This theory has since been updated, to see the new version, click here or here.

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.

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.

Likewise, if both players roll average (or, actually, if they roll the same level of luck relative to each other), than the dice are going to play a relatively insignificant role in determining the outcome of the game than the lists the players brought to the table, or how they were deployed and moved.

Of course, this is no eureka moment, as this idea is pretty obvious. Where it gets interesting is something that I've come to notice about tactics as of late.

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.

Of course, if you had two players of roughly equal skill at everything, these small differences would actually be the only determiner of outcome (see chess, for example). The thing is, though, there's this other element in 40k: luck.

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.

There is only one final piece to this before I wrap it all up, and that is that the better you get at 40k, the less better you get at 40k, and the less it actually matters. When you start out, you make serious errors, and fixing those errors can make a huge impact in the game. The better you get, though, the smaller the mistakes you make. When you and your opponent are both seasoned players, unless one of you happens to make a real blunder that game, the most likely outcome is that the two of you are going to be making small errors, and that they're unlikely to make much of a difference with determining the outcome of the game...

... compared to luck. The point I'm trying to make is that as player skill improves, the only way that mistakes can still be a determining factor (like in chess), is if everything else is even MORE relatively irrelevant. The better you get, the less likely your mistakes are going to matter compared to what the dice show over the course of a game. The dice may be unpredictable, but there is a certain range to which they can be influential. Skill may diminish in relative importance, but luck always has the same range of influence. The less skill matters, relatively, the more luck matters.

Now, I'm not claiming that there is an ultimate level of 40k-ness where you make perfect lists, and have perfect tactics. What I'm claiming is that the closer you get to perfection, the less your perfection actually influences the course of the game. After all, if you had two perfect players with perfect lists and perfect field-play, then the ONLY determining factor would be how the dice roll.

Thus, my theory 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. It's not that skill literally doesn't matter, it's that it practically doesn't matter. Yes, you can play any given game at a lower skill level (you didn't get enough sleep the night before, or just made silly mistakes), and relative skill level between players still matters.

My point is that the higher player skill level becomes, the less the difference between the players matters, and the more that the results are determined by luck.

Of course, this is a somewhat disheartening conclusion to reach. I'd like to believe that 40k predominantly is a game of skill rather than predominantly one of chance. As such, I'd like to get more input before I set this down in stone.

Your view is absolutely correct Ailaros, both players could make zero mistakes and have perfect lists, and they could still roll terribly and get blown off the board. Such are the whims of dice. Although you can't make incredibly stupid mistakes and expect to win.

An excellent way to test this theory is with loaded dice.

It'll require three games:

1. Control game: Equally skilled players, fair dice.
Outcome should be unpredictable.

2. Loaded dice game: Equally skilled players, unfair dice.
Outcome should be predictable in favor of loaded dice.

3. Loaded dice/novice list: Unskilled vs skilled player, unfair dice.
If you're right, the loaded dice should cause the unskilled player to win.

If you're not using egregiously loaded dice (e.g. always roll a six) then the higher trending dice will play the part of "luck" for you. I'll see if I can find anyone to run these experiments with.

Lonecoon wrote:I'll see if I can find anyone to run these experiments with.

Please.

Also, I've taken the liberty of making some graphs to more clearly explain what I'm talking about:



The better you get, the smaller the mistakes you make are. The smaller the mistakes, the less likely mistakes will determine the outcome. Also, the closer in skill level the players are, the less their actual skill level will matter. Luck is a constant factor.

One of the things this implies is that the better you get, the harder it is to get better (that is, the same increase in skill will have a smaller affect on the determination of a game). Combine this with the closer the skill levels you are, the less it matters, and one of the conclusions that can be reached is that when you have two players who play well (even if they're not playing at exactly the same level, as difference in skill level the higher up you go matters less), the end result is that 40k, played by good players, is predominantly a game of chance.

Well... Obviously luck is going to be a deciding factor of any game, whether you and your opponent are closely matched or not. Right?

If you and your opponent are both good enough players not to make tactical mistakes, I guess you could discount that factor, making the luck factor "bigger" in theory. Seems pretty natural. Although there is still the list building. Two "balanced" lists, when pitched against each other, can create tactical advantages/disadvantages/imbalances, yes?

Are you worried that tactics isn't as complicated as to provide endless room for improvement?

I agree that luck is always a factor, but I don't agree that luck always influences the game equally. A better player is going to be much less impacted by bad luck than a new player.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:I agree that luck is always a factor, but I don't agree that luck always influences the game equally. A better player is going to be much less impacted by bad luck than a new player.

Are they? I'd think that problems with list building and movement/deployment would be a more determining factor for new players. Sure, luck is obviously also going to be a factor (the same factor, regardless of player skill), but it seems to me that luck is a relatively less determining factor. Bad luck emulates mistakes. New players are already making big mistakes, so luck doesn't add as much. If bad luck emulates serious mistakes in a player that doesn't make many serious mistakes, then luck would be a much more determining factor.

Almarine wrote:If you and your opponent are both good enough players not to make tactical mistakes, I guess you could discount that factor, making the luck factor "bigger" in theory.

Well, my point isn't about people that make NO mistakes, rather that as player skill improves, the less difference there is in the size of mistakes between unequal players. One player may be nearly perfect and the other only half perfect, but the difference in their mistake load is going to be tiny (not relative to each other, but relative to the same gap between an utter noob and someone twice as good as an utter noob). Because this gap is so relatively small, it matters less and less against constant factors, like luck.

Almarine wrote:Well... Obviously luck is going to be a deciding factor of any game, whether you and your opponent are closely matched or not. Right? Are you worried that tactics isn't as complicated as to provide endless room for improvement?

This was mostly in response to people griping about me talking about luck in my battle reports, and accusations that I was blaming my dice for the outcome of games, rather than looking at what I did wrong.

I'm not claiming in any way that I'm a perfect player, but I find that the better I get, the less that improvement in my skill level seems to matter.

Also, there is apparently a camp of people out there who believes that player skill is the most determining factor of the outcome of games regardless of skill level. Needless to say, I expect acerbic comments from tournament winners who will undoubtedly rightly question whether my theory degrades the idea that they've earned their success.

yep luck is always a factor, even in real warfare.
anyone who says diferent is kidding themselves, however, the more skill you have to more you can account for the randomness this game puts out, look at ork players

Ailaros wrote:
What I'm looking for is an example of two good players, where one makes a tiny mistake, and even with good luck, the mistake trumps the luck. What I'm looking for is examples of GOOD tactics trumping luck.

Here's an example of a SoB player losing to an IG player because he lost sight of what the actual objective of victory was. He had the complete advantage early, then failed to capitalize on it and played right into his poorly rolling opponet's hands.

It's actually an example of one player's mistakes not costing him the game, and another player's mistakes costing him. The player who won was still the player who rolled worse, but he kept better track of a path to victory.

Your right on this. Me and my mates can to this conclusion fairly quickly when we picked up 40k. For a tactical game 40k isnt very tactical. We equat it to checkers alot or chess if you like even though chess does take alot more thought.

After you reach a certein "level" in 40k and everyone is at this same level...40k really does turn into more of a game of chance. This thought yeah can be a little disheartening depending on why it is you are into 40k in the first place.

If your in it cause you like the models..modeling..painting..haning out at the stoere.. plaing campaigns..ext..ext then this thought isnt nearly as big of a deal. Compared to someone who is in it more just to win and go for first prize. Cause really in that scenario its more of up to chance on how your dice roll and what your match up are.

fuegan17 wrote:well I think another facet of this is the ability to adapt to luck or take in account bad luck when determining you moves.

Formosa wrote: the more skill you have to more you can account for the randomness this game puts out, look at ork players

Most certainly. The higher player skill you have, the more you can work around bad luck, and the more you can take advantage of good luck.

The thing is, though, that it's all relative to your opponent, as this is a competitive game. What you're talking about makes a HUGE difference in solitaire, but when it's two player's skills against each other, things change.

Because, remember, bad luck for you is good luck for your opponent. While your skill helps you work around the bad luck, your opponent's skill helps him take advantage of it.

DarknessEternal wrote:Here's an example of a SoB player losing to an IG player because he lost sight of what the actual objective of victory was. The player who won was still the player who rolled worse, but he kept better track of a path to victory.

Yes, this is a perfect example of tactics mattering. Both players made big mistakes, but one player made a really huge mistake (losing sight of the strategic aim of the game), and the mistake was so huge, that it mattered more than luck.

When you're taking about big mistakes, they matter more than luck (see the above graphs, for example), but saying that big mistakes is very determining doesn't break the theory, it only reinforces it.

What I'm talking about is when SMALL mistakes are the determiner of a game DESPITE luck going one way or the other.

well I think another facet of this is the ability to adapt to luck or take in account bad luck when determining you moves. Luck is just another part of the skill set required to play the game at higher levels, and luck must be mastered as much as it is possible to work with luck. Yes luck will always be a determinant of a game, anyone saying otherwise is kidding themselves, but its just another part of the game that needs to be accounted for.

Ailaros wrote:

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:I agree that luck is always a factor, but I don't agree that luck always influences the game equally. A better player is going to be much less impacted by bad luck than a new player.

Are they? I'd think that problems with list building and movement/deployment would be a more determining factor for new players. Sure, luck is obviously also going to be a factor (the same factor, regardless of player skill), but it seems to me that luck is a relatively less determining factor. Bad luck emulates mistakes. New players are already making big mistakes, so luck doesn't add as much. If bad luck emulates serious mistakes in a player that doesn't make many serious mistakes, then luck would be a much more determining factor.

But bad luck won’t prompt mistakes out of a really top notch player. Just because the dice aren’t participating doesn’t mean you have to make bad decisions. Even in a bad situation there are right decisions and wrong decisions. A better player has presumably played more often, been reamed by the dice more often, and knows how to make the best of a bad situation.

A new player on the other hand won’t have that experience. Not only are they not as good at decision making in the first place, but the bad luck puts them in situations they have no idea how to handle.

Part of it is also emotional. I think calm, collection, and focus are hallmarks of a good player. Bad luck can really throw the emotions of some people and then their decision making tanks.

Bad luck will only affect a top notch player’s opponent. It won’t affect them if they really are a top notch player. A newer or not as good player will really get thrown by bad luck.

I’m not saying bad luck can’t cost a good player a game. But at the same time if you have any tournament ambitions you need to know how to at least tie no matter what the dice do. If you can’t at least tie when things aren’t going your way then your whole day is shot. It’s a skill that takes a lot of discipline and sometimes playing in not so fun ways, but if not losing is really your goal that’s what it takes to do it consistently.

Ailaros, I think you have it exactly backwards.

Exactly.

You wrote, "The higher player skill level becomes, the less the difference between the players matters, and the more that the results are determined by luck." You also wrote, "...40k is actually a tactically limited game, and once you achieve a certain level of skill, your skill becomes relatively insignificant compared to luck."

You have it exactly backwards. In truth, as a player's skill level becomes greater and greater, luck factors into their game less and less - because part of skill is learning how to mitigate luck as a factor in your strategy since it is an uncontrolled variable.

While the following cannot prove my claim, it is based on personal experience, and combined with the above explanation, should be sufficient to disprove your claim.

The following thread about dice: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/346793.page

In short, I have a legendary reputation for my dice rolls. Everyone knows someone who can roll a 5+ like no other. I'm the guy who balances that guy's luck. Rolling 26 dice (taking 26 shots) with dark lances over the course of a turn and getting two hits out of 26 (on a 3+), followed by a single glance of a razorback (3), followed by a shaken result (1). That's a bad game for anyone. But I consistently do it. Pretty much every game. Even on Vassal, where the dice are based on a RNG. I'm truly not overstating my rolling (or understating in this case), it is truly an abomination.

And yet I win. Almost every game. I've been playing almost exclusively Dark Eldar for two years now.....56 wins and 2 losses on the tournament circuit (the kind you can verify if you cared); and something obscene outside of the tournament scene - so obscene that I took it out of my signature because I was tired of people calling me a liar simply on the principle that "no one is that good, luck is too much of a factor." At the time it was something to the effect of 297 wins and 1 loss....and that was probably a year or so ago. And most of those wins were with the old codex. I had a lot fewer lances then. At 2,000 points, I generally had...8 dark lances, sometimes nine. Then again, I had haywire grenades and the possibility of a 12" charge. =p

My point is this: Luck has nothing to do with me winning or losing, because my "luck" defies statistical probability, and I still win. I *win* because I've minimized the role of luck in my games. I'm not unique, I can rattle off names. I'm just the most vocal, and willing to point to my W/L record and draw correlations.

Yup that's sports. Sometimes your star QB slips in mud or a wild haymaker downs a fighter. Napoleon used to ask " Is he lucky?" when trying out a new commander. You'll learn how to set up to where you are in a good position to take advantage of good luck or if in a bad position not let luck ruin you (too much). You should pick up a book called "How to lose a Battle" It's a good read on how luck has affected every majoir conflict and how great leaders account for luck....or how they didn't.


Edit: dash said it better.

Ailaros wrote:One of the things this implies is that the better you get, the harder it is to get better (that is, the same increase in skill will have a smaller affect on the determination of a game). Combine this with the closer the skill levels you are, the less it matters, and one of the conclusions that can be reached is that when you have two players who play well (even if they're not playing at exactly the same level, as difference in skill level the higher up you go matters less), the end result is that 40k, played by good players, is predominantly a game of chance.

On the same vein of disagreement: If two players of incredible skill meet on the tabletop, both players will have achieved the same result - minimizing or mitigating the possibility that luck will affect their game.

From there, it comes down to complete skill. There is only one game in the entire history of my gaming where I would attribute my loss to luck. I can point to every other loss, and name the specific mistakes, the specific actions that cost me the game. They might be minor mistakes, but the fact that I didn't account for them, or made the wrong move meant that they got exploited. That's a matter of skill.

And that's what it comes down to. I'm not God. I *am* skilled. And I'm experienced enough to know that people who blame luck for losing (or winng) are not skilled enough to understand anything else. Its like a car. If you're not mechanically inclined; if you don't know when to change or rotate your tires, you're going to think that you were unlucky if a tire blows out. In reality, its a matter of education.

Not knowing something is not justification for presuming it doesn't exist.

@ Dash, can you give an example on how to minimize luck in your plans?

Players can do things with lists and tactics that offset or minimize the effects of luck--things that aren't related to player skill. The battle report makes me think of something from probability math that I've become increasingly aware of while playing Eldar lately, the law of large numbers: that the more dice you throw, the closer your average outcome is to the expected outcome. Or the converse--that only throwing a few dice tends to magnify the effects of bad outcomes (and also the effect of good outcomes).

So in simple 40K terms pertaining to shooting in particular--if you have a lot of shots, your overall results will tend to be close to the expected results, while if you have fewer shots the effects of a miss (or hit) will be magnified.

From the battle report, for example, you're running a vanquisher, and he's running a vendetta. A vanquisher has two shots (with the hull lascannon) so you throw two dice. The vendetta has three shots, and they're twinlinked, so he's throwing as many as six dice. The chance that your vanquisher will not even get a hit is 25%, and the chances that it will get only one hit are 50%. I can't even calculate the odds that a vendetta will get no hits, but experience tells me that vendettas usually get one or two hits, very consistently, every turn, and that the zero hits things only happens very seldom. Certainly less than 25%.

Now the chance that he'll get the massive vanquisher cannon hit/pen is zero, but with fewer dice if you get on a bad streak of a lot of misses, that vanquisher is doing nothing turn after turn (which is what happened on the game). Streaks like this are much less likely for vendettas because they throw more dice (and the twin-linking gives some of those dice "memory" which pushes the frequency even more toward expected outcomes).

You can see the same thing happening with his hydras, which throw out twice as many shots for the same points as your executioners. And his manticore, which has the chance of multiple templates, and his multilasers at three shots each.

In Eldar you see the same thing happening with the single-shot fire prism versus an EML falcon in an anti-tank role. The falcon nearly always gets one hit every turn, and a second hit about half the time on average. But a prism has about a 25% chance of missing completely *two* turns in a row. If those two turns are the first two turns of the game (as they were in your battle in Bloomington) then the effects on the rest of the game are huge.

And the effects are magnified even more in antitank shooting, since multiple kills on the same vehicle with a single volley don't matter the way that they would in shooting against infantry.

So for long-range antitank shooting, your army has (I don't count HBs as anti-tank in this case since they can't hurt AR12).
4 lascannons
vanquisher battle cannon
2 exterminator autocannons

So you're throwing 13 antitank dice per turn, 8 twinlinked (possibly more with orders)

Against that he's throwing
5 multilasers
6 TL lascannons
1 medusa blast
1-3 storm eagle blasts
4 hydra autocannons

That's 31-33 dice, half of them twinlinked. So yes, he had really good luck in this particular game. But more dice means that the odds of his guns doing nothing were extremely small, and most likely he'd get results closer to the expected value than the army with fewer shooting dice. Notice that--at least according to the report--the tank with the fewest shots (medusa) did the least, while the tanks with the most shots (hydras) did the most. Likewise your own exterminators got the best results, while the dual shot vanquisher basically whiffed.

So, math gurus please correct me if I'm misunderstanding the probabilities here, but more dice = less dependence on luck.

Flavius Infernus wrote:I can't even calculate the odds that a vendetta will get no hits,

It's 1.56% . And you are certainly right about large number, they lead to much more consistency which I like. But on the other hand if you are playing an army that puts out fewer but more powerful shots and they land on the positive side of the stat curve it really hurts.

I think that one of the unspoken assumptions in this thread is that no mistakes were made in that battle report. It's hard to deny that Ailaros rolled poorly, and his opponent rolled well (though not as significantly as you'd think).

However, I think there are some other factors at play here. The lists present a pretty tough match up: ailaros needed to advance, while his opponent only needed to shoot. All of ArtfcllyFlvrd's heavy hitters had cover on turn one (either by terrain, chimeras, or scouting). That's going to halve anybody's damage output.

Additionally, I would have deployed different as Ailaros. Why not deploy the tanks on the flanks? That prevents the opponent from sneaking side shots, and increases the side shots gained. It would also allow the tanks to advance fully in support.

I think luck plays a pretty crucial role, and I'm not an expert player, but when I play somebody very good I can usually trace my loss to an error I made, not to bad dice rolls.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:@ Dash, can you give an example on how to minimize luck in your plans?

I'm not Dash, but I can throw out an example not related to shooting and the law of large numbers:

In the batrep, Ailaros decided to send his infantry through rough terrain--which resulted in his getting bogged down for at least one additional turn, and possibly two. The decision to go through rough terrain made his success dependent on dice--so when the dice came up bad, it caused him a problem. If he had moved through the open, there would have been no luck involved in his ability to move--he could have gone 6+d6" in the open without having to count on a good die roll.

Now moving in the open has its own hazards, and given the outcome you could ask the question if he would have lost more guys by screening one unit with another instead of keeping everybody in terrain, but that's all after the fact.

But this does highlight a point I was trying to make a couple months ago in a thread about the advantages of mech guard over infantry guard--that you always know your vehicle will move 12" in the movement phase without having to depend on luck, unlike infantry who need a favorable outcome and can be screwed over by a run of bad dice.

I'm willing to test this theory given that I'll bring the "Noob" side of the equation and the gimmicked dice to the table. I'm half tempted to challenge Ailaros to meet me somewhere in Indianapolis to test this.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:

Flavius Infernus wrote:I can't even calculate the odds that a vendetta will get no hits,

It's 1.56% . And you are certainly right about large number, they lead to much more consistency which I like. But on the other hand if you are playing an army that puts out fewer but more powerful shots and they land on the positive side of the stat curve it really hurts.

Wow, that's even less than I thought.

I've been noticing more and more as I tweak my own guard list that I'm leaning increasingly toward things that get more shots rather than things that get powerful shots. And of course, differences in the range of the two armies also played a huge role in the battle.

I also think that this huge element of luck is what makes 40k good!

In a game with no chance, like Chess, you don't get the same 'oh my god!' moments that you do in 40k when a Guardsman kills Kharne the Betrayer.

Over a lot of games, things perform averagely, so luck doesn't factor much overall. However, it adds the excitement, the twists, the reward for daring strategies to 40k. Chess is more like a puzzle, where there's always a 'best' move if you can spot it. But in 40k, the dice gods make the game interesting.

I well understand the law of large numbers. Unfortunately, it doesn't have much bearing on this.

Polonius wrote:I think that one of the unspoken assumptions in this thread is that no mistakes were made in that battle report.

No, actually. My assumptions relate to relative player skill and player skill relative to perfection. You can have two awful players, and they'd still fit the graph.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:But bad luck won’t prompt mistakes out of a really top notch player.

Ah, my point wasn't that bad luck causes mistakes, it was that it emulates mistakes. The end result is the same (a unit destroyed prematurely, for example), even if the means is different.

So, it seems that there is this idea that a good player can cancel the effects of bad luck, and that the better they are, the more it cancels. A perfect player, then, would be totally unaffected by bad luck.

How is this possible? I understand having backup plans to mitigate bad luck to a certain extent, but at best, you're mitigating the luck, not erasing it. If you lose 50% of your forces to a spectacular alpha strike, just how exactly is perfect skill going to get you a win?

The only way I can see is if you ALSO get good luck (or he gets really bad luck), or if your opponent makes a spectacular alpha strike sized mistake.

Remember, just as good player skill can mitigate bad luck, so can good player skill exploit bad luck. If you had two perfect players, and one had bad luck, one player would perfectly mitigate it, but the other player would perfectly exploit it, meaning that the end result is based entirely on the badness of the luck. Meanwhile, with two bad players, one wouldn't be able to mitigate the luck, but the other wouldn't be able to exploit it either.

As such, I really don't see how, between two good players, luck wouldn't be just as deciding of a factor as between two bad players.

Dashofpepper wrote:Not knowing something is not justification for presuming it doesn't exist.

What?

Illumini wrote:Also, I would love to hear your answer to my earlier question: If skill has such low value, how can a player dominate every single tourney he goes to? How can some players win 99% of their games?

Dashofpepper wrote:I'm truly not overstating my rolling (or understating in this case), it is truly an abomination. And yet I win. Almost every game.

Well, according to the above model, if you have bad luck and are still winning, it's because you're playing people sufficiently worse than you. That or there's something deceptive in the luck. Remember, luck only matters when it counts. Just having bad rolling doesn't necessarily mean it's significant to the results of the game.

you are missing one other factor in games, terrain. If terrain is equal and set up where both halves mirror each other then it is not a factor. If it is not, then terrain can affect a games out come.

Ailaros, I have to disagree with you as well. I think that you are focusing too much on the idea of a mistake. I agree with you, that as a player gets better, they make fewer and less painful mistakes, and it becomes progressively harder to learn to avoid them. But there are a host of other decisions that go in to a game of 40k that are harder or impossible to characterize as mistakes/correct decisions. Primarily, I'm thinking of list building.

You mention that experienced players make few mistakes in building their lists. I agree, in the sense that they will avoid weak units, make sure everything in their list works together, etc. Perhaps it is possible to agree that there is one best, say IG power blob build out there, and a veteran player's list will tend to be close to it. But, there is also the matter of deciding what sort of list to take, which can also have a huge impact on the outcome of the game. Surely we've all heard people complaining recently that the tournament meta is a Rock-Paper_Scissors game between SW, Mech IG and BA. My opinion is that amongst top players, one of the most important skills, at least for tournament play, is anticipating the likely meta and building a list to take advantage of it. I'm new to 40k, so I don't have any examples of this, but I know for a fact that this has happened in M:TG tournaments in the past. Players have won with decks that were not good against all comers, but were good against the decks the top players used. I realize that many 40k players will find this sort of logic disgusting but I really don't think anyone with aspirations of winning major tournaments can afford to be sentimental about stuff like which army they use.

Lastly, I wonder if some top players are successful because they are better at being unpredictable and thinking several turns ahead. This might not be so relevant for your army, Ailaros, since it is slow by nature, and hence can't redeploy easily. But I imagine a good player of a fast army, like Dash, has the ability to threaten to do a lot of things 3 turns from the current one, and can take advantage of that.

Finally, I would like to point out that results from other games suggest that luck won't be the determining factor for top players. I think a useful comparison is Poker. We all know that top Poker players are successful due to skill, not luck. It is interesting to note that the skills that separate a winner from a loser change as the overall skill level of the game increases. If you're playing against idiots and people who are there to gamble, simply not playing bad starting hands can be enough to make you a major winner. As the skill and stakes increase, everyone stops playing crap hands, so you have to get good at other things, like buying a free card or switching up your play. I think the same thing is true at 40k. The most basic thing is to know the rules and not make obvious mistakes. The next is to make a decent list, etc.

I will close by noting that we can find evidence for the importance of luck by looking at the top ranked players. If that set of players doesn't have a lot of turnover year-to-year, luck really can't be a major factor in tournament success. Is that the case? I don't know the answer myself.

Ailaros wrote:Ah, my point wasn't that bad luck causes mistakes, it was that it emulates mistakes. The end result is the same (a unit destroyed prematurely, for example), even if the means is different.

But they aren’t the same. Having a couple more transports blown up than average, or failing a few more saves is not the same as bad target priority, deploying when you should have reserved, running when you should have shot, advancing when you should have retreated. One gets a few models killed, the other wrecks your whole game. The game is not about killing things. Killing things is a tool to achieve the objective. Getting lucky and killing a few more things than normal does not necessarily stop you from achieving the objective.

For example, the store I play it is LOADED with very similar chaos armies. Every now and then I get lucky and blow all the transports up (or most) in the first turn or two. The not as good players keep rushing at me with no hope of ever making it. The smartest player, who I have never beat, find terrain to sink into, hangs on, goes to ground when appropriate and doesn’t when it isn’t, and keeps enough of his force alive that when he moves on objectives turn 5 and 6 it very difficult for me to move on the same objectives.

He keeps his cool, makes good decisions all the time, and even when the dice favor me strongly I can’t beat him. I’m getting closer each time, but I’m still not quite there.

Ailaros wrote:So, it seems that there is this idea that a good player can cancel the effects of bad luck, and that the better they are, the more it cancels. A perfect player, then, would be totally unaffected by bad luck.

It's not that they are unaffected, they just adjust tactics and adjust style depeding on what happens. Sometimes they make boring decisions but if they are the right decision than that's what it takes.

Ailaros wrote:Remember, just as good player skill can mitigate bad luck, so can good player skill exploit bad luck.

Absolutely true. But if you build lists that aren't dependend on linch pin units, and you practise situations where you lose important elements of your army, then you can mitigate what your opponent is able to do to you, and you can adapt, and you can still win.

Now if someone in one round of shooting blows away 75% of your army then there probably is nothing you can do. But I have never seen or heard that happen. And people do blow away game changing amounts of stuff in a single turn, but then change with the game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And I'm no expert in it, I'm learning just like the next guy. But I have watched some pretty good people and this is how they do it.

MrEconomics wrote:Primarily, I'm thinking of list building... Players have won with decks that were not good against all comers, but were good against the decks the top players used.

Right. Working with meta is an example of player skill. A person not bringing any anti-AV14 isn't actually a mistake, if they know they're not going to come up against AV14. It would be list tailoring (a meta-based player skill), not an error.

MrEconomics wrote:Lastly, I wonder if some top players are successful because they are better at being unpredictable and thinking several turns ahead. This might not be so relevant for your army, Ailaros, since it is slow by nature, and hence can't redeploy easily.

Sure, but movement is only one part of tactics, and you have to take player skill as a whole. I mean, most ork players aren't going to win a long-ranged shooting contest, but that doesn't mean orks aren't competitive. Likewise, just because a guard player doesn't bring skimmers means he's out of the running.

MrEconomics wrote:I think a useful comparison is Poker. We all know that top Poker players are successful due to skill, not luck.

Poker is really fascinating to me, actually, but it can't be applied directly here. In the end of a game of poker, the winner is most likely the last person not to fold. Yes, there still is a random element, but it's not the same. In 40k, you can see the results of your opponent's dice, and your opponent's randomness affects you, whether you care to believe it or not. For poker to really be analogous to 40k, you'd need to be able to see your opponent's hand.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:

Ailaros wrote:Ah, my point wasn't that bad luck causes mistakes, it was that it emulates mistakes. The end result is the same (a unit destroyed prematurely, for example), even if the means is different.

But they aren’t the same. Having a couple more transports blown up than average, or failing a few more saves is not the same as bad target priority, deploying when you should have reserved, running when you should have shot, advancing when you should have retreated. One gets a few models killed, the other wrecks your whole game.

Yes, but that's because you're not looking at the same level of mistake v. luck. Having a couple more transports blown up than average is a much smaller deal than advancing when you should have retreated.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:But if you build lists that aren't dependend on linch pin units, and you practise situations where you lose important elements of your army, then you can mitigate what your opponent is able to do to you, and you can adapt, and you can still win.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote: The not as good players keep rushing at me with no hope of ever making it. The smartest player, who I have never beat, find terrain to sink into, hangs on, goes to ground when appropriate and doesn’t when it isn’t, and keeps enough of his force alive that when he moves on objectives turn 5 and 6 it very difficult for me to move on the same objectives.

Exactly. Skill makes more of a difference when you're in the realm of more serious mistakes.

I'm not arguing that skill never matters, I'm arguing that it matters less the more you go, relative to other factors, like luck.

Ailaros wrote:
Yes, but that's because you're not looking at the same level of mistake v. luck. Having a couple more transports blown up than average is a much smaller deal than advancing when you should have retreated.

But you almost never see the type of luck that would equal a truly bad decision. Even in our game, as good as I was rolling, it equated to one extra vehicle that was stunned, and a couple extra guardsmen killed every turn. The type of negative results that are produced through luck, even the worst luck, just aren’t the same as the results created from bad play.

Ailaros wrote:
I'm not arguing that skill never matters, I'm arguing that it matters less the more you go, relative to other factors, like luck.

I would say that if you had two players of the exact same skill (skill including decision making, target priority, list building, and tons of other things) then luck is going to be the deciding factor because it’s the only thing that isn’t exactly equal. But if there is even a small disparity in skill that disparity is more influential then a very large disparity in luck. And having people with the exact same skill level is really never going to happen. And that level may change, one day I may be able to pull a fast one over you. You think about it, the next time you try something I have never seen before. The odds of a match coming down to nothing but luck are very, very small. I would say I have never lost solely on luck. With every game I can point to decisions that were wrong and would have increased my chances of winning. Had I made those decisions I might have won. Not saying it can’t happen, it just hasn’t happened to me.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:
I would say that if you had two players of the exact same skill (skill including decision making, target priority, list building, and tons of other things) then luck is going to be the deciding factor because it’s the only thing that isn’t exactly equal. But if there is even a small disparity in skill that disparity is more influential then a very large disparity in luck. And having people with the exact same skill level is really never going to happen. And that level may change, one day I may be able to pull a fast one over you. You think about it, the next time you try something I have never seen before. The odds of a match coming down to nothing but luck are very, very small. I would say I have never lost solely on luck. With every game I can point to decisions that were wrong and would have increased my chances of winning. Had I made those decisions I might have won. Not saying it can’t happen, it just hasn’t happened to me.

I'm not sure I can completely agree with that statement. Large numbers were mentioned earlier and I think that's a great point to bring to bear here. Let's take an example;

I run Nobz in BWagons---couple of other loaded BWagons----Big Mek-----standard Ork build really. Now, I get my first turn and move up 13"----you start shooting your next turn because you're a gunline.

Now normally you might get...let's say 12 hits against my AV 14 Wagons---you roll average and get 4ish pens. So I roll my KFF saves----technically I should only get 2 saves here and you should roll twice on the damage chart, probably dislodging my Nobz. However, I roll well this phase and roll 4 saves.

Now big numbers say down the road...over many many games those good rolls will come back to haunt me and even things out. But making one good round of rolling in this case (IE luck), has made a tremendous difference in my chance for success as I will now have a chance to silence guns early....before they can make the odds come back to me later on this saves.


This is why I believe 1 off games against anyone proves pretty much, absolutely nothing and single games can (and usually with two good players) break down to luck. 40k isn't terribly complicated----target priority----movement quirks---experience against a wide variety of armies.

Just my opinion though, your mileage may vary .

Good players minimise the effect of luck by calculating probabilities and choosing situations in which the balance of probability is on their side.

This doesn't eliminate luck entirely, of course. I think it just slants the blue line on the graph down a bit.

I'm not sure I agree that there is such a thing as a "small" mistake anyway. Especially in the context of equivalent opponents.

Sure, some mistakes are larger than others, but as soon as a mistake has a tangible cost, it's not going to be small.

What would you consider a "small" mistake that is outstripped by luck?

DarknessEternal wrote:
What would you consider a "small" mistake that is outstripped by luck?

I'll make the mistake of running one of my boyz units every round in exchange for the luck of making every one of my KFF saves every round.

Trade?

AgeOfEgos wrote:

I'm not sure I can completely agree with that statement. Large numbers were mentioned earlier and I think that's a great point to bring to bear here. Let's take an example;

I run Nobz in BWagons---couple of other loaded BWagons----Big Mek-----standard Ork build really. Now, I get my first turn and move up 13"----you start shooting your next turn because you're a gunline.

Now normally you might get...let's say 12 hits against my AV 14 Wagons---you roll average and get 4ish pens. So I roll my KFF saves----technically I should only get 2 saves here and you should roll twice on the damage chart, probably dislodging my Nobz. However, I roll well this phase and roll 4 saves.

Now big numbers say down the road...over many many games those good rolls will come back to haunt me and even things out. But making one good round of rolling in this case (IE luck), has made a tremendous difference in my chance for success as I will now have a chance to silence guns early....before they can make the odds come back to me later on this saves.


This is why I believe 1 off games against anyone proves pretty much, absolutely nothing and single games can (and usually with two good players) break down to luck. 40k isn't terribly complicated----target priority----movement quirks---experience against a wide variety of armies.

Just my opinion though, your mileage may vary .

First, how dare you disagree!

Second, running with your example, If I deploy in such a way that one round of bad shooting on such a priority target is going to allow you to assault really important stuff then I haven’t done my job of deploying road bumps, building contingency plans, and doing a number of things that can be done to minimize the effects of the bad luck.

Now two rounds of bad shooting, probably not as much you can do. Three rounds, at that point I would sympathize with someone calling it bad luck. But to have three very noticeable turns of very above or below the stat curve is getting into the realm of virtual impossibility. Now you’re dice might fail at a really pivotal moment, but if you have played the game in a way where it all comes down to one or two rolls I say you have played it wrong. It happens that way a lot, it happens to me a lot, I play wrong a lot.

Just my two cents. As far as myself I feel like it is a much more accurate statement to blame myself when I lose as opposed to luck.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:But if there is even a small disparity in skill that disparity is more influential then a very large disparity in luck.

Why?

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote: As far as myself I feel like it is a much more accurate statement to blame myself when I lose as opposed to luck.

Which is what I suppose I'm trying to get at here. Why is it more accurate to blame yourself than your dice for the outcome of a game?

Kilkrazy wrote:This doesn't eliminate luck entirely, of course. I think it just slants the blue line on the graph down a bit.

Hmm, this is an interesting way of thinking about it.

Of course, it's still relative. While your skill helps bump that line down, your opponent's skill helps bump that line up.

After all, if you were playing a much worse game than your opponent, you would probably need a great deal of luck to win.

DarknessEternal wrote:What would you consider a "small" mistake that is outstripped by luck?

Well, for example, a large mistake would be building a list that contains no anti-AV14. This provides a huge opportunity to your opponent if he brings any AV14. In fact, it would be easy to see how this would be the determining factor of a game (a land raider contesting an objective without fear of destruction, for example).

A small mistake would be things that are unlikely to hurt the person for making them, and if things do go against them, it's not very likely to determine the outcome of a game.

For example, if you accidentally turn a Leman russ against something in such a way where you expose the AV13 side armor to an autocannon, that's a pretty small mistake. The odds of that one autocannon doing anything are pretty low, and the odds of it doing something that actually affects the outcome of the game are even lower.

Plus, one of the things I forgot to mention earlier is the idea of tradeoffs. Very often in 40k, you can't do anything without risk. In the case of the above, the russ in question may have had to turn in order to blow up a land raider or kill off a demon prince, or something. In this case, letting the demon prince survive and make it into close combat with the russ would have been much worse off than exposing a little side armor.

Just because something goes poorly or well for you doesn't mean a mistake was made. You can still make the best move without it being a perfect move. Luck makes sure of that.

Ailaros wrote:

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:But if there is even a small disparity in skill that disparity is more influential then a very large disparity in luck.

Why?

Because the negative results produced from bad play are much greater than the negative results produced from bad luck.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:
First, how dare you disagree!

Second, running with your example, If I deploy in such a way that one round of bad shooting on such a priority target is going to allow you to assault really important stuff then I haven’t done my job of deploying road bumps, building contingency plans, and doing a number of things that can be done to minimize the effects of the bad luck.

Now two rounds of bad shooting, probably not as much you can do. Three rounds, at that point I would sympathize with someone calling it bad luck. But to have three very noticeable turns of very above or below the stat curve is getting into the realm of virtual impossibility. Now you’re dice might fail at a really pivotal moment, but if you have played the game in a way where it all comes down to one or two rolls I say you have played it wrong. It happens that way a lot, it happens to me a lot, I play wrong a lot.

Just my two cents. As far as myself I feel like it is a much more accurate statement to blame myself when I lose as opposed to luck.

I hear you and understand where you're coming from. I've surely seen mistakes cost me games and learned quite a bit from idiotic (In hindsight) decisions. That said, I've also seen (especially since 5th Ed.) luck run away with someone before...both ways. Armor/SS saves are two good examples of this, as usually there are so few of those saves forced (Due to heavy weapon restrictions) that large numbers do not come into play...until you play multiple games.

I've seen many games turn on someone rolling multiple SS saves at a crucial time in the game (Above average by far). I've also seen the game turn the other way by watching my buddy roll 5 1's on normal Term saves. Small dice rolls with statistical outliers can certainly swing games in my experience.

This is why I've always joked that the fairest way to play 40k is to simply figure out, statistically, how many hits/wounds/saves should occur and apply the results .

AgeOfEgos wrote:This is why I've always joked that the fairest way to play 40k is to simply figure out, statistically, how many hits/wounds/saves should occur and apply the results .

It may be the most fair but it’s not as fun, at least for me. Figuring out the risk/reward of all your decision is part of what makes you a good player.

And yeah I have seen a lot of rolls at pivotal moment decide games. But I think the pivotal moment rolling is a symptom of crutch units or risky play which to me is bad play. Sometimes fun, but not high level. Maybe I have an elitist attitude when it comes to 40k.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:

AgeOfEgos wrote:This is why I've always joked that the fairest way to play 40k is to simply figure out, statistically, how many hits/wounds/saves should occur and apply the results .

It may be the most fair but it’s not as fun, at least for me. Figuring out the risk/reward of all your decision is part of what makes you a good player.

And yeah I have seen a lot of rolls at pivotal moment decide games. But I think the pivotal moment rolling is a symptom of crutch units or risky play which to me is bad play. Sometimes fun, but not high level. Maybe I have an elitist attitude when it comes to 40k.

Oh, I absolutely agree! The fondest memories I have of 40k are statistical outliers (Remember that time your Khorne Champion made 29 saves and wiped out an entire GeneStealer brood?!), etc. I'm more a 'Tell a story' than play competitively.

Pivotal moments can be based on risky play to be sure...but risking 6 terminator saves at the loss of 1 is an acceptable risk imo. When you roll 5 ones though, the outliers really suck!

Regardless, good discussion.

Ailaros wrote:
For example, if you accidentally turn a Leman russ against something in such a way where you expose the AV13 side armor to an autocannon, that's a pretty small mistake. The odds of that one autocannon doing anything are pretty low, and the odds of it doing something that actually affects the outcome of the game are even lower.

When the chances of something being destroyed go from zero to "anything except zero" then that's a fairly large mistake if you had nothing to gain from doing so.

That's still a small mistake. A BS4 Autocannon gets 0.22 results against Armor 13.

A large mistake would be turning it around entirely or tank shocking with the Leman Russ against a melta carrying squad rather than shooting at them.

I agree with the original post that luck becomes a greater factor in the game as a player's skill increases. Although people write lists to minimise luck, it is still present, and given that no list writing or tactical mistakes are made, luck can be the deciding factor. However, the different armies in the game are simply not balanced. It has been my experience that the imbalance between armies is usually the deciding factor, rather than luck or tactics. Sometimes you have a clearly dominant list, and other times the tournament lists function like rock paper scissors.

The OP reminds of Magic: The Gathering or Poker. Yes, luck is a factor. But, overall, skill takes precedence. There is such a hideous number of factors in one single game of WH40k that I find it hard to believe that luck is the ultimate deciding factor. I completely agree that luck influences the outcome, but it is marginal compared to raw skill and list-building. Sometimes luck can outweigh raw skill and list-building, but I find that to be the exception and not the rule. Just my .02 cents.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:
I would say that if you had two players of the exact same skill (skill including decision making, target priority, list building, and tons of other things) then luck is going to be the deciding factor because it’s the only thing that isn’t exactly equal.

See, this is exactly what I'm arguing against. This argument only works if the players happen to take the same list. There is this hidden assumption that either "Equal list building skill" = "Same list", or "Equal list building skill" = "Any list Player A constructs is an even matchup with any list Player B constructs". The first proposition is clearly false. The second is also false. My reasoning is that, it may be true that list A and list B are equally good in an all-comers sense, that is, the have the same probability at winning against an opponent that is randomly sampled from the appropriate meta. Thus, over a large sample of opponents, with a mix that represents the local metagame, the two lists are equally good. However, each list is inevitably going to have good matchups and bad matchups. List A might brutally punish Mech IG because it focuses on killing armor, but have a rough time with a DoA army because it can't kill MEQ fast enough. List B might be a Mech IG list, so the advantage goes to A when they play each other. When Player A wins, we can't attribute the win to player skill, but giving it to luck isn't really appropriate either. We see this kind of thing in other areas all the time: Sports, video games, etc.

Again, I think the Poker comparison is apt here. Player A might consistently beat Player B for a variety of reasons yet we might still think they are equally skilled in some abstract sense because they perform equally well against the field in general.

Alright....I had typed up a pretty lengthy response, highlighting key issues that I wanted to address, then realized that some of the presumptions that I was going to have to respond to (like all my opponents being really bad) are ridiculous, or that I already hit them.


I will offer this instead as a note on minimizing luck's factor in your game.

When 10 Orks fight 10 Marines, they are going to need luck to win the combat.

When 20 Orks fight 10 Marines, they are going to need luck to wipe out the marines.

When 100 Orks fight 10 Marines, luck is no longer a factor in the Marines dying.

This is common sense, but think on it deeper than face value.

A skilled player, a truly skilled player, makes decisions on the table that minimise the amount of 'luck' needed to achieve a certain objective. The two aren't independent from each other, you merely use a controllable factor (your ability at 40k), to limit or nullify an uncontrollable one (the dice). The better you are ad identifying and making those decisions, the better a player you are.

I think someone earlier in the thread (Dash?) said pretty much the same thing; the higher your skill level the less of an impact luck has on your game. Its why consistently 'unlucky' people blame the dice rather than their tactics or their overall strategy. This is normally a result of their army only having a single strategy (usually 'Get 'em!' or 'Blast 'em!') without an effective back-up and/or lack of intelligent playing decisions during the game.

As the player doesn't understand how to play their army differently, as their strategy is so very, very basic; anything that does go wrong is the dice's fault: 'I needed to get across the board as quickly as possible, I didn't roll high enough for DT/run moves, dice screwed me over.'

I'm normally an advocate for luck not getting the recognition it properly deserves in 40K, but to say luck and skill operate completely independently of each other is, I'm afraid, incorrect.

L. Wrex

This type of analysis that the original poster posted is spot on...it's been thought out and done in other games. There's a similar thing that Seth (who now works for capcom) wrote during the first US vs. Japan.
Execution sets apart the top players and the good players.

At the top level, everyone has the knowledge and the lists..so you'd think it would be luck, but the little things matter. You might think it would be luck, but a really good player can take advantage of situations. A small mistake might means few models down..which in turn means they can't do their job as well, etc etc...it's more magnified against good opponents.

On top of that, you are right to be discouraged, because you've discovered diminishing returns. But the fact is diminishing returns is true for everything. It doesn't matter what anybody comepete at...as you go up in skill, achiveing the next level of ability requires exponential amount of time and effort.

This is why in Michael Jordan's book he calls himse;f "a student of the game." He might be considered great, but even he sees the holes in his own game.

The other thing too...as you get better, you notice more weaknesses in your own gameplay that are exceptionally difficult to correct..that you might not have noticed before.

The exception to the rule is when game breakdown occurs. For instance, tic tac toe. Because the options are so small and finite, it is easy to break down the game and have a perfect mathematical solution early.

But for 40k, which evolves and has many permutations, it's an ongoing process.

For once I agree with Ailaros on something.

If two players of equal skill mirror match each other they should have a 50% chance to win/lose.

Ailaros is saying that at the extreme, if you play perfectly, and terrain is perfect, and your lists are evenly matched (alot of big ifs, but follow along), then the only thing that will effect the outcome of an individual match can only possibly BE determined by individual die rolls.

The idea that you can somehow be good enough to not care about what dice you roll is absurd. If you have a list that can throw enough dice at everything at everyone everywhere all the time forever and ever and not ever care what an individual roll is then either your list is better, your opponents are worse, or your matchups are more lopsided through a category you can't determine than your ego wants them to be (points to mister 99.9999% win ratio even though I roll 30% ones all the time)

@Ailaros

Luck is very subjective.
I know MANY players who claim to be unlucky in order to mitigate their lack of skill in front of opponents.
So they keep forgetting good rolls and insist on bad rolling if some roll was under "average".

If you need lady luck on your side, then you have a bad matchup or you play a better opponent.

40k is more than basic tactics actually. You can simplify it afterwards of course, but it is as simple as Sun Tzu: Simple but not easy.

My key to victory is:

Try to avoid important dice rolls (rather avoid engagement for one more turn)
local superiority cannot be broken
1:0 on mission objectives is sufficient to victory, so dont let the opponent get the 1 (you could get the 0)

So if you want to avoid luck:

Movement Phase is your phase. Unless you dont have terrain infront of you, it is your free choice what to do. Use that freedom.
Every target engagable for the opponent should be treated as a (potential) casualty.
Use distances in your favour.
Clear target priority. Most important stuff has to be shot. It HAS to be shot (I spent a whole game killing my opponents bloodletters ignoring the crushers tearing through my army. It was an objective game, I traded half of my army in order to get them, I would have won on turn 5, we tied after he killed my last troop and it was his only tie in the tournament the rest were massacre victories (he won it) but if I altered even a bit, I would have lost badly)

I think the outcome of a game depends on:

50% matchup (your army vs enemy army under the given mission on the given table)
40% skill
10% luck


EDIT @Mike

Ailaros is saying that at the extreme, if you play perfectly, and terrain is perfect, and your lists are evenly matched (alot of big ifs, but follow along), then the only thing that will effect the outcome of an individual match can only possibly BE determined by individual die rolls.

Under that certain circumstances the very most likely outcome of the game will be a draw.

The idea that you can somehow be good enough to not care about what dice you roll is absurd.

No it isnt. Learn to move properly^^

I agree with the O.P.

For this reason;

In the absence of any mistakes, if both players play perfect games, then the winner will be the one who had more luck.

What form that luck takes is an entirely different matter. Luck enters into games in more ways than the rolls of the dice.

If you're playing in a tournament, your first round match-up can derail any chance you have of winning first place. With a sufficiently large number of players, the eventual winner will need to go undefeated. With a non-sufficiently large number of games, the eventual winner will need to not only win, but to massacre their opponents. If you draw a not-so-good player in the first round, you're on your way. If you draw one of the other top players at the event, you will most likely knock each other out of contention.

A few years back, I faced Bill Kim in the first round of the Adepticon gladiator. He's won the event (twice, I think). We played to a near draw, and the rest of the day was spent playing essentially meaningless games.

Luck can also feature in match-ups. As much as you can try to make an all-comers list, all lists will have some lists that they do better against, and, therefore, some that they do worse against. Not to pick on Bill, but the year after the above game, he took his Stealer Shock to the gladiator. This was tail-end of 4th edition, and mechdar was a powerful build. Bill knew that his list had a real uphill battle against well-played mechdar lists, because they could dance around the stealers. But, he never had to face a mechdar list. That's also luck. That's not trying to say that Bill only won because of this. Clearly he's an excellent player, because when the luck fell in his favour, he was able to take advantage of this, and outplay his opponents to win the event.


That same weekend, at the championship game, I played a mechdar list. I knew I had a weakness against destroyer-heavy necron lists, but I could pretty much beat anything else. I'd rocked my first few games, and was on the top three tables for the final game. I also had an excellent looking army (within the top 10 for paint scores, if I recall correctly), a perfect sportsmanship score... I was in the running. As I approached the top tables, I saw the other armies set up. Chaos Marines, Marines... and this one monolith, backed up with 17 destroyers. Yup, that was my table. I gave it my best shot, but after a couple of turns, all my skimmers were permanently shaken, and he was able to pick it apart. I pretty much knew, walking up to the table, that I was already knocked out. No dice involved, just luck of the draw. (Clearly, my opponent was also an excellent player, or he would not have been at the top tables either).

So, between list match-ups and opponent match-ups, it's pretty easy to see how luck has already been able to knock a really-good player out of contention at any given tournament. And we haven't even rolled a single die yet.

Then there's terrain. The simple assignment of what table you're playing on can have a huge impact. Playing a bike or cavalry heavy force, and find yourself on a table with those accursed ruins that your men cannot even enter - and watch your opponent place the objectives on the upper floors.... Are you playing a long-range shooty army, only to find yourself on a table with few clear firing lanes and plenty of places for your opponent's models to advance without being seen? Are you playing an assault army, and find yourself on a table with lots of difficult terrain that doesn't even provide cover (rivers/marshes anyone)?

And we still haven't rolled a die.

Are you the guy who gets to play the objective mission against someone with 2 five-man troop squads, and the kill point mission against someone with 24 kill points in their army? Or are you the guy who gets to play the objective game against someone with 10 scoring units and three fast skimmers to contest with, and the kill point mission against the guy with 4 units in their entire army?

All these things are luck, none are dice-related, and any of them can win, or lose, you a game.

And then there are those two all-important first rolls...

As skill levels increase towards perfection, the impact of luck definitely increases. Good player beat average players because the good player can plan for, and mitigate the effects of luck better. But when skill levels are equal, 40k really does come down to luck.

I'm going to have to throw my lot in with Dash here....I mean, yes in a game with perfectly balanced armies, with perfect play on both sides, the deciding factor will be luck. It will be that one flubbed roll with a powerfist, or that time you rolled 3 ones to fry yourself with your own plasma guns. It will be luck.

However, we do not live in an idea world, and in reality, the chance of you facing a game where everyone is equal in skill, and play a perfect game is next to nil. There will be mistakes made by even the most experienced player. They might set up their army, and not check line of site to make sure they were hidden behind terrain, which could easily turn the game around. I agree, that with more experienced mistaked, smaller mistakes get amplified, and the big obvious mistakes get toned down, but that's my opinion. As the players grow more experienced, the tiny flaws they made in their game play get inflated massively by their well skilled opponent, and since the mistake isn't obvious, or even readily spottable, it gets put down to 'luck'.

I mean, going back to my example with checkig line of sight. Let's say you've got a Russ in a position where you think its hidden completely from your enemy's railguns. However you didn't check, and a railgun can see you. You get cover, but it sees you. It hits and stuns your Russ first shooting phase, which then snowballs into costing you the game. Now, is it luck that you didn't make your cover save that cost you the game, or is it the mistake you made that cost you the game? I say its the mistake.

I mean, going back to my example with checkig line of sight. Let's say you've got a Russ in a position where you think its hidden completely from your enemy's railguns. However you didn't check, and a railgun can see you. You get cover, but it sees you. It hits and stuns your Russ first shooting phase, which then snowballs into costing you the game. Now, is it luck that you didn't make your cover save that cost you the game, or is it the mistake you made that cost you the game? I say its the mistake.

Every target engagable for the opponent should be treated as a (potential) casualty. This should be in your plans. If it wasnt, its a lack of skill. If you wanted to hide the russ and did not make it completely then you deserve it to be killed.

My theory is, under equal circumstances you always will be able to tie on top level.

Not taking missions or enemy lists into consideration while building your own list is a lack of skill.

Luck can also feature in match-ups. As much as you can try to make an all-comers list, all lists will have some lists that they do better against, and, therefore, some that they do worse against. Not to pick on Bill, but the year after the above game, he took his Stealer Shock to the gladiator. This was tail-end of 4th edition, and mechdar was a powerful build. Bill knew that his list had a real uphill battle against well-played mechdar lists, because they could dance around the stealers. But, he never had to face a mechdar list. That's also luck.

Yes he needed this luck because of his lack of skill to take the mechdar threat into consideration.

I played a mechdar list. I knew I had a weakness against destroyer-heavy necron lists, but I could pretty much beat anything else. I'd rocked my first few games, and was on the top three tables for the final game. I also had an excellent looking army (within the top 10 for paint scores, if I recall correctly), a perfect sportsmanship score... I was in the running. As I approached the top tables, I saw the other armies set up. Chaos Marines, Marines... and this one monolith, backed up with 17 destroyers. Yup, that was my table. I gave it my best shot, but after a couple of turns, all my skimmers were permanently shaken, and he was able to pick it apart.

same story. Why did you allow a major weakness to destroyer heavy opponents? If it was so important that it lost you the game. Perhaps you could solve this problem creatively?

Then there's terrain. The simple assignment of what table you're playing on can have a huge impact. Playing a bike or cavalry heavy force, and find yourself on a table with those accursed ruins that your men cannot even enter - and watch your opponent place the objectives on the upper floors.... Are you playing a long-range shooty army, only to find yourself on a table with few clear firing lanes and plenty of places for your opponent's models to advance without being seen? Are you playing an assault army, and find yourself on a table with lots of difficult terrain that doesn't even provide cover (rivers/marshes anyone)?

Those are unbalanced conditions and therefore uncompetitive. But still, why do you need a specific terrain for your army to work properly?

Luck and skill. One could say that that trying to remove luck from the game is the best use of skill.

I play a lot more Blood Bowl (board and PC) than I do 40k. It's a faster game and the growth aspect is a lot of fun for me.

Some of the most sucessful coaches in Blood Bowl will move all of their players that can move before they pickup a single die. This gets their guys into position and doesn't leave anything to chance before any matter of luck can change the board. I try to teach new coaches this as it will help their offense and defense tremendously.

But rolling dice early (before moving all players) can have huge implications. If you knock down some of their guys, or simply move some of your own blockers out of the way, you can open up lanes for critical blitzes or better formations. But that is taking risks. Like poker, sometimes they pay off, sometimes they don't. It is up to the coach to determine if it is worth the risk, but you go into it knowing that you can't win 100% of the time.

40k is a more complicated game (with very few rerolls!) but sometimes it can be simplified to near Blood Bowl levels. Nothing is usually 100%, but you can shift your odds and have backup plans. Position a key squad that can fire on 2 or 3 different things. Fire the rest of your army first at critical targets. Fire this last key squad at whatever remains. This key squad is your "reroll" against the critical targets.

Another thing to consider is best described with Long Fangs splitting fire. If you have Lascannons in the squad and two Monoliths bearing down on them, they should always split fire, and be fired first. Odds are against you blowing both up, but if you don't split fire then you will never blow both up. These things can happen so don't remove the possibility before you even try.

Aillaros' initial point is fact and not disputable. If one controls for skill, terrain, etc. (IE all-non "luck" factors), then the result of the game will be determined by "luck". It's definitional.

However, I think there is some misalignment on what "luck" means. In terms of this discussion, it seems to indicate variability due to dice roll. This is the classic difference between games of chance and skill. Chess is a classic example of a skill game- there is no random factor. Dice based games are chance games- you can always "lose" on a roll and successful strategies revolve around probabilities.

Comparing 40k to sports (or fighting games) is flawed- sports generally have little to no randomness. Other than the initial coin flip (a random event), there are no random events that the game depends on (for example, American footbal teams do not roll a dice to determine whether a touchdown attempt scores 6, 7, or 0 points). There are an exceedingly high number of variables, but for game theory, these are classed as non-random in that they are a product of decision or circumstance, not a random generator.

Cards are also very different from dice based games in the randomization mechanic. Games like Magic involve a limited pool without replacement- that is, you only have a set amount of cards, and once you draw a given card, you will not draw it again and the card total (and variability) is reduced. Not so with dice- each roll is an independant event.

The only real debate here I see is the relative weight of the random event compared to minor differences in player skill (defined as actual skill, not optimal, IE how they actually play in the game, not what they are capable of). To this end, I would say it varies somewhat and certain lists rely more on the random element than others. There is a fairly high level of randomness in the game, though, for the most part, that is not possible to compensate for. For example, if an opponent goes first and rolls in a statistically high manner, the only response is to act in a manner that minimizes that damage. It is quite possible to have units crippled to a point that they cannot recover on due to astatistical rolling. Thereotically, a poorer player could beat a better one based an "better" rolling.

However, it is my opnion that there are broad skill levels (perhaps five or so) that generally account for more than the random factor, and playing up or down more than one band almost guarantees the result. I do not think that small differences in skill will compensate for any significant swing in the random factor.

I think its fair to say that there is no such thing as a perfect mirror match between two players of identical skill....unless you copy your own list and play against yourself. Then you could see how luck factors in, presuming that you made no mistakes on either side.

Short of that....I'm not sure I agree with things like Redbeard's assessment of luck and its factor.

While it may have been "bad luck" for you to get paired up against a destroyer heavy Necron army....it was only bad luck because you brought a list that wasn't capable of dealing with them. The same thing to the guy who plays an objective mission against someone with 2 five-man troop squads. Player skill dictated the assembly of that list. And the kill-point mission against someone with 24 killpoints? Player skill assembled that list too.

Heck, my Dark Eldar run 25 killpoints. I don't have issues in killpoint games, because my player skill dictates how I approach and win those challenges.

MrEconomics wrote:

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:
I would say that if you had two players of the exact same skill (skill including decision making, target priority, list building, and tons of other things) then luck is going to be the deciding factor because it’s the only thing that isn’t exactly equal.

See, this is exactly what I'm arguing against. This argument only works if the players happen to take the same list. There is this hidden assumption that either "Equal list building skill" = "Same list", or "Equal list building skill" = "Any list Player A constructs is an even matchup with any list Player B constructs". The first proposition is clearly false. The second is also false. My reasoning is that, it may be true that list A and list B are equally good in an all-comers sense, that is, the have the same probability at winning against an opponent that is randomly sampled from the appropriate meta. Thus, over a large sample of opponents, with a mix that represents the local metagame, the two lists are equally good. However, each list is inevitably going to have good matchups and bad matchups. List A might brutally punish Mech IG because it focuses on killing armor, but have a rough time with a DoA army because it can't kill MEQ fast enough. List B might be a Mech IG list, so the advantage goes to A when they play each other. When Player A wins, we can't attribute the win to player skill, but giving it to luck isn't really appropriate either. We see this kind of thing in other areas all the time: Sports, video games, etc.

Again, I think the Poker comparison is apt here. Player A might consistently beat Player B for a variety of reasons yet we might still think they are equally skilled in some abstract sense because they perform equally well against the field in general.

The argument Ailaros has created is "If you completely control for everything except luck, only luck will be a factor" which he has extended to "top-tier players have controlled for everything except luck, so luck will be the only factor in them winning their games against each other"

Your point presented above is "Well if you completely control for everything except luck AND imbalance between army lists, then the imbalance between army lists will also be a factor!" This is correct, but individual matchups roll back into the "luck" thing. In your example, a particular set of players might not have an even 50/50 (or 20 win 60 draw 20 win, which is probably more likely) spread vs. each other due to their lists, but would perform equally well against the teeming masses as a whole, which for the purposes of the argument is functionally the same thing.

Jmurph encapsulated the debate pretty well.

nazdreg wrote:No it isnt. Learn to move properly^^

Read my post until you THINK you understand it, and then read it again a couple more times, and you'll see exactly why what you typed is incorrect.

Dashofpepper wrote:
While it may have been "bad luck" for you to get paired up against a destroyer heavy Necron army....it was only bad luck because you brought a list that wasn't capable of dealing with them. The same thing to the guy who plays an objective mission against someone with 2 five-man troop squads. Player skill dictated the assembly of that list. And the kill-point mission against someone with 24 killpoints? Player skill assembled that list too.

But you're failing to take into considerations the way that tournaments were run then (and some still are). If you have 150 participants in a three or four round tournament, then you -need- massacres to be in the running. Squeeking out minor victories simply doesn't cut it. That means that, in that environment, you need to take a list that's going to be capable of massacres in the most common matchups (versus MEQ, and versus whatever the meta is running at that time (in late 4th ed, that was largely nidzilla and mechdar, along with the MEQ lists). Taking a list that gives up scoring massacres against the more common opponents, in exchange for a slight edge against the less common opponents (I don't think there were many more than 5 necron armies there) is a poor strategic choice.

Luck enters into it because there is the chance that you play the necron army. But, playing the odds, you take the list that gets the massacres versus 75% of the field and has a bad game against 5% of the field, because that yields the best chances to win the event. There's actually math that backs up this assertion.

Now, some of the newer tournament formats, like Nova, and like Adepticon is doing this year, are changing that dynamic. They reward the player who wins all their games, even barely, above those that massacre. So you plan accordingly. In that scoring system, you're right, you try to eliminate poor match-ups, because winning is more important than massacring, and you cannot afford the loss to the match-up. But if failing to massacre is equivalent to failing to win, that's not as true.

There is luck in sports. Take the two sports I know best: basketball and boxing.

In basketball, you're not gonna make every shot you shoot. That's why rebounding is so important. It's almost random whether or not a sharp shooter makes a 3 pointer. A good 3 point shooter shoots like 45%...that's as random as can be. BUT..you factor in the miss aspect of that into your strategy. This is why a dunk or a layup is a better shot...it has a higher chance of going in.

You know on intentional fouls, you try to foul the guy that shoots the worst on free throws. Smart teams try to counteract this by inbounding the ball on intentional fouls to the point guard..who usually has the highest free throw percentage. That's not too different from 40k.

Boxing..same thing. You can dominate an opponent for 11 rounds and get hit by a lucky punch and get knocked out. But as hall of famer boxing coach Freddie Roach once said, "There is no such thing as a lucky punch." Yet, at the same time, I've seen weird things. I've seen someone slip on a wet spot, and then get canned by a haymaker while his footing was lost.

However, that's considered part of the game, and that's why so much is stressed on footwork...to mitigate random crap like this happening.

Luck is part of the game. dealing with luck is very much a part of the game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

The argument Ailaros has created is "If you completely control for everything except luck, only luck will be a factor" which he has extended to "top-tier players have controlled for everything except luck, so luck will be the only factor in them winning their games against each other"

Problem with this is that we haven't even touched the tip of the iceberg. In fighting games, top players routinely watch videos of themselves and other top players to gain insight into the game. I'm not saying they watch 30 seconds of crap. I mean frame by frame over and over on situations that gave them trouble. As a former top 3rd strike player, I spent hours in the lab working on specific things over and over. I don't see 40k being taken to that level. If anything, 40k evolves kind of slow, even with the internet around.

To add to this...unlike fighting games that don't have rules changes very often, the 40k rules itself evolve as new codecies and faqs come in...and very often these faqs invalidate or completely change popular strategies.

The other thing is there isn't a standard way to play the game. Players do not have set tables or set terrain or even set rules about how terrain works. Each location generally plays things differently, and the rulebook advocates that by being wishy washy about terrain rules.

Add in random ass missions in hard boyz and other tournaments, and you have a game where it's very unlikely a player entering in has a complete understanding of what's going on. It's simply too difficult.

DarknessEternal wrote:

Ailaros wrote:
For example, if you accidentally turn a Leman russ against something in such a way where you expose the AV13 side armor to an autocannon, that's a pretty small mistake. The odds of that one autocannon doing anything are pretty low, and the odds of it doing something that actually affects the outcome of the game are even lower.

When the chances of something being destroyed go from zero to "anything except zero" then that's a fairly large mistake if you had nothing to gain from doing so.

He clearly made the point that he gained from doing so, but then provided an opportunity for luck to rear it's head. If the opponent then gets a lucky shot in, that could cost the game while not being a "mistake" since it was the best choice available. Basically, the "if you had nothing to gain" is the crux.

There was talk about small mistakes meaning much more in higher-skilled games. This is incredibly true, and where competitive play really shines. So eventually, small mistakes are actually big mistakes, once skill levels are that refined. However, there's a point where bad luck *does* emulate mistakes, as Ailaros suggests. The example mentioned that a small mistake cost a unit a few models, which then reduced its ability to perform later on. Rolling poorly on armor saves emulates this perfectly, and can cost you the exact same number of models.

To get mathematical, there's a theoretical point where the only factor in a game is luck, since everything is played out perfectly. Nobody said this has to happen "IRL", you just have to accept the theory. Pretend someone programmed it on the computer or something. Now, on the other hand, it's possible for the disparity between two opponents to be so large that there is no amount of luck that will save the less skilled. He can roll all 6's if he wants, but there's no way a 50-man Guard Blob is bringing down that Wraithlord. Now, if you graph the effect of luck and the effect of skill, like Ailaros has, but let the lines vary all you want, there's still one thing that must happen: there has to be a crossover where the difference in skill affects the game less than luck. This part of the graph is what A-ros is talking about, and it mathematically has to exist. (If you're a math person, yes, I'm assuming the functions are continuous. Deal with it.)

The discussion, as I see it, is whether this region of skill vs luck is large enough to trifle about. You can have plans with backup plans and more backup plans, but there are times you're just fethed by dice. You can also Gump your way into victory. These are part of the game, and no amount of skill will prevent it from happening. If you play defensively enough that you avoid the possibility of getting wiped out by poor saves, you won't be in a position to take advantage when it happens to your opponent. If you both play that way, you may as well stay in your deployment zones and play with yourselves.

You can reduce the effect that luck has, but you can never make it meaningless. If you're finding that luck is playing too much a part in your games, then you should put effort into minimizing that. Take redundant units, play more (or less) conservatively, buy expensive and balanced dice. Someone pointed out that 40k isn't as practiced and evolved as some sports where people watch their matches over and over again, and I think there's at least some validity there. There's almost guaranteed to be a way to change your game or playstyle to reduce luck's effect. But even if you work at it for years, there's the statistical possibility you roll all 1's for everything (except leadership checks, of course).

I think the best ways to reduce luck's impact are large point games, and missions with multiple tiers of objectives. The more goes on in a game, the more skill can come into play to compensate for turns of luck.

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.

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.

Likewise, if both players roll average (or, actually, if they roll the same level of luck relative to each other), than the dice are going to play a relatively insignificant role in determining the outcome of the game than the lists the players brought to the table, or how they were deployed and moved.

Of course, this is no eureka moment, as this idea is pretty obvious. Where it gets interesting is something that I've come to notice about tactics as of late.

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.

Of course, if you had two players of roughly equal skill at everything, these small differences would actually be the only determiner of outcome (see chess, for example). The thing is, though, there's this other element in 40k: luck.

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.

There is only one final piece to this before I wrap it all up, and that is that the better you get at 40k, the less better you get at 40k, and the less it actually matters. When you start out, you make serious errors, and fixing those errors can make a huge impact in the game. The better you get, though, the smaller the mistakes you make. When you and your opponent are both seasoned players, unless one of you happens to make a real blunder that game, the most likely outcome is that the two of you are going to be making small errors, and that they're unlikely to make much of a difference with determining the outcome of the game...

... compared to luck. The point I'm trying to make is that as player skill improves, the only way that mistakes can still be a determining factor (like in chess), is if everything else is even MORE relatively irrelevant. The better you get, the less likely your mistakes are going to matter compared to what the dice show over the course of a game. The dice may be unpredictable, but there is a certain range to which they can be influential. Skill may diminish in relative importance, but luck always has the same range of influence. The less skill matters, relatively, the more luck matters.

Now, I'm not claiming that there is an ultimate level of 40k-ness where you make perfect lists, and have perfect tactics. What I'm claiming is that the closer you get to perfection, the less your perfection actually influences the course of the game. After all, if you had two perfect players with perfect lists and perfect field-play, then the ONLY determining factor would be how the dice roll.

Thus, my theory 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. It's not that skill literally doesn't matter, it's that it practically doesn't matter. Yes, you can play any given game at a lower skill level (you didn't get enough sleep the night before, or just made silly mistakes), and relative skill level between players still matters.

My point is that the higher player skill level becomes, the less the difference between the players matters, and the more that the results are determined by luck.

Of course, this is a somewhat disheartening conclusion to reach. I'd like to believe that 40k predominantly is a game of skill rather than predominantly one of chance. As such, I'd like to get more input before I set this down in stone.

This is an excellent analysis and one that my personal experience largely reinforces.

I play in a LOT of tournaments, typically several a month. And what I have noticed is that in good games, against good opponents with good lists in balanced missions (reduction of variables) it simply comes down to who makes less mistakes and who gets a few lucky dice to fall their way. That's it.

Is it disheartening?

It depends on your point of view. It has made me a more relaxed player for the most part (although I still get VERY engaged in competitive games) as I have come to accept that a lot of it is simply out of my hands.

However, the counterpoint is that we see the same players winning consistently. So, given the above premise you have to accept that either they are more lucky (which is contrary to the very nature of probability), cheating (which in 99.9% of the cases is going to be false) or that skill does play more of a roll than you think, albeit not by much. Victory or failure in a tight game comes down to minutiae (as it does in all high level competition). It is just that in our game, unlike a lot of others, luck plays a much larger roll.

I believe that skill in playing and list building is the greatest determinate of success or failure in 40K. However, as you state, as skill levels and all other variables come closer together so as to become negligible (or at least less determinate), then the uncontrollable and inherently random element of chance plays a larger part in the game. But, given the real-world facts that the same players consistently do well in tournaments, skill still reigns supreme in 40K, otherwise real-world results would be much more skewed.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:
Because the negative results produced from bad play are much greater than the negative results produced from bad luck.

Sufficiently good/bad luck can destroy any plan. Watching a Eldar player lose two grav tanks on turn one to glancing hits (this was 3rd). Watching that same player with White Scars have a Chaplain charge 3 times and spend 8 phases in close combat, yet not cause a single wound. Having a turn where you roll 30% under average is crippling, just like having repeated mulligans in magic is crippling.

Another thing to considering is consistent luck, be it good or bad. Stat simply says that things trend towards average over larger numbers of events. There are still outliers, and still lucky players.

Dashofpepper wrote:Alright....I had typed up a pretty lengthy response, highlighting key issues that I wanted to address, then realized that some of the presumptions that I was going to have to respond to (like all my opponents being really bad) are ridiculous, or that I already hit them.


I will offer this instead as a note on minimizing luck's factor in your game.

When 10 Orks fight 10 Marines, they are going to need luck to win the combat.

When 20 Orks fight 10 Marines, they are going to need luck to wipe out the marines.

When 100 Orks fight 10 Marines, luck is no longer a factor in the Marines dying.

This is common sense, but think on it deeper than face value.

This ties into my point that good players try to set up situations in which luck is no longer a factor. Naturally they will do this for crucial tactical situations rather than trivial ones.

Ailaros countered that the opponent does the same, which is true, however if both players are minimising the effect of luck in tactical situations, then the effect of luck in the game as a whole is reduced.

I don't believe luck can be eradicated from 40K, because the scope of the game does not offer enough time and space to make all the manoeuvres you might want to.

Warhammer 40,000 is about managing luck and potential. How does this even come up?

If you want to know about managing games of luck, look up classical game theory. If you want to know about managing games of potential, look up combinatorial game theory.

You use the likelihood of some event occuring, or not, and cross-reference that with the event's potential value to winning you the game. Sometimes it's a no-brainer, it's the only way you could win, and sometimes you might as well, between two otherwise identical S9 shots, the one with AP2 can be expected to return better results than the one with AP4.

I think the reason Ailaros has come upon his curious theory is that he's used to thinking of the odds of stuff happening in 40,000, and not thinking of the value obtained. You're not going to get luckier by rolling a few hundred more dice, and you're not going to roll significantly closer to the expected value simply by rolling a fw more either.

However, by rolling more dice, you will benefit from more effects when you do get lucky. To understand this we need to turn to the Bolt Gun, and its developments: the Stormbolter and the Twin-Linked Bolter.

Supposing a Tactical Space Marine is firing the weapon, notice that at 12"-24" the Twin-Linked Bolter expects a hit-rate of 0.88 while the Bolter expects a hit-rate of 66. Comparatively, the Stormbolter expects a hit-rate of 1.33. That's because the Stormbolter has twice the firepower, whereas the Twin-Linked Bolter only increases its chance of hitting by the likelihood of a miss being re-rolled successfully.

Now, interestingly, the Twin-Linked Bolter is better at 1"-12" ranges, expecting 1.76 hits, as it gets twice the potential, from the extra shot, and the re-roll to both.

Likewise, getting lucky at the beginning of the game has knock-on effects because Warhammer 40,000 is always about managing resources. This was such a problem in 4th edition that the reserves rules were broadened to enable players to reserve their armies out of the harm's way of T1, and the game start finally matched set-up to player turn priority with a randomiser in Seize the Initiative so that the game didn't rely on winning the role for the first turn. But the advantage was not eliminated.

For example, suppose you have three units of Heavy Weapon Teams with Lascannons. They can shoot up to three Rhinos, in any combination. Without any worry about terrain, contents, mission, etc, the ideal fire pattern would be to shoot on lascannon at each Rhino. That's so you can maximize the amount of damage you can do if you get lucky. Alternately if the mission is to capture an objective and only one Rhino full of Tactical Marines was within 13" of the objective when the game could end next turn?

Here's where player organization comes in, devising a fire plan, wagering not only that a particular result will occur, but that it will enhance your ability to win the game.

For example, suppose you have a unit of Chaos Space Marines. You could take a pair of Melta Guns, so that the Chaos Space Marines can charge the contents. However, even if successful in destroying the Rhino, the opposing player can place the wreckage or crater between the Tactical Marines in the Rhino to claim cover and cause difficult terrain to short-circuit a charge.

Alternately you can rely on another unit killing the vehicle, and a unit of Chaos Space Marines with two Flamerthrowers ready to move up close and rapid fire whatever falls out of the Rhino. The number of hits is usually equivalent to a round of close combat except no worries about being attacked in return until the following turn.

Very alternatively, and this doesn't really work with regular infantry, you move and run to surround the vehicle with the unit, blocking off emergency disembarkation, and shooting the vehicle with the other unit. Jump Infantry though, like Gargoyles, are great at it.

Each tactic has its pros and cons, given the likelihood of accomplishing the given tasks in order, but also in positioning given the likelihood of failing to accomplish destruction of the Rhino and the Tactical Marines inside, and the costs of doing so (say, leaving a Land Raider alive if using an external unit to shoot).

After all, remember that plays in 40,000 can always fail, the "1s before modification are always failures" rule. Rather than putting you at the mercy of fate, it places a floor of cost to your actions: If the cost of your action is greater than the cost of doing nothing then you really shouldn't do it.

Of course, this isn't a cost in points, but in increasing your likelihood of winning the game.

Luck can never be fully eradicated from the game so long as we are using dice or any other means of simulating an uncertain outcome (flipping coins, random number generators, etc.). But as stated in this thread, we can TRY to reduce the factor of luck through redundancy and making sound tactical decisions. But in the end, lady luck will still play a part in the game no matter how much we try to reduce that factor.

@ the OP,

I think this thread is interesting from a theoretical point of view. In theory 2 players with the same list and same skill, the game would boil down to luck. But in reality, no 2 players are exactly equal. Also as mentioned earlier, the "small" mistakes good players make become huge mistakes against good opponents.

How much skill is there to learn in 40K?

There is an interesting analysis of two player games by a mathematician (Laszlo Mero) that indicates the "depth" of a game, i.e. how much you can improve your skills.
(Sorry, can't find a good link.)

Let's say there is a spectrum of players from a newbie, who learned the rules yesterday and the absolute perfect player.

You can divide up this spectrum into layers, where to a gamer to be qualified as layer X has to have the skills to beat the players in the layer below 75% of the time.
(E.g. you're layer 2 if you can beat total noobs 75% of the time.)

Some games, like chess have a lot of depth (many layers) and can take years to master. Go is one of the deepest games by this definition and the skill level between an average player and a master is just enormous.

We would find out how deep 40K really is if it had an ELO system like chess or dans/kyus like Go.

I actually think that 40K is not that deep, a beginner still has a chance to beat an average player.
E.g. http://warhammer40kbloodangels.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-player-profile-my-friend-jim.html

I agree, nyenyec. Chess is inherently skill (not chance) based, and GO has limited chance (similar to cards). 40K has greater chance than either, which, as a correlary, limts the impact of skill. 40k is simply not designed for competitive play, despite some veteran players wanting to be regarded as some sort of tactical genius. It simply requires basic probability understanding and some spacial aptitude. Contigency planning is very shallow compared to more classical games. Which makes it more accessible to new players and arguably more "fun" since these factors can allow a newer player to beat a more skillful player.

It's a fun, light game based largely on chance and should be enjoyed as such.

ElCheezus wrote:However, there's a point where bad luck *does* emulate mistakes, as Ailaros suggests. The example mentioned that a small mistake cost a unit a few models, which then reduced its ability to perform later on. Rolling poorly on armor saves emulates this perfectly, and can cost you the exact same number of models.

Yeah but a truly bad mistake isn’t going to get a few guys killed. It is going to get an entire unit whipped, it might start a run on an entire side of the board, it might put a unit out of position so they can’t claim an objective. Fairly minor mistakes can have BIG game impacts. Substantially bad luck does not impact the game nearly as much as a minor mistake.

nyenyec wrote:How much skill is there to learn in 40K?

A lot. Maybe not as much as chess, but maybe. Either way there is a lot to be mastered. Just learning the strengths and weaknesses of your own and other peoples armies can take a LONG time.

I’m not very good at chess so this may also be true with other competitively played games, but 40k is very unforgiving. If you deploy when you should have reserved, it can cost you the game. If you advance too soon, or not soon enough, it can cost you the game. If you assault the wrong unit, or shoot the wrong thing, even just once, it can cost you the game. Everybody wins every now and then, but if you want to win consistently, and if you want to win big tournaments, you need to make good decision and make them virtually all the time. Knowing how to win in all this situations is a skill, then executing every time is a skill on its own.

And a new player might beat someone who has been playing a while. But just because you are new doesn’t mean you are bad, and just because you have played awhile doesn’t mean you are good. There are eight year old chess prodigies that beat grown men who have been playing since they were eight.

I agree, 40k is not a deep game. But, on a fundamental level, it's also not a game that's intended for serious competition.

Evidence:

Well, first, there's the designers own statements to that effect.

Then, there's the fact that the game is clearly written to sell models, without a thought for balance. The idea of creating a new rule system every 3 or 4 years, while taking longer than that in many cases to update part of the game system (codexes) should be evidence of that. The fact that something so simple as a rhino can have multiple versions, each for a different number of points reveals that balance is not something given a high priority in the development studio, pushing sales is. Not selling enough Rhinos are 50 points each, better cut their price and give them better built in equipment...

Each codex is developed, seemingly, in a vacuum, with little thought given to how the introduction of new powers will effect prior codexes (after all, they've already sold those models).

But, okay, assume then that you take only the most competitive books, and only their most competitive units (what a lot of tournaments seem to involve anyway).

The game is still fundamentally flawed from a competitive standpoint. Luck, whether you're able to mitigate it or not, is a huge factor in games, especially in the early turns. If you fire your entire army at your opponent, making 100% correct decisions, and fail to achieve even a single shaken result, you're probably in trouble. If their every shot on you not only pens your AV14, but gets past your forcefield save and explodes your battlewagons back in your deployment zone, you're in for a world of hurt.

Most competitive pursuits, be they sports or games, are based on multiple rounds/turns/halves, with the 'advantage' given alternatively to each player/side. Chess tournaments are rarely single-game affairs, especially at the high levels. M:tG matches are best 2-of-3, with each player getting the option for first turn at least once. Baseball's World Series is a best-of-seven event. Boxing has multiple rounds, poker plays multiple hands, and even American Football plays two halves, with each team receiving the ball once.

Not in 40k. You get one shot. Your army does better if it goes first, but you're going second - too bad. You may not ever get to use a certain unit if your opponent neutralizes it on their first turn, and while reserving can help, we've all had games where our needed reserves didn't show up until turn 5, well after the game had been decided.

All of the above fall into the category of luck. And multiple games would do wonders to address these issues, but last I checked, it's hard enough for people to want (or be able) to play six games in two days, let alone eighteen games over a week. So we settle for the luck-based environment.

Obviously, players who consistently perform are doing so because their skill is allowing them to defeat their opponents in spite of these possible pitfalls. But to think that they're doing so without any luck is a fallacy.


Something else to consider. If Reecius is right, and the greatest determinants of success are list building and play skill, what impact is the internet having on the games?

I'd venture to say that, in a vacuum, list building is more important than play skill. But, with the internet providing this skill for people, in practice, play skill becomes the more important factor.

List building is very complex. You're looking for synergies, balancing cost-effectiveness versus different target types, and hoping to achieve redundancy. Yet, thanks to blogs and forums, few people actually have to master this skill. Looking just on this forum, I'm not sure many people know what it takes to break down a codex to find the gems and the turds. But they don't need to, because someone else is doing that for them.

As a result, of the skills that a player really needs, it is the simpler one (knowing distances, optimizing firing order and target priorities, getting the most from your charges) that holds more sway over the games.

The reason I can't seem to get behind the "luck" argument is this:

There doesn't exist a 40k game in which both players are identical in skill, list power, and make no mistakes, such that dice play a significant impact.

Two games I'd like to use for example that onlookers would attribute the result of to luck:

1. In Game Six of the Nova Open, playing against Mark XXXXX's Blood Angels to see who would advance to the final table, our game (and my loss) was ultimately decided by a single D6. Two of them honestly. If either roll had gone my way, I would have won. At the end of the game, tied on everything, with a tie-breaker of table-quarters, we were tied on those too - with Mephiston standing exactly on the line between two table quarters. If he was standing in one quarter, I win. If he was standing in the other, I lose. I lost the D6. The previous turn, I was winning. If the game had ended on a 4+, I would have won. Instead, the game continued. While the end result of the game was decided on a dice roll....it wasn't determined by luck. Player skill (or lack thereof) put me in a position where the game *could* be decided by a D6 roll, instead of making such a roll irrelevant. I can point to several mistakes I made in the game (and I think I did in my battle report), including one *major* misunderstanding of a Deffrolla (The Nova Open ruled that the Ram itself has to explode a vehicle for the battlewagon to continue, the deffrolla results were irrelevant) that shifted tactical advantage away from me and to my opponent. The fact that a dice roll was critical in our game was a direct result of player skill.

2. In the Whiskey Challenge at the Nova Open last year, where we tied all conditions and had to go off the chart to find a tie-breaker, a couple instances of dice rolling were game changers. Example: Two units of Lootas completely whiffing against a unit of wolf-scouts who popped onto their table edge. Not a single one of them died. Bad rolling? Sure. Luck? No. It should have been irrelevant - if I hadn't forgotten that there were wolf scouts that *were* going to come on back there, I would have had something back there to assault and eat them. My Lootas were supposed to be on anti-tank duty, not trying to sort out an outflanking unit in the backfield. My dice rolling only mattered because I didn't take all components into consideration.

My point is that the probability of a dice roll or a set of dice rolls affecting the outcome of a game should *never* be a consideration to a skilled player. Playing an army full of AV10 open-topped skimmers against a mechanized Blood Angel army sporting 6 predators and 4 las/plas razorbacks....when my alpha strike of 26 darklight weapons gets me 2 hits and one shaken result, I still won. My opponent was good - but my rolling poorly doesn't affect my games, except to make them more challenging.

Dashofpepper wrote: While the end result of the game was decided on a dice roll....it wasn't determined by luck. Player skill (or lack thereof) put me in a position where the game *could* be decided by a D6 roll, instead of making such a roll irrelevant. I can point to several mistakes I made in the game ...

I think we have the same perspective on this. Your story kind of sums up what I said about pivotal roles being a symptom of bad play. I do it myself all the time, trying to do it less.

I don’t think anyone here is saying that luck doesn’t affect the game at all, but some of us think it is by a fairly large margin the thing that affects the game the least. And a truly great player figures out ways to win despite bad luck. Trying to that level myself.

Dashofpepper wrote:... At the end of the game, tied on everything, with a tie-breaker of table-quarters, we were tied on those too - with Mephiston standing exactly on the line between two table quarters. If he was standing in one quarter, I win. If he was standing in the other, I lose. I lost the D6. The previous turn, I was winning. If the game had ended on a 4+, I would have won. Instead, the game continued. While the end result of the game was decided on a dice roll....it wasn't determined by luck. Player skill (or lack thereof) put me in a position where the game *could* be decided by a D6 roll, instead of making such a roll irrelevant. ... The fact that a dice roll was critical in our game was a direct result of player skill.

So your opponent was a better player than you? Unless the die roll had gone your way, in which case you were the better player?

Not trying to be combative, and I totally understand your point about making mistakes leading to that die roll. However, your opponent must also have made mistakes in order for the game to come down to the die roll, no? If they'd played flawlessly, they'd have won outright and the die roll would have been unnecessary.

So you both made mistakes? That would point to luck indeed being the determining factor in a game between two equally, highly, skilled players, which was the OP's claim.

Just because you could have played better to avoid the chance that this die roll would cost you a game doesn't mean that the game was not decided by a single d6 roll - something that cannot, in any way, be assigned to skill (unless the roller was cheating at dice).

This is a very good thread, and Ailaros' and others' similar observations largely reflect my own.

40k is the game that I play for 'funsies', meaning that I can build a relatively hard armylist and have one or two general 'plans' for gameplay and regardless of opponent, as long as I can slowly work my way through my mental checklist of target prioritization and objectives, I can win reliably unless my dice screw me.

So, a sound player obscures his landraider, and a noob fires a lascannon at it. The noob is lucky, succeeding in the roll to hit and penetrate. The sound player is unlucky, failing the cover save. The noob is lucky, wrecking the raider.

In some instances, tactics and skill can be completely outmatched by luck. I don't care how good you are, if you roll ones and twos and your opponent rolls 5's and 6's your sunk. Period.

Kilkrazy wrote:Ailaros countered that the opponent does the same, which is true, however if both players are minimising the effect of luck in tactical situations, then the effect of luck in the game as a whole is reduced.

Ah hah, there we go. When both players are good, the "blue line" is brought down somewhat. Of course, it can only be brought down so much.

Anyways, there are a lot of good ideas here, which I'd like to thank people for. Most of what I'd have to say is rehash, so I won't bother. The one thing I'd note is to remember that things are relative, here.

I'm not setting up a situation where players have to be perfect, in order for luck to be controlled for, the two players just need to have the same skill level. To the effect that they don't, the amount that luck is a determining factor would be something like ( luck - difference in skill = amount that luck determines the outcome). The only thing I'm adding to this is that the better you get, the less getting better actually matters relative to things which basically don't change, like luck.

At no point am I saying that tactics or player skill becomes unimportant when you look at things as a whole. My point is that they matter relatively less the higher up you get. The idea that tactics are always what matters until you get up to perfect play (at which point it switches over to pure luck) seems a little strange to me. The less that controlled factors are dissimilar, the more uncontrolled factors matter to the outcome. At some point, luck matters more than tactics, and luck continues to matter more, the better players become, as the better players become, the less difference there is in skill level between them.

As for countering luck, once again, it's relative. Furthermore, there is an absolute part that seems to have gone unspoken. If you receive bad luck, and you lose a vehicle, no amount of planning will replace that vehicle that you lost. Yes, you can make your individual components of your list less necessary to victory, but you will never actually get that hardware back. It will never be a thing that the player can use to help achieve victory.

I mean, if you get shot at turn 1, and half your army falls back off the board, those units are gone. Tactics can not replace them, or the serious potential lost when they went away. Of course, this is an extreme example, as I don't think anyone would assume you could pull off victory with 1/2 your army missing unless you were playing against a much worse opponent, but this extreme points to the rule - when bad luck limits your options, your options are limited. When bad luck destroys stuff, those things are gone. Talk about some sort of infinite complexity if you will (which I have yet to see why we should), but if you get 100% of your army blown off the board turn 1, I really fail to see how tactics make the difference. Likewise, lesser luck would still have a lesser impact, but the impact would never go away.

Finally, there's something that I'd like to rehash. I think that talking about "mistakes" earlier was a poor way of putting it. Really, we should be talking about "risk" and "reward".

Now, certainly newer players will take bigger risks where, if successful, they will get little reward, and if they are unsuccessful, they will be severely punished. As you get better, you start more smartly assessing risk, making choices that lead to less awful punishment when the dice go your way, and to greater reward when they do. There is, however, no decision that a player can make that has NO risk of bad things happening, nor a decision that has only great possible outcomes. There is no "perfect move" as it were.

As such, in order to have success, you need to risk failure. Good players pick better decisions, but they do not pick risk-free ones (remember, your opponent also helps make this true). But here's the thing, the quality of the move you made is no guarantee of success. You can mitigate the price of failure, and you can increase your odds of success, but just doing something "right" doesn't mean that you'll get the desired result.

I think one of the things that some people are doing is looking at things post-facto, and that if something worked as desired, it was the right move, but if there were negative consequences, then the player must have made a "mistake". This kind of hindsight is not only useless, but it obscures a more pertinent fact. Regardless of the quality of the decisions you make, the end result is ALWAYS determined by luck.

So, in reality, we have to start from a base where 40k is ONLY a game of luck, like craps. From there, we can note that increasing player skill allows you to play the odds better, and to stack them somewhat in your favor, but the better you and your opponent get, the less it matters. You can only stack things so much in your favor, and your opponent is also trying to stack things against yours.

In the end, though, it's still all determined by dice.

I think the following statement needs to be corrected:

Nurglitch wrote:You're not going to get luckier by rolling a few hundred more dice, and you're not going to roll significantly closer to the expected value simply by rolling a fw more either.

However, by rolling more dice, you will benefit from more effects when you do get lucky.

This is some dangerous thinking. It is true that the best and worse case scenarios tend to deviate much more strongly from the norm when there are a lot of dice involved than a few. For example, a unit of 5 Terminators failing 1 out of 1 armor save isn't as bad as failing 5 out of 5. We must remember, however, that the more dice that are involved, the less likely the worst case scenario becomes. A Terminator needing to make 1 armor save and failing is a 1 in 6 event, and can't be considered very improbable. Failing 5 out of 5 is a 1 in 7776 event, that is, it will happen less than .1% of the time. If this has happened to you more than once or twice in your 40k career, your dice are probably biased. The simple fact is that deviations from the mean outcome are common when the number of dice (or random draws in a more general sense) is small, while having overall results close to the mean approaches probability 1 as the number of dice gets large.

You do have a good point, however, in that throwing a few extra dice will not quickly move the overall result to the average once an overall deviation is present. The Law of Large Numbers only holds in the limit, as does the central limit theorem. Most reasonable random variables approach normality at a speed that is proportional to the square root of the number of trials, which is rather slow once you have more than a few trials.

Shenra wrote:In some instances, tactics and skill can be completely outmatched by luck. I don't care how good you are, if you roll ones and twos and your opponent rolls 5's and 6's your sunk. Period.

That's the whole point of the discussion. A lot of us don't think you are automatically sunk.

Okay, at what point do you consider yourself to be sunk.

Let's say that, after one turn each, at 2000 points, you've lost 33% of your forces, and have not made any significant impact on your opponent's force. He now outnumbers you 3:2.

Would you go into a 1500 point game with 1000 points and believe your skill would pull it out?

What if your opponent destroyed 50% of your forces on turn one, with no significant damage in return? Unlikely?

What if you're playing a fateweaver army, and, while you did you best to pick a landing spot, you did need to make sure your juggernauts could get in range of Big Bird and so tried to land them 14 inches away (knowing that between base size and both units running, that you could get there. But instead, your scatter die came up 12" right towards the bird, and you lost the unit to perils. And then, your opponent's opening salvo saw Big Bird take the one wound that scared him away too. Bam, you're down 800 points and your opponent has fired all of one gun. That's what, seven dice rolls (scatter, mishap, to-hit, to-wound, save, re-roll save, leadership). Plus, the lynch-pin of your strategy is gone. (Oh, right, good players never use units like Fateweaver...) But your skill can compensate...

I'm the first to recognize that skill is a huge part of 40k. The same people don't win game after game, event after event, without it depending on something they control. But, I'm not so blinded as to discount the role of luck either. And as a realist, you have to admit that, at some point, bad beats are just bad beats and no amount of skill could have changed that. Maybe your skill allows you to recover from a greater loss than someone else could. But at some point...

You know, would you put money on a four turn game where you started with 50% fewer points than your opponent? Where they got to pick which 50% you didn't get to use? Can your skill recover from an opening turn like that?

Redbeard wrote:Okay, at what point do you consider yourself to be sunk.

Let's say that, after one turn each, at 2000 points, you've lost 33% of your forces, and have not made any significant impact on your opponent's force. He now outnumbers you 3:2.

How often does this really happen? I was playing the shootiest army in the game and I had very solid dice and all I did was blow up two tanks, stun a third, and get one squad to go to ground.

But even assuming first turn shooting are devastating, you go into crisis mode and you either start playing for a tie and use lots of stall tactics (not stalling for time, but playing evasively on the board and using lots of speed bumps and stuff) or you press on as intended and hope the luck swings back your way. I say the former is the better choice, and the choice of someone who wants to win consistently.

Redbeard wrote:Would you go into a 1500 point game with 1000 points and believe your skill would pull it out?

What if your opponent destroyed 50% of your forces on turn one, with no significant damage in return? Unlikely?

Again, who loses 50% of their stuff on turn one? The game just isn’t designed like that. I had very strong dice, made very good target priority decisions, and I killed far less than 1/3 of his points.

If you are really worried that your opponent is going to cripple you before you get to do anything, reserve. If you do get crippled, play for the tie. If you want to win tournaments you can’t lose games. So when bad luck comes you either throw the towel in for the day or your get what points you can out of it.

Redbeard wrote: What if you're playing a fateweaver army, and, while you did you best to pick a landing spot, you did need to make sure your juggernauts could get in range of Big Bird and so tried to land them 14 inches away (knowing that between base size and both units running, that you could get there. But instead, your scatter die came up 12" right towards the bird, and you lost the unit to perils. And then, your opponent's opening salvo saw Big Bird take the one wound that scared him away too. Bam, you're down 800 points and your opponent has fired all of one gun. That's what, seven dice rolls (scatter, mishap, to-hit, to-wound, save, re-roll save, leadership). Plus, the lynch-pin of your strategy is gone. (Oh, right, good players never use units like Fateweaver...) But your skill can compensate...

I think you answered your own question when you said lynch-pin. You decided to build an army dependent on a not very tough 333 pt MC and 400 pts in slow models with a HUGE footprint. That’s inherent in your army build, you either accept it or have a plan for when this happens. You play that army long enough it is going to happen. Getting crushers to mishap on something is not that hard, then getting Fateweaver killed is not that hard either. I say this is a player problem not a dice problem.

Redbeard wrote: You know, would you put money on a four turn game where you started with 50% fewer points than your opponent? Where they got to pick which 50% you didn't get to use? Can your skill recover from an opening turn like that?

No, but I would put money on six turn game where I knew there is an incredibly small chance that a large portion of my capabilities will but cut out early on, but I still have a huge ability to dictate whether or not I achieve the mission.

Luck can only help you with killing stuff, it doesn’t necessarily help you achieve the mission. There are ways to mitigate the other person’s ability to kill stuff and still win. It’s not easy, but if you want to win for long stretches of time that’s how you need to think and that’s the level of play you need to expect from yourself.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:
How often does that this happen? I was playing the shootiest army in the game and I have very solid dice and all I did was blow up two tanks, stun a third, and get one squad to go to ground.

Just because something does not happen often does not invalidate those times when it does happen. This is what the rest of us call luck. There are some things that are outliers, but that are beyond the ability of skill to impact.

Again, who loses 50% of their stuff on turn one?

Ask the people who played against the leafblower army at 'ard boyz a couple of years ago... It happens. It happened then. You say, 'well, you shouldn't have deployed like that' - sorry, you cannot control for the terrain that happens to be at the event. You say 'well, you should have used reserves'. Right, against the army with the -1 to reserve rolls, because that worked really well, as your forces trickle onto the board and are defeated in detail. That was tried too, without much more success. I'm not saying there is no way to play against this. You do seem to be saying that luck is never a factor. But, one of the best pieces of advice for playing against a leaf-blower force is 'win first turn'. Isn't that a single die roll - isn't that "luck"? Was it skill that enabled him to win all his 'ard boyz games? Absolutely. Was it skill that led to him getting first turn in all those games?

If you are really worried that your opponent is going to cripple you before you get to do anything, reserve. If you do get crippled, play for the tie. If you want to win tournaments you can’t lose games. So when bad luck comes you either throw the towel in for the day or your get what points you can out of it.

Oh, but then you admit that bad luck comes.... Which is it?

Luck can only help you with killing stuff, it doesn’t necessarily help you achieve the mission. There are ways to mitigate the other person’s ability to kill stuff and still win. It’s not easy, but if you want to win for long stretches of time that’s how you need to think and that’s the level of play you need to expect from yourself.

Thanks. I'm clearly a tournament noob and didn't know that.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:Again, who loses 50% of their stuff on turn one? The game just isn’t designed like that. I had very strong dice, made very good target priority decisions, and I killed far less than 1/3 of his points.

It's 2009. You're playing Vulkan and two Crusaders filled with Hammerbros. You have 3 Tac squads with melta/multimelta in rhinos and a min. scout squad with snipers.

Your opponent is playing a truly horrible list for the matchup. Two Big Meks with SAGs, a Battlewagon with no Deffrolla, ten MANz, shoota boyz without Rokkits, and ten Deffkoptas with t/l rokkits.

T1 he rolls double sixes with his SAGs on your Land Raiders. Vulkan, Two Crusaders, and 15 Terminators vanish from the table.

Three Tactical squads with meltas and the scouts are staring at his entire army.

Generally, I find with more experience, that it is a calculation of risk/reward. Also it is a matter of lists becoming more generic and less eggs-in-one-basket.
For example a list of 4 landraiders I would dislike as I have 1000 points stuck into 4 targets. If an opponent gets lucky early, I have handed over half of my "power" to lucky or unlucky rolls on those 4. OTOH, while a raider list allows for a tight packed and hard to kill list, it is less numberous and more subject to luck. Whereas for those same 1000 pts, I could field 12 razorbacks. Sure the razors are more likely to be affected but if we are talking a mass efect, they are less likely to be destroyed en mass so rather than one roll of the dice taking out 2 TL las, 1 TL HB and a multi-melta shot, I have changed that to 4 Las and 8 TL plas and that in four separate targets.

T1 he rolls double sixes with his SAGs on your Land Raiders. Vulkan, Two Crusaders, and 15 Terminators vanish from the table.

Because everyone failed their 2+ save against the vehicles exploding as a result from their single automatic penetrating hit?

Redbeard wrote:

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:
How often does that this happen? I was playing the shootiest army in the game and I have very solid dice and all I did was blow up two tanks, stun a third, and get one squad to go to ground.

Just because something does not happen often does not invalidate those times when it does happen. This is what the rest of us call luck. There are some things that are outliers, but that are beyond the ability of skill to impact.

Again, who loses 50% of their stuff on turn one?

Ask the people who played against the leafblower army at 'ard boyz a couple of years ago... It happens. It happened then. You say, 'well, you shouldn't have deployed like that' - sorry, you cannot control for the terrain that happens to be at the event. You say 'well, you should have used reserves'. Right, against the army with the -1 to reserve rolls, because that worked really well, as your forces trickle onto the board and are defeated in detail. That was tried too, without much more success. I'm not saying there is no way to play against this. You do seem to be saying that luck is never a factor. But, one of the best pieces of advice for playing against a leaf-blower force is 'win first turn'. Isn't that a single die roll - isn't that "luck"? Was it skill that enabled him to win all his 'ard boyz games? Absolutely. Was it skill that led to him getting first turn in all those games?

If you are really worried that your opponent is going to cripple you before you get to do anything, reserve. If you do get crippled, play for the tie. If you want to win tournaments you can’t lose games. So when bad luck comes you either throw the towel in for the day or your get what points you can out of it.

Oh, but then you admit that bad luck comes.... Which is it?

Luck can only help you with killing stuff, it doesn’t necessarily help you achieve the mission. There are ways to mitigate the other person’s ability to kill stuff and still win. It’s not easy, but if you want to win for long stretches of time that’s how you need to think and that’s the level of play you need to expect from yourself.

Thanks. I'm clearly a tournament noob and didn't know that.

Calm down now, I didn’t say anything offensive.

About the leaf blower, I play a mini leaf blower, I have gone 7-1-2 in my last three tournament (against pretty solid guys, maybe not the likes of you and Dash, but solid) and I think in 11 games I first turn alpha struck twice , and one of them I didn’t win. Every game I’m either reserving or their reserving or I’m going second or any number of things. The army is different between 1250-1850 compared to 2500 or whatever ard boyz is, but results for that army definitely don’t come down to one dice roll.

And no one is saying luck isn’t a factor, we pretty much have all said the opposite. But some of us think it is the smallest factor, and even at its most extreme is still usually not a game losing factor. Game changing, absolutely, almost always. Game losing, not in my experience.

40k isn't a good enough game to merit this kind of analysis, though I agree.

Luck go down as the size of the army increases, and goes up with matching skills with familiar terrain. However if you fight campaigns, that changes the whole game, new tactic, new desperate plays. That why i prefer a uneven fight, being out numbered, or outnumbering them to see what they do.

So, something I'd note here is that units have a limited potential. That and the potential you have is limited by the aggregate potential of your units.

After all, if you only had a single guardsmen on the table, regardless of skill, there is only so much you can do. In this case, player skill would be a relatively insignificant factor, as a bad player and a good player aren't going to be able to make much difference about how they use that one dude on the table. Yes, a better player is more likely to make closer to 100% usefulness out of that guardsman than the noob, but the limiting factor is that you still only have one guardsman on the table. He is not going to win a 1000 point game by himself.

Good players may be able to squeeze a higher percentage of power out of what they have on the table, but it's die rolls that actually determine what you have on the table. If your opponent blows up a land raider, that amount of potential is gone. If you squeeze more out of the rest of your list, you can still have a net higher power, but the closer you and your opponent are in skill level, the more the fact that you have less potential on the board actually matters.

Furthermore, the better both players get, the closer the amount of power they can get out of their units becomes, meaning that the actual units on the board matter even more.

Since which units stay on the board and which ones don't is determined by luck (either the lascannon penetrated or it didn't), this is another indicator that luck becomes more relatively important as skill levels become closer/go up.

Witzkatz wrote:

T1 he rolls double sixes with his SAGs on your Land Raiders. Vulkan, Two Crusaders, and 15 Terminators vanish from the table.

Because everyone failed their 2+ save against the vehicles exploding as a result from their single automatic penetrating hit?

FYI, double-sixes with a SAG removes the target from the game. The land raiders don't explode, they simple cease to be, along with their contents.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:
And no one is saying luck isn’t a factor, we pretty much have all said the opposite. But some of us think it is the smallest factor, and even at its most extreme is still usually not a game losing factor. Game changing, absolutely, almost always. Game losing, not in my experience.

Perhaps I misunderstood what you were getting at. Still, if all other factors are equal (player skill, list quality, terrain impact, and so on), then even if luck is the smallest factor, isn't it going to be the one that determines the battle?

As for countering luck, once again, it's relative. Furthermore, there is an absolute part that seems to have gone unspoken. If you receive bad luck, and you lose a vehicle, no amount of planning will replace that vehicle that you lost. Yes, you can make your individual components of your list less necessary to victory, but you will never actually get that hardware back. It will never be a thing that the player can use to help achieve victory.

This is true for most competitions. It's definitely true in sports. It is part of the game.

Phil Jackson as coach or player has won 12 championship, he has threepeated 3 times, and may do it a 4th time this year. No coach has won more rings than he has.
And one of the things in his book he greatly advocated, was having the poise to carry yourself through difficult situations. You see, winning a championship in the NBA does have a lot of luck to it. It's a marathon season, random injuries happen all the time, and you can't always be at your best. On top of that, you're playing the odds on the court...someone might make a shot, they might not. Your opponent may have more energy on his homecourt. All these factors that you can't effectively control (especially the injury one).

And he said, "The key is poise in difficult situations, to have the ability to play through rough and difficult spots out of your control." This is a big part of winning...to completely disregard luck and worry about putting yourself in the best position to win. Sometimes the referees don't call the game like they should...but it's on YOU as a player to adjust to the situation.

Case in point: Last year's Nba finals, final game 7. Really physical game, and the referees let them play. It wasn't a certain thing if fouls would be called or not (they mostly weren't)...and it greatly disrupted both team's offense. What did Phil tell his team? Go get more rebounds, if we have more shots in this kind of environment, we have a better chance to win. Crash the boards, get more possessions, put yourself in the driver's seat. People keep saying Kobe isn't clutch, but that night he had 15 rebounds. If you look at the stat sheet, both teams shot poorly and were pretty much comparable except for two stats: Rebounds and number of shot attempts

This is the type of thing you do to become a champion. If this game is so much about luck, how come the same people every year take the top spots? That's just it...there's more to it than that.

Redbeard wrote:Perhaps I misunderstood what you were getting at. Still, if all other factors are equal (player skill, list quality, terrain impact, and so on), then even if luck is the smallest factor, isn't it going to be the one that determines the battle?

Yeah, I think I agreed to that on pg 2 or something. But I really don't think that every actually happens. And if it did there really is no way to prove it.

I think skill can go back and forth between days, so one day I play better than you, the next day you play better than me. But I think one person almost always plays better than the other. No way to prove it either way, just my gut feeling.

So, something I'd note here is that units have a limited potential. That and the potential you have is limited by the aggregate potential of your units.

The problem with this thinking is with the object of the game. 2/3rd of the missions are objectives, and it is possible (i've done it more than once) to kill very little of your opponent and win with 1 or 2 models on the table. In football objectives, if I have one thing contest and I have 1 scoring model on my objective, I win, regardless if he has fifty billion leman russ tanks in the wrong place.

That's usually my main strategy (denial style, minimize damage and defense, and force the IG player to move against me by killing his mobile elments first) against imperial guard anyways, so maybe that's not so surprising that's happened.

scuddman wrote:And he said, "The key is poise in difficult situations, to have the ability to play through rough and difficult spots out of your control."

Sums it up nicely.

scuddman wrote:

So, something I'd note here is that units have a limited potential. That and the potential you have is limited by the aggregate potential of your units.

The problem with this thinking is with the object of the game.

Well, then let me expand that.

The power you have to take and hold objectives in objectives games and to kill whole enemy units in KP games has a limited potential. This potential is limited to the aggregate of the potentials of the units you have on the board.

For example, you have the potential to tank shock contest an objective if you have a tank on the board, but you don't if you don't. You can increase the odds that you still have a tank on the board, but your opponent is simultaneously working to reduce those odds. In the end, you can not completely make it go one way or the other, and the dice eventually are the only deciding factor of if there's a tank on the table or not.

The less you have on the board, the less options you have - the less power you have to make your tactics affect the outcome of the game. Unfortunately, the amount you have on the board is ultimately determined by luck.

Yes, things like "poise" are helpful rather than hurtful, but to only look at those things that you have control over at the expense of those things you don't have control over breeds a false hope that you have control over everything.

Redbeard wrote:

FYI, double-sixes with a SAG removes the target from the game. The land raiders don't explode, they simple cease to be, along with their contents.

Was that changed by an Errata or FAQed at some point in time? Because the codex states:

Codex: Orks wrote:
Any model hit by the gun this turn is removed from play, Vehicles take an automatic penetrating hit.

Seems like you could argue that a vehicle is a model and is therefore removed regardless of penetrating hits happening, but I always assumed that they stay, apart from that autopen.

Ailaros wrote:Unfortunately, the amount you have on the board is ultimately determined by luck.

This is where I have to disagree with you. There are a lot of things you can do to survive even the hottest dice. Knowing when to stop playing normally and when to flip it into survival mode to preserve enough objective grabbing potential is a skill unto itself.

Now if the mission is annihilation, that's harder. But with the new 3 objective format you will almost always have something you can play for.

Well, then let me expand that.

The power you have to take and hold objectives in objectives games and to kill whole enemy units in KP games has a limited potential. This potential is limited to the aggregate of the potentials of the units you have on the board.

For example, you have the potential to tank shock contest an objective if you have a tank on the board, but you don't if you don't. You can increase the odds that you still have a tank on the board, but your opponent is simultaneously working to reduce those odds. In the end, you can not completely make it go one way or the other, and the dice eventually are the only deciding factor of if there's a tank on the table or not.

The less you have on the board, the less options you have - the less power you have to make your tactics affect the outcome of the game. Unfortunately, the amount you have on the board is ultimately determined by luck.

Yes, things like "poise" are helpful rather than hurtful, but to only look at those things that you have control over at the expense of those things you don't have control over breeds a false hope that you have control over everything.

This isn't right either. It isn't necessarily enough to have a tank on the board. The tank has to be mobile and in position to tank shock, but the way deployment is, the tank rarely (pretty much never) starts in the optimal position. Your movement of the tank is not random, and directly affects the game. On top of that, it is necessary to move the tank into position to do so.

While it is true that the less you have on the board, the less options you have, you still lhave some options.
The only exception is the case on the first turn your opponent completely tables your army and gives you no units before you get to go. As long as you have 1 or 2 in an objective mission, you still have the potential to win.

I'll use a chess adage to illustate: The position of a piece is more powerful and useful than how powerful the piece is. Just like in 40k, it is possible to win with 2 pieces, even though you didn't capture a single one of the enemy's pieces, because you just "happen" to be in a position to checkmate.

This is why I like objectives more than killpoints or kill each other kind of missions. Position in 40k is mostly determined by player choices, and position is how you win objective missions. It's not about how much you kill, it's about what you have left and where it is.

Witzkatz wrote:

Redbeard wrote:

FYI, double-sixes with a SAG removes the target from the game. The land raiders don't explode, they simple cease to be, along with their contents.

Was that changed by an Errata or FAQed at some point in time? Because the codex states:

Codex: Orks wrote:
Any model hit by the gun this turn is removed from play, Vehicles take an automatic penetrating hit.

Seems like you could argue that a vehicle is a model and is therefore removed regardless of penetrating hits happening, but I always assumed that they stay, apart from that autopen.

Hrm, I was unaware of this. I don't think I've ever played with a SAG. Although, you're right, a vehicle is still a model. Lovely writing by GW as always.

I know. I just realized the discrepancy between those lines...making new thread in YMDC so there's no more disturbance here.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:

Ailaros wrote:Unfortunately, the amount you have on the board is ultimately determined by luck.

This is where I have to disagree with you. There are a lot of things you can do to survive even the hottest dice. Knowing when to stop playing normally and when to flip it into survival mode to preserve enough objective grabbing potential is a skill unto itself.

As far as I can tell, the only thing that you can do to guarantee the survival of something is to keep it completely out of line of sight. Even then, this still requires your opponent not to have any deepstrikers or outflankers or barrage weapons.

I mean, a lascannon has a 1 in 6 chance of causing a penetration per hit regardless of player skill. The player can move the land raider into cover to improve his odds, but it's still a 1 in 12 chance.

No matter what you do, the dice are ultimately the deciding factor.

scuddman wrote:While it is true that the less you have on the board, the less options you have, you still have some options.

That's exactly what I said...

Ailaros wrote:After all, if you only had a single guardsmen on the table, regardless of skill, there is only so much you can do. In this case, player skill would be a relatively insignificant factor, as a bad player and a good player aren't going to be able to make much difference about how they use that one dude on the table. Yes, a better player is more likely to make closer to 100% usefulness out of that guardsman than the noob, but the limiting factor is that you still only have one guardsman on the table. He is not going to win a 1000 point game by himself.

Good players may be able to squeeze a higher percentage of power out of what they have on the table, but it's die rolls that actually determine what you have on the table.

Well luck is a massive part of the game because once my hammerhead shot down a stormraven first turn and hasn't done it since that game.

Ailaros wrote:

I mean, if you get shot at turn 1, and half your army falls back off the board, those units are gone. Tactics can not replace them, or the serious potential lost when they went away. Of course, this is an extreme example, as I don't think anyone would assume you could pull off victory with 1/2 your army missing unless you were playing against a much worse opponent, but this extreme points to the rule - when bad luck limits your options, your options are limited. When bad luck destroys stuff, those things are gone. Talk about some sort of infinite complexity if you will (which I have yet to see why we should), but if you get 100% of your army blown off the board turn 1, I really fail to see how tactics make the difference. Likewise, lesser luck would still have a lesser impact, but the impact would never go away.

I think the dispute in this thread comes down to this, though: Was it really due to luck that you lost those units? Or was it due to poor strategy/tactics?

Talking in abstracts like this does nothing but cloud up the issue and make it arguable from either side. Can you describe for me an in-game situation where you lose 1/2 your army in the shooting phase of turn 1? If so, and you give us the details, I'm pretty sure we can determine whether or not it was due to tactics or luck.

For what it's worth, I'm in the middle on this issue at the moment. Both sides have persuasive arguments, but discussing abstractions is actively detrimental to analyzing this aspect of 40k. We should talk about what actually happens at the table, or we shouldn't talk at all.

Hans Chung-Otterson wrote:Was it really due to luck that you lost those units? Or was it due to poor strategy/tactics?

Well, it was luck that determined whether the units were lost or not. A die roll determined if a model was wounded, and a die roll determined the results of a cover save.

The only thing that tactics can do is allow you to manipulate the odds. If you're in cover, the odds are longer, if your opponent is in flamer/double-tap/melta range, those odds are shorter. You can use tactics to manipulate the odds, but the end results are still determined by die rolls.

Ailaros wrote:As far as I can tell, the only thing that you can do to guarantee the survival of something is to keep it completely out of line of sight. Even then, this still requires your opponent not to have any deepstrikers or outflankers or barrage weapons.

You can go out of LOS, you can get in cover, you can go to ground, you assault with tie up units, you can harass and distract with not important units, you can try and draw your opponent out of position.

I'll give you a couple examples:

In our game, I pressed up with my CCS. They were doing nothing for me, the plasma shots on guardsmen in cover were next to worthless. I knew you would eventually get to something, getting to the CCS losses me a relatively unimportant unit and then you would most likely be bunched up for flamer madness. I put my CCS in a position that made it easier to get to hoping you wouldn’t try for the stuff behind. The same type of leading/distraction can be done in survival mode to keep pressure off important units.

In a recent tournament game against poding wolves, the objective I was playing for was to get your hq to the center of the table. I reserved everything, he poded with one unit in each quarter (I assume he was playing for table quarters). When I moved on from reserve I move on the extreme corners of my DZ (and outflanked with vendettas on the extreme corners of his DZ). He shifted his stuff towards the corners which allowed my HQ (which thankfully came in very late) to fly up the middle completely unharrassed. Same types of things can be done to protect units in survival mode.

The local chaos guy I struggle with like crazy often hides in cover and goes to ground until 5. He runs to objectives, I come up, if it goes to turn 6 he is now in my face with a lot more of his forces than if he had pushed through no man’s land earlier.

Identify what units are really important to you, get them where they need to be, and the rest is all just running interference to that end.

And as far as the deep strikers etc, when you flip into survival your priority targets change. Go after things that are going to mess up your survival plans.

I think this can be summed up easily as:

Part of playing 40k competatively is risk management. Highly skilled players are better at risk management, which minimizes but doesn't eliminate the effects of luck.

Heffling wrote:I think this can be summed up easily as:

Part of playing 40k competatively is risk management. Highly skilled players are better at risk management, which minimizes but doesn't eliminate the effects of luck.

Agreed. But some will say even if you manage it, the risks will eventually bite you, and then there is nothing you can do. Or the bad luck happens before you have a chance to manage it. I have not personally experienced luck so bad that in hindsight there was nothing I could have done. I suppose it is possible, and I suppose it must have happened somewhere sometime. But I think if you attribute more than .001% of your losses to luck you're missing out on some opportunities to get better.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:You can go out of LOS, you can get in cover, you can go to ground, you assault with tie up units, you can harass and distract with not important units, you can try and draw your opponent out of position.

Yes, you can lengthen the odds, but you can not eliminate them.

Also, don't forget that 40k is a competitive game. While you are trying to shorten your odds, your opponent is trying to lengthen them. If your success in how well YOU mitigated luck was what was important, you'd be playing solitaire, not 40k.

Because of the nature of the game, you are always going to have to be doing certain things where there is no riskless option. Even if you park a tank completely out of LOS, for example, you're still risking that your army doesn't need the support of that unit that turn, for example.

There is no perfect decision, and there is no decision that does not require risk.

To say that skill is always the most determining factor, you have to believe that risk is always infinitely mitigatable. Said another way, in order for skill to always matter more than luck, luck is something which must be controllable. In the end, though, it is not. No matter what you do, it is always the dice that will have the final, determining word.

So far, to believe otherwise appears to me that one would have to deny that luck exists in 40k at all.

Ailaros wrote:There is no perfect decision

I just disagree with this statement. I guess it depends on the definition of perfect, but I think in almost every situation there is a best decision. It’s not always clear or obvious but it’s there.

Ailaros wrote:
To say that skill is always the most determining factor, you have to believe that risk is always infinitely mitigatable. Said another way, in order for skill to always matter more than luck, luck is something which must be controllable. In the end, though, it is not. No matter what you do, it is always the dice that will have the final, determining word.

So far, to believe otherwise appears to me that one would have to deny that luck exists in 40k at all.

Nobody is taking it to that extreme. I just said its possible that luck could completely cost you the game. But this is how I see a game.

Something happens, you make the decision that gives you the best chance of winning.
Something else happens, you make the decision that gives you the best chance of winning
Something else happens, you make the decision that gives you the best chance of winning

You keep making the best decisions and the odds of luck truly keeping you from winning the game are so small I would say it has never happened to the vast majority of us.

Just my philosophy on it, but I have a very empowering mentality about everything in life. If you take credit for your successes I think you need to take credit for losses too. But that’s more self help than 40k .

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:You keep making the best decisions and the odds of luck truly keeping you from winning the game are so small I would say it has never happened to the vast majority of us.

Indeed, I think this is the core of it.

Both players make the best decisions they are able to manage risk as best as possible. As two players come closer in skill level, the amount that they manage risk is relatively less important. Also, the higher in skill level one gets, the less benefit to risk management they gain (changing catastrophe from being on a 1/2 chance to a 1/20 chance is huge, but making it from a 1/20 to 1/40 is less so, and 1/40 to 1/60 even less so).

The question here isn't "does skill matter less the more skilled you become?". The question is "at what point does luck become more significant than skill?". You're assuming that the "blue line" is practically at the bottom of the graph. Skill will always be more of a determiner until the two players become perfect. As that can never happen, skill will always be more important than luck.

I can't see why this is the more accurate way of seeing things. In the end, regardless of risk mitigation, the actual end results are determined by the way that dice roll. In the end, the % player skill really only determines the % that they squeeze out of their list. The perfect player will get the absolute most out of their list, but that does not mean that a perfect player will win every game.

While the skill level determines how much you can squeeze out of your units on the field, it is ultimately luck which determines which units you have on the field. You can only work with what you have, and what you have is determined by the individual die rolls that determine if things survive or not.

As such, I really can't see how luck is a "small" effector. To me, it seems the "core". It is not luck that effects the outcome of skill, it is skill that effects the outcome of luck.

When the central mechanic of a game is rolling dice, I don't understand how it could be other.

My following opinion is not based from this thread, as I haven't read it all (time constraints at time of posting).

Luck affects Everything. Even in the tinest speck, it affects it. Otherwise everybody would blame something else that wasn't luck if something bad happened instead of saying "That was unlucky"

In 40k, you have luck. Why? Beccuase there is a cube with 6 numbers on it dictating what you're going to get, that's why. You can reduce your reliance on luck, take lots of dice or increase the odds of getting what you're after. It's still luck in the end. All those 2+ rolls can still be 1's at some point, and you will get them. Trying to get around this won't stop it. You can roll 1000 dice and I can guarntee that one of those will be a 1.

I'd assume more... competitive lists try and reduce the reliance on luck to a very fine point. Meching up, taking protective upgrades and powerful guns, units with good solid rules and the like. It's still luck when you get a 1 on that Difficult Terrain test for your transport and it breaks down just when you didn't need it to.

But you can prove that is wrong.

If you roll nothing but 1's, and your opponent rolls nothing but 6's, you will lose the game. Try it some time. Short of your opponent being so completely inept that they never even try anything, you're going to lose all your models, in as many shots as it takes your opponent to roll them.

Such rolling, while absolutely an extreme case, must be considered one possible scenario. In other words, the impact of luck on games is provably greater than 0%.

So, call the impact of luck on the game X. The impact of all the player decisions on the game (list building, in-game choices, and so on), is 100-X. We can call this Y (as in X+y = 100).

But Y is made up of two components, player 1's skill, and player 2's skill.

Y = (a-b).

X + (a-b) = 100

But, if A and B are equally skilled....

X + 0 = 100

X, the impact of luck, is the only thing that determines who wins the game.

And, if A and B are pretty close...

X + (small delta) = 100

Then X is still representing a large percentage of the component of the game.

Even if you add some extra mathy bits, such as X + 5(a-b) = 100, equally skilled players still find that luck accounts for 100% of their game results.

The skill level difference between the two players has to get significantly large before the impact of luck starts to fade away.

Right, and in the larger sense what I'm getting at is that, because skill has diminishing return (the same amount of time and effort for the same increase in skill will have less of an impact the higher it goes), there eventually becomes this point where the effect of different skill level of the two players is so low, regardless of how much more skill one has than the other (assuming they're both high enough), that the differences between skill becomes less of a factor. The difference in actual risk mitigation between a "level 1" 40k player and a "level 10" 40k player will be very pronounced, while the difference between a "level 40" and a "level 50" will be much less so, not just because the ratio is smaller, but also because you get diminishing return from each level achieved.

Which then also makes skill less of a difference as per the above.

Ailaros wrote:
The question here isn't "does skill matter less the more skilled you become?". The question is "at what point does luck become more significant than skill?".

I actually see it a different way. The question is more, 'how much effect can your skill have on the game, and to what extent can it overcome luck?'

Luck is a part of any competition, sport, or game. Some in this thread have said that luck is less a part of sports than other games, but that's not so. Luck is, in effect, random events outside your control, and there are tons of those in sports. Lots and lots. But in sports and games that involve a lot of skill, the skills involved are much larger parts of the equation. There are innumerable physical skills involved in sports, as well as decision-making, analysis, and so forth. Even competitive video games require physical skills. These factors thus usually make up far more of the equation that determines winning or losing than luck. Luck plays a part, sometimes a large part, but generally speaking the skills involved and the execution thereof determine the winner.

Something such as 40K has no physical skills. Neither does chess, of course, yet chess is a very deep game and difficult to master, because there are so many possible permutations arising from each move, and each player makes many moves over the course of a game, increasing the permutations that need to be analysed exponentially. 40K does not. Yes, there is lots of variety in situations and armies and so on, but a player doesn't do all that much over the course of a game, not compared to other sports or games.

Consider that the skills involved in 40K are essentially decision-making, analysis, and an element of vision and creativity. That's basically it. These are important skills, to be sure, and can be difficult to master. But there aren't that many things to do in the game that affect things. A 40K game lasts 5, 6 turns. You don't do much on your opponents turn except eat pizza and trash talk. You thus have five or six 'situations' to analyse, ie. the situations at the start of your turns, and during setup. You then make ten, twenty decisions or so each turn, roll the dice and check the outcome. That's it. That's really not a lot of opportunities for skills to affect a game, not when compared to a sport, which involves hundreds to thousands of micro-decisions and the execution of physical skills to accompany those decisions. So while your skills can make a large difference in the outcome, they really don't make as much of a difference as you think. There's just not enough skill-based events during a game of 40K for them to have that effect.

Take, for example, blackjack or poker. These are heavily luck-based. Yet there are also skills involved, and some are so good at these skills that they win again and again, almost always, despite the heavy element of luck. The reason they are able to use those skills, though, is because there are dozens, hundreds of hands, and they use those skills to come out ahead at the end. It doesn't matter how skilled you are at blackjack or poker - you get dealt a bad hand, you are very unlikely to win that hand. That's okay, though, because losing those hands and minimising the losses, while counting cards or watching tells and waiting for the moment to come out ahead are the real skills in those games. The point is that if you play the best poker player in the world for one hand, luck determines who wins. You play him over hundreds of hands, or hundreds of skill-based events, as it were, and he slaughters you, because there are enough of these events for his skill to make the difference.

List-building, of course, is another skill. In this way competitive 40K is actually a lot more like, say, competitive Magic: the Gathering than a sport. There aren't that many skills involved in a game of Magic. You judge some probabilities based on your deck, you react to cards you have and what your opponent plays, and so the game goes. The list/deck building is the larger part of the game. Competitive 40K is similar, especially in the way 'competitive' lists are built. I don't know a ton about M:tG, but from what I've seen and been told, competitive decks are generally of a style that executes a particular gimmick/plan and tries to win regardless of what the opponent has or does, ie. by making the opponent as irrelevant and possible. Competitive 40K lists are similar - all the 'power' lists out there are designed with a specific gimmick/strategy in mind, and attempt to execute that irrespective of the opponent. This has the added advantage of minimising some of the aforementioned skills, removing some of the need for analysis, vision, and decision-making because what your opponent is doing becomes less relevant.

In short, I don't think the real question is about whether or not 40K is heavily luck based. It has a lot of luck in it, but there are skills there, and a skilled player can win again and again. The real issue is that 40K is not a very deep game, and not a great avenue of competition, because there aren't that many skill-based events over the course of a game where skill can make a difference. Winning almost all of the time is less about in-game, tactical skill, and more about gaming the game, as it were. In other words, about playing the game in such a way that you render your opponent as irrelevant and helpless as possible, by taking a strong list that has a clear path to victory and dominates at that path as well as it can. Tactical skills make a difference in 40K. Skill differentials make a difference. But they don't make anywhere near the difference they do in sports or more competitive games.

Redbeard wrote:<<Excellent Post>>The skill level difference between the two players has to get significantly large before the impact of luck starts to fade away.

I wonder if you could quantify the skill element even further given two known lists within relatively few 'tactical' options to actually solve for the percentage impact skill can have on the game given "average" dice rolls, and 1 or 2 standard deviations out. Doing so you could actually "prove" some unit combinations are easier or harder to play than others (requiring more/less skill).

For a rough example, 5 TH/SS Terminators versus 5 PF/SB Terminators. Each unit can move 6", run 1-6", and assault 6" if they haven't run. The PF/SB Terms have the advantage at range. The TH/SS Terminators have the advantage in CC.

If the game proceeds for the 5 turns necessary for the PF/SB Terms to shoot to death enough of the AssTerms that they survive the assault, they win. If the AssTerms can close to the assault before that time, they will win. "Skill" would be the difference between those scenarios, and the impact of "luck" can be shown via how many standard deviations from the norm 'skill' can compensate for before either player reaches a threshold where victory is significantly more likely.

Redbeard wrote:

But, if A and B are equally skilled....

X + 0 = 100

X, the impact of luck, is the only thing that determines who wins the game.

And, if A and B are pretty close...

X + (small delta) = 100

Then X is still representing a large percentage of the component of the game.

Even if you add some extra mathy bits, such as X + 5(a-b) = 100, equally skilled players still find that luck accounts for 100% of their game results.

The skill level difference between the two players has to get significantly large before the impact of luck starts to fade away.

That's true, but the scenario of two players being exactly equally skilled is immensely unlikely. We aren't talking about the chances of two players being exactly the same height. Even in 40K, there are a lot of elements that go into this broad term of 'skill'. A lot of the posts in this thread talk about 'skill' as if it's a numerical quantity like height. That's just not the case - it's a multifactorial set of spectra that's almost impossible to quantify.

What does this 40K 'skill' rating involve? List making? If so, do 'equally skilled' players come up with exactly the same list, since they are equal in skill? Decision making? How do you quantify decision making? Minimising mistakes? If a player makes a mistake due to the influence of a random event outside his control (eg. a basketball player misses a free throw due to a random camera flash going off in his face), is that bad skill, bad luck, or both?

sourclams wrote:

Redbeard wrote:<<Excellent Post>>The skill level difference between the two players has to get significantly large before the impact of luck starts to fade away.

I wonder if you could quantify the skill element even further given two known lists within relatively few 'tactical' options to actually solve for the percentage impact skill can have on the game given "average" dice rolls, and 1 or 2 standard deviations out. Doing so you could actually "prove" some unit combinations are easier or harder to play than others (requiring more/less skill).

For a rough example, 5 TH/SS Terminators versus 5 PF/SB Terminators. Each unit can move 6", run 1-6", and assault 6" if they haven't run. The PF/SB Terms have the advantage at range. The TH/SS Terminators have the advantage in CC.

If the game proceeds for the 5 turns necessary for the PF/SB Terms to shoot to death enough of the AssTerms that they survive the assault, they win. If the AssTerms can close to the assault before that time, they will win. "Skill" would be the difference between those scenarios, and the impact of "luck" can be shown via how many standard deviations from the norm 'skill' can compensate for before either player reaches a threshold where victory is significantly more likely.

If you could figure that out, you would have a glorious career ahead of you as a game designer.

Way back when I worked for a video game company as a designer (RTS), we would use what math processes we could to balance units----then we would run scenarios of likely engagements v. other units----basically try to assign each unit an OCON number. Over contribution versus expense (Unit cost, build time, etc). It was very difficult to do---and while math certainly helped form a root to build from, countless other environmental (AI pathing, lag time, etc) would influence/skew the results. For the most part though, no surprises.

If you could apply that result to 40k in a structured test environment----(specific scenario, point cost, swap 1st turn, etc) and kept track of the units contribution via weighted scales (points killed---amount of fire absorbed---scoring objective, etc)-----you could, in theory, over many many games----develop an OCON for units as well.

Once you had the OCON for each unit in a given army----then you could start weighting the armies to determine what skill level was required to get victory-----over many, many games to prevent outliers from ruining your results.





Or you could just guess at the costs based on previous armies, release the book and say "oh I didn't think of that" when people take lots of Vendettas and Razorbacks.

Relic_OMO wrote:...The real issue is that 40K is not a very deep game, and not a great avenue of competition, because there aren't that many skill-based events over the course of a game where skill can make a difference.

This is a good way of putting it.

I would note, though, that comparing 40k to poker isn't the best analogy. Skill in poker is based on psychology. The only reason it works is because you don't know what your opponent's randomly determined stuff (the cards) is. In 40k, both players have full access to information about the random part of the game (both players see the die rolls).

Relic_OMO wrote:That's true, but the scenario of two players being exactly equally skilled is immensely unlikely.

No, but that's not the point. The point is that the amount that skill matters is relative to the inequality in skill. If you have two players that are nearly, but not exactly equal in skill, luck would play a majority, but not exclusionary role. The farther apart they get, the less other things (such as luck) matter.

Relic_OMO wrote:What does this 40K 'skill' rating involve?

I'm assuming some sort of aggregate here. The lump some of list building capabilities, deployment capabilities, movement, strategic focus, etc. One could be at the same overall skill level without being exactly equal in the details.

sourclams wrote:I wonder if you could quantify the skill element even further given two known lists within relatively few 'tactical' options to actually solve for the percentage impact skill can have on the game given "average" dice rolls, and 1 or 2 standard deviations out. Doing so you could actually "prove" some unit combinations are easier or harder to play than others (requiring more/less skill).

Actually, this is something that would be interesting to see more about.

Clearly a meltagun takes more skill in the movement phase in order to achieve the same result as a lascannon, which requires NO skill to use in the movement phase (you know, because you can't move and shoot it). However, in order to compensate for this, meltaguns are made much superior both in efficiency and effectiveness on a per-shot basis.

In this case, GW is clearly rewarding people who have relatively better skills in the movement phase by giving them weapons that work better when you are more competent at movement than your opponent.

How this actually factors into this discussion is a mystery to me. I almost feel like we'd need some really smart math guy, or a GW representative to talk about this. Clearly there's something to this, but what?

In terms of quantifying what the skill numbers mean, you could simply say, "that's how many mistakes were made".

It's probably an oversimplification, as mistakes are not all of the same value, but what if you assigned each mistake a rating. A ten-point mistake would be something critically bad, while a one-point mistake might be shooting in the wrong order, thereby missing out on one extra possible casualty.

The overall math remains the same. Two players who each make 5 points worth of mistakes (assuming we correctly assign point values to mistakes) are likely to have their game decided by luck.

Here's a scenario.

Two players are in the same situation. They've got one shot left, a lascannon. It can take a high-percentage shot at a fully loaded enemy transport that needs to be stopped this turn, or a low percentage shot at a land raider that is further away, and that has blown smoke.

The skilled player, recognizing the situation, fires at the rhino, but misses. The poorer player fires at the land raider, and despite the odds, immobilizes it.

Both players are now subject to whatever the rhino was going to do. But one player is in a much better position for three turns from now.

Where is your skill now

Also, remember that "mistake" is a tricky word, here. Often, a gamble is called a mistake only if it fails. Big gambles that have big failures are called big mistakes. Big gambles that have big successes are called triumphs.

Good post with some good analysis and arguments.

My 'motto':

Skill allows you to increase your chances to be 'lucky' and helps mitigate your 'unluck' or your opponents 'luck'.

After all, if you only had a single guardsmen on the table, regardless of skill, there is only so much you can do. In this case, player skill would be a relatively insignificant factor, as a bad player and a good player aren't going to be able to make much difference about how they use that one dude on the table. Yes, a better player is more likely to make closer to 100% usefulness out of that guardsman than the noob, but the limiting factor is that you still only have one guardsman on the table. He is not going to win a 1000 point game by himself.

Except sometimes that one guardsman that is left makes all the difference in the world.

Here is the other thing too that you haven't taken into account. As you go up in skill level, mistakes are more magnified. At a lower skill level, a moderate mistake even between two equally skilled players matters less than in high level play.

At the highest level, the top players are able to take advantage of small errors and turn them into critical advantages...so you also have to factor that in. I don't think luck means more as you go up in skill level. If anything, between two good players it usually comes down to who makes that critical error or the game becomes a draw. In some ways, mitigation of mistakes becomes more important as you become better and better at the game and face tougher and tougher competition.

I might add that this is true for all things, be it chess, sports, or video games like street fighter.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

I would note, though, that comparing 40k to poker isn't the best analogy. Skill in poker is based on psychology. The only reason it works is because you don't know what your opponent's randomly determined stuff (the cards) is. In 40k, both players have full access to information about the random part of the game (both players see the die rolls).

Well, a lot of the dastardly tactics in poker work in 40k, but poker is about money so it's kinda considered "okay." It's really unsportsmanlike in 40k. For instance, pressuring your opponent to play faster, or deliberately trying to distract him with something. One of the things card dealers are taught is to push players to play quickly with subtle things like gesturing them to make a decision when they're thinking about it. The advantage is twofold: You make sloppier decisions when you don't think them through, and you also fork over your money faster if you play more hands.

I've seen things like the fanatic bluff. Some orc and goblin players will place their fanatics (usually a lot of them) on the table first while fishing out the rest of their army. The idea is to psychologically make the opponent think about fanatics while he's deploying...even if the orc player doesn't even use the fanatics.

Another common one is the "painted monster bluff". Some player will super up talk their lord of tzeentch or whatever, making the monster sound super good and super scary. Then when the opponent concentrates on the monster, the player quietly kill his opponent with the rest of his army while having some pretend remorse that his super unit got "defeated."

Your imagination is your limit.

The point was not that poker and 40K are similar. The point is that poker is heavily luck-based, yet a highly skilled player can use that skill to make a difference because poker is played over a lot of hands, thus giving him more skill-based events and opportunities for that skill to make a difference. Play poker over one hand, and the winner is determined entirely by luck; you need lots of hands for skill to make the difference.

40K does not have a lot of skill-based events over the course of a game by comparison to other competitive sports or games. It's just not that deep a game.

I have just read the first post so if my argument has been discussed already sorry for being lazy of reading.

Luck is a big factor in 40k for sure but I don't buy that it increases with level of skill. Two beginners making tons of misstakes probably wins or loses based on luck a lot also. In one game they may get lucky with that their list beats their opponents (equally unbalanced but in a non-favorable way). They might also be doing a lot of movement and decisions "on random" which can lead to that they take turns in winning playing the same list mainly based on luck. Of course misstakes made based on random moves gradually transitions to knowledge and finally they reach the high level play you describe.

But part of it is to be able to cope with an unfortunate roll and adapt to the situation instead of blaming it on bad luck.. it can turn around (still not saying luck isnt a big factor).

I'm a little annoyed.

I agree that in a perfect game, against a perfectly equal opponent, with mirrored armies, where neither makes a mistake....that the dice will determine the game.

That game doesn't exist. However, that's not the argument that's being made about luck - its that the higher that player skill gets, the more that luck factors in.

That's exactly backwards. Its the opposite. I consider myself to be right at the freakin' top of the pile. When I get pitted against someone else of my caliber...and the skill level at the table is phenomenal, luck literally plays no factor in the technical gameplay. It comes down to maneuver and exploitation.


I'd even say this: The *ONLY* role that luck has in higher level gameplay is in smoothing over the consequences of a mistake. I made XX mistake, if I get lucky, it won't hurt me. At the highest *humanly* possible levels of gameplay, luck never rears its head - until a player forces it to by making a bad decision.

MrEconomics wrote: Most reasonable random variables approach normality at a speed that is proportional to the square root of the number of trials, which is rather slow once you have more than a few trials.

Question: so if my non-math-person understanding of this is right, then aren't we looking at a large difference between--I guess it's "normality"--with, for example, the 1 or 2 dice thrown by a single shot weapon, versus the 6 or 7 shots thrown by groups of multi-shot weapons? Because the single-shot weapon trials are so small that even the square root of the multi-shot weapon trials will be maybe two or three times bigger proportionally?

Like a 4-shot gun approaches normality at twice the rate of a 1-shot gun?

There is a huge amount of skill. While luck is in play a experience player will win at least 5 out of 6 times against inexperienced players. Luck will always be a factor there will be games you roll nothing but ones, and your opponent nothing but 6's.

Take my last game, only a single melta gun got a shot off that managed to hit, my opponent had at least 6 CSM's with meltas against my DE. Yes I had night shields so he couldn't get the extra d6 for damage but he simply missed, and when me made armor rolls for the same melta equiped troopers all died. It was just luck I had all 3 raiders and 2 ravagers left at the end of the game. Normally our games are quite close. I destroyed him that game though.

The previous game, he stomped both my lord and lelith into the ground (my lord failed my 2nd invuln save).

It may be a simplification but it does point out how a dice roll can have a severe impact on the game. A person can state that a skilled player attempts to mitigate the dice----and that isn't anything vastly illuminating. Of course they do.

Following that train of thought though----a skilled player will also take advantage of poor dice rolls on their opponents behalf---else they wouldn't be a good player.

To use Sourclams example, if I'm playing my friend and I manage to blow up both of his Land Raiders with two Las Cannon shots----thus forcing his Terms to walk the remainder of the game----if I don't win, then I've made some serious, serious mistakes. Provided I have skill however, I'm going to take advantage of the luck of the dice and press home my 'lucky' advantage. My friend on the other hand is going to be forced into less than desirable decisions by the fate of the dice---which could further my advantage.

TL;DR version, great post Redbeard and I'm in agreement.

Redbeard wrote:In terms of quantifying what the skill numbers mean, you could simply say, "that's how many mistakes were made".

It's probably an oversimplification, as mistakes are not all of the same value, but what if you assigned each mistake a rating. A ten-point mistake would be something critically bad, while a one-point mistake might be shooting in the wrong order, thereby missing out on one extra possible casualty.

The overall math remains the same. Two players who each make 5 points worth of mistakes (assuming we correctly assign point values to mistakes) are likely to have their game decided by luck.

Here's a scenario.

Two players are in the same situation. They've got one shot left, a lascannon. It can take a high-percentage shot at a fully loaded enemy transport that needs to be stopped this turn, or a low percentage shot at a land raider that is further away, and that has blown smoke.

The skilled player, recognizing the situation, fires at the rhino, but misses. The poorer player fires at the land raider, and despite the odds, immobilizes it.

Both players are now subject to whatever the rhino was going to do. But one player is in a much better position for three turns from now.

Where is your skill now

So far everyone here pretty much seems to be in agreement, except dashofpepper, who probably has a vested interest in being viewed as some sort of tactical genius, and scuddman, who appears to be creating arguments out of thin air.

Dashofpepper wrote:I'd even say this: The *ONLY* role that luck has in higher level gameplay is in smoothing over the consequences of a mistake. I made XX mistake, if I get lucky, it won't hurt me. At the highest *humanly* possible levels of gameplay, luck never rears its head - until a player forces it to by making a bad decision.

This simply can't be true without the inverse also being true; at a high level of gameplay luck can invert a non-mistake.

Real Example from an 'Ard Boyz R2 Semi: Buddy of mine has 15 Hammernators within the umbrella of a Null Zone Librarian. He assaults a 10 man blob of Hammernators plus Lysander.

Buddy puts 18 wounds on the squad, which should be about eight dead Hammernators and 1 wound on Lysander. In return he should take about 3 unsaved casualties.

Opponent makes something like 15 3++ saves, rerolling for another 14 3+ saves. He loses 3 models with 1 wound on Lysander. Buddy fails 6/14 3++ saves, losing combat, falling back, getting escorted off the table.

Would you honestly say it was a 'mistake' to have assaulted when you've got numerical superiority and a vicious support debuff in your favor?

Unfortunately Dash seems to be ignoring or trivializing the random element of the game in his assessments about "luck". That is, he posits that with equallly skilled players, the random factor will not be determinative- it will be the quality of play. This, of course, does not account for times when both players play comparably and yet one still wins significantly. By dash's theory, these should almost always be draws and always be draws or very close games. Likewise, when one player plays better than another by a small margin at equal skill levels, this should almost always result in victory.

He is treating the game more like a non-random element game (chess) than a dice based game. Since, at best, a dice game approaches normalized results, this approach is flawed.

Sourclams makes a very good point- in a real game, an unfavorable roll (or series of rolls) can defeat even very sound decisions. That is the risk of randomized results, especially with relatively high variability like a single d6. Another example- I watched a skilled player play a less than tactically adept one. The less skilled player shot the more skilled's smoke protected LR full of death with a lascannon. Of course, the lowly lascannon exploded the LR and killed a depressing amount of the terminators inside. It was a game shifting event based purely on luck. It does not mean it would consistently happen, but it is possible, and does on occasion. Interestingly, the more games played, the more likely such statistical anomalies are to occur in any given game.

It also stands to reason that if two players are playing an equivalent skill, luck (IE favorable rolls) would be a potentially huge determinate of the result.

jmurph wrote:, an unfavorable roll (or series of rolls) can defeat even very sound decisions. That is the risk of randomized results, especially with relatively high variability like a single d6. Another example- I watched a skilled player play a less than tactically adept one. The less skilled player shot the more skilled's smoke protected LR full of death with a lascannon. Of course, the lowly lascannon exploded the LR and killed a depressing amount of the terminators inside. It was a game shifting event based purely on luck. It does not mean it would consistently happen, but it is possible, and does on occasion. Interestingly, the more games played, the more likely such statistical anomalies are to occur in any given game.

Yes, it is possible for a single lascannon shot to penetrate a land-raider, explode it, and nuke some of the terminators inside. Or alll of them. THat's a "Lucky shot."

My argument is that its only a "lucky shot" because the guy with the landraider full of terminators put all their eggs in one basket, such that a single die roll or the loss of a single model *can* influence the game. Which is a matter of skill. In building a list. I'm not ignoring or trivializing the random elements of the game, just pointing out that the WRONG associations are being made to them.

I've been to four tournaments in the last two months. 12 games. I've won all 12. In 10 of the 12 games, I tabled my opponents. In one of the remaining two, my opponent had a single model left on the board - stuck in close combat with me for 4 turns and I couldn't get rid of it. In two of those 12 games, I lost nothing. Not a single unit. In 7 of those 12 games, I scored perfect victory conditions. Primary, secondary, tertiary, and bonus points.

The theory in this thread requires that my opponents are either extremely bad, the worst kind you can put on the table, or that I am incredibly lucky, or both. This applies to *all* the top players I know and that I've met in my travels and keep in touch with.

Its simply not the case. My opponents are *not* incredibly bad. I've not been incredibly lucky. I've been rather *unlucky* in my dice, which is why there's a 6 page thread about how I can fix the dice to trivialize outliers with them in Dakka Discussion.

Here's the truth of it: A lucky die roll doesn't matter in a game with me. I play simple army lists that focus on redundancy and multi-focus roles. So a Lascannon gets a lucky shot, blows through my battlewagon, negatves my KFF, and explodes it.

So what? Happens all the time. That's why there's only 18 boyz instead of 20 in the wagon next door, so that my KFF or Ghazghkull can jump into the next wagon over and the whole thing can keep trukking. So I'm playing DE and I lose two ravagers - 2/3 of of my ranged anti-tank in the first turn. So what? That's why EVERY OTHER UNIT in my WHOLE army is capable of killing a tank.

I'm not ignoring the random element of the game. I'm just noting that at greater skill levels - of which there are plenty of people - particularly notable dice rolls are irrelevant to the game.

Now, if my opponent rolls such that every dice hits, every dice penetrates, I fail every save, and he explodes all my vehicles......I'm going to say that was a damned unlucky game. But that's a lot of dice rolling needing a precise series of events to happen, which is extremely statistically unlikely. The kind of luck you guys are talking about isn't the theoretical "You could roll 10 sixes in a row" but the "Lucky shot, unlucky save, lose a few vehicles, dual landraiders gone....." Letting those kind of things influence your game is a matter of your skill in allowing or disallowing those events to become meaningful.

Dash, You're repeating the mantra "I'm awesome so luck doesn't exist" without actually addressing any of the key points made with regards to the fact that variance in unit performance does exist, and not just in the outliers you claim it does.

40k, despite what your ego is screaming at you, is not a deep game - certainly not one deep enough that you can just contain enough balls-to-the-wall awesomeness to win all of your games vs. a bunch of people that you insist are equally as good as you even though you beat them 99% of the time (when you apparently roll 'one' 30% of the time, which has hilarious implications). Assuming everyone is bringing the correct amount of redundancy (as they should be) then the only differentiating factor between two equally skilled players will be how the units actually perform in their respective combat rounds. There is no way to reliably refute this (or at the very least, repeating "But I'm really good at this game! I swear! Therefore variance in unit performance is always irrelevant!" Is doing a piss-poor job of it)

There are only a few real possibilities:

You and these people that can only beat you 1% of the time perform equally well against the market, but have lists that are unfavorable matchups vs. you (in which case, assuming they are making a correct decision in bringing their list in the first place may be a stretch, but either way in this scenario the list imbalance does the heavy lifting), and would reliably beat you close to 50% of the time if you both had completely open access to whatever you wanted to bring over the course of, say, 20 games.

You're rolling better than you think you are (From your posts in the dice thread I'm inclined to believe that confirmation bias, fueled and boosted by the "lol dash rolls bad" trend that your gaming group has likely adopted, makes you think your overall spread of every die roll in a given game is less statisically likely than it really was)

Your opponents are worse than you insist they are. This is also likely, given that:
40k is not a complicated game
You claim over a 95% win ratio to them

The people here disagreeing with you have raised some outstanding points in favor of their position and so far all you really have is "But I win alot and I think I'm really good and I think my opponents are good too therefore luck does not exist"

MikeMcSomething wrote:Dash, You're repeating the mantra "I'm awesome so luck doesn't exist" without actually addressing any of the key points made with regards to the fact that variance in unit performance does exist, and not just in the outliers you claim it does.

40k, despite what your ego is screaming at you, is not a deep game - certainly not one deep enough that you can just contain enough balls-to-the-wall awesomeness to win all of your games vs. a bunch of people that you insist are equally as good as you even though you beat them 99% of the time (when you apparently roll 'one' 30% of the time, which has hilarious implications). Assuming everyone is bringing the correct amount of redundancy (as they should be) then the only differentiating factor between two equally skilled players will be how the units actually perform in their respective combat rounds. There is no way to reliably refute this (or at the very least, repeating "But I'm really good at this game! I swear! Therefore variance in unit performance is always irrelevant!" Is doing a piss-poor job of it)

There are only a few real possibilities:

You and these people that can only beat you 1% of the time perform equally well against the market, but have lists that are unfavorable matchups vs. you (in which case, assuming they are making a correct decision in bringing their list in the first place may be a stretch, but either way in this scenario the list imbalance does the heavy lifting), and would reliably beat you close to 50% of the time if you both had completely open access to whatever you wanted to bring over the course of, say, 20 games.

You're rolling better than you think you are (From your posts in the dice thread I'm inclined to believe that confirmation bias, fueled and boosted by the "lol dash rolls bad" trend that your gaming group has likely adopted, makes you think your overall spread of every die roll in a given game is less statisically likely than it really was)

Your opponents are worse than you insist they are. This is also likely, given that:
40k is not a complicated game
You claim over a 95% win ratio to them

The people here disagreeing with you have raised some outstanding points in favor of their position and so far all you really have is "But I win alot and I think I'm really good and I think my opponents are good too therefore luck does not exist"

It’s so hard to have a civil internet conversation because people misinterpret so many things and you don’t have a change to correct them before they write a lengthy response based on their misinterpretation.

I think we all agree on the following points.
Luck is A factor.
List building and taking bad match ups into consideration is a skill.
Finding ways to minimize the impact of risk/luck is a skill.
If all else was truly equal luck would be the deciding factor.

I think we disagree on the following points.
All else is never truly equal.
If something else is unequal it is more likely to win/lose the game than luck.
The odds of someone having luck truly bad enough to cost them the game are extremely small.
Things like having a raider blown up, a key unit destroyed, getting a bad match up in a tournament, etc are more attributable to skill than luck.

I don’t know how else to resolve this other than to say the two sides disagree on the second set of assumptions.

I would argue that the true skill is reducing the role of luck in any outcome. This is done by building a redundant list where one "lucky" shot is going to do you in or one series of "bad" dice rolls is going to totally undermine your chances to win. "Luck" tends to enter into a decisive win or loss only because we are taking a risk of Luck entering into it. Such as an alpha strike list where you will dominate if you go first but then proceed to go second in 3 out of 4 rounds of a tournament. Or the LR Crusader with 5 Terminators and 3 Termie characters that given one turn of movement will unload ultimate devastation on your opponent only to see you beloved LR Crusader explode on turn one. Or losing the multi-combat by 2 and then watching all of your MCs fail their fearless saves and die.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:
I think we all agree on the following points.
Luck is A factor.
List building and taking bad match ups into consideration is a skill.
Finding ways to minimize the impact of risk/luck is a skill.
If all else was truly equal luck would be the deciding factor.

I think we disagree on the following points.
All else is never truly equal.
If something else is unequal it is more likely to win/lose the game than luck.
The odds of someone having luck truly bad enough to cost them the game are extremely small.
Things like having a raider blown up, a key unit destroyed, getting a bad match up in a tournament, etc are more attributable to skill than luck.

You know, I think it's actually just the last point that there's serious disagreement about. I mean, I agree that player skill is extremely unlikely to ever be exactly equal. The theory does not require that to be true (in fact, there's this whole graph on page 1 for when they're not). Likewise, the more non-luck things are inequal, the more they matter compared to luck.

Really, it seems to be a matter of opinion with regard to where the "blue line" on the graph is. I think we can agree that if you had two hypothetically peftectly matched people, that the game would be determined by luck, and that if you had a perfect player play the worst player in 40k, then luck would be pretty unlikely to be the determining factor (unless, perhaps, the perfect player could roll literally nothing but 1's, perhaps).

The real question is one of when does luck become a more important factor than relative skill to the outcome of a game?

The idea that the blue line should be at the absolute bottom (on the X-axis) seems much too low to me. I have had several games where the two players had unequal skill and the game was determined by key die rolls. Plus, the idea that skill's comparison to luck is boolean, where it either totally matters or it totally doesn't, is strange to me.

Of course, I'd also argue that placing the blue line at the highest possible point on the Y-axis would be too much. As I have had games between unequal players determined primarily by luck, so have I also beaten worse players, even while rolling poorly. Clearly, there is a skill component to this game.

As such, the crossover between luck and skill is some nebulous place in the middle.

I suppose the real question is somewhat less of determining most accurately where this level is (because that sounds extremely difficult, at best), but what does it mean when the skill level goes below the luck level?

I think that means different things to different people, depending on what they're looking for from 40k as a game. For some people, knowing that if they lose a game it's probably because they were terribly unlucky might drive them insane and cause them to quit 40k to play a game where there isn't a random element in it. For others, perhaps once they get to a certain level they stop bothering with trying to get better, and focus on other things.

As been said a couple of times here...

matterofpride wrote:After you reach a certein "level" in 40k and everyone is at this same level...40k really does turn into more of a game of chance. This thought yeah can be a little disheartening depending on why it is you are into 40k in the first place.

If your in it cause you like the models..modeling..painting..haning out at the stoere.. plaing campaigns..ext..ext then this thought isnt nearly as big of a deal. Compared to someone who is in it more just to win and go for first prize. Cause really in that scenario its more of up to chance on how your dice roll and what your match up are.

Reecius wrote: I play in a LOT of tournaments, typically several a month. And what I have noticed is that in good games, against good opponents with good lists in balanced missions (reduction of variables) it simply comes down to who makes less mistakes and who gets a few lucky dice to fall their way. That's it.

Is it disheartening?

It depends on your point of view. It has made me a more relaxed player for the most part (although I still get VERY engaged in competitive games) as I have come to accept that a lot of it is simply out of my hands.

MikeMcSomething wrote:Dash, You're repeating the mantra "I'm awesome so luck doesn't exist" without actually addressing any of the key points made with regards to the fact that variance in unit performance does exist, and not just in the outliers you claim it does.

40k, despite what your ego is screaming at you, is not a deep game -

Doooooooooooooood. Relax. No need for the personal crap. If my ego was screaming at me, instead of trying to logically explain things to you, I would simply say something like, "MikeMcSomething, you think that luck matters in 40k because you're not good enough to see past that entry level understanding of 40k. You think the game isn't very deep because you can't comprehend its dimensions or depth. Your inability to fathom more than a beginner's understanding of the game, or accept the possibility that you don't KNOW everything about the game is why we can't have a conversation about this topic."

That would be arrogance - an offensive display of superiority or ego.

Instead, I'm trying to stay logical with you. Variance in unit performance *does* exist. Player skill negates the relevance of of that variance. You're right in that I *am* drawing from personal experience here. I'm not concerned with how deep the game is or not, but there is a group of people (a significant group) around the country and world who perform exceptionally well in 40k games. It is not because they are incredibly lucky, it is because they are incredibly skilled. When you pit these people against each other, luck does not determine the outcomes of their game, skill does - the ability to play tactically sound, to not make mistakes, and to create opportunities on the table and try forcing your opponent to make mistakes.

If you've never had an opponent pivot or move a predator in such a way that your eyes light up a little bit because you know that you're going to be able to move a unit just far enough the next turn to get in a side armour shot on it, you probably don't know what I'm talking about. If you've ever made that realization, moved to exploit it, failed to hit/penetrate/other, and subsequently feel like you just blew your chances at a win, or that your strategy is screwed now....you probably don't know what I'm talking about.

Player skill in 40k starts with building an effective list capable of taking on any other list provided that you are a competent general. From there it expands into threat prioritization, knowledge of your own capabilities and your enemies....and goes into analysis of deployment, probing questions of your opponent...into the miniscule detail of examining the facings of enemy vehicles, baiting deep-striking units, and so much more.

At the highest levels of gameplay....winning and losing is in the details - not hoping for good luck. That's entry level 40k tactics. And in that respect, I *do* have a big ego. I solidly believe that I am at the highest levels of gameplay. I travel all around the country to test that theory as often as I can. *THIS* thread, however, posits that the skill I work to master and test against others is irrelevant "up here" because luck is the deciding factor. I see some hypothetical discussion that runs contrary to reality.

That's like some kids saying "Nascar drivers drive cars powered by bubbles!" And the Nascar drivers say, "Uh...no we don't."

Yep. I said it. There is a level of 40k up there. See the link in my signature about "High Stakes 40k?" Do you think I would put mortgage payments on the line for a 40k game if LUCK was the deciding factor?

So far everyone here pretty much seems to be in agreement, except dashofpepper, who probably has a vested interest in being viewed as some sort of tactical genius, and scuddman, who appears to be creating arguments out of thin air.

This is funny. Just because everyone thinks one way doesn't mean that they are right. You see, I have the perspective of having played sports, video games, and 40k at a high level, so I'm able to draw parallels between different competitions that other people can't.

And this is my premise...if you think 40k or these kinds of things are totally based on luck, you are also saying the same of all competitive things, because there is a random element to everything we do competitively.

That just sounds like what losers say. "You were just lucky..."

Of course, I'm from an ultracompetitive tiger mom kind of background, so my viewpoint has its own bias.

Edit: and in the vein of competitveness, this also tells me MikemcSomething is an idiot...who doesn't have the ability to analyze my arguments, but can just say "out of thin air" without any analytical proof, but is too stupid to make his own argument or think for himself.

Dashofpepper wrote:Player skill negates the relevance of of that variance.

Firstly, player skill reduces, not negates. Secondly your opponent's player skill at exploiting variance negatively impacts your ability to reduce the variance.

Player skill can not literally turn a "vehicle explodes" result into any other result, no matter how experienced you are. Player skill can not change the actual results of the die roll (unless you've become so skilled you're actually a Jedi). Skill can reduce the impact of losing a vehicle (but remember, your opponent is trying to exacerbate the impact), but it can't bring that vehicle back.

Luck has real consequences in a game determined by die rolls.

Dashofpepper wrote:You're right in that I *am* drawing from personal experience here.

I don't think anyone here is doubting that you have had experiences. I think that we are doubting your interpretation of your experiences. So far, the only defense of why your interpretation is the correct one seems to be because you're the one who come up with it.

Dashofpepper wrote:See the link in my signature about "High Stakes 40k?" Do you think I would put mortgage payments on the line for a 40k game if LUCK was the deciding factor?

I don't think you'd put mortgage payments on the line unless you THOUGHT luck wasn't the deciding factor. Whether it IS the deciding factor or not has nothing to do with how you choose to risk your money.

Ailaros wrote:Big gambles that have big failures are called big mistakes. Big gambles that have big successes are called triumphs.

Firstly, player skill reduces, not negates. Secondly your opponent's player skill at exploiting variance negatively impacts your ability to reduce the variance.

Player skill can not literally turn a "vehicle explodes" result into any other result, no matter how experienced you are. Player skill can not change the actual results of the die roll (unless you've become so skilled you're actually a Jedi). Skill can reduce the impact of losing a vehicle (but remember, your opponent is trying to exacerbate the impact), but it can't bring that vehicle back.

Luck has real consequences in a game determined by die rolls.

This type of thinking assumes that one die roll as a major impact on the game. It doesn't..and here's why.

With probability, there is more variance the fewer the number of attempts done. Mathematically speaking, as you go towards infinity, you get closer and closer to the statistical norm...which is why probability was invented in the first place as an analysis tool.

The thing is, to even shoot a lascannon, you have to roll to hit, roll armor pen, roll cover saves, and then roll on the damage table. That's FOUR dice rolls for 1 effect in the game. How many dice do you roll in 40k? Over 6 turns, all your guns, you're gonna roll hundreds of times. For hth, you'll roll thousands of times.

Because 40k is designed this way using six sided dice, I can mathematically figure out my odds and have an extremely high amount of certainty about what will happen and factor that into my play. On top of that, 40k divides things into vehicles and infantry, hth or not. It is easily possible to isolate one type of thing and make it completely immune to another. (Such as can't shoot into hth).

Fantasy is more a game where a single dice roll could derail you (magic, leadership, etc.)
40k rolls too much dice and has way too many ways to mitigate.

This is distinctly different from a game that is completely random and has absolutely no certainty.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

The real question is one of when does luck become a more important factor than relative skill to the outcome of a game?

I agree with Ailaros that this really is the crux of the argument. However, I'd say 40k doesn't get completely broken down enough for us to make a good enough assessment of this question completely. My "intuition" tells me that army list matters most, followed by game play (endgame matters more than beginning, generally), followed lastly by luck.

But I can't easily measure those because we havent broken 40k down enough to make those quantifiable weights.

Sure is argument from authority in here. Time to unsubscribe.

Ailaros wrote:
Player skill can not literally turn a "vehicle explodes" result into any other result, no matter how experienced you are.

Correct. But player skill can reduce the impact of "Vehicle explodes" into a minimal role - such that its impact on the game is trivial. IE, "Good job, you exploded a vehicle. I was expecting that and prepared for it."

SKILL also dictates WHAT vehicle an enemy explodes.

There's a lot of resistance to completely breaking the game down, so at this point in time, I'd say luck doesn't matter as much. But that being said, I'll concede that there may be a point that the game breaks down and becomes completely about luck.

I just don't know where that point is, and I don't think we've even come close to maxing skill possibility yet.

Now, if we played 40k for money...this game would then evolve very quickly...lol...but it'll become not so fun very fast. I'm looking at you, Magic the Gathering.

I think a single die roll can definitely have an impact on the game. A major impact. Enough to determine who wins and loses (or draws, in the example I'm about to give).

A while back I was playing with Tau against a 3rd edition GK force with my friend. In the deployment phase (I went first), I carefully examined the terrain, my army, his army, and what I thought he would do. I placed my Broadside teams (3 teams - forget how many total) in areas where I had LOS to a solid part of his deployment zone. When he deployed, he carefully examined the situation and found that there was no place where his Land Raider would be safe from fire - he eventually found a spot with cover, but I still had the opportunity to shoot. My "Skill" gave me the opportunity to fire at the start of the game.

On the first turn, I immobilized his LR. Despite the 4+ cover save it got. Only one team of Broadsides fired at it. Statistically speaking, even with 3 in the team (and assuming all 3 hit - 75% chance of each hitting), I should have had maybe 1 or 2 pens, and maybe a glance instead of a pen on one of those, of which he saves against a hit, and I either get one glance or penetrating hit (not exact, but bear with me). So assuming I penetrate, I roll 1D6+1 on the damage chart - giving me a half chance to destroy it, and a 1/6 chance to only stun it (AP 1). I got something in the middle, that I was happy with, Immobilized. That single roll was "luck". I had another team that could have fire, but they changed targets because I was satisfied with the result. Had I got Weapon Destroyed or Stunned, I may have continued firing (I can't say for sure). But the single roll which may have blown it up or stunned it was "luck". My "skill" in the other team of Broadsides being where they were was a backup, but I could not have controlled what the first team's results would have been. Maybe all 3 hit. Maybe all 3 miss. Maybe I blow it up, maybe it stun it a lot. I dealt with what I got, a result I was happy with.

Fast forward to turn 5. Out of the 4 objectives on the table, I control 1, he controls 1, and we contest 1. At the end of the turn, he had 4 Grey Knights on the table, while I had well over 50% of my forces, including 3 scoring units. We rolled for the next turn (continue on a 3+), and it comes up 1. The game ends, a draw (we don't use tie-breakers). I sighed and was pissed off at myself. I had that game in hand, but my lack of "skill" caused the game to be a draw despite an overwhelming advantage on my part. I made several mistakes, and that caused me to only draw and not win the game. His "skill" allowed him to scrape together a draw despite losing over 1/6 of his points before even firing a shot. His Knights, at the end, were surrounded by Fire Warriors, a Devilfish, and a Crisis Suit with Burst Cannons. Had the game continued, I would have easily won.

But it didn't. The game ended. A better player than myself would have tabled him that game, and a worse player may have lost. "Luck" decided that the game ended when it did, on turn 5, even though the odds said it should continue. More "Skill" on my part would have negated that luck, my tabling him before the roll ever occurred. More "Skill" on his part may have handled the situation he was thrust in at the start better, and found a way to squeak out a win. In terms of our relative skill, I would give him an edge over myself, particularly in terms of tactics.

Skill was important that game. His skill and mine are the primary reasons that the game ended up a draw. More skill from either of us and it seems likely that someone wins. But Luck played a big part in it, particularly when the time came for a final die roll to see if the game continued. I have no doubt that if Dash or others more skilled than I played in my place, the game would have been over far before the roll came. But what if Dash had been playing someone about as skilled as he is?

What if, on turn 5 (going second), you look at the table. You have played your heart out, and even you acknowledge this is the finest game of Warhammer you have ever played. Both you and your opponent have played to the stretch of your abilities and beyond, impressing even those who used to think of you as inferior. It's a tournament, and you NEED to win this game.

Analyzing the table, there is no way to win. Objectives are tied, with one being contested in the middle by two large squads locked in close-combat. Only a cruel roll of the dice will cause anyone to win the CC this turn (both units have ATSKNF). Nothing is in position to help in the assault, you can't shoot into it, no barrage to "accidentally" scatter onto the assault. you can't even touch the objective he controls, it's completely out of LOS. You do what you can. You position units to shoot at the enemy on your next turn, turn 6. You ready them as best you can (nothing has the movement to contest), and continue the CC. You lose, as you hoped would happen, and fall back using "Combat Tactics". The enemy doesn't catch you, and you run far enough away to no longer contest. This is the best and only way you could win - lose the CC, hope the game continues, shoot the enemy to death and move onto the objective again. The roll comes down - a 1. You lose. But it was the best move. You played as well as you could, nary a bad move to your name, it was your only hope to beat the opponent. It was the best move. Everyone agrees with you, even your opponent, saying "I would have done the same thing". You congratulate each other, and he celebrates winning the tournament.

Now, I have no tournament experience, but this seems like a probable occurrence. If you HAVE to win, you had to give yourself the possibility of losing. And the dice just didn't have it in them. I don't think that makes someone "worse" for doing the best they could and a single roll needed to go one way for it to work. Sometimes things just don't work out.

It brings up another idea about "Individual Battles" that is well-known in sports. In a team based game (like we can consider Warhammer to be, from the models' perspective), each unit has it's task. For the plan to work, we need units to carry out their task. Sometimes you can do everything right, and it just doesn't work out, because a unit spends three turns firing it's melta at BS 4 and just can't hit the damn vehicle. This forces you to dedicate other resources to the destruction of that vehicle, if it's important enough. Let's say that vehicle ends up destroying something vital of yours - a squad sitting on an objective, and they run away. Since the first unit never won their individual battle, the objective you thought was safe is empty again - forcing you to dedicate more resources that were not planned for holding that objective to hold it yet again.

Redundancy, skill, and smart play help mitigate these effects. But it does not erase them. And the "bad luck" of the melta missing 3 straight times ends up being more problematic, and the effects continue to compound. First, it was a vehicle that simply wasn't destroyed. Second, a squad performing a vital task (objective holding) ran off. Thirdly, a unit that had it's own job to perform had to go and hold an objective, draining away resources from something else it could be doing (smashing the enemy, for example). The skill of the player helps to make these catastrophic situations into merely bad situations, or even just poor situations. But ultimately, it was bad luck, and it had affected his play, and it will cause a problem in his army - how well he deals with it is indicative of his skill - but if the melta fails on turns 5, 6, and 7, and his opponent, going second, makes his squad run away on turn 7 - that's bad luck, and if those were all the best moves, no about of skill can negate the fact that you no longer have an objective.

scuddman wrote:There's a lot of resistance to completely breaking the game down, so at this point in time, I'd say luck doesn't matter as much. But that being said, I'll concede that there may be a point that the game breaks down and becomes completely about luck.

I just don't know where that point is, and I don't think we've even come close to maxing skill possibility yet.

Now, if we played 40k for money...this game would then evolve very quickly...lol...but it'll become not so fun very fast. I'm looking at you, Magic the Gathering.

We *do* play 40k for money.

Not like in street fighter. You willing to put up 500 bucks on a money match? I'm not..not these days. I've seen money matches go for thousands of dollars. That's past my limit of hardcoreness.

scuddman wrote:Not like in street fighter. You willing to put up 500 bucks on a money match? I'm not..not these days. I've seen money matches go for thousands of dollars. That's past my limit of hardcoreness.

Well given that Dash has made references to a 'significant amount of moeny' being wagered on a match at Nova...

I'm with you, in that I'd never play 40k for serious money. But that's just me...I'm a hobbyist and collector first, and a gamer 2nd.

scuddman wrote:Not like in street fighter. You willing to put up 500 bucks on a money match? I'm not..not these days. I've seen money matches go for thousands of dollars. That's past my limit of hardcoreness.

I'm absolutely willing to put up $500 for a game of 40k. Or $1,000. Or $5,000. I've had $50-$150 bets randomly scattered throughout my career. The winner of the Nova Invitational in August gets $1,000 cash. I've got a side-challenge to a 2k game for money (linked in my bio). Probably more money than has ever been bet on a 40k game before?

The only thing keeping people from going pro with 40k is the naive belief that luck has anything to do with this game.

Oh, well, if he's doing money matches, then his skill level will be higher than most others.

Edit: I'm willing to money match you, but only in the street fighter game of my choice. Lol.

Am I allowed to challenege without offering up any money?

ChrisWWII wrote:

scuddman wrote:Not like in street fighter. You willing to put up 500 bucks on a money match? I'm not..not these days. I've seen money matches go for thousands of dollars. That's past my limit of hardcoreness.

Well given that Dash has made references to a 'significant amount of moeny' being wagered on a match at Nova...

I'm with you, in that I'd never play 40k for serious money. But that's just me...I'm a hobbyist and collector first, and a gamer 2nd.

I'm a gamer first, an unwilling hobbyist, and a chance collector.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

scuddman wrote:Oh, well, if he's doing money matches, then his skill level will be higher than most others.

Thus my NASCAR reference earlier. Its one thing to hypothesize about whether luck plays a factor when you're a skilled gamer, and another thing to actually BE there.

scuddman wrote:Oh, well, if he's doing money matches, then his skill level will be higher than most others.

Why?

Why does the amount of money you wager on a game have any impact on how much luck is the determiner of a game? Moreover, why does wagering more necessarily imply more skill?

Were this true, craps or roulette would be an absolute science, rather than a game of chance...

There's more money in street fighter...play that.
There's no bs hobbyist mentality either. Everyone's a shark. I think you'd be good at it.

Ailaros wrote:

scuddman wrote:Oh, well, if he's doing money matches, then his skill level will be higher than most others.

Why?

Why does the amount of money you wager on a game have any impact on how much luck is the determiner of a game? Moreover, why does wagering more necessarily imply more skill?

Were this true, craps or roulette would be an absolute science, rather than a game of chance...

There's nothing TO craps other than rolling dice. And perhaps the amount of money you wager on a game has an impact on how much luck is the determiner of the game because the players *wagering* the money are at a skill level high enough not to believe that the earth is flat, that voodoo works, or that luck has much to do with determining the winner of a 40k match.

In 40k, rolling the dice is the smallest piece of it.

Why?

Why does the amount of money you wager on a game have any impact on how much luck is the determiner of a game? Moreover, why does wagering more necessarily imply more skill?

Were this true, craps or roulette would be an absolute science, rather than a game of chance...

Because of a financial concept called risk aversion. And I'm not talking about luck, I'm talking about skill.

scuddman wrote:Because of a financial concept called risk aversion. And I'm not talking about luck, I'm talking about skill.

Right, and I'm saying a high threshold for risk is not the same as skill.

And saying that, if you played him, he'd take your money. Risk aversion is not a high threshold for risk. It is that you are only willing to take risk when the RETURN is at a certain threshold. If you aren't certain you're gonna get a return, you wouldn't do it.

Dashofpepper wrote:
I'm a gamer first, an unwilling hobbyist, and a chance collector.

Hence the difference.

Dashofpepper wrote:

The only thing keeping people from going pro with 40k is the naive belief that luck has anything to do with this game.

Well, no. The fact that there's no viable spectator market or big money interested in funding such a thing is what keeps 40K from going pro. And there are good reasons why a game like 40K should not have such things, not the least of which is that it's not that deep a game.

I get that you're a good 40K player. I understand that you win a lot of matches. But believing that luck (ie. randomness) has nothing to do with victory in anything competitive, much less 40K, is hubris. Random events are a factor in competitive sports at the highest of levels. People who compete in the hardest, toughest, most competitive environments on the planet understand this. People who sacrifice their lives, their health, their sanity on the altar of victory understand this. These people train every day, live, breathe and eat their chosen sport, to minimise these random events. They contort their minds and cripple their bodies so that their skills will be unparalleled, so that they can step onto the stage with the greatest in the world, sometimes the greatest in history. I know these people. I have competed against these people, trained them, and been one of them. Even these people know that sometimes, gak happens. Pretending that there's no such thing as luck is folly.

I have no doubt you understand things about 40K the rest of us don't, and that you believe that in the rarefied air you breathe only your pure, untrammeled skill separates you from the mere peons who scrabble in the muck and dare to say they play the same game as you. Props for your skill, dude. Seriously. But believe me, it's really not that deep a game. By comparison, there aren't that many points in it where skill can come into play. And randomness is a significant part of it.

Furthermore, it seems a little strange to me that one would say that luck has nothing to do with the game when the primary mechanic of the game is rolling dice....

scuddman wrote:And saying that, if you played him, he'd take your money.

So?

Anyways, I'd like to thank everybody for their input here. Some of it was extremely useful in hammering things out. My findings on the matter are recorded here.

Thanks again!

Ailaros wrote:

scuddman wrote:Oh, well, if he's doing money matches, then his skill level will be higher than most others.

Why?

Why does the amount of money you wager on a game have any impact on how much luck is the determiner of a game? Moreover, why does wagering more necessarily imply more skill?

Were this true, craps or roulette would be an absolute science, rather than a game of chance...

There's incentive for you to do it. When there's something at stake, people will tend to play to win, regardless of fluff or whatever. And isn't craps and roulette purely luck-based? If it needs a certain degree of skill, I'm sure there would be professionals who would play it. There are professional poker players after all.

It's also about security. If you are going to earn money to support yourself or even more while playing the game, you can afford to spend more time to play the game more. It stops being a hobby and it becomes a job. It's the difference between someone who's hobby is to paint portraits and someone's who is paid to paint portraits: sure some hobby guy might be really good, but the tendency is that the professionals are more skilled, since they spend more time to it.

Have none of you "it's all luck" chaps ever read _A Player of Games_, by Iain M. Banks? The assumption that games that include a random element involve less skill than completely non-random games is characteristic of pre-hyperspace societies.

Let's assume that chess requires skill, at a high level of play.

Now let's compare 40K to chess.

In chess, if you know the rules, you can look at the board at any stage, and see a finite number of possible moves that the next player can make. You can put a number on that number, quite easily. Look 2 moves ahead, and you can put a bigger number on the set of possible moves that can be made.

In 40K that is not really true any more. It's less inherently predictable, less definable as a number. There's an infinite number of possible moves that any one infantry squad can make with its 6" move allowance (a bounded infinity, admittedly, like the infinity of numbers between the number 1 and the number 2, but an infinity nontheless). The board is analogue, rather than digital.

Add in the effects of the dice -- the fact that you have to allow not just for every possible combination of moves that you and your opponent can make on each turn (every *infiinite* but bounded combination of moves), but also every possible combination of every result of every die that is thrown as part of a turn.

And you still have to win. You have to allow for all of those things, and know that even allowing for all of those things, your army and skill level and awareness of game-state and flow combine to give you the victory. Whatever your opponent does.

I'm not at that level yet. Nowhere near. But I get better every time I play, because I recognize that that level exists, because I see how complex and skilled this game can be. If you assume it's all about throwing dice, you'll never get much better -- not because you're not a good enough player, but because you don't believe it's possible to be a good enough player.

40K? Just about rolling dice? Sure, the same way that Street Fighter II is just about pushing buttons.

Dash if you feel like addressing any of the points I've made, knock yourself out. Repeating yourself a few times? Like I already said you were? And ignoring people's points? Like I pointed out? Not so relevant, sorry. I know you think you're the world's best upscaled tic-tac-toe player, and that this game is some massive infinite well of skill inputs, and that anyone that disputes that is inherently incorrect, but you have yet to really demonstrate anything to the contrary (as several people you've ignored have pointed out to you on multiple occasions) All I've seen so far is that you have the disposable income to go get ranked at these tournaments and still have enough left over to throw at a game of 40k. Merry Christmas to you! That unfortunately means nothing in a discussion regarding skill inputs!

As for Ian, you are correct in that any given unit can do what appears to be a near infinite variety of moves, but in reality those moves all create a small set of binary conditions - so just because a unit of Scouts can go 6 inches in a circle doesn't mean that there are an absolutely infinite number of game positions that will result from these infinite potential movements i.e. most movements will either be "In shooting range of x without fear of counter shooting" or "In shooting range of x without fear of assault from Y" - you can expand on this to be "In shooting range of x without fear of assault from Y and able to contest objective z by turn N" or whatever you feel like adding and you still wind up with a managable list of relatively binary inputs from movement.

Fighting games make a bad comparison for a couple reasons: the (literally) hundreds of skill inputs made in a given 30-second match, compared to the 30+ decisions between movement, target selection, and launching assaults in a given game of 40k are going to provide for a much higher skill variance as well as the fact that the skills are directly tied to execution in a fighting game - you don't (barring obvious extreme edge cases like GG Faust throwing literally random crap in the air) roll dice to see how much damage you do to an opponent with a given combo - if a character went to Perfect Guard a mistimed Inferno Divider, but then "WHOOPS I ROLLED A 1" and got launched anyway, fighting games would be considerably different .

It's also more fun to watch.

Anyways, last thing I want to point out is this idea of true mitigation.

I think in his article, Ailaros said that he had a game where everything was shaken.

What about the event that you go first and you're able to get everything that your opponent has that is shooty into hth?

This is true mitigation that your opponent cannot get around, barring weird rules like hit and run or combat tactics.

Is that considered a luck based or a skill based event?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Fighting games make a bad comparison for a couple reasons: the (literally) hundreds of skill inputs made in a given 30-second match, compared to the 30+ decisions between movement, target selection, and launching assaults in a given game of 40k are going to provide for a much higher skill variance as well as the fact that the skills are directly tied to execution in a fighting game - you don't (barring obvious extreme edge cases like GG Faust throwing literally random crap in the air) roll dice to see how much damage you do to an opponent with a given combo - if a character went to Perfect Guard a mistimed Inferno Divider, but then "WHOOPS I ROLLED A 1" and got launched anyway, fighting games would be considerably different .

There is randomness in fighting games, it's just not tied to dice. You put people into situations and they have to guess. You see it all the time when someone gets knocked down and has to guess what to do on wakeup. The thing that skews this is risk vs. reward. Sometimes the correct counter is difficult and doesn't do very much return damage, so putting your opponent into that situation is a huge advantage. It's still random though...

scuddman wrote:It's also more fun to watch.

Anyways, last thing I want to point out is this idea of true mitigation.

I think in his article, Ailaros said that he had a game where everything was shaken.

What about the event that you go first and you're able to get everything that your opponent has that is shooty into hth?

This is true mitigation that your opponent cannot get around, barring weird rules like hit and run or combat tactics.

Is that considered a luck based or a skill based event?

I would say if a list had the ability to completely shut another list down, then:

If ''Scissors list" performed as well against the unwashed masses as "Paper list" then it's a bad matchup, and that is largely luck-based, unless your metagame is such that bringing Scissors List will make you as likely to get to the top table as Paper list, in which case it would be skill based - you chose to bring Paper even though you were likely to put yourself in a position to be defeated by Scissors without any gain vs. the market as a whole.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

scuddman wrote:There is randomness in fighting games, it's just not tied to dice. You put people into situations and they have to guess. You see it all the time when someone gets knocked down and has to guess what to do on wakeup. The thing that skews this is risk vs. reward. Sometimes the correct counter is difficult and doesn't do very much return damage, so putting your opponent into that situation is a huge advantage. It's still random though...

You're correct in that luck also rears it's head in fighting games as well, I wasn't really trying to say fighting games don't compare to 40k because of luck, but because of the massive variance in skill inputs as well as the fact that the very execution is completely different - you force a hidden guessing game on your opponent with something like playing wakeup, where in 40k there's nothing really behind the scenes like that.

Isn't that why everyone is meching up, though? A friend of mine pointed out that vehicles were like rings in sonic the hedgehog. As long as you have one ring left, it doesn't really matter that the vehicle is killed; the contents inside are going to be okay.

Another thing was as a perfect counter to lash. You also don't have to take leadership tests while inside a transport, completely invalidating a lot of very powerful things (like pbs or fear of the darkness or whatever)

You could say this is a form of true luck mitigation, right?

MikeMcSomething wrote:Dash if you feel like addressing any of the points I've made, knock yourself out.

Points have *been* addressed. Sorry that you didn't get the answers you wanted the way you wanted them, but when your presentation involves ridiculing the person you're trying to get to answer you, you get dismissed.

Forum 101.

scuddman wrote:What about the event that you go first and you're able to get everything that your opponent has that is shooty into hth?

Is that considered a luck based or a skill based event?

Luck. Specifically, the roll to determine who goes first.

As for other games, like chess, poker, and street fighter, there are very serious differences between those games and 40k that only make comparisons so valid.

And there is no such thing as "perfect mitigation". The only way that losing something would make NO difference when it was gone is if it made NO difference if it was still there.

Such a unit, I'd assume, would cost zero points...

Also, the idea of "perfect mitigation" is silly. For every amount that you are able to mitigate the effects of luck, so your opponent is able to exploit the effects of luck. As such, you really have to compare perfect mitigation against your opponent's perfect exploitation. If they're not the same level of perfection, then that skill difference will matter (in relation to their difference), if they're equal, they won't.

Which is what I've been saying this whole time...

scuddman wrote:Isn't that why everyone is meching up, though? A friend of mine pointed out that vehicles were like rings in sonic the hedgehog. As long as you have one ring left, it doesn't really matter that the vehicle is killed; the contents inside are going to be okay.

Another thing was as a perfect counter to lash. You also don't have to take leadership tests while inside a transport, completely invalidating a lot of very powerful things (like pbs or fear of the darkness or whatever)

You could say this is a form of true luck mitigation, right?

You can do things in 40k that completely eliminate a given small variable (like you can not take psykers to avoid having to lose your HQ 1 in every 1000 matches or so to multiple perils of the warp rolls) but once both players have done that, if their lists are equal, and they aren't moving their vehicles ass-first into AT guns all day, and they shoot the dangerous stuff first, with the correct amount of their stuff, then at the end of the day a huge chunk of how the game is resolved comes down to how the dice fall.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dashofpepper wrote:

MikeMcSomething wrote:Dash if you feel like addressing any of the points I've made, knock yourself out.

Points have *been* addressed. -

If they were addressed by someone, it certainly wasn't you! But nice try anyway!

I would agree with the people that say luck is only a small part in it. Good players create their own luck, give opponents opportunities to depend on luck (and lose b/c their luck is bad) and adapt to situations where your luck is bad.

This reminds me of a game I had on Vassal yesterday. My nids, an experimental and weak list took on daemons. The other guy took risks with his deep striking that ultimately caused him to lose a whole unit of bloodletters to scattering off the table. I mopped up his crushers and herald.

He conceded and blamed the dice for his demise. If he hadn't scattered, who knows what would have happened. But I know this much, he took a chance and it didn't pay off. He set his stuff down 8 inches from the side of the table, where he said '7 is the average roll' and scattered off. Dice don't do what you expect them to.

bucheonman wrote: Good players create their own luck

The only way this would be true is if player skill determined the outcome of the die.

In more technical parlance, that's called "cheating".

bucheonman wrote:I would agree with the people that say luck is only a small part in it. Good players create their own luck, give opponents opportunities to depend on luck (and lose b/c their luck is bad) and adapt to situations where your luck is bad.

This reminds me of a game I had on Vassal yesterday. My nids, an experimental and weak list took on daemons. The other guy took risks with his deep striking that ultimately caused him to lose a whole unit of bloodletters to scattering off the table. I mopped up his crushers and herald.

He conceded and blamed the dice for his demise. If he hadn't scattered, who knows what would have happened. But I know this much, he took a chance and it didn't pay off. He set his stuff down 8 inches from the side of the table, where he said '7 is the average roll' and scattered off. Dice don't do what you expect them to.

Thing is, everyone here knows you create/mitigate your own luck - the discussion hinges on the actual boundaries of how much luck you can write out of the game.

Okay, I guess I can see that to an extent.

In chess, it is a slight advantage to play white (who always goes first).

If we assume infinite skill and perfect play, then who would win would come down to whoever won the roll to play white.

But we discussed this already. This assume perfect game breakdown, which 40k hasn't reached.

I'd like to hear why you say, "As for other games, like chess, poker, and street fighter, there are very serious differences between those games and 40k that only make comparisons so valid."

scuddman wrote:I'd like to hear why you say, "As for other games, like chess, poker, and street fighter, there are very serious differences between those games and 40k that only make comparisons so valid."

In chess, the SOLE determiner of which pieces are taken off the board is movement. In 40k, you can move stuff and attack your opponent's pieces, but whether you are successful is determined by a die roll, not by where you moved your units.

In poker, the random element is hidden from your opponent. The random element only matters at the end, if your opponent calls. In 40k, it matters at the beginning and all the way through the game.

In street fighter, once again, the damage you do is based on when you press a button. If a punch is successful, it's because you pressed a certain button at a certain time while your character was a certain distance away. In 40k, if your punch was successful is determined by the roll of a die.

You don't need to break down 40k all the way in order to realise that 40k is a different game from other games.

In 40k, you can move stuff and attack your opponent's pieces, but whether you are successful is determined by a die roll, not by where you moved your units.

I don't see how the distinctions between poker and street fighter set them apart so that luck means more in 40k than in those games. Or any game, really. If anything, 40k's randomness is more quantifiable because it's defined as a die roll.

I don't agree with the above either. If you aren't within 12 inches of an enemy unit, your charge will ALWAYS fail. If your lascannon is 49" away from the tank, the shot will ALWAYS fail. Movement and range are NOT RANDOM and are not trivial, and they play as big if not a bigger role in taking a piece than in rolling the dice. Once again, it's possible to win without taking a single piece from your opponent.

This goes back to my argument about position being importnat, that I feel you glossed over.

I think the thought is that, if you shoot at my tank and you get lucky, it dies and you can't mitigate that. But you can!

Here's an excessive example...ninja Tau in a tournament setting with limited time. My scoring unit comes on the board at the end of the game (as I make sure they don't come in until time is almost called). Opponent never gets to shoot. Or do anything really. It's also not very fun, but that's neither here nor there.

Or what if swooping hawks were scoring and I always deepstruck so conservatively that they wouldn't mishap? The rubber hawk thing completely mitigates shooting

scuddman wrote:I don't agree with the above either. If you aren't within 12 inches of an enemy unit, your charge will ALWAYS fail. If your lascannon is 49" away from the tank, the shot will ALWAYS fail. Movement and range are NOT RANDOM and are not trivial, and they play as big if not a bigger role in taking a piece than in rolling the dice. Once again, it's possible to win without taking a single piece from your opponent.

This goes back to my argument about position being importnat, that I feel you glossed over.

At no point have I said that 40k is ONLY a game of luck. My point has only been that other things determine the outcome of the game less than luck the more they are controlled for.

If you believe that luck isn't a factor, on the other hand, that seems strange to me, what with the fact that we roll dice and all.

And for the record, the only way you could win against an opponent in 40k without destroying a single one of their units is if the skill difference between the two of you is phenomenally huge. If you play against an opponent as skilled as you, you can't win a game without destroying stuff.

... or, you know, you play kill points missions...

but whether you are successful is determined by a die roll, not by where you moved your units.

This is plain wrong. If it were true, I would cancel every tactical experience I made and just play into nowhere hoping my dice would secure my victory.

My theory is:

If you are equally skilled, then luck impacts equally on your result.

If you are low skilled, luck has a high impact, because you dont have tactical plans and randomness will rule the game.

If you are high skilled, luck has a very low impact (yes it has an impact, but most of the time not a decisive one) because you plan your game.

So equally high skilled games will end in a draw.
Equally low skilled games will end in a random result determined by dice.


Of course I had games where I was extremely lucky and turned a normally clear defeat into a massacre victory (against a better player! I made a stupid mistake, I did not see a single mistake from my enemy), and I have been very unlucky and lost a game almost with a massacre instead of winning it easily (against a slightly worse player).

Both results werent decided by dice rolls, they were decided by lists that were vulnerable against absurd dice.
If you field two landraiders as a main striking force and only have 4 twin lascannons you should be aware of the possibility to lose a killpoint game vs an MSU army.
If you field 2 big seer councils you are doomed against an IG if your guys retreat even though you have a LD10 rerollable.

Both lists are yay or nay setups. So you are dependant on the success of your "deathstars" (which is their big weakness). This is a matter of skill, not a matter of luck.

MikeMcSomething wrote:As for Ian, you are correct in that any given unit can do what appears to be a near infinite variety of moves, but in reality those moves all create a small set of binary conditions - so just because a unit of Scouts can go 6 inches in a circle doesn't mean that there are an absolutely infinite number of game positions that will result from these infinite potential movements i.e. most movements will either be "In shooting range of x without fear of counter shooting" or "In shooting range of x without fear of assault from Y" - you can expand on this to be "In shooting range of x without fear of assault from Y and able to contest objective z by turn N" or whatever you feel like adding and you still wind up with a managable list of relatively binary inputs from movement.

A manageable list of relatively binary inputs from movement? When you also factor in the different options for placing each individual scout in that unit, and factor in every other unit, and their positions, and their assorted movement options (including movement options outside the movement phase), in every turn (including the potential turns 6 and 7, if you happen to live in a universe in which that particular atom decays and that particular cat dies), and terrain? I think that gets quite far beyond a manageable list, at least to the vast majority of players.

The fully random factors -- die-rolling -- add a major element of risk management to the game. If you know all the charts pretty well, and all the unit and weapon stats, you have a pretty good idea of what the possibilities are, but there's a huge yomi side here too which is *highly* reminiscent of SFII or real-world combat sports, in that the particular risk management style a particular player is known for could become significant in the way you manage your own risk. For example, we know from other posts that Dash (though we might believe him to be mildly reckless on the issues of drunken 40K and/or 40K with thousands of dollars to play for) takes very few risks when he plays: ISTR he mentioned that he doesn't ever expose a unit with the expectation that it will be destroyed after doing its job. Another high-end player might well take more of a "go big or go home" approach, willing to lose 90% of his army as long as you lose 100% of yours. Observing the top players' different approaches would absolutely lead to a new understanding and a new depth of play which 40K rarely sees, since few players, even the best players, get to regularly, systematically play against and observe (even second-hand, on video) other top players outside their own area in the way that SFII or judo champs can.

I was playing Eldar in a KillTeam game last week, my Pathfinders failed to wound for three rounds, that was 20 to wound rolls showing 3 or less... but that's not why I lost the game, it was because I should have deployed the rest of my guys behind the pathfinders... why didn't I? I was rushing to teach a guy how to play and didn't think about the implications, I just wanted stuff in combat quickly to help with the demonstration.

Tactical decisions will always have a bigger effect on the game than die. To use the SAG as an extreme example, to even have the chance to roll 6,6 one must first decide to take it.

scuddman wrote:

I don't see how the distinctions between poker and street fighter set them apart so that luck means more in 40k than in those games. Or any game, really. If anything, 40k's randomness is more quantifiable because it's defined as a die roll.

The difference is that 40k is more transparent and has a far lower execution threshold than both of those games.

In 40k you know -- or should know -- exactly what your opponent is fielding and its location, and all of its abilities and capabilities, at any time. Although there's a variable outcome for any one action, it's a fairly predictable variable being constrained to a d6 in the majority of circumstances. Execution also tends to be perfect (in terms of, my models will move exactly where I want them to move, when I want them to, barring minority circumstances like immobilization or dangerous terrain and rough terrain. Even then you can opt to not go through terrain, and circumvent the risk entirely.

In Poker, the d6 is a d47; you know only your own hand (or your own hand plus the flop), and the 'skill' aspect is in managing the risk:reward payoff and in reading your opponent's behavior to attempt to determine the likelihood that you can 'roll' higher on the d46 than s/he can.

In Street Fighter, there is less ambiguity than in poker because again you should know your opponent's character and abilities, but the execution threshold is far, far higher than in 40k. If I spend 10 seconds deciding that my best course of action is to turbo boost my Vendetta, I measure out 24 inches and pick up my base and do so. If I want to counter an enemy ability, I have to first identify the ability being used, and in the split second window of opportunity I have to hit the exact combo of buttons necessary to do so correctly. That's a time constraint, memory/knowledge constraint, and a tactile constraint (ability to hit buttons within the window of opportunity).

How many of us can walk up to a table, look at the units and layout, and predict where a unit is going to be in 1-2 turns fairly reliably? Probably all of us. Can we say the same about where the chips will go in the next hand of poker? Or which player will land the first blow when a SF game starts? That's much harder to do.

If after discards both players knew both hands in poker and were betting on which hand was going to win as the turn and river are revealed, poker would be more similar to 40k.

-Nazdreg- wrote:

but whether you are successful is determined by a die roll, not by where you moved your units.

This is plain wrong. If it were true, I would cancel every tactical experience I made and just play into nowhere hoping my dice would secure my victory.

It's only wrong if you take my quote entirely out of context.

The point I was making was comparing 40k to chess. In chess, the ONLY determiner of which enemy pieces are removed is how you move your own. In 40k, you still need to move your pieces (seriously, I never said 40k does not have a skill component), but the only thing that movement plays in 40k, with regards to if an enemy unit is destroyed or not, is if you get the chance to roll to see if the unit was destroyed or not. The actual destruction of a vehicle requires you to roll a vehicle destroyed result, not move a meltagun on top of a vehicle (like chess).

-Nazdreg- wrote:If you are equally skilled, then luck impacts equally on your result.

So equally high skilled games will end in a draw.

This would only be true if both players rolled equally well.

Really, if both players are equally skilled, they will be able to mitigate and exploit luck equally, which means there is no net effect of skill on luck, not that there is no net effect of luck on the game.

This would only be true if both players rolled equally well.

OK I should add "most likely". But it is not required to roll exactly equal.
But how do you explain guys who dont lose most of the time? Are they lucky per se? Are they more skilled than the whole community?

Really, if both players are equally skilled, they will be able to mitigate and exploit luck equally, which means there is no net effect of skill on luck, not that there is no net effect of luck on the game.

The problem is, mitigating happens before exploiting.

So if someone can exploit anything, something wrong must have happened before.
If someone mitigates, the wrong is not wrong anymore, so there is nothing to exploit.
And normally you dont rely on things that will not normally happen. So preexploiting will just result in an unnecessary high risk.

In addition there are many things in 40k that dont involve luck at all:

Distances
terrain shape
model shape
physical presence
mission objectives

and so on

its a long list. Highly skilled players will concentrate on those factors, so dice rolling becomes less and less important.

If I am 25" away from an enemy he will not fire a single boltgunshot on me next turn, even though he may roll only 6es.
If I am totally behind terrain/my models, I will not get shot unless the opponent has a barrage weapon. No dice needed.
If I confront a unit with 2 of mine, one of mine will survive the encounter for one turn. (Given that multicharge is impossible and this unit wont be able to split fire) -> local superiority
If I have a vehicle in front of my opponents way not a single infantry model will pass through it.

low skill players dont care about those things. They may happen accidentally but not on purpose, so they will have to rely on dice.

-Nazdreg- wrote:how do you explain guys who dont lose most of the time? Are they lucky per se? Are they more skilled than the whole community?

Both of those explanations are just fine examples.

-Nazdreg- wrote:The problem is, mitigating happens before exploiting.

Actually, no it always doesn't. On the one hand, you can exploit before your opponent mitigates. Have you ever had an opponent move something back away from a unit with a meltagun or with close combat upgrades? You haven't even rolled the dice yet. If your opponent is mitigating BEFORE the event, then what they are doing is taking actions to lengthen their odds of ruin, your own actions on your own turn are done precisely to shorten them.

Secondly, you can exploit luck during your own turn. Have you ever shot a transport with one weapon and then fired at the guys who got out with another? Your opponent didn't have a chance to do anything before you were able to exploit the luck of rolling well on a vehicle damage chart.

-Nazdreg- wrote:In addition there are many things in 40k that dont involve luck at all
...

its a long list. Highly skilled players will concentrate on those factors, so dice rolling becomes less and less important.

Taking all of those things into account falls under player skill. Highly skilled players will be able to manipulate those things, but all those factors are still rolled into skill.

Terrain has no bearing on die rolls. None of those things you listed do. They don't effect luck at all.

Skill doesn't make die rolling less important by itself. It only makes it less important relative to the skill gap of the players.

Ailaros wrote:
Terrain has no bearing on die rolls. None of those things you listed do. They don't effect luck at all.

At a tournament, the terrain available on the table you're assigned to is random. Better events try to normalize it, but I've been to tournaments where one player was assigned to a table with two small hills, and nothing that blocked line of sight, and another player was assigned to a table that might as well have been a cityfight table.

For those of you who don't believe luck has an effect in high level play, would you be willing to play a game where your opponent was allowed to pick the result of three dice rolls every player turn - to represent them getting lucky at critical moments and you getting unlucky at other critical moments? Against an opponent who was even close to your skill level, do you think you could play though this simulation of luck?

Yes. In a tournament, I've actually won the roll for going first, and then when my opponent complained about how it hosed him, I let him go first anyways and declined to roll steal the initiative.

But then, I'm not super hardcore about this game.

Against my playing group, we often do this...where we "run it back", same mission same deployment, but who goes first is passed to the other player.

Kilkrazy wrote:Good players minimise the effect of luck by calculating probabilities and choosing situations in which the balance of probability is on their side.

This doesn't eliminate luck entirely, of course. I think it just slants the blue line on the graph down a bit.

I agree with this. I just started an Ork army. Never played Orks in my entire life. I have so many extra ork models lying around from 2nd edition, gorka morka, and black reach that I went out and bought a couple of box sets and added to them and now I have a decent army. I still need more bikes though.

I look at the Ork army skill set, and the whole army has pretty much a BS of 2. But my current list (2250) 48 boyz in it all in truks, 15 lootas, 30 warbikes, 2 big meks with force fields, battle wagon, and 3 defcopters. I got some nobz in there leading boyz with boss sticks and such, and I can easily drop a few boyz out to add war gear for other purposes. So I can be up and in your face fast. I hit better in hand to hand combat and I got numbers.

So, I have a strategy, and I am playing to my army's strength, and having 30 war bikes, with 10 of them a nob squad can hit hard. As long as I don't make little mistakes and stick to what needs to be done I will probably do well every game, even if I end up losing. I like to keep it simple. Simple and straight forward strategy with a bit of trial and error. Every time I win by a large margin it is because my opponent tried to get smart and pull off a high risk low probability move. My last fantasy game against one of my buddies was a prime example. He marched his treemen around my flank towards me read hoping to trap me next turn and charge me from the front and the back. Since he had rank and file units in front of me and his light cavalry on my flank. Well, when I saw that I immediately marched in the opposite direction creating a huge gap. He spent the rest of the game chasing me. Had he engaged my throw away unit I tossed in front of the treemen he would have been held up for 1 turn, maybe 2 max as his treemen decimated my meat shield units.

That is what meat shields are for though, I don't expect them to live. They are there to delay the enemy from my main units which are scoring points, and doing whatever it is they need to do. Sometimes people get upset when their units die and they lose concentration. If you wipe out a whole unit in one turn, I need to change up but it isn't over. I can go to ground, hold objectives, call in reserves, and so forth. Units die, sometimes half your army can die and you can still win if you play the mission right.

Luck is the roll of the dice. That is it. For example, my Ork army listed above, shoots a lot of attacks in each shooting phase, and some are twin linked weapons. However, my to hit roll is a 5+ so I need those numbers assuming I am going to a have a 33% chance on every die I roll to get a hit, and I am rolling just over 100 dice per a shooting phase (48 boyz, 30 warbikes, 15 lootas on a wagon with D3 shots per a turn, 3 defcopters). This is also assuming that most of them live and they don't have good armor saves. That is going to average me about 30 actual hits or so, that is if I roll average. Since a 5+ on a D6 has a 33% chance of being successful. So, that is how I look at it, but I know you can roll like crap. I have seen it happen, to myself as well. However, your opponent is subjected to the same rolls. Now my armor saves suck like mentioned before, and a 6 on a D6 has a 16% chance of rolling. So every time I take a hit, from a weapon that has no AP I have a 16% chance of saving. Otherwise, most basic guns in 40K have AP5. So I gotta take that probability as well.

I am just now getting back into the hobby so I am rusty but I used to play in tournaments and campaigns back a long time ago. I am trying out lots of new tactics since the game has dramatically changed since 2nd edition in some regards. However, knowing your opponent is very key to winning too. You may be able to pull quick ones or low probability high risk winning moves against someone who knows you well. They will expect you to do something a certain way, or what not. I switch from mech/tank builds on my marines to just heavy troops and tactical marines all the time. I got a land raider, a predator, some razor backs and some dreads and I am know to beef up my tanks and use heavy firepower to win games, but the more I play 5th edition to me I think 40K has shifted away from just heavy support. So, I am going more and more assault tactics these days. The fact you can move, shoot and then assault the same units means you can really deal a ton of hits to them. The more hits cause more wounds and the more wounds will yield more failed saving throws.

I just play numbers and probability with a game plan and then adapt to the mission. If it is capture and seize just make sure even if I am losing contest every capture point. The thing that sucks for me the most right now is I don't know all the new codices that well like I used to back in the day. So, I am still getting surprised by certain things I had no clue of. That is just my lack of experience with the new rule system and should hopefully get better over time.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ailaros wrote:

scuddman wrote:Oh, well, if he's doing money matches, then his skill level will be higher than most others.

Why?

Why does the amount of money you wager on a game have any impact on how much luck is the determiner of a game? Moreover, why does wagering more necessarily imply more skill?

Were this true, craps or roulette would be an absolute science, rather than a game of chance...

this is an interesting point in my opinion. What does one wager in GW games? Well, if you can afford to buy all the big baddie models then your army may have an advantage. I mean the models do cost physical money and some builds can be very expensive, and who is to say once you become known for a certain build people don't build their armies specifically to counter yours? So, your ability to spend your own money is a factor in what you can field. Though in my gaming group we don't care about WYSIWYG models. I have used fantasy models before because they are same scale when I want to try out something new in 40K but don't want to buy it with out trying the unit in several games first. The fantasy models are also very distinct and can be easily recognized and I can declare what they are. In a tournament or even a pick up game at a local gaming store may not allow that.

Now craps isn't about luck, it is about strategy. I used to play craps a lot when I first became of age to gamble. I am rusty because I haven't played in a long time but basically you look at the odds and the money you are tossing down. I am not rich so I always played on the $5 table. I always bet on the pass line and doubled down if I had the chance. Then I would watch people roll and look for trends. The one time I won really big was this old man, as old as Moses, was rolling a hard 6 over and over again. After his 2nd time in a row rolling it I dropped money on a hard six. This had a very low probability but high payout if it happened. I knew the risk, and took it because this old man had just rolled two in a row. He rolled like 2 or 3 more and I cashed out just under $1,000 or something in literally like 2 minutes of dice rolling. I also never got greedy either.

Rolling dice in 40K should be taken in the same manner. Yes it is random and yes there is luck, but really you can have a strategy to dice rolls and you can calculate probability. I think the biggest luck factor in 40K is who gets to go first, who deploys first, and who's reserves come in first. Going first can be a game changer. I have seen all enemy tanks get taken out first turn by anti tank stuff.

I guess what I am trying to say is, that in every aspect of tabletop war gaming and in every game system, everything is a part of the strategy. Terrain, sides, who goes first, dice rolls, calculating average dice roll probability, figuring out average outcomes of what situations and so forth. However, rolling a dice is still luck in itself. Probability just means that most of the time you will get this average, but that doesn't mean every time. Most importantly it doesn't mean you will roll your roll at the proper time. You could be rolling 6s when you need 1s, or vice versa.

Redbeard wrote:

Ailaros wrote:
Terrain has no bearing on die rolls. None of those things you listed do. They don't effect luck at all.

At a tournament, the terrain available on the table you're assigned to is random. Better events try to normalize it, but I've been to tournaments where one player was assigned to a table with two small hills, and nothing that blocked line of sight, and another player was assigned to a table that might as well have been a cityfight table.

For those of you who don't believe luck has an effect in high level play, would you be willing to play a game where your opponent was allowed to pick the result of three dice rolls every player turn - to represent them getting lucky at critical moments and you getting unlucky at other critical moments? Against an opponent who was even close to your skill level, do you think you could play though this simulation of luck?

Sure. As long as I get double the points and am not restricted to a FoC. Would you let me take an extra queen on a Chess Board to show that it isn't luck that determines the winner? I don't see any real point to installing artificial handicaps in testing luck. Instead, it completely negates the THINGS that mitigate luck. Why would I need to take multiple ravagers when I know that the one I have will explode every vehicle it shoots at? And pass every flickerfield save?

I *would* and regularly do play at a point handicap. Just to hone my luck.

good luck happens. One of my freinds had an amazing day while mine was maybe below average. This was only one of a slew of rolls he made that day. I just had to immortalise it for him. How often someone has a day like this is debatable.
[img]

Now, if everyone always rolled exactly on average, this would be a relatively insignificant factor (such as the significance of luck in chess)

There is NO luck in chess. None. Not the slightest hint of this factor whatsoever. Chess is a game of skill, memorization of strategies and how to counter them, and the ability to read your opponent and the board.

I do NOT however want to imply that 40k is lacking in strategy. There is a great deal of strategy, but the factors that arise are more complex, something akin to schrodinger's cat... is it dead or not? Until you open the box it is both.

It is kind of like quantum physics. You cannot know the exact state of an electron, you can only know relative probabilities about the electron's position and velocity and the more you know about one, the less certainty you have about the other. You do not know what your Lootas will roll. You only know the probabilities that they can roll. There is a slim chance that they will roll three shots each, all will hit, all will would and your opponent will make no saves. (good lord that would hurt!) With Long Fangs there is a somewhat larger amount of certainty about the results. (Yes this scenario hurts either way but if I knew what was coming I would like the Lootas to be my dudemens over the Long Fangs).

In chess you always know the outcome if you pull a "Fools Mate" in chess. When you move your queen and take his bishop's pawn at F7 you WILL have a checkmate. There is no chance. Chess is lost by someone making a mistake, large or small and their opponent exploiting it. Deep Blue and Kasparov both made mistakes that caused them to lose games.

In 40k you only know that it is likely that your Assault Termies will rout the Penal Squad on the objective. There is a chance that they will rend the piss out of you and stand defiantly on the objective screaming like a bunch of loonies to win the game...
Even the best players will make mistakes and I think at the highest level of play the exploitation of these mistakes outweighs lady luck. But she is always there.

Craps and roulette are all about randomness but you can still have a great time playing craps and roulette. You can have a blast playing 40k BECAUSE of the fact that you never know for sure if the cat is dead until you open the box.

/Cheers mates

Redbeard wrote:But you can prove that is wrong.

If you roll nothing but 1's, and your opponent rolls nothing but 6's, you will lose the game. Try it some time. Short of your opponent being so completely inept that they never even try anything, you're going to lose all your models, in as many shots as it takes your opponent to roll them.

Such rolling, while absolutely an extreme case, must be considered one possible scenario. In other words, the impact of luck on games is provably greater than 0%.

So, call the impact of luck on the game X. The impact of all the player decisions on the game (list building, in-game choices, and so on), is 100-X. We can call this Y (as in X+y = 100).

But Y is made up of two components, player 1's skill, and player 2's skill.

Y = (a-b).

X + (a-b) = 100

But, if A and B are equally skilled....

X + 0 = 100

X, the impact of luck, is the only thing that determines who wins the game.

And, if A and B are pretty close...

X + (small delta) = 100

Then X is still representing a large percentage of the component of the game.

Even if you add some extra mathy bits, such as X + 5(a-b) = 100, equally skilled players still find that luck accounts for 100% of their game results.

The skill level difference between the two players has to get significantly large before the impact of luck starts to fade away.

Your equation assumes that assumes that the game is symmetrical, and it isn't.

In each turn, only one player takes all the active moves. He decides what to attack and how. The other player cannot countermove. All he can do is roll saves and hope for the best.

If the active player takes into account probability and makes moves which minimise the effect of luck, he can bias the game in his favour. He can pick formations that maximise the damage he will do, and minimise the damage the other player will be able to do on his active turn.

It would be interesting to see how much effect first mover advantage has in 40K. It is known that first mover advantage has a minor effect in Chess, which has completely equal luck for both sides.

Rabid Ferret wrote:There is NO luck in chess. None. Not the slightest hint of this factor whatsoever. Chess is a game of skill, memorization of strategies and how to counter them, and the ability to read your opponent and the board.

Sure there is. Luck is just shorthand for "things happening over which I have no control." In chess, that's your opponent's moves. In 40k, that's the dice and everything your opponent does.

Sure, you can influence how your opponent moves. You can influence the dice by having an item that grants rerolls. You can make a given target more attractive. You can make taking one piece more important than taking another.

But you don't control your opponent in chess. Therefore, there's luck.

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:There is NO luck in chess. None. Not the slightest hint of this factor whatsoever. Chess is a game of skill, memorization of strategies and how to counter them, and the ability to read your opponent and the board.

But you don't control your opponent in chess. Therefore, there's luck.

Er, no....

Dashofpepper wrote:

Redbeard wrote:
For those of you who don't believe luck has an effect in high level play, would you be willing to play a game where your opponent was allowed to pick the result of three dice rolls every player turn - to represent them getting lucky at critical moments and you getting unlucky at other critical moments? Against an opponent who was even close to your skill level, do you think you could play though this simulation of luck?

Sure. As long as I get double the points and am not restricted to a FoC. Would you let me take an extra queen on a Chess Board to show that it isn't luck that determines the winner? I don't see any real point to installing artificial handicaps in testing luck. Instead, it completely negates the THINGS that mitigate luck. Why would I need to take multiple ravagers when I know that the one I have will explode every vehicle it shoots at? And pass every flickerfield save?

Well, it's the opposite, actually. Your opponent would get to pick the rolls. It's not about handicapping, it's about proving your claim that luck would have no impact on the game.

We cannot create 'bad luck'. But we can simulate it. These die rolls that your opponent gets to pick would represent Murphy's Law - things going wrong at the worst time. If you're as good as you say, and bad luck has no impact on your game, you'd be able to play through these critical events without missing a beat. Without needing extra points or an extra FOC.

You win that game, you can definitively say that you played through the worst possible luck and still won. It's like the one time that Ghazgull charges something he should easily kill, but of the three saves he has to take, , and he dies before he swings. Just because that 1-in-216 event happens doesn't mean your decision to call the waaagh and charge was a bad decision, but it sure didn't turn out how you expected or planned.

You're saying that, due to your skill as the ultimate 40k warrior, you already planned for Ghaz to die when he charged those 10 grots, and that the rest of your army is in position to compensate for this loss. I'm not so sure.

What the "no-luck" proponents are saying is that you can mitigate luck. This is mostly true. You can play so that you avoid situations where getting unlucky will slay you. Instead of losing a LandRaider to a single shot, they don't bring LRs, they run MSU or horde. Instead of relying on a deathstar that could splat to a PBS, they don't take a deathstar. When they get hit by a run of bad luck, they're in a position where it doesn't mean the end of the game. This is entirely possible, and can really hep. I'll be looking to incorporate things like this into my game. No only do you not expect to get lucky, but you even expect to be unlucky.

However, they're missing the basic premise of this thread, and that is that the players are of comparable skill. With both players mitigating like that, luck still plays a factor even if it's small. If their skill levels are close enough and the mistakes they make are small enough, it will come down to who botches fewer rolls.

Dash, you claim that luck doesn't matter, and you also claim to win 99% of your games. Cool, good for you. However, you've also tried to downplay the idea that you're a lot better than your opponents. This is where you stop to make any sense. If you're good enough to have that winning streak, then you're obviously leaps and bounds over you opponents. They don't have to be dullards, but they're obviously not as good by a decent margin. Your data and experiences, then, obviously don't fit the criteria of "similar skill level" where this discussion of luck is supposed to be taking place.

If there's little skill difference and no luck difference, the only way you could be winning like this is if it were "God's Plan" and you were the chosen one, lucky you.

Have you ever played a game with someone (any game, really) often enough that your skill levels were equal, and you always knew your opponent's plays. Whether you were masters or not, you had equal skill levels, and winning always came down to one thing. Maybe that one thing was whoever bought Park Place first, or who went first. This is the similarity in skill level we mean, with a bit of leeway on each side meaning it's not a *single* die that matters, but a few handfuls. I play my brother-in-law's 'Nids often. I could conceivably see it coming down to how many turns it takes my blobs to eat through his Trygon, and whether they could still take on Genestealers (for example). It would depend on the dice to see if I got through those combats as expected, or even at all. Now, if you said a smart player would find a way around that combat, that's fine. But that would mean one of us got got more skill and disrupted the equilibrium.

I think it's quite plain that the situation Ailaros mentioned in the OP can happen, and does happen. What this thread should be about, then, is how to prevent that. We've gotten decent advice from the nay-sayers (though indirectly) to avoid situations where a little bad luck (on the order of a roll or two) can ruin the entire game. This will help us mitigate luck and become better players.

sourclams wrote:

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:There is NO luck in chess. None. Not the slightest hint of this factor whatsoever. Chess is a game of skill, memorization of strategies and how to counter them, and the ability to read your opponent and the board.

But you don't control your opponent in chess. Therefore, there's luck.

Er, no....

First, I'd appreciate it if you didn't make it look like I'm schizophrenic.

Second, do you really think that anything listed as being a part of chess isn't also a part of 40k, FB, or any other wargame?

edit: And just to expand, do you really think that 'luck' as a concept is limited to die rolls?

ElCheezus wrote:I think it's quite plain that the situation Ailaros mentioned in the OP can happen, and does happen. What this thread should be about, then, is how to prevent that.

Right, now that the theory is established and refined sufficiently enough for my standards, the question then becomes one of "so what?" What does it matter if the theory is true?

I would agree with what you say that it does sort of wreck the most competitive part of the game. Either, like Dash, you have to disregard the dice altogether, or at some point, eventually, you have to succumb to the slow, grinding, and increasing primacy of luck, the more you play (or always only play against worse opponents ). If the only way to have fun is to win a competitive game, then the game will get less fun, the more you go.

One of the ways to handle this is to change aesthetic away from solely competing, but I'd rather not get into my developing theory of the Tao of 40k at the moment. One of the other things you can do, as was just now mentioned, is to find ways to break up this equilibrium.

This might mean playing strange, non-standard missions, or doing strange things with terrain. This might also mean changing your definition of competitive. For example, you can win well enough when playing with the best list you possibly can, but what about when you don't? What if you disrupt the equilibrium by purposely lowering your own skill in the list-building part of the game? You've won with the best, can you win with the rest?

Thinking of the "so what?" aspects is what is absorbing most of my attention now, I think. Especially since there appears to be enough consensus on the abstract theory itself.

Redbeard wrote:
Well, it's the opposite, actually. Your opponent would get to pick the rolls. It's not about handicapping, it's about proving your claim that luck would have no impact on the game.

We cannot create 'bad luck'. But we can simulate it. These die rolls that your opponent gets to pick would represent Murphy's Law - things going wrong at the worst time. If you're as good as you say, and bad luck has no impact on your game, you'd be able to play through these critical events without missing a beat. Without needing extra points or an extra FOC.

You win that game, you can definitively say that you played through the worst possible luck and still won. It's like the one time that Ghazgull charges something he should easily kill, but of the three saves he has to take, , and he dies before he swings. Just because that 1-in-216 event happens doesn't mean your decision to call the waaagh and charge was a bad decision, but it sure didn't turn out how you expected or planned.

You're saying that, due to your skill as the ultimate 40k warrior, you already planned for Ghaz to die when he charged those 10 grots, and that the rest of your army is in position to compensate for this loss. I'm not so sure.

The existence of "bad luck" or "good luck" are random events. You aren't trying to simulate the creation of randomness, you're looking to take the random results out of a random event - by defining both the event and the result - which is why I said that doing so doesn't simulate good or bad luck, it just adds another dimension to the game.

Besides, this thread isn't about whether consistently high/low/chosen dice rolls can change a game. If I roll all sixes and you roll all ones for an entire game, of *course* I'm going to win. But that is not an approximation of lucky rolling either. I expect dice rolling to fall within a certain median of results. I expect that sometimes that median will be high, and sometimes it will be low (lucky rolling and unlucky rolling). I don't expect either of those to have a significant impact on my game.

Does lucky or unlucky rolling affect your game? Not if you don't let it.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ailaros wrote:
Right, now that the theory is established and refined sufficiently enough for my standards............. Especially since there appears to be enough consensus on the abstract theory itself.

I don't seem to be making much of an impact here, so I'll respectfully bow out.

I hope the dice gods look up on your chance to win more favorably in the future.

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:

Rabid Ferret wrote:There is NO luck in chess. None. Not the slightest hint of this factor whatsoever. Chess is a game of skill, memorization of strategies and how to counter them, and the ability to read your opponent and the board.

Sure there is. Luck is just shorthand for "things happening over which I have no control." In chess, that's your opponent's moves. In 40k, that's the dice and everything your opponent does.

Sure, you can influence how your opponent moves. You can influence the dice by having an item that grants rerolls. You can make a given target more attractive. You can make taking one piece more important than taking another.

But you don't control your opponent in chess. Therefore, there's luck.

"things happening over which I have no control." is not luck. If someone were to walk up to me and punch me when I was not looking I would not be unlucky. I could not control it but it is not luck. The guy was just crazy or a dick. Luck is not just 'things happening over which I have not control'.

Rabid Ferret wrote:

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:

Rabid Ferret wrote:There is NO luck in chess. None. Not the slightest hint of this factor whatsoever. Chess is a game of skill, memorization of strategies and how to counter them, and the ability to read your opponent and the board.

Sure there is. Luck is just shorthand for "things happening over which I have no control." In chess, that's your opponent's moves. In 40k, that's the dice and everything your opponent does.

Sure, you can influence how your opponent moves. You can influence the dice by having an item that grants rerolls. You can make a given target more attractive. You can make taking one piece more important than taking another.

But you don't control your opponent in chess. Therefore, there's luck.

"things happening over which I have no control." is not luck. If someone were to walk up to me and punch me when I was not looking I would not be unlucky. I could not control it but it is not luck. The guy was just crazy or a dick. Luck is not just 'things happening over which I have not control'.

If that guy who had punched you did so by choosing a random person then yes it would have been luck. If you had some sort of connection it is just out of your control. If I were to walk out of my house today and say at random give the 5th person I see a dollar out of my pocket, that would be luck. Obviously, so many factors are involved which bring up different probability.

A dice roll is luck, period. It is random. However, you can calculate probability of your dice rolls based on the percentages needed to succeed. If you are playing a horde army and you decide to get a heavy squad and give them heavy bolters instead of rocket launchers that can make a difference. You can calculate your average number of attacks you can get, what you need to hit and what you need to wound, and get a decent idea of how it may work out. However, that is if your opponent lets you unfold your plan as is.

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:

Rabid Ferret wrote:There is NO luck in chess. None. Not the slightest hint of this factor whatsoever. Chess is a game of skill, memorization of strategies and how to counter them, and the ability to read your opponent and the board.

Sure there is. Luck is just shorthand for "things happening over which I have no control." In chess, that's your opponent's moves. In 40k, that's the dice and everything your opponent does.

Sure, you can influence how your opponent moves. You can influence the dice by having an item that grants rerolls. You can make a given target more attractive. You can make taking one piece more important than taking another.

But you don't control your opponent in chess. Therefore, there's luck.

I think that you and I are looking at luck differently. In the context of games I am referring to random chance. In this case the moves of your opponent are not random. There is no chance aspect in chess. Every move and outcome is regulated by rules and movement choices. In 40k there IS chance and this is what is referred to in OP's post. Not the broader definition of luck but the truly random factor introduced by the dice.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Crom wrote:

Rabid Ferret wrote:

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:

Rabid Ferret wrote:There is NO luck in chess. None. Not the slightest hint of this factor whatsoever. Chess is a game of skill, memorization of strategies and how to counter them, and the ability to read your opponent and the board.

Sure there is. Luck is just shorthand for "things happening over which I have no control." In chess, that's your opponent's moves. In 40k, that's the dice and everything your opponent does.

Sure, you can influence how your opponent moves. You can influence the dice by having an item that grants rerolls. You can make a given target more attractive. You can make taking one piece more important than taking another.

But you don't control your opponent in chess. Therefore, there's luck.

"things happening over which I have no control." is not luck. If someone were to walk up to me and punch me when I was not looking I would not be unlucky. I could not control it but it is not luck. The guy was just crazy or a dick. Luck is not just 'things happening over which I have not control'.

If that guy who had punched you did so by choosing a random person then yes it would have been luck. If you had some sort of connection it is just out of your control. If I were to walk out of my house today and say at random give the 5th person I see a dollar out of my pocket, that would be luck. Obviously, so many factors are involved which bring up different probability.

A dice roll is luck, period. It is random. However, you can calculate probability of your dice rolls based on the percentages needed to succeed. If you are playing a horde army and you decide to get a heavy squad and give them heavy bolters instead of rocket launchers that can make a difference. You can calculate your average number of attacks you can get, what you need to hit and what you need to wound, and get a decent idea of how it may work out. However, that is if your opponent lets you unfold your plan as is.

Again I think that in the context of wargames discussion we are referring to the influence of a random chance element. If you read into Game Theory the moves of your opponent are not an aspect of chance and in a given scenario there is an optimum move that they may make. If they move optimally it will result in a draw or standoff. This is possible in chess and tic tac toe. It is unlikely in a game that has a truly random element such as dice rolling.

Dashofpepper wrote: I expect dice rolling to fall within a certain median of results. I expect that sometimes that median will be high, and sometimes it will be low (lucky rolling and unlucky rolling). I don't expect either of those to have a significant impact on my game.

So that seems to be the issue. Variation within the standard deviation (which you seem to be describing) is normal, not either good or bad luck. It's when the dice roll out of those "expected" bounds that's luck. Well, assuming you "expected range" isn' 1-6, because that's obvious.

I don't seem to be making much of an impact here, so I'll respectfully bow out.

I hope the dice gods look up on your chance to win more favorably in the future.

That's because, as I said, your data is outside the scope, here. You obvious are significantly better than your opponents, or you wouldn't win as often. Basically, the difference in skill is large enough to overshadow luck, and you don't seem to notice that.

Rabid Ferret wrote:
Again I think that in the context of wargames discussion we are referring to the influence of a random chance element. If you read into Game Theory the moves of your opponent are not an aspect of chance and in a given scenario there is an optimum move that they may make. If they move optimally there is the possibility of an infinite draw or standoff. This is possible in chess and tic tac toe. It is not possible in a game that has a truly random element such as dice rolling.

No, even in randomness you can have stalemates. What happens if you and your opponent have the same dice rolls? The probability is that will most likely never happen, but it isn't impossible. The only true random element of 40K is the dice rolls. Otherwise every action performed is done with a reason and not at random. Unless you want to count some Ork things that are random, like weird boyz.

I think you are agreeing with. I was just pointing out that the random punch analogy was one that did not quite apply is all.

Crom wrote:

Rabid Ferret wrote:
Again I think that in the context of wargames discussion we are referring to the influence of a random chance element. If you read into Game Theory the moves of your opponent are not an aspect of chance and in a given scenario there is an optimum move that they may make. If they move optimally there is the possibility of an infinite draw or standoff. This is possible in chess and tic tac toe. It is not possible in a game that has a truly random element such as dice rolling.

No, even in randomness you can have stalemates. What happens if you and your opponent have the same dice rolls? The probability is that will most likely never happen, but it isn't impossible. The only true random element of 40K is the dice rolls. Otherwise every action performed is done with a reason and not at random. Unless you want to count some Ork things that are random, like weird boyz.

I think you are agreeing with. I was just pointing out that the random punch analogy was one that did not quite apply is all.

I was imprecise in my wording. I did not mean to say that a stalemate was not possible for a random game. They are.

I was saying that in games like chess and tic tac toe if both sides do not ever make mistakes there will always be a stalemate. If both players play optimally Tic Tac Toe will always result in a draw. In a game with random chance if both players play optimally a game will NOT ALWAYS result in a draw although a draw is possible.

@Dash

Bad luck is bad luck. But the question comes down to if your opponent can capitalize on your bad luck.

A few bad rolls do not mean much if your opponent does not make something out of them.

Everyone seemed to ignore my wall of text before, so I'll jump back in again.

ElCheezus wrote:Dash, you claim that luck doesn't matter, and you also claim to win 99% of your games. Cool, good for you. However, you've also tried to downplay the idea that you're a lot better than your opponents. This is where you stop to make any sense. If you're good enough to have that winning streak, then you're obviously leaps and bounds over you opponents. They don't have to be dullards, but they're obviously not as good by a decent margin. Your data and experiences, then, obviously don't fit the criteria of "similar skill level" where this discussion of luck is supposed to be taking place.

Perhaps the truest and well-thought out statement in the thread in regards to Dash. Though he has bowed out, I expect (and hope) that he'll keep reading. You have to understand, Dash, not one of us has one reason to not believe in your amazing record or your bad luck that you have brought up before. Your group has labeled it as such, and tournaments you've been to can vouch for your successes, even if no one believed either of those things. I do. I don't doubt your record one bit. Perhaps that's why we're finding it hard to understand.

Let's act on the assumption you are the best in the nation at 40K. So, we can assume you can bring a slightly better list, play slightly better, and mitigate/exploit bad/good luck slightly better than anyone else in the country, at the very least. Against someone like me, those advantages become enormous. You, being the best, undoubtedly play against the next best players you can find - the ones ranked 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, etc. You have claimed they are highly skilled opponents, capable of going toe-to-toe with you, making you work for every victory. At the same time, you have some abysmal luck on your rolls, with Dark Lances failing to do significant damage time and time again. Obviously, if you are playing someone with nearly equal skill, and if they have good or average die rolls, the advantage should, theoretically, be theirs. Maybe they don't capitalize on it all the time, but they should more often than twice in 58 tries, I think, if they are within the top in the nation.

Yet you are 56-2 with Dark Eldar. So obviously something isn't meshing.

The DE player in my group also had poor luck with his Dark Lances when they were 3rd edition. Despite this, he managed to beat over 50% of our group (myself included) more often than he lost, with several draws thrown into the mix. This is because he was significantly better than most of them, and marginally better than me (who he drew the most). He had bad luck, but his skill was able to overcome it, and through superior playing (in all aspects), he managed to squeak out draws or wins when dice were against him. And you're doing the same, but against people who, by your admission are significant challenges, who you cannot take lightly.

I think this brings up 2 possibilities.

One, his luck is not as bad as he claims, and goes more toward "average" than we expect. This is possible, and people may not even realize it as it occurs. It's very easy to remember the bad luck - I once had 6 Eldar Seer Council members with Fortune fly into dangerous terrain, only to have 2 die. That was on turn 1. I only lost 3 more the rest of the game, and I had two councils. Horrible Lances, Sisters charging into Tau, only to run 2 turns into the combat (happened to me - I charged in 8 vs 9 Tau), 3 Saves on 2+, failing all 3, Commissars executing Clergy members and running like girls (love your BRs, Ailaros) - we can all recount instances of bad luck. How many instances of great luck can we recount? Probably not as many. In my own case, I remember poor luck more than good luck, and it takes a great deal of positive luck for me to remember the instance a day or so after the game. I can't even remember a single Warhammer instance, but I can remember a raging first level Half-Elf barbarian with 6 hit points charging an undamaged Ogre by himself and killing it with a single blow (Critical hit with a Greatsword). So this is one possibility.

The second is that, despite playing the best, he continues to win again and again, counting his losses on one hand, while needing a calculator for the victories. Which means that, despite playing the best, they simply aren't as good as him, and his skill is superior enough to overcome the bad luck and claim victory. Not knowing Dash, or any other high Tournament player personally leaves me at a loss for which this could be, if any. Maybe Dash really has gone past the point where dice matter? I don't know.

I'm not trying to poke fun here or anything, and this is a serious post. I dislike singling out a particular individual, but this seems to be the main wrench in Ailaros' theory, which otherwise sounds very solid and factual to me.

EDIT: I complain about people ignoring my wall of text, only to put up...WALL OF TEXT MARK II! Oh, Einstein's definition of insanity, take me!

TheRedArmy wrote:I'm not trying to poke fun here or anything, and this is a serious post. I dislike singling out a particular individual, but this seems to be the main wrench in Ailaros' theory, which otherwise sounds very solid and factual to me.

Right. The most serious problem, as ElCheesus noted, is that, so far, Dash's only real contribution to the theory is:

Dashofpepper wrote:Ailaros, I think you have it exactly backwards.

With the only defense of his argument being "I've won tons of games, I'm awesome, listen to me!"

I don't doubt that there is a more thoughtful argument against this theory (ArtfcllyFlvrd has provided more than one), but just because someone says something doesn't mean it's actually meaningful to the conversation.

I was watching a game the other day, blood angels (mech) vs mech guard, 1850, both were good lists, the IG went first, BA reserved all 8 units, and failed init. Guard took a commanding posistion by turn two, entreched in cover, vehicles with excellent shooting lanes, perfect setups. Then the BA player goes, 1 raven, razorbacks, and a raider. He gets EVERY reserve in and they all come in and pop smoke. Then his strom raven which will be able to get it's cargo into combat in 1 more turn absorbs almost the entire shooting og the guard army, even with a pair of hydraflaks he managed a total of 2 stuned results, and a weapon destroyed. This game stands out in my mind. I think that really, luck averages out for most people, and thus we only remember the extremes of that luck. You have a game where you roll average and pull out a hard fough win, you don't remember the rolls just the game, when a game is really onesided and luck was the biggest factor, you will remember the dice more then the game. That being said, a good run of bad luck will still bone most people.

doubled wrote: I think that really, luck averages out for most people, and thus we only remember the extremes of that luck.

You know, I don't neccessarily doubt that Dash has bad luck, the reason being because I, myself, have well-documented bad luck. It's not that I doubt that Dash has bad luck, so much as, as do many others, I doubt that dash has both consistantly bad luck AND opponents of equal skill level simultaneously.

I mean, I can claim that I've had bad luck, but I also claim that I have a winning record due to sufficiently more skill than most of my opponents, on average. It's claiming to be unlucky AND winning most of your games AND playeing against opponents of equal skill, all at the same time, that doesn't make any sense.

Ailaros wrote:

doubled wrote: I think that really, luck averages out for most people, and thus we only remember the extremes of that luck.

You know, I don't neccessarily doubt that Dash has bad luck, the reason being because I, myself, have well-documented bad luck. It's not that I doubt that Dash has bad luck, so much as, as do many others, I doubt that dash has both consistantly bad luck AND opponents of equal skill level simultaneously.

I mean, I can claim that I've had bad luck, but I also claim that I have a winning record due to sufficiently more skill than most of my opponents, on average. It's claiming to be unlucky AND winning most of your games AND playeing against opponents of equal skill, all at the same time, that doesn't make any sense.

Precisely.

I have to agree with Dash.

Luck is perspective in this game. What constitutes "good" or "bad" luck is determined by one or two instances in a game.

An example would be a player losing 5 out of 6 marines on failed 1's and 2's. It looks like bad luck, but no one paid attention to the fact that in the previous turn his bolters hit an average amount of times, but all of the hits were 5's and 6's.

What makes it bad luck is the fact that the rolls were critical one way or the other when the margin for failure or success is high/low. No one thinks about it when a Bear Lord passes 4 invulns on 3++ and all 4 dice are 5's and 6's, but they are when a Demon Prince does the same on a 5++.

Luck is perspective. In 12 years of gaming, I can only say that I have lost one game due to luck. That was in 2004.

Ailaros wrote:\

Dashofpepper wrote:Ailaros, I think you have it exactly backwards.

With the only defense of his argument being "I've won tons of games, I'm awesome, listen to me!"

And because that's all you're capable of getting out of what I write, that's why I've chosen to stop trying to posit my opinion. There's no point trying to convince a block of clay that it can be a beautiful sculpture if it is convinced it will never be more than a lump of clay.

Likewise, you don't seem to have the ability to grasp higher tenets of 40k, and I'm not going to keep trying to convince you that you can get better if you refuse to believe so. I haven't seen much in the way of competitive players show up here, and when they have, they're agreed with me (Unless Hulksmash disagreed with me, but that might have been a different thread, and I don't remember if he agreed or disagreed with me).

Can't force evolution. Back to your superstitions. =D

Dashofpepper wrote: because that's all you're capable of getting out of what I write

Lol. The reason I don't understand your opinion is because I'm an idiot, and you're speaking a language too complex for comprehension?

You'll have to excuse me if that position isn't particularly convincing to me.

Dashofpepper wrote: Back to your superstitions. =D

-Nazdreg- wrote:Luck is very subjective.

Darkness wrote:Luck is perspective.

Actually, luck is both objective and easily understandable.

It's what we have statistics for.

I'm trying not to return your hostility. I really am.

If you don't understand Calculus because you've only gotten to Algebra....it doesn't mean that Algebra is the only math, it just means you haven't learned Calculus yet. I'm not telling you that you're stupid, merely that for you to hold your opinion about luck in 40k demonstrates that you just haven't learned Calculus yet.

Dashofpepper wrote:I'm trying not to return your hostility.

What hostility?

I'm here to learn and refine, not to cast slander.

Dashofpepper wrote:If you don't understand Calculus because you've only gotten to Algebra...

So, you're going to stick with that position, then. You're so awesome that I just can't possibly understand what you're saying?

Once again, you'll have to forgive me for being skeptical of this line of thought. I mean, it IS based on a logical fallacy after all.

MrEconomics wrote:I think the following statement needs to be corrected:

Nurglitch wrote:You're not going to get luckier by rolling a few hundred more dice, and you're not going to roll significantly closer to the expected value simply by rolling a fw more either.

However, by rolling more dice, you will benefit from more effects when you do get lucky.

This is some dangerous thinking. It is true that the best and worse case scenarios tend to deviate much more strongly from the norm when there are a lot of dice involved than a few. For example, a unit of 5 Terminators failing 1 out of 1 armor save isn't as bad as failing 5 out of 5. We must remember, however, that the more dice that are involved, the less likely the worst case scenario becomes. A Terminator needing to make 1 armor save and failing is a 1 in 6 event, and can't be considered very improbable. Failing 5 out of 5 is a 1 in 7776 event, that is, it will happen less than .1% of the time. If this has happened to you more than once or twice in your 40k career, your dice are probably biased. The simple fact is that deviations from the mean outcome are common when the number of dice (or random draws in a more general sense) is small, while having overall results close to the mean approaches probability 1 as the number of dice gets large.

You do have a good point, however, in that throwing a few extra dice will not quickly move the overall result to the average once an overall deviation is present. The Law of Large Numbers only holds in the limit, as does the central limit theorem. Most reasonable random variables approach normality at a speed that is proportional to the square root of the number of trials, which is rather slow once you have more than a few trials.

I'm not talking about probability there, I'm talking about potentiality. You won't get luckier rolling more dice, but if you do get lucky, you're going to do more, it's as simple as that.

For example, suppose you have the option (A) to roll 5+ to hit with six dice. On average you should expect two hits. Another option (B) is to roll 4+ to hit with four dice, and a third option (C) is 3+ to hit with three dice. Regardless of the choice, and supposing all else is equal, you're most likely to average 2 hits every time you face this choice. However, the most hits you'll be able to get out of option C is three, option B is four, and option A is six. The least number of hits you're able to get out of any option is 0.

Over the long haul this levels out, but there's simply not enough dice rolled during a game of Warhammer 40,000 to approximate even a wishful application of the law of large numbers. A good player is prepared to capitalize on good luck and minimize the damage done by bad luck, as well as prepared for the most probable chain of events. They pay attention to the limits, as well as the likelihoods.

Warhammer is interesting because it combines traits of combinatorial and classical games, and too many people get caught up in the statistics of whether particular events are likely to plan for the whole continuum of potential events, and thus play the game rather than just roll dice and hope.

I mean, there's a great comment up there about how a 'good' player has obscured their Land Raider but it's still destroyed when an Ork player gets lucky, and how that makes luck as important as skill... It's just bizarre to me that anyone would think of skill as somehow being exclusive from luck when the skill in 40k is managing resources, of which luck is just one variable. The others are board-space, turn-time, and army-material.

Something everyone should try in Warhammer 40,000 is a game of several squads of Imperial Guard Infantry against an identical Imperial Guard Infantry force. I think it gives one an appreciation for the basic mechanics of Warhammer, and the impact of sound tactics and strategy on luck.

Ailaros wrote:

Dashofpepper wrote:If you don't understand Calculus because you've only gotten to Algebra...

So, you're going to stick with that position, then. You're so awesome that I just can't possibly understand what you're saying?

Once again, you'll have to forgive me for being skeptical of this line of thought. I mean, it IS based on a logical fallacy after all.

Dash, try and turn things around. Look at it from our perspective. What you are basically saying is the rest of us - including the majority of the people that have commented on this thread - are not yet skilled enough at Warhammer to understand why the dice matter as little as they do (that is to say, virtually none in your experience). To quote something you said...

DashofPepper wrote:My point is this: Luck has nothing to do with me winning or losing, because my "luck" defies statistical probability, and I still win. I *win* because I've minimized the role of luck in my games. I'm not unique, I can rattle off names. I'm just the most vocal, and willing to point to my W/L record and draw correlations.

That's all very well Dash. The point is how? ArtfcllyFlvrd asked that of you, of which you had not posted a response. You post about how little luck matters, but fail to provide evidence to that example. You also mentioned this...

DashofPepper wrote:Rolling 26 dice (taking 26 shots) with dark lances over the course of a turn and getting two hits out of 26 (on a 3+), followed by a single glance of a razorback (3), followed by a shaken result (1). That's a bad game for anyone. But I consistently do it. Pretty much every game. Even on Vassal, where the dice are based on a RNG. I'm truly not overstating my rolling (or understating in this case), it is truly an abomination.

Anecdotal evidence, fine. How did you win that game? What did you do? How did you strategy change based on the bad luck? How can you consistently win when several hundred points of your army fails to do it's job turn after turn and game after game? I pity the soul that catches your dice on a good day, by the way.

Since you haven't really provided an answer other than mostly repeating what you said when you first entered the thread, other than providing a few other anecdotal bits here and there, we (the collective rest of us who only know Algebra) are forced to draw other conclusions - one possible conclusion is, yes, you are so far beyond the rest of us trying to understand you that you don't feel like taking the time to bother and/or feel like even if you did we couldn't grasp the concept (That is a completely serious sentence). I think most people will be hesitant to simply accept that. I suck at basketball, but still understand why Michael Jordan was as amazing as he was. The other two I already presented beforehand - either your rolls aren't really as bad as you and others think they are (considering the group also notices, I find this less likely), or, despite playing the best in the country you are still leaps and bounds ahead of them that bad rolls don't affect you enough to cost you the game. I find this one more likely.

I hope you can get where the rest of us are coming from now.

DashofPepper is no Michael Jordon
I mean, Jordon didn't become Jordan because he was lucky, he became Jordan because he persevered through the lows as well as excelling the highs. That said, I think that he's right to point out managing constants like material and space is far more important than managing variables like the likelihood of any particular event occurring.

Take the Hawk-Dove game, for example. In this game the players have the choice of either playing the Hawk strategy, in which case they take a dollar from their opponent, or the Dove strategy, in which case they give two dollars to their opponent. The Nash Equilibrium for this game is opposing Hawk strategies.

Now, if suppose you had to roll to determine whether the strategy goes off: 3+ for the Dove strategy, and 5+ for the Hawk strategy, would that simply make the game a matter of lucky? Nope, opposed Diced Hawk Strategies are now the Nash Equilibrium. That's because a player that plays Dove will always do worse than an opponent who plays Hawk, and only as well as an opponent who plays Dove. The 'risk' of doing better than a failed strategy is absent because the Dove strategy gives money away. Certainly the dice roll makes the game a little less of an obvious resolution, and essentially just dicing off, but it doesn't remove the strategy and strategic thought required to play the game successfully.

For example, I think there's something to be said for playing to prevent an opponent winning as well as trying to be the first one past the finish line. But once I'd made that strategic decision, all I have left is implementation. Fortunately the implementation involves more than just rolling dice...

I agree with the original post

TheRedArmy wrote:
That's all very well Dash. The point is how? ArtfcllyFlvrd asked that of you, of which you had not posted a response. You post about how little luck matters, but fail to provide evidence to that example. You also mentioned this...

And that answer to that is tactics - how I overcome a challenge in a particular game changes with the game. In the game where my alpha strike was 2/27 hits, I had positioned myself to give most of my vehicles mutual cover (at least the most important ones). I'd also taken flicker fields on all my vehicles, and while it helped me from losing *everything*, I spent the rest of the game surviving as best I could (terrain and flat out moves, going to ground where applicable) until the last turn (objective game) at which point I had given up trying to protect my vehicles and had taken out three of his five troop choices (but not much else) - leaving me with three objectives to his one, and him with firepower supremacy on the table - but unable to do much moving because I was using surviving vehicles to physically block his other troops from getting to an objective, and his vehicles from contesting mine. If it was an unlimited turn game, I would have lost, but at the end of turn 6, I had more objectives. I had lost several troop choices, but I brought six to the game. That wasn't a "lucky choice" that was a strategic decision.

There's no tactical guidelines that I can post "This is the answer to situation X...." Throughout the forums I give situational advice as best I can, but most of the help you can give outside of a game is with a list. That's a piece of it, but how you PILOT that list isn't really something that someone can teach you over the forums. I can watch a game and critique moves, target priorities, objective placement, vehicle facings....those are the elements that turn a good list into a winning one.

I've done my best to explain how to mitigate luck and make it as much of a non-factor in a game as possible. I can't walk you through every permutation of a game and what the "correct" response is. That's something you have or you don't have, and if you don't have, you hopefully learn.


Back to the MJ reference with basketball. If someone who doesn't play basketball makes a three pointer, it was a lucky shot. If someone who plays professional basketball makes a three pointer, it was skill.

Dice rolling good or bad don't make you win or lose games. Bad rolling is a cop-out for a bad player to explain why they lost a game. Yes, I'm saying trust me. It *is* all about skill. Any of the "elite" of 40k will tell you the same. And have. I've sent a couple PMs asking some friends to post in here with their thoughts, and for the most part I got things like, "Its a pointless thread - some people refuse to believe they're at fault for not being good players."

So yes - I'm asking for trust. All I can do is give general guidance, mentor someone in a vassal game or in person, and ask that you trust in my experience.

Dashofpepper wrote:

TheRedArmy wrote:
That's all very well Dash. The point is how? ArtfcllyFlvrd asked that of you, of which you had not posted a response. You post about how little luck matters, but fail to provide evidence to that example. You also mentioned this...

And that answer to that is tactics - how I overcome a challenge in a particular game changes with the game. In the game where my alpha strike was 2/27 hits, I had positioned myself to give most of my vehicles mutual cover (at least the most important ones). I'd also taken flicker fields on all my vehicles, and while it helped me from losing *everything*, I spent the rest of the game surviving as best I could (terrain and flat out moves, going to ground where applicable) until the last turn (objective game) at which point I had given up trying to protect my vehicles and had taken out three of his five troop choices (but not much else) - leaving me with three objectives to his one, and him with firepower supremacy on the table - but unable to do much moving because I was using surviving vehicles to physically block his other troops from getting to an objective, and his vehicles from contesting mine. If it was an unlimited turn game, I would have lost, but at the end of turn 6, I had more objectives. I had lost several troop choices, but I brought six to the game. That wasn't a "lucky choice" that was a strategic decision.

So, if your opponent had covered more ground that game and not allowed to you flat out move to the objectives, then you probably would have lost? It seems to me that your opponent wasn't trying to grab objectives more so he was trying to kill you. Which can be a common problem in games, and I even find myself doing it. I find myself going after my opponent when I should be going after objectives at times. I try to catch myself and rethink scenarios. If I can capture an objective over fighting, is the fighting worth it? Is the objective worth it?

Then army lists. A lot of times you see people only take 2 core units, because that is the minimum, and if those two get under 50% strength then they cannot hold objectives. I saw this happen last night in a friendly game I was sort of just watching while my buddies played. Each only took 2 core units (1750 points) and one side had all their core units reduced to under 50%. He could no longer hold objectives just contest them.

I just built an ork army (I am an old school gamer just getting back into it and had tons of orks from boxed sets that I never used from back in the day) by dusting off some old orks I had and buying a few new models. My tactics will be move fast, always shoot, always assault always move towards the enemy with lots of boyz as fast as possible. I cannot wait to try them out.

Sorry, I'm posting as an aside to the main point of the thread (but I have to say, after going back-and-forth several times, I'm with Dash on this one. His argument is persuasive, and it makes sense. I also don't think he's being hostile when talking about Calculus v. Algebra; I think the OP is being a little too sensitive. I, for one, am not even at Algebra yet).

Crom wrote:
Then army lists. A lot of times you see people only take 2 core units, because that is the minimum, and if those two get under 50% strength then they cannot hold objectives. I saw this happen last night in a friendly game I was sort of just watching while my buddies played. Each only took 2 core units (1750 points) and one side had all their core units reduced to under 50%. He could no longer hold objectives just contest them.

Where's this rule, Crom? I'm new to the game so I re-looked-up "scoring units" on page 90 of the BRB but I find nothing about scoring units not counting as such under 50% capacity.

Dashofpepper wrote:
Dice rolling good or bad don't make you win or lose games.

I think this could be quantified in a series of experiments:

Take an opponent (preferably with similar skills to yours) and start granting him X rerolls per game. He gets X opportunities to reroll either his or your dice rolls.
Start with say, 50 rerolls. If you still win, increase the amount, if you lose decrease. Stop when you can only beat him 50% of the time.

How high do you think you could go?

Dashofpepper wrote:

TheRedArmy wrote:
That's all very well Dash. The point is how? ArtfcllyFlvrd asked that of you, of which you had not posted a response. You post about how little luck matters, but fail to provide evidence to that example. You also mentioned this...

And that answer to that is tactics - how I overcome a challenge in a particular game changes with the game. In the game where my alpha strike was 2/27 hits, I had positioned myself to give most of my vehicles mutual cover (at least the most important ones). I'd also taken flicker fields on all my vehicles, and while it helped me from losing *everything*, I spent the rest of the game surviving as best I could (terrain and flat out moves, going to ground where applicable) until the last turn (objective game) at which point I had given up trying to protect my vehicles and had taken out three of his five troop choices (but not much else) - leaving me with three objectives to his one, and him with firepower supremacy on the table - but unable to do much moving because I was using surviving vehicles to physically block his other troops from getting to an objective, and his vehicles from contesting mine. If it was an unlimited turn game, I would have lost, but at the end of turn 6, I had more objectives. I had lost several troop choices, but I brought six to the game. That wasn't a "lucky choice" that was a strategic decision.

There's no tactical guidelines that I can post "This is the answer to situation X...." Throughout the forums I give situational advice as best I can, but most of the help you can give outside of a game is with a list. That's a piece of it, but how you PILOT that list isn't really something that someone can teach you over the forums. I can watch a game and critique moves, target priorities, objective placement, vehicle facings....those are the elements that turn a good list into a winning one.

I've done my best to explain how to mitigate luck and make it as much of a non-factor in a game as possible. I can't walk you through every permutation of a game and what the "correct" response is. That's something you have or you don't have, and if you don't have, you hopefully learn.


Back to the MJ reference with basketball. If someone who doesn't play basketball makes a three pointer, it was a lucky shot. If someone who plays professional basketball makes a three pointer, it was skill.

Dice rolling good or bad don't make you win or lose games. Bad rolling is a cop-out for a bad player to explain why they lost a game. Yes, I'm saying trust me. It *is* all about skill. Any of the "elite" of 40k will tell you the same. And have. I've sent a couple PMs asking some friends to post in here with their thoughts, and for the most part I got things like, "Its a pointless thread - some people refuse to believe they're at fault for not being good players."

So yes - I'm asking for trust. All I can do is give general guidance, mentor someone in a vassal game or in person, and ask that you trust in my experience.

Your reducing the effect that luck has in your games, but it is a factor in the game
I'm not sure why you were saying up to this point that it doesn't have any effect

If a game involves dice, chance and luck is involved
You can certainly reduce the effect the dice roll has on your game, as you clearly do, but to deny its existence in the game is strange to say the least.