choices based on what might happen, or what's likely to happen, or what they'd like to happen, they are making the choices. The dice are just reporting how it turned out.

My Rock-Paper-Scissors comment was used as an analogy nothing more. If you try to take out tanks with tactical squads with no high strength good AP weapons, you are essentially trying to beat a rock with scissors. This only holds any weight in Army List building. If you build an anti horde army and do not use any anti armor weapons and your opponent rolls out 3 AV14 tanks, then the rock paper scissors comment holds true, as an analogy. That is what I was trying to express, guess I did not make it clear that I think table top war gaming is like a game of paper-rock-scissors.

Honestly, I think the real cap on pursuit of skill is when you realize that pursuing perfection is taking the fun out of the game. When your pursuit of perfection means that you're too good to play many local games with people because they're tired of always losing. When the pursuit of perfection means that you're constantly striving to solve that last weakness in your list, rather than embracing the challenge of playing with a weaker list. Refer back to that article I posted before, about the phases of the gamer. I've kind of hit that point. I know I can play with the best, I know I can make rock hard lists and crush people. I've got a wall of trophies in my basement... but I'm tired of it. I'm tired of playing games against the same handful of lists. Razorspams and TWCs, or whatever the meta of the day dictates. I'd rather play my warbikers against my friend's Ultramarines in a campaign in the basement than try to solve the meta for the next tournament.

I think another level of skill rises from this. When you ascend to the point where you can on purpose take an inferior army list and win. Back in the day of 4th ed Fantasy I started a Lizardmen Army, which is highly broken. I won so many games and tournaments with them because of how imbalanced they were. In one campaign style tournament we were playing this guy got mad and said that Lizardmen should not be allowed in the tournament because they were OP. So, the guy running the tournament took the High Elf army list I just demolished, and we replayed the same game. Same army, same war gear, same spells, etc. He held me back, and forced a tie. He was proving a point that even with the list that the High Elf player took (which was totally a crappy build against Lizardmen) he was able to force a tie and almost beat me. He did it from just being a better player than me. Then again the guy running the tournament had been playing war games for like 15+ more years than I had, so he had lots of experience.

List building and codex choice are number one in games of 40k. if your list is crappy then you most liklely will loose.
Strategy comes in at a close second to list building.
Luck runs third place though if you are playing a horde army luck plays far less of a role than it would in an elite army. Any game with dice involves luck. Thus.... the dice.

This in a nutshell is what I was saying in my last post. I agree.

Crom wrote:Army list, table position, tactics, terrain, and so forth are larger factors than dice rolls.

But all those other things don't actually determine the outcome of anything. You can not blow up a land raider with table position, nor can you with terrain.

But even if you were right, that still doesn't address relative skill. Once you start to control for all those other variables like tactics and terrain, the less they matter, compared to noncontrollable things, like die rolls.

Nurglitch wrote:Risk management is about what you do given your opponent's vehicles blowing up or not blowing up, and your reserves coming in optimally and sub-optimally. Even games where there is no luck, such as Rock-Paper-Scissors, actually especially in those games, there is risk management.

The determiner of things in 40k are the players. They are playing this thing called a game, in which they take turns making moves, like Chess. Each move is one of a very large set of potential moves, which can be valued in three different ways.

(1) Some potential moves are valued purely because of their effect, making that move would win the game. This is expected utility. The Hawk-Dove game involve pure expected utility since there is no luck involved.

(2) Some potential moves are weighted purely by their likelihood of happening, since the effect would be the same. This is a reasonable expectation, a.k.a MATH.

(3) Some potential moves must be weighed by indexing their expected utility with the reasonable expectation of the event happening, the expected value, aka 'math-hammer'.

Regardless of how you choose to weigh the value of moves and events in the game, the game still consists of more than one player. That player has to cross-index their own potential moves with those of their opponent and choose the course that they believe will either optimize (tournament/campaign win) or satisfice (friendly game).

This is a great exposition on different types of player skill. Of course, all of them are really just changing the odds, but that's exactly what skill is

Nurglitch wrote:Whether they're making choices based on what might happen, or what's likely to happen, or what they'd like to happen, they are making the choices. The dice are just reporting how it turned out.

Exactly.

Players make decisions based on the odds that they want to play, and the dice actually determine the success or failure of their decisions.

Fearspect wrote:Okay, I read your main post and the first few pages...

I look forward to your response.

My response is that several of the things you address have already been changed. You can view the revised version of the theory here.

Redbeard wrote:Honestly, I think the real cap on pursuit of skill is when you realize that pursuing perfection is taking the fun out of the game. When your pursuit of perfection means that you're too good to play many local games with people because they're tired of always losing. When the pursuit of perfection means that you're constantly striving to solve that last weakness in your list, rather than embracing the challenge of playing with a weaker list. Refer back to that article I posted before, about the phases of the gamer. I've kind of hit that point. I know I can play with the best, I know I can make rock hard lists and crush people. I've got a wall of trophies in my basement... but I'm tired of it.

Well said.

I definitely feel like I'm at the same stage as you, but I didn't stick it out long enough to collect a bunch of trophies first.

Dashofpepper wrote:

Ailaros wrote:
You can't have your control over the game increase in the percentage that your control is determinant AND factors beyond your control ALSO increase in percentage of determination at the same time.

Which is why you're missing coefficients to the equation that should be the underlying principle of your hypothesis....

Or you're trying to obscure a contradiction you're making by using a mathematical language set.

If you have an alternate theory in which what you said isn't a contradiction, I'd like to hear it.

Ailaros-

You are missing my point. You CAN win with out rolling dice and table position does in fact change the outcome of what your opponent will do. If I am playing imperial guard and I got all my big guns pointed down the center of the table, are you going to just come down the center of the table and take the chance of all my big guns killing you?

This type of tactic forces a player like DashofPepper to weave his open top skimmers in his DE army to avoid being shot down by big guns (ideally of course). Thus limiting his options and forcing him to get creative, or have him take the chance of getting destroyed by my heavy firepower. At the same time I can also use this tactic to hopefully force him into moving into a particular position where I can put him between a rock and a hard place.

Also table position can put more scoring units in objectives. You don't have to blow the crap out of your opponent to win a game in 40K. In fact I am finding that 5th edition is really all about mission objectives as kill points don't always matter. Owning the table can have many many benefits. Hell, cover saves alone in 5th edition are nuts. I can put the cheapest unit ever behind a steel wall and get a 3+ cover save.

Crom wrote:

This type of tactic forces a player like DashofPepper to weave his open top skimmers in his DE army to avoid being shot down by big guns (ideally of course). Thus limiting his options and forcing him to get creative, or have him take the chance of getting destroyed by my heavy firepower. At the same time I can also use this tactic to hopefully force him into moving into a particular position where I can put him between a rock and a hard place.

.

Oh, I'm coming down the middle of the table for you mofo. =D

Dashofpepper wrote:

Crom wrote:

This type of tactic forces a player like DashofPepper to weave his open top skimmers in his DE army to avoid being shot down by big guns (ideally of course). Thus limiting his options and forcing him to get creative, or have him take the chance of getting destroyed by my heavy firepower. At the same time I can also use this tactic to hopefully force him into moving into a particular position where I can put him between a rock and a hard place.

.

Oh, I'm coming down the middle of the table for you mofo. =D

better hope your cover saves from going flat out hold up then Which is what in all honesty I would most likely do to if I had fast transport vehicles. Though against you I would deploy on my table edge making it 30+ inches away from your nearest unit so I would get my first volley of shots in before your fast vehicles could drop off your troops for an assault. That is assuming we have played each other several times and I got a feel for how you play. I know that lots of assault troops and fast vehicles is what the DE are all about from reading up on them but I have yet to play against them.

Crom wrote:If I am playing imperial guard and I got all my big guns pointed down the center of the table, are you going to just come down the center of the table and take the chance of all my big guns killing you?

I wouldn't do that, personally, because I don't like those odds.

Crom wrote: You CAN win with out rolling dice and table position does in fact change the outcome of what your opponent will do.

Firstly, I never said skill didn't matter at all. At least, not unless players are exactly of equal skill level, which I don't assume ever actually happens.

Secondly, I'd really like to see a game where someone won without rolling a single die.

Deleted

Considering you roll for sides and turns, it would be impossible to win a game (let alone play a game) with out rolling dice. Though I am sure if you did a horde army, and just seized nothing but objectives and went to ground and held your own you could possibly win with minimal dice rolls.