One thing that I've noticed is that, barring flagrant errors or extremely unbalanced matchups, the outcome of a game is typically decided by smart tactical play, not list composition. However, a lot of tactical discussion focuses on what list to take, not how to play.

To be honest, I support a different approach-- first, test a wide range of units and strategies until you find ones that you like to use and that fit well with your playstyle. Don't commit too early to certain units-- you may find that others suit your style better. For instance, in 5th edition everyone said that Predators were the optimal Space Marine Heavy Support choice, but through testing I found that I honestly preferred and did better with the then-humble Thunderfire Cannon.

Similarly, you have to play quite a few games with a unit before you have a good "feel" for it. For instance, I like to run a squad of ten Space Marine Scouts with bolters. A lot of people scoff at this unit or consider it bad-- and in some cases, it is! But in other cases it wins games for me, so I still run it despite the naysayers. If I had given up on this unit after my first few games with it (which were generally unexciting), I would be missing out on a tactical option that I've found to be very useful.

But once you've done a lot of testing and figured out what works well for you, keep your list more or less solid and focus more on tactics. When you encounter a new situation or an army you can't deal with-- first focus on changing your strategies, not your list, and then make tweaks as minor as possible in order to preserve your experience as best you can. It's certainly possible that new releases or types of opponents might cause you to have to vary your choices-- every new Codex, even if it doesn't apply directly to your primary or allied detachments, changes up the metagame-- but I for one advocate changing slowly and focusing on tactical play rather than list composition to win you games.

You see a lot of listbuilding discussions, because discussing actual tactics is nearly impossible.

Just have a look at a chess tactics description, and how extensive they are. There are very few "standard" situations that crop up in Warhammer, and they are all pretty self explanatory (counter-charging, hitting rear armor).


The other problem is, that Warhammer is a highly randomized game, even more so with the changes that the 6th edition brought with it.


I still agree that tactics are often neglected in favour of pure listbuilding and statistical comparrissons. Me and my friends sometimes switch armies to get a new look on our armies, and more often than not I find myself surprised that a unit that I found OP so far, is actually just being played very well.

DrunkPhilisoph wrote:
You see a lot of listbuilding discussions, because discussing actual tactics is nearly impossible.

Just have a look at a chess tactics description, and how extensive they are. There are very few "standard" situations that crop up in Warhammer, and they are all pretty self explanatory (counter-charging, hitting rear armor).


The other problem is, that Warhammer is a highly randomized game, even more so with the changes that the 6th edition brought with it.


I still agree that tactics are often neglected in favour of pure listbuilding and statistical comparrissons. Me and my friends sometimes switch armies to get a new look on our armies, and more often than not I find myself surprised that a unit that I found OP so far, is actually just being played very well.

QFT

this is all due to the fact that everyone has different preferences when making an army, hence the best armies are those that the player likes using, not the tourney lists that crop up most of the time.

Moreover since we are fighing minature battles no situation is going to be standard, so every comment about tactics in my mind has to relate to the lsit you are using as each one has different qualities...

There's a rather large amount of Tournament/Competitive players here on Dakka Dakka who focus a lot on the list building aspect of the game. This is because at the higher/highest levels of play the people participating are going to be veterans who have been around the block once or twice. This means that they'll probably be able to assess the tactics of a game at a very fast pace and counter it accordingly. So creative/non-traditional tactics will either be spotted quickly and countered or they will be ignored as ineffective because the person may have seen it before.

Point being: Since these players know most of the "tactics" involved with the game, list building becomes the only way to get a serious advantage, or at least avoid a disadvantage.

By taking the best possible units from the best codexes, they set themselves up to have an advantage versus less Powerful-Per-Point units. And in many cases it only evens the playing field as tournaments are filled with players that all optimize their lists. I think this is part of the reason why there is a focus on list building rather than "Tactics."

Let's take for example your unit of ten bolter scouts. A good, tournament-going player will see the unit's abilities and capabilities. Infiltration, scout moves, scoring, good anti-infantry fire, and reliant on cover saves. They'll then take a unit from their optimized list to destroy it or remove its ability to affect the game. In the case of chaos this would probably be helldrake. So it won't matter how clever the placement of your scouts are or how craftily you use them. The choice is simply invalidated by another unit choice from a different codex. Of course, this is all a vaccum and won't be affected by list synergy, but you see my basic point.

List building is extremely important at higher levels of play, and give extreme advantages to those at lower levels when facing unaware opponents.

It's easier to discuss if something is worth it's points than to explain maneuvering and deployment. The later is more difficult to teach and/or explain.

The medium is the message.

List discussion is something that is easy to do on the net. Strategic advice is harder to do on the nett.

Need tactical advice: get of the boards.

 schadenfreude wrote:
It's easier to discuss if something is worth it's points than to explain maneuvering and deployment. The later is more difficult to teach and/or explain.

This is true. Actual game tactics are something that have to be learned through experience.

I'm with the OP in spirit, though as many have pointed out, tactics are harder to discuss without seeing games unfold. Having said that, I'd rather read a post where people attempt to discuss tactics rather than another "what should my list look like" post.

Listbuilding is a tactic. Pushing the plastic is also a tactics, but without a full board layout and situation, it's hard to talk about.

I find that list building is the first and base part of tactics.
When building a marine army, I usually have only one CC specialist unit with the majority being cookie cutter approach.
The advantage is I know the capabilities of my troops and don't have to worry too much about getting squad A against target B but squad C has to face target D.

My old setup consisted of 5 - Las/Plas Razorbacks 4 with 6 tacticals with SW - usually a flamer. 1 Dakka Pred, 6 HB armed landspeeders and a Whirlwind. So I had 4 cookie cutter troops - admittedly limited - but that allows me to worry about getting my 1 HQ CC unit where the biggest threat is. The rest can worry about what the opponent is doing and what counter it needs... This army used to win based on the firepower it could put out and the mobility/lethality of those HB land speeders. Typically I would overwhelm one flank and manuever towards it with the landspeeders.... By turn 3 the enemy was usually in a hard place with 6 landspeeders threatening his rear armor and thus stalling any attack while the Las/Plas razorbacks presented a solid fire line.

List building is an important part of the game. It affords you the opportunity to maximise your armies strengths, and minimise your armies weaknesses. A well constructed army will have a lot of synergy between units and allow them to complement each other and hopefully be more effective than you would imagine.

An example is scout bikes, terminators, and a librarian with GOI, the scouts can get accross the board quickly, and then allow you to pinpoint move a powerful unit into your enemies back field. Where and when to pull of this trick is something that will be determined by the tempo of the battle, among other things, but in a vacuum, it is impossible to tell you when you should make the move. its impossible since every opponent is different, armies are all different, the battlefields are all different. but what you do have is the ability to engineer the trick into your army so you have the option of doing it if the siruation is favourable.

Likewise, since this trick is an inherent option in your army, your opponent will either miss it, and be unprepared, or he will notice it and either act to neutralise it immediately by eliminating one (or more) component, or try drawing you into a trap, lets say by leaving an obvious opening, waiting for you to take the bait, and then countering it.

Ultimately, the tactics you use will depend on the terrain and the army you are facing. i will fight a different battle facing guard than i will facing CSM's, and it will be different again if the CSM's are Iron warriors instead of Plague marines, or whatever. the best time to discuss tactics is immediately after a battle, when you can assess what has happened objectively.

Tactics can even be as small as when, if at all, to use psychic powers. A recent battle i was fighting i was facing thousand sons with my Imperial fists. As anyone will know, inferno bolts tear marines to pieces, and in 1000 points i was facing 2x 9 strong units. one unit was in the open, dangerously close to my lines, but in a position that if they were locked in combat, it would block LOS for several more units. I duly charged them with a depleted unit of terminators, led by a librarian with nullzone, and then declined to use my psychic power because i wanted the combat to be prolonged a little and totally throw a spanner into my opponents battleplan, he had more firepower than me, arguably a better deployment and so forth, and i was on the back foot. the 4 rounds the combat took to resolve allowed me to secure the win, if i had used Nullzone, the combat would likely have been over in 2 rounds, and the position would have been much trickier for me.

If that combat had been in a different location on the battlefield, i would very likely have use nullzone, and ended the combat more swiftly to free up my terminators, but as it was, i made the tactical choice to prolong the combat.
its highly highly unlikely that exact situation will arise again. that being the case, the more logical discussion to have is whether my terminators should run with a cyclone or an assault cannon, whether i should use hammernators over my current tactical termies, or whether i should even include them at all

 Kingsley wrote:
One thing that I've noticed is that, barring flagrant errors or extremely unbalanced matchups, the outcome of a game is typically decided by smart tactical play, not list composition. However, a lot of tactical discussion focuses on what list to take, not how to play.

To be honest, I support a different approach-- first, test a wide range of units and strategies until you find ones that you like to use and that fit well with your playstyle. Don't commit too early to certain units-- you may find that others suit your style better. For instance, in 5th edition everyone said that Predators were the optimal Space Marine Heavy Support choice, but through testing I found that I honestly preferred and did better with the then-humble Thunderfire Cannon.

Similarly, you have to play quite a few games with a unit before you have a good "feel" for it. For instance, I like to run a squad of ten Space Marine Scouts with bolters. A lot of people scoff at this unit or consider it bad-- and in some cases, it is! But in other cases it wins games for me, so I still run it despite the naysayers. If I had given up on this unit after my first few games with it (which were generally unexciting), I would be missing out on a tactical option that I've found to be very useful.

But once you've done a lot of testing and figured out what works well for you, keep your list more or less solid and focus more on tactics. When you encounter a new situation or an army you can't deal with-- first focus on changing your strategies, not your list, and then make tweaks as minor as possible in order to preserve your experience as best you can. It's certainly possible that new releases or types of opponents might cause you to have to vary your choices-- every new Codex, even if it doesn't apply directly to your primary or allied detachments, changes up the metagame-- but I for one advocate changing slowly and focusing on tactical play rather than list composition to win you games.

Here's a question. In what kind situations have you found your tactical marines useful. I've been playing a lot of different chaos marine builds and I'm having a tough time finding utilizing the humble chaos space marine. With the introduction of hull points it has become increasingly difficult to get marines across the table. Most of the weapons marines have are short ranged, so it's hard to get in range to use them. Then I end up having spent a lot points on marines to hang out in my deployment zone. If I give them a lascannon, then the marines have something to do, but that's an expensive way to bring lascannons.

I know that due to combat tactics and ATSKNF tactical marines and chaos marines are different beasts, but how does one use our 3+ chumps in this edition?

@bogalubov, re: chaos space marines.

How about:
Units of 10 in rhinos (destroyer blades possible combi flamer), with pistols / combat weapons and meltaguns. Keep or lose the bolters.
Three such units side by side. Throw in some supporting units bikes, spawn, raptors.

Power across the board in the first turn, with supporting keeping up. Seond turn support units assualt and everyone else deploys, ideally into cover or rhinos then move to block LOS' + lots of shooting. Turn three tankshocking + charging + mopping up.

If you're advancing out of your zone with them - then you could do with a unit to tie up with, deep strikers / infiltraters / outflankers. You don't walk them up to an ADL fortress without having given it a bit of a serious pounding from your support weapons.

I think you just need to have an idead of what you are going to do with them based on the build of the army (as mentioned lots on the post) and try to have a list which gives you lots of flexibility - Huron/Ahirman + deep strikers/quick reserves + spare transports and in larger games the awkward to get the most out of landraider.

I think I just went off on one.

Humble CSMs rule.

Another reason i think the discussion seems to focus on list building is that people ask for it. People often have topics like best load for x unit, is x unit competative, ect. These questions make sense because outside of specific matchups and circumstances it is easier and more useful to talk about tactics in a general way such as maximizing point efficiancy or creating synergy.

I think if people asked more questions about specific tactics, the discussion might not be as helpful but you would see more "this is how you should play x unit".

gpfunk wrote:Let's take for example your unit of ten bolter scouts. A good, tournament-going player will see the unit's abilities and capabilities. Infiltration, scout moves, scoring, good anti-infantry fire, and reliant on cover saves. They'll then take a unit from their optimized list to destroy it or remove its ability to affect the game. In the case of chaos this would probably be helldrake. So it won't matter how clever the placement of your scouts are or how craftily you use them. The choice is simply invalidated by another unit choice from a different codex. Of course, this is all a vaccum and won't be affected by list synergy, but you see my basic point.

I do pretty well in tournaments with those Scouts. Unusual isn't the same as bad, and they are far from "invalidated" by a Heldrake. In fact if someone trades a Heldrake for my Scouts, I'm pretty sure I'm up under normal circumstances.

gpfunk wrote:List building is extremely important at higher levels of play, and give extreme advantages to those at lower levels when facing unaware opponents.

I actually believe the reverse-- the better you are, the less it matters what your list is. Good players have been winning with unconventional lists for a long time now.

bogalubov wrote:Here's a question. In what kind situations have you found your tactical marines useful. I've been playing a lot of different chaos marine builds and I'm having a tough time finding utilizing the humble chaos space marine. With the introduction of hull points it has become increasingly difficult to get marines across the table. Most of the weapons marines have are short ranged, so it's hard to get in range to use them. Then I end up having spent a lot points on marines to hang out in my deployment zone. If I give them a lascannon, then the marines have something to do, but that's an expensive way to bring lascannons.

I typically use Combat Squads to split my Tactical Marine units in half. One half of the unit, with a special weapon and matching combi-weapon from the Sergeant, grabs a Rhino, while the other half brings a heavy weapon to the backfield. Without Combat Squads, heavy weapons in basic Marine squads are not very efficient. In the case of Chaos Marines I would play to your strengths and field two special weapons instead of one special and one heavy. For hanging out in the deployment zone, I'd rely on allies, cheap Cultists, or Noise Marines with blastmasters.

Pony_law wrote:Another reason i think the discussion seems to focus on list building is that people ask for it.

I agree. I'm trying to advocate people asking for other things.

I think part of the problem is that many of us have certain tactics we love to use with certain units, so the variety of answers is not great. Also, when you ask a question about a unit, invariable the most common answer you get is, don't take it.

That said, I'm game. Based on my recent experience with Leman Russ tanks, I am thinking of running one of these:

Leman Russ Vanquisher
Lascannon
Multi-Melta Sponsons
Pask

It's a lot of points, and so I want it to be the most effective possible and last as long as possible. So, does anyone have any tactical suggestions?

Bb

Well, as an Ork player our Tactics are quite limited, especially if we don't talk about list building.

Here goes:

Fast stuff moves straight towards enemy, Lootas hang back and shoot, Boyz walk up between fast stuff and Lootas for 2-3 wave / onlbjective taking.

The only other Tactics I could write about are counter tactics. What happens when I'm playing a list that charges me?

Usually move forward with bikes, measure exactly out 18", shoot, and sit there waiting for them to get closer. Worked great against Abbadon last week. Took a whole 1 wound off him before CC. Orks are very predictable so usually I just move it forward and react to what the opponent does.

Not much else I can do.

 Kingsley wrote:


I actually believe the reverse-- the better you are, the less it matters what your list is. Good players have been winning with unconventional lists for a long time now.

I absolutely agree with this. It's the Indian, not the arrow.

No, the arrow matters a great deal. Bent arrows are horrible even in the hands of master archers.

 Kingsley wrote:

I do pretty well in tournaments with those Scouts. Unusual isn't the same as bad, and they are far from "invalidated" by a Heldrake. In fact if someone trades a Heldrake for my Scouts, I'm pretty sure I'm up under normal circumstances.

They aren't trading a helldrake for your scouts. They're allocating one of the helldrake's many destructive turns to wiping them out. An AP3 torrent weapon will decimate those scouts, taking them completely out or crippling them pretty badly.

It's the idea of a hard counter. Light infantry that rely on cover are hard countered by a torrent weapon that ignores cover and their armor save. Optimized lists are generally full of these sorts of hard counters. Take the Vendetta for example. It's a hard counter to practically any vehicle on its own. It doesn't matter if you take an unusual IG choice like a Banewolf or a DevilDog, they'll both be utterly destroyed by that hard counter of three twin-linked lascannons on a tough, hard to hit platform.

gpfunk wrote:List building is extremely important at higher levels of play, and give extreme advantages to those at lower levels when facing unaware opponents.

So you think if you were the best player in the world then it wouldn't matter what you took because you could out-think and out-play your opponent utterly and completely? What if you were playing the second best player in the world and they took an optimized list? Would you be able to beat them regardless of list composition? Or does it matter to a certain appreciable degree? Like 25% of the match is decided by lists? Or 10%?

I actually believe the reverse-- the better you are, the less it matters what your list is. Good players have been winning with unconventional lists for a long time now.

So they've either been winning against local players, who may not always take optimized lists, or they've been playing in tournaments where a great many things come into play to determine the winner. Or they're incredibly lucky, of course.

Tournament results are a very small sample size to take from. In a tournament, people will play anywhere from 3 to 7 individual games and the winner will be whoever did the best out of those seven games. There are so many uncontrolled variables that can't be accounted for on that particular day and in those particular rounds. Maybe the winner played a game on round three and the opponent had to forfeit due to severe bowel discomfort. Seven experiments are a woefully low number if you want to extrapolate any useful data about anything.

I would put forth the idea that, if you took two equally skilled tournament going 40k players and sat them in a room and had them play 10,000 games, one has an optimized list and one has a non-optimized list...then the winner would be the person who was the luckiest and had the best list. Since they're veterans they would know most of the tactics involved in the game, and very little would surprise them. They'd know the capabilities of all the units, what they're used for, how best to use them. The optimized list would have the tools to handle it and the non-optimized one would either have no answer to, or a severely limited answer to the optimized list.

I guess I think that Warhammer 40k isn't deep and layered enough for general tactics to make list building less important. Tactics mostly involve playing the odds. You use tactics to play the odds as best you can, or to make your opponent play them worse (Thanks to a certain Guard commander for that one.) If you use a non-optimized list then you are putting yourself at a bigger disadvantage, you're making the odds longer for yourself from the start. That means smart/clever/unusual plays are more difficult to pull off, and probably impossible against a savvy opponent who isn't some fresh faced new comer.

You'd have to show me a player that consistently wins with non-optimized lists versus players of equal skill with optimized lists for me to believe that tactics were more important in the end game. I think JY2 would be a strong candidate, but even he doesn't pick things that are far and away unusual or underpowered.

It's a tall order, I know. I'd personally love it if discussion became more Tactics centric and less List centric, but in the end there are just some units that will always be better than others in almost every way. And taking units that aren't the best of the best is inherently putting you at a disadvantage at its most basic point, right?

Gork and Mork that's a wall of text. Sorry about that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

G. Whitenbeard wrote:

 Kingsley wrote:


I actually believe the reverse-- the better you are, the less it matters what your list is. Good players have been winning with unconventional lists for a long time now.

I absolutely agree with this. It's the Indian, not the arrow.

G. Whitenbeard wrote:

 Kingsley wrote:


I actually believe the reverse-- the better you are, the less it matters what your list is. Good players have been winning with unconventional lists for a long time now.

I absolutely agree with this. It's the Indian, not the arrow.

Martel732 wrote:No, the arrow matters a great deal. Bent arrows are horrible even in the hands of master archers.

That's my main point sort of summed up. Two master archers at the peak of their craft. One has a bent arrow, the other has a straight arrow. Who's going to win in the end?

 PipeAlley wrote:
Well, as an Ork player our Tactics are quite limited, especially if we don't talk about list building.

I don't believe that I can disagree more than with this statement.

Orks may have straitforward units, but it takes a solid tactician to make them really shine.

"That's my main point sort of summed up. Two master archers at the peak of their craft. One has a bent arrow, the other has a straight arrow. Who's going to win in the end? "

This is why if I really want to be competitive, I play Starcraft. Blizzard actually listens to player feedback and tries hard to make the game fair, even though the three armies are very different.

I get the distinct impression GW doesn't even pretend to attempt to try. Exhibit A: no Vendetta price change in Skies of Blood.

 Kingsley wrote:
One thing that I've noticed is that, barring flagrant errors or extremely unbalanced matchups, the outcome of a game is typically decided by smart tactical play, not list composition. However, a lot of tactical discussion focuses on what list to take, not how to play.

To be honest, I support a different approach-- first, test a wide range of units and strategies until you find ones that you like to use and that fit well with your playstyle. Don't commit too early to certain units-- you may find that others suit your style better. For instance, in 5th edition everyone said that Predators were the optimal Space Marine Heavy Support choice, but through testing I found that I honestly preferred and did better with the then-humble Thunderfire Cannon.

Similarly, you have to play quite a few games with a unit before you have a good "feel" for it. For instance, I like to run a squad of ten Space Marine Scouts with bolters. A lot of people scoff at this unit or consider it bad-- and in some cases, it is! But in other cases it wins games for me, so I still run it despite the naysayers. If I had given up on this unit after my first few games with it (which were generally unexciting), I would be missing out on a tactical option that I've found to be very useful.

But once you've done a lot of testing and figured out what works well for you, keep your list more or less solid and focus more on tactics. When you encounter a new situation or an army you can't deal with-- first focus on changing your strategies, not your list, and then make tweaks as minor as possible in order to preserve your experience as best you can. It's certainly possible that new releases or types of opponents might cause you to have to vary your choices-- every new Codex, even if it doesn't apply directly to your primary or allied detachments, changes up the metagame-- but I for one advocate changing slowly and focusing on tactical play rather than list composition to win you games.

I'm going to guess that my post in the forum had something to do with this post, an explanation:

Whenever somebody looks for tactics to deal with X...one of the first questions usually asked is "do you have Y?" In my case, dealing with kiting DE Skimmers (X), I was lacking long range firepower (Y).

The reason for my post wasn't a "Build my list" post, rather, I was looking for feedback on the various SM HS options, as I rarely see them discussed often, and less so in a specific situation (Vulkan army lists). I was also attempting to confirm if Vulkan works better in a Drop Pod list and shouldn't really be used as Mech.

I was trying to explain list bulding vs tactics to this guy I played last Friday. He is really indecisive and took 45 min to write up a list and then quit on turn 4 due to getting hosed. He didn't get that he was the reason for his loss, not his list. All he could focus on was what he needed to change in his list to win. No amount of uber unit choices will give you a win if you have no tactical thinking.

On the other hand you need to be in it to win it. You can be a formula one race car driver but your not going to win any races taking a car with significantly less HP than your rivals.

I guess the third factor (1 being army list, 2 being tactics) is luck, you need the dice to favor you.

No tactical thinking: my opponents putting stuff in reserve for no apparent reason and then wondering how they got tabled or crushed up piecemeal.

 TheLionOfTheForest wrote:
I was trying to explain list bulding vs tactics to this guy I played last Friday. He is really indecisive and took 45 min to write up a list and then quit on turn 4 due to getting hosed. He didn't get that he was the reason for his loss, not his list. All he could focus on was what he needed to change in his list to win. No amount of uber unit choices will give you a win if you have no tactical thinking.

On the other hand you need to be in it to win it. You can be a formula one race car driver but your not going to win any races taking a car with significantly less HP than your rivals.

I guess the third factor (1 being army list, 2 being tactics) is luck, you need the dice to favor you.

The fourth factor is practice.

practice, practice, practice

Tactics focuses on list building because 40k is a game with very little tactical depth. Once you've created an optimized list it's usually pretty self-explanatory how to play it. Sure, there might be subtle variations in execution (in exact situation X do I move my assault unit forward 6" or 5.5"?) but it's hard to have a meaningful discussion about that one specific event in isolation. So discussion focuses on building a better list, and that last 10% of skill is developed through experience.

nobody wrote:
I'm going to guess that my post in the forum had something to do with this post, an explanation:

Whenever somebody looks for tactics to deal with X...one of the first questions usually asked is "do you have Y?" In my case, dealing with kiting DE Skimmers (X), I was lacking long range firepower (Y).

The reason for my post wasn't a "Build my list" post, rather, I was looking for feedback on the various SM HS options, as I rarely see them discussed often, and less so in a specific situation (Vulkan army lists). I was also attempting to confirm if Vulkan works better in a Drop Pod list and shouldn't really be used as Mech.

If you look at the timestamps, you'll find that actually I posted this thread a few hours prior to yours. You may also note that my main recommendation had to do with different tactics for your Stormtalons rather than changes to the list.

gpfunk wrote:They aren't trading a helldrake for your scouts. They're allocating one of the helldrake's many destructive turns to wiping them out. An AP3 torrent weapon will decimate those scouts, taking them completely out or crippling them pretty badly.

In the context of my army, a Heldrake won't have all that many destructive turns to get. Typically I've found that Heldrakes only get 1-3 shots off against me (depending on situational factors), so each one has to count. If a Drake uses two of those shots to kill a Scout squad, that may very well be a good deal.

gpfunk wrote:It's the idea of a hard counter. Light infantry that rely on cover are hard countered by a torrent weapon that ignores cover and their armor save.

I don't consider Scouts to rely on cover and most of the time I don't use it with them unless facing large amounts of AP4 weapons. T4 4+ and 10 bodies is sufficient protection against most small arms. To be honest, I don't think 40k has very many "hard counters," certainly fewer than many other popular games.

Tactics is situation dependent whereas lists are absolutes.

Internet forums do not lend itself to situation dependent abstract talk. Now if people start posting battle reports and asking what should I have done here? Then we could talk tactics. Actually that might not be a terrible idea. What do I do with _ list against _ list with a deployment like _.

 Peregrine wrote:
Tactics focuses on list building because 40k is a game with very little tactical depth. Once you've created an optimized list it's usually pretty self-explanatory how to play it. Sure, there might be subtle variations in execution (in exact situation X do I move my assault unit forward 6" or 5.5"?) but it's hard to have a meaningful discussion about that one specific event in isolation. So discussion focuses on building a better list, and that last 10% of skill is developed through experience.

I do not agree with you at all there. 40K is exactly as tactical as you make it. I used to play with a group who would bluff with their lists to try and get you to bring the wrong stuff and use basic psychological warfare techniques to unnerve the opponent. It was actually pretty fun, except the noise and light concentration disruption, that was kind of annoying.

Of course some of this requires certain houserules like if you only let your opponent see your list when the at the top of first turn. It also requires a board with some good LoS blocking terrain on it so you have to choose do I move in a straight line or do I follow this piece of terrain loosing a turn of possible assault.

Blind setup can also be really fun and the FW modules are nice to spice things up. You can also try points bidding, bid so much handicap to get to setup the board and so many points to go first, etc.

Straight up 40K with the book terrain rules is the vanilla ice cream of 40K, non offensive but bland.

The main issue with discussing tactics is the medium. Its not so easy to set up a proper tactical discussion via this medium.

An earlier example of chess was made - lets see what we can extrapolate from chess.

In chess, books describe tactics relative to specific positions and games. These specific positions are useful due to the static nature of the board setup. In contrast, game boards for 40k have a very dynamic and non-fixed character. Not only might each army be comprised of very different units, but they also interact differently with each other unit (as opposed to chess where the interaction is fixed).

The total number of positions in 40k is exponentially above the astronomical number in chess. This makes it harder to find positions which demonstrates concepts.

If you really want to talk tactics, you need to bring up specific board positions with diagrams. Anything else is general strategy concepts.

 Dracos wrote:
The main issue with discussing tactics is the medium. Its not so easy to set up a proper tactical discussion via this medium.

An earlier example of chess was made - lets see what we can extrapolate from chess.

In chess, books describe tactics relative to specific positions and games. These specific positions are useful due to the static nature of the board setup. In contrast, game boards for 40k have a very dynamic and non-fixed character. Not only might each army be comprised of very different units, but they also interact differently with each other unit (as opposed to chess where the interaction is fixed).

The total number of positions in 40k is exponentially above the astronomical number in chess. This makes it harder to find positions which demonstrates concepts.

If you really want to talk tactics, you need to bring up specific board positions with diagrams. Anything else is general strategy concepts.

I agree. One interesting thing that I've noticed is that the Battle Reports forum often has more useful tactical discussion than the Tactics forum. I suspect this is because the nature of the Battle Reports forum lends itself to discussion of specific positions and matchups rather than the "oh yeah? well my X would totally blow up those Y!" trap that Tactics threads can often fall into.

While tactics are an important part of winning, army lists will trump tactics quite often. In my experience the list is nearly always the deciding factor between two opponents that are of even remotely similar experience playing 40k.

 Dracos wrote:
The total number of positions in 40k is exponentially above the astronomical number in chess. This makes it harder to find positions which demonstrates concepts.

Especially since only a tiny, tiny minority of those positions have any interesting tactics to discuss. The vast majority of the time you can just play your list on autopilot because there's exactly one correct decision and everything else is obviously wrong.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Dracos wrote:
The total number of positions in 40k is exponentially above the astronomical number in chess. This makes it harder to find positions which demonstrates concepts.

Especially since only a tiny, tiny minority of those positions have any interesting tactics to discuss. The vast majority of the time you can just play your list on autopilot because there's exactly one correct decision and everything else is obviously wrong.

Peregrine has summed up tactics in 40k into the most basic terms. It is in fact however more complicated than that. Tactics is the implementation of utilizing your units to the best of their ability while considering the factors of mission type and board setup, in direct contrast to the implementation and understanding your opponent has.

If both people know what they are doing then it will come down to most competitive list (the list statisitically most likely to succeed), whoever makes the most mistakes and luck (dice rolling)

Half the people at my FLGS dont even know the proper rules to their codex or the BRB let alone playing tactically. I find some of them easy to bait. These matches i play a fun list to make the game more interesting. There are of course the power gamers who know their , know your and know the BRB inside and out.

Peregrine would have you believe that it is as simple as "autoplay", like Connect 4 or Checkers, one wrong move looses you the game. I would argue that it is a little more complicated than that.

How many times when playing a 40k match do you relish your opponents mistakes because you know you can capitalize on them. Some times its easier to see the mistake when you are on the other side of the board.

 TheLionOfTheForest wrote:
Tactics is the implementation of utilizing your units to the best of their ability while considering the factors of mission type and board setup, in direct contrast to the implementation and understanding your opponent has.

Except that pretty much all of that is decided before the game begins, most of it in list construction. If I'm playing gunline IG I know I'm going to deploy near the back of the table with plenty of cover and I'm going to sit there shooting until my Vendettas arrive to drop a PCS on an objective late in the game. Nothing my opponent can do will change that plan. Similarly, if I'm playing assault orks I have exactly one viable plan: move forward as fast as possible, charge, and hope that I built my list with enough efficiency to succeed. I might have pre-set decisions to make, like "if my opponent has lots of tanks I drop pod my combi-melta sternguard first and kill them, if they don't I drop pod my tactical squad first into cover on my 'home' objective and save the sternguard for later", but those are pretty obvious decisions to make and you've established that "if-then" plan before the game begins. All that is left to do in the game is to identify which pre-set scenario you're dealing with and execute the appropriate game plan.

Peregrine would have you believe that it is as simple as "autoplay", like Connect 4 or Checkers, one wrong move looses you the game. I would argue that it is a little more complicated than that.

That's not what I said at all. It isn't one wrong move = auto-loss, because there are dice involved. What I said was that there are very few situations where there are non-trivial tactical decisions to make, and most of the time you're just executing a single plan based on decisions made in list construction.

I get where you are coming from, especially with the gunline guard example. I do find that my guard follow more of the situation you described.... guard can only do one thing really... shoot.

Where I do disagree with this situation is when i am playing my BA. We cant assault well anymore... we get outshot easily. What we do have on our side is mobility, which leads to more thinking outside the box.

I guess any codex that is considered out of date and not cometative anymore will require more intelligent use from the player.

 TheLionOfTheForest wrote:
Where I do disagree with this situation is when i am playing my BA. We cant assault well anymore... we get outshot easily. What we do have on our side is mobility, which leads to more thinking outside the box.

Honestly, how many new decisions are you making each game? Are you really coming up with new tactics every time based on a changing situation or are you just following a set of "IF X THEN DO Y" rules that you learned long ago and use every single game?

I guess any codex that is considered out of date and not cometative anymore will require more intelligent use from the player.

Not really. Tau are pretty obvious, castle up and shoot, and use JSJ and meatshields to keep your shooting units alive and out of combat. BT are pretty obvious, charge straight at the enemy and wipe them out. Etc. These armies do have less flexibility in list construction because each sub-optimal choice hurts you a lot more than, say, CSM that can depend on their 3x Helldrakes to make up for a "fun" choice elsewhere, but that doesn't really translate to more tactical decisions to make.

It is more of an "If x, do y" but keep in mind that I have been playing since 1994, so i have a lot of experience from a lot of editions to draw on. I see a lot of throwbacks in 6th ed to 2nd ed and its nice to be able to do some of the same things. I think the biggest changes that the BA have gone thru (as far as making them useless) was back in 4th ed, when i decided to start my guard army.

Perhaps we are confusing tactics and experience, or are they totally one and the same?

 Dr. What wrote:

 PipeAlley wrote:
Well, as an Ork player our Tactics are quite limited, especially if we don't talk about list building.

I don't believe that I can disagree more than with this statement.

Orks may have straitforward units, but it takes a solid tactician to make them really shine.

And that's certainly not me. One of the many attractions of Orks, for me, is their straight forward style with the occasion twist ala SAG or Weirdboy physic powers. I'm not a great tactician but I'm a good sport.

 Peregrine wrote:

 TheLionOfTheForest wrote:
Where I do disagree with this situation is when i am playing my BA. We cant assault well anymore... we get outshot easily. What we do have on our side is mobility, which leads to more thinking outside the box.

Honestly, how many new decisions are you making each game? Are you really coming up with new tactics every time based on a changing situation or are you just following a set of "IF X THEN DO Y" rules that you learned long ago and use every single game?

I guess any codex that is considered out of date and not cometative anymore will require more intelligent use from the player.

Not really. Tau are pretty obvious, castle up and shoot, and use JSJ and meatshields to keep your shooting units alive and out of combat. BT are pretty obvious, charge straight at the enemy and wipe them out. Etc. These armies do have less flexibility in list construction because each sub-optimal choice hurts you a lot more than, say, CSM that can depend on their 3x Helldrakes to make up for a "fun" choice elsewhere, but that doesn't really translate to more tactical decisions to make.

Personally, I am coming up with new stuff as I go. If something goes wrong, I gotta do something new. Granted, teams have generic tactics (orks charge forward, eldar and DE flank, etc) but that does not mean I adhere by those every time. I find that adaptability is how you win battles, not lists. it is hard to discuss tactics, but it can be done. Honestly though, the best placeto learn tactics is in a Military History book. That is where I got many of my tactics from.

 Kingsley wrote:
One thing that I've noticed is that, barring flagrant errors or extremely unbalanced matchups, the outcome of a game is typically decided by smart tactical play, not list composition. However, a lot of tactical discussion focuses on what list to take, not how to play.

To be honest, I support a different approach-- first, test a wide range of units and strategies until you find ones that you like to use and that fit well with your playstyle. Don't commit too early to certain units-- you may find that others suit your style better. For instance, in 5th edition everyone said that Predators were the optimal Space Marine Heavy Support choice, but through testing I found that I honestly preferred and did better with the then-humble Thunderfire Cannon.

Similarly, you have to play quite a few games with a unit before you have a good "feel" for it. For instance, I like to run a squad of ten Space Marine Scouts with bolters. A lot of people scoff at this unit or consider it bad-- and in some cases, it is! But in other cases it wins games for me, so I still run it despite the naysayers. If I had given up on this unit after my first few games with it (which were generally unexciting), I would be missing out on a tactical option that I've found to be very useful.

But once you've done a lot of testing and figured out what works well for you, keep your list more or less solid and focus more on tactics. When you encounter a new situation or an army you can't deal with-- first focus on changing your strategies, not your list, and then make tweaks as minor as possible in order to preserve your experience as best you can. It's certainly possible that new releases or types of opponents might cause you to have to vary your choices-- every new Codex, even if it doesn't apply directly to your primary or allied detachments, changes up the metagame-- but I for one advocate changing slowly and focusing on tactical play rather than list composition to win you games.

I love this comment. I really do. List building is a fun pastime, but itys kinda lkike asking whether Dimaggio or Ruth (or even Ken Griffey Junior in the first half of his career) were the best of all time. It depends on what you needed them to do for you, but they were all effective at something.

My blog has done some serious list hammering lately, but tactics and how to use certain units in imaginative ways is the real talent in the game and I try to put a bigger does of that out there than lists or failing that, explain how to use those lists, suboptimal or otherwise. I've been beaten by worse lists and beaten others with the same. We've all been there.

The General Matters was one of my first blog entries. So amen brother. Sing it from the mountain top!

I feel that most of the time tactics are put on the backburner to list building because most people see that unit X destroyed Y. It's harder to go back to deployment and think that if I deployed my army this way as opposed to that way I would have done much better.
Examples are denying flanks, castling in two corners to weaken an assault army realizing that you should be able to keep half your army out of assault. We can also include tarpitting, and other things.
The bottom line is that the way lists are built is based off of these tactics and playstyles. Some tactics are easier to use, and/or harder to counter, and this trickles into list building.
The other thing is that after you get the basic tactics laid out the only other thing to discuss is usually what options to bring on a squad.

Well the strategy informs the list building. So in my book it starts with the strategy.

For an example, in my armies:

Tau: Timing. I plan to beat you by not actually being where you can get and then being able to ambush your weakest point with no time to respond. Pretty much literally.

Sisters of Battle: Position. I bring a torrent to the point of attack and block which ends counterattack hopes and then I push, sometimes even foregoing the shooting phase if it means I can keep the enemy further from where they want to go. Blocking is a key piece of the plan. Units are highly disposable, even in KP missions and I mitigate that by simply having larger units for the enemy to devote energy to but slimming the wargear way down in anticipation of extreme attrition, then counter attacking the exposed enemy who tends not to be as numerous as I am. I can win the exchange battle.

Dark Eldar: attack morale is the goal. I tank shock, pin and whittle every available enemy unit to try and force as many checks as possible. Against Fearless enemies, I bring a couple brick houses to keep the primary threats busy while the units continue to kill from the perimeter. Speed gives me the edge, and volume of fire gives me a lot of morale checks. I dont rush the enemy like Dark Eldar wyche cults. I prefer to keep things moving and limit return fire or just kinda focus it into my brick houses. It's a totally different strategy than my Sisters of Battle who want to get up on you and position you to death or the Tau who are barely more than a whisper on the baord until they are right behind you late game.
The Dark Eldar can bog an enemy down with their brick houses, but the real damage is done at range or with lots of movement ending with liquefier juices everywhere as we make our moves.

Chaos Space marines: Casualties. I try to win by killing so many warm bodies that Khorne himself asks me to stop for desert. Using powerful augmented Marines and smashing into the enemy with audible brute force (read: clacking of many dice) is the goal. Chaos has little subtlety in its list. Obliterators, Heldrakes, Khornate berserkers and the like typify the casual disregard for lives the forces of Chaos bring to the table! Its the smashiest high AP list I play, and it essentially wants to leave nothing in its wake but grisssle. It tends to ignore objectives and simply cut the threat away from them en masse. Its not artful, but it is effective and its the one army I play wherein I kinda get to take my frustrations out in a fun "Hey they're bad guys anyways, so if they lose me the game...meh..." kinda way. Always like it when the good guys win anyhow.

Grey Knights: Playing for secondary objectives. First blood is easy to get with this army, it hunts characters really well (assassins, Crowe, and obviously precision shot in general), it is tough and mobile when played with a GrandMaster making LineBreaker a near given... It is ideal for fighting for the Secondaries. Their range disallows them from playing against the entire field, in the broad sense and getting flanked at distance is a danger for them so the force sort of has to "scoop" around not too far from center and can usually hold enough objectives to make it about the secondaries on a fairly consistent basis...at which they excel in getting. Overall, lower model count armies tend to need to play to this way because they just cant cover all the ground they need to and stay effective but they are pretty killy a lot of the time.

So each strategy calls for certain units. I could choose to try winning with Casualties with Tau. I'd need entirely different units to try...and Tau have those units. I could play to attack morale with Chaos OR Tau. My IG kind of do this too.

The Strategy informs the list building. =) When you have a good plan, the units you need aren't always the power units. In fact some codex's dont even HAVE what one would call a terrifying singular hammer per se without taking allies. They rely on some other form of winning besides casualties or they rely on terrain a lot!

Fun to talk about.

Da_Boss wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 TheLionOfTheForest wrote:
Where I do disagree with this situation is when i am playing my BA. We cant assault well anymore... we get outshot easily. What we do have on our side is mobility, which leads to more thinking outside the box.

Honestly, how many new decisions are you making each game? Are you really coming up with new tactics every time based on a changing situation or are you just following a set of "IF X THEN DO Y" rules that you learned long ago and use every single game?

I guess any codex that is considered out of date and not cometative anymore will require more intelligent use from the player.

Not really. Tau are pretty obvious, castle up and shoot, and use JSJ and meatshields to keep your shooting units alive and out of combat. BT are pretty obvious, charge straight at the enemy and wipe them out. Etc. These armies do have less flexibility in list construction because each sub-optimal choice hurts you a lot more than, say, CSM that can depend on their 3x Helldrakes to make up for a "fun" choice elsewhere, but that doesn't really translate to more tactical decisions to make.

Personally, I am coming up with new stuff as I go. If something goes wrong, I gotta do something new. Granted, teams have generic tactics (orks charge forward, eldar and DE flank, etc) but that does not mean I adhere by those every time. I find that adaptability is how you win battles, not lists. it is hard to discuss tactics, but it can be done. Honestly though, the best placeto learn tactics is in a Military History book. That is where I got many of my tactics from.

This is why we can't have nice things. The majority of people playing this game aren't approaching it as a game that they are capable of understanding (like Peregrine), they're just trying to find an excuse to stand around with their buddies and LARP that they are Sun Tzu or this century's Napoleon whatever (like this cancer-causing abomination above).

Frankly, 40k isn't that complicated. If you think it's really complicated, or intricate or requiring some special level of "finesse", or takes the honed application of thousands of years of military history texts (HAHA) to play well once the models hit the table, then you are *bad at the game* - if you say "But I won XYZ tournament and I totally stomp the guys at my FLGS" well guess what? They're awful too! You can all pat each other on the back and pretend you're master strategists and buy each other sweet epaulets and talk about how your opponents are all totally awesome but your masterful tactical prowess saves the day every time, but you will not fool anyone good, because you suck.

If things like bolter scouts or Blood Claws or Krootox or Flash Gitz are the unsung heroes of your games, then your opponents suck, and you're too bad to notice, or ignoring it on purpose to pat yourself on the back for being this generation's Next Top General.

Then don't play.

 Peregrine wrote:

 TheLionOfTheForest wrote:
Where I do disagree with this situation is when i am playing my BA. We cant assault well anymore... we get outshot easily. What we do have on our side is mobility, which leads to more thinking outside the box.

Honestly, how many new decisions are you making each game? Are you really coming up with new tactics every time based on a changing situation or are you just following a set of "IF X THEN DO Y" rules that you learned long ago and use every single game?

I guess any codex that is considered out of date and not cometative anymore will require more intelligent use from the player.

Not really. Tau are pretty obvious, castle up and shoot, and use JSJ and meatshields to keep your shooting units alive and out of combat. BT are pretty obvious, charge straight at the enemy and wipe them out. Etc. These armies do have less flexibility in list construction because each sub-optimal choice hurts you a lot more than, say, CSM that can depend on their 3x Helldrakes to make up for a "fun" choice elsewhere, but that doesn't really translate to more tactical decisions to make.

Do you consider chess a deep and tactical game? You may have noticed computers beat the living out of humans in chess now and computers only ever do if _ does X then Y. They literally have no ability to "think". So if that is the criteria for a game devoid of tactics then your criteria is flawed or you will have to fight real wars against groups of people to get tactics.

MikeMcSomething wrote:

Da_Boss wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 TheLionOfTheForest wrote:
Where I do disagree with this situation is when i am playing my BA. We cant assault well anymore... we get outshot easily. What we do have on our side is mobility, which leads to more thinking outside the box.

Honestly, how many new decisions are you making each game? Are you really coming up with new tactics every time based on a changing situation or are you just following a set of "IF X THEN DO Y" rules that you learned long ago and use every single game?

I guess any codex that is considered out of date and not cometative anymore will require more intelligent use from the player.

Not really. Tau are pretty obvious, castle up and shoot, and use JSJ and meatshields to keep your shooting units alive and out of combat. BT are pretty obvious, charge straight at the enemy and wipe them out. Etc. These armies do have less flexibility in list construction because each sub-optimal choice hurts you a lot more than, say, CSM that can depend on their 3x Helldrakes to make up for a "fun" choice elsewhere, but that doesn't really translate to more tactical decisions to make.

Personally, I am coming up with new stuff as I go. If something goes wrong, I gotta do something new. Granted, teams have generic tactics (orks charge forward, eldar and DE flank, etc) but that does not mean I adhere by those every time. I find that adaptability is how you win battles, not lists. it is hard to discuss tactics, but it can be done. Honestly though, the best placeto learn tactics is in a Military History book. That is where I got many of my tactics from.

This is why we can't have nice things. The majority of people playing this game aren't approaching it as a game that they are capable of understanding (like Peregrine), they're just trying to find an excuse to stand around with their buddies and LARP that they are Sun Tzu or this century's Napoleon whatever (like this cancer-causing abomination above).

Frankly, 40k isn't that complicated. If you think it's really complicated, or intricate or requiring some special level of "finesse", or takes the honed application of thousands of years of military history texts (HAHA) to play well once the models hit the table, then you are *bad at the game* - if you say "But I won XYZ tournament and I totally stomp the guys at my FLGS" well guess what? They're awful too! You can all pat each other on the back and pretend you're master strategists and buy each other sweet epaulets and talk about how your opponents are all totally awesome but your masterful tactical prowess saves the day every time, but you will not fool anyone good, because you suck.

If things like bolter scouts or Blood Claws or Krootox or Flash Gitz are the unsung heroes of your games, then your opponents suck, and you're too bad to notice, or ignoring it on purpose to pat yourself on the back for being this generation's Next Top General.

Well that would be fun for LARP people I suppose. I am definitely not Napolean and/or Sun Tzu non of us are and anyone who is playing a game can never hope to be. The joy of a game is immediate results/satisfaction combined with a narrowed scope from the real world. In the real world the options approach infinity (but never reach it) and the possible outcomes are never cut and dry and normally are not fully felt for years. We simplify the game and this makes it never as complex and "tactical", however, this doesn't mean it is devoid of tactics. The game has exactly as much tactics as you put into it.

If you play gunline guard then the tactical situations narrowed to shooting. Is that the game or is that you? That is YOU, you chose to focus your army around 1 of 3 phases in the game and ignore the other phases as much as possible. If you play a SW drop pod/vendetta/gunline hybrid list then suddenly you use the 3 games phases and the tactical complexity of the games is cubed. Be honest with yourself though you took the gunline guard as it simplifies the math of what effect each unit/choice your list building has on the game. This is why list building is so important though as there are dynamic elements in each army and if you do not take them and in sufficient numbers the tactical complexity of the game and of your army decrease exponentially.

This post seriously rambles like a boss but from what I can tell you're missing the point. "Tactical Complexity" is jargon, it's two war/combat/strategy-sounding words put together to obfuscate the fact that you feel like the game somehow gets legitimately more complicated or difficult to think about when you have some of your points arrive by drop pod and some of them fly in from a board edge. That's the entire problem - those aren't complicated scenarios. You aren't "Cubing" anything, that's just math being done to a term you just invented. That is exactly the problem I'm talking about.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jancoran wrote:
Then don't play.

This is also why we can't have nice things. You tell a LARPer they're LARPing and they don't say "Yeah you know maybe I really get into the whole blood for the blood god thing but it's cool it's a miniatures game and I don't care if I win" they say "Rawr go away!"

The lightss! It burnss you!

 ansacs wrote:
Do you consider chess a deep and tactical game? You may have noticed computers beat the living out of humans in chess now and computers only ever do if _ does X then Y. They literally have no ability to "think". So if that is the criteria for a game devoid of tactics then your criteria is flawed or you will have to fight real wars against groups of people to get tactics.

When you have a series of if-then circumstances, you generate a decision tree. Chess has many of these scenarios. So many that even our most powerful computers cannot enumerate them all. While they might be adequate to defeat even the best human players, Chess is of sufficient complexity that computers have yet to create a definitive strategy for it -- and most algorithms use heuristics to some degree or another.

Peregrine mentioned a single if-then circumstance. Nothing was contingent upon it, and the game proceeds very much according to plan once the decision is made. The decision tree is not very complex, and so we say that the game is not complex. While 40k might in principle have lots of different specific scenarios, subtle differences won't generally make a difference in the strategy you employ. And while you can make a statistical model for randomness, you can't fully predict what's going to happen in advance. So if you're depending upon a particular event occurring for a strategy's success, that's going to limit the effectiveness of that strategy. When these events are iterated, the reliability of the strategy diminishes. And so the utility of a complex decision tree is rendered worthless.

This is why Chess is a more tactically rich game than 40k. Small variances in circumstance are more apt to contribute to changes in strategy, and reliable action-consequence relationships allow for more complex decision trees.

I feel compelled to throw my name into the ring. This is just about the best topic ive read here on DakkaDakka in a long time. That being said this is an issue that has merit on both sides. Tactics and List-building. It has been said in earlier posts that it is very difficult to write about tactics and discribe events because of the ever-changing boards that we play on. Hardly ever do we play on the same looking board twice. So i agree unless ur posting pictures or graphics of your battles, tactics are hard to translate without using the age old "X beats Y" or "A counters B" . which is where List-building comes in, building a list is a big deal and Mathhammering away for hours or days to find the perfect synergy for your army is something just about everyone who plays and enjoys this hobby does. And if you deny it, your just kidding yourself. Trust me you have, even if it is in very small degrees. Because everyone wants to be better and to win. Period.

So here is my own humble opinion: Building a List tailored to how you play is probably 70% of the Tactical part of 40k. And i think its important for people to play different armies and styles, read the fluff and find what you like and how you enjoy playing. Because if you enjoy Gaunts ghosts or Caiphis Cain and you decide to rock with the IG because of that, tailor a list of IG how you want. 40k is a very personal and situation game. The only true Gods we have are the Dice Gods and we all have felt them shine on us and we certainly have felt it when they turn their back on us.

So since i'm liable to become long winded i will conclude: Make a list you like, that works with the style of play you favor and let the Dice fall where they may, because the other 30% is how you use your army when you deploy and play. And that is all Straight tactics, i don't care how much people say "X beats Y" or make sup'd up lists for Tourneys. If you deny that your using tactics when you decide how far you move, or what your lascannon is shooting at first, or whom your going to assault and where. Then your an ignoramous!!

Because target Priority, Movement of Troops, and timing of your Assaults is all huge in Tactics and they change every game you play, against every army you play. Thank you, i bid you Au Revoir

Wanna talk complex...managing the quotes is starting ti get there. The nested labels are starting to look like a logic tree in an of itself.

MikeMcSomething I don't care what you call it call it a decision tree if you want (see Corollax's link).

MikeMcSomething/Corollax:
Chess is more complex as the decision tree branches and splits more due to the entire game being linked. If you want a measure for "tactical" then this is probably relatively good compared to vague hand waving.

Corollax:

Peregrine mentioned a single if-then circumstance. Nothing was contingent upon it, and the game proceeds very much according to plan once the decision is made.

Where do you get this? Think a little about a shooting turn it is basically a series of simple if/then loops if you discount range. If you do not discount range then it becomes more complex and the complexity increases when LoS and weapon effectiveness is considered. Are you honestly just shooting your weapons at the nearest enemy unit and then doing this until you kill it to move onto the next unit? This is still a linked series of if/then statements that in programming would be simplified into a loop.

I would rank tactics as this order Machiavellian manipulation(Only cause modern politics are pretty sad)>>>Normal Diplomacy/War>>>>>(Several lines down worth)>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Chess>>>40K>>Backgammon>>>checkers>>>>>>tictactoe>>>tying your shoes(can become higher than Machiavellian manipulation if you get sufficiently "expensive" shoes)

Games by definition are shallow versus life. Are you a master of war if you know chess. NO
Is 40K devoid of tactical thought and decision making. NO
If it were as devoid of thought as you say people would stop playing it when they turn 10 and learn you cannot win tictactoe.

On another note the link is a nice one to put into this thread I however was trying to only make the point that if the criteria we judge the complexity of a game is that it can be boiled down to if/then statements then it applies to chess and any game...in fact it pretty much applies to life completely.

Computers do and have been beating humans in chess completely for a while and there is no "thinking" involved on the part of the computer. This is a fact even if the computation has to use approximations to get to the result experience based or otherwise.

Corollax wrote:
Summarizing it better than I could.

Exactly.

Every game can be solved in theory, given infinite processing power and time. The question is how humans play it, not computers that can brute force a solution in a way that no human could even attempt. So, the question is how much depth does a game have?

A game like chess has a lot of depth because you very frequently encounter situations where there is an elaborate interaction between strategy and counter-strategy and picking the right outcome requires not only seeing the best move, but seeing your opponent's likely reaction to that best move and making a move that counters their reaction (and on forever). Even the best chess players have to work very hard to find the right answer, or even a good answer.

A game like 40k has very little depth because the choices are usually very simple. Most of them are decided in list construction (unit X is my anti-tank, for example), and most of the ones that come up in actual gameplay have very obvious correct answers (no, you shouldn't charge assault terminators with fire warriors). Newer players still have to think about it a bit, but you quickly get to the point where you can play the game pretty well purely on autopilot.

 ansacs wrote:
Where do you get this? Think a little about a shooting turn it is basically a series of simple if/then loops if you discount range. If you do not discount range then it becomes more complex and the complexity increases when LoS and weapon effectiveness is considered. Are you honestly just shooting your weapons at the nearest enemy unit and then doing this until you kill it to move onto the next unit? This is still a linked series of if/then statements that in programming would be simplified into a loop.

Except you're just talking about basic target priority. It doesn't take a genius to figure out things like "shoot the assault terminators before they wipe out your whole army" or "use your melta against that Land Raider". So while these decisions technically exist they're rarely very interesting ones.

Is 40K devoid of tactical thought and decision making. NO
If it were as devoid of thought as you say people would stop playing it when they turn 10 and learn you cannot win tictactoe.

What you're missing is the fact that few people play 40k for the tactics, they play it because they like the models/background, their friends play it, etc. The fact that it has very little tactical depth doesn't mean you can't enjoy playing the game, it just means that winning has more to do with optimizing your list than tactical genius.

 Peregrine wrote:

Corollax wrote:
Summarizing it better than I could.

Yay. I appreciate the compliment, but a lot of the ideas aren't strictly my own. If you're interested in reading about general game strategy from a designer with some serious credentials, I should point you to Sirlin. If you read nothing else, check out Playing To Win.

Not all of it is directly applicable to 40k, but the general principles should apply.

 Peregrine wrote:
A game like 40k has very little depth because the choices are usually very simple. Most of them are decided in list construction (unit X is my anti-tank, for example), and most of the ones that come up in actual gameplay have very obvious correct answers (no, you shouldn't charge assault terminators with fire warriors). Newer players still have to think about it a bit, but you quickly get to the point where you can play the game pretty well purely on autopilot.

I can see the thrust of your argument here, but I don't really find it to be necessarily the case. For instance, let's say there's a Land Raider coming at me. I have many options, some of which are "soft" and some of which are "hard."

I could fire long range anti-tank weapons of varying effectiveness-- railguns from my Broadsides, lascannons from my rear objective claimer squads, assault cannons from my Stormtalons, Demolisher Cannon from a Vindicator-- at it to try to remove it from play outright. I could move a melta team up to attempt to engage the Land Raider directly. I could fire Thunderfire Cannon subterranean detonation rounds to give me a 1/6 chance of immobilizing the LR and taking a Hull Point if it attempts to move. I could move vehicles or infantry with melta up in the Land Raider's face to block its movement. I could attack the opponent's backfield objective claimers with Deep Strikers or Outflankers to make him consider reallocating the Land Raider to protecting his area instead of menacing mine. I could even hide.

Every one of those choices is heavily influenced by situational factors. What turn is it? What primary and secondary objectives can I try to claim? Do any of the relevant units want to move instead? The "correct choice" is far from obvious in 40k as it is actually played, despite the fact that it may seem obvious in theory. Units can be both played and countered in a variety of ways, there are decisions you can take to mitigate potential bad luck, etc. Overall the complexity of a game of 40k, once you factor in the totality of both armies, the scenario, etc. makes the game far more tactically interesting than it would seem at first glance.

A lot of the list building which goes appears on dakka tends to be focused on one or two of the standards 6 missions; the one with multiple objectives and the one with two objectives. List building is important but to have a "straight (ish) arrow" for all of the missions the army ends up being relatively balanced; then it comes back to how you use it, little army specific trick and overall tactics.

There is a great value in list building and seeing how other people do it as it does help develop ideas to test out in play.

 Kingsley wrote:
For instance, let's say there's a Land Raider coming at me. I have many options, some of which are "soft" and some of which are "hard."

But that's just math. If the Land Raider is a priority threat you attack it with anti-tank weapons in descending order of effectiveness until it dies. That's just basic target priority and understanding the odds of success for your various units, not a complex tactical decision. And it's a situation where you probably already know the answer, since part of list construction was "how do I deal with AV 14" and all you need to do is apply the anti-tank weapons you brought.

Every one of those choices is heavily influenced by situational factors. What turn is it? What primary and secondary objectives can I try to claim? Do any of the relevant units want to move instead? The "correct choice" is far from obvious in 40k as it is actually played, despite the fact that it may seem obvious in theory. Units can be both played and countered in a variety of ways, there are decisions you can take to mitigate potential bad luck, etc. Overall the complexity of a game of 40k, once you factor in the totality of both armies, the scenario, etc. makes the game far more tactically interesting than it would seem at first glance.

I think you're vastly overstating how much these factors really matter. Yes, there are slight advantages and disadvantages to consider, but they're offset by the randomness of the dice. Once you cut it down to the options that are actually a viable plan (for example, taking a scoring unit off an objective on turn 6 to melta it is easily dismissed) you usually have a very small set of options, and your default answer is probably going to be the one you picked in list construction.

 TheLionOfTheForest wrote:
I get where you are coming from, especially with the gunline guard example. I do find that my guard follow more of the situation you described.... guard can only do one thing really... shoot.

Where I do disagree with this situation is when i am playing my BA. We cant assault well anymore... we get outshot easily. What we do have on our side is mobility, which leads to more thinking outside the box.

I guess any codex that is considered out of date and not cometative anymore will require more intelligent use from the player.

I'm not calling you out lion, but this is exactly the kind of thinking that sells the tactics of 40k short. Gunlines are a great example of tactics in 40k. Every decision that you make is one with tactics. In a gunline, do you line up at the 12''? Your initial volley will likely include more guns, but you will be closer later. Maybe at the 6''? You are sacrificing firepower for survivability late game. Tanks in front of men or men in front of tanks? Men in front is bubble wrap, tanks in front is partial cover. Do you sit heavy left to draw assaulters away from your right? You will give the right the freedom to move up in safety if they don't commit resources to it. Should you spread infantry out wide so the assault elements don't sweep through you in seconds? It will make it harder to kill all of your resources, but you may limit your ability to respond to threats with firepower.

THAT WAS JUST DEPLOYMENT. Every decision you don't see, you don't make. Every decision you don't make, your opponent has made for you. When we fail to see the tactics of the scenario, we fail to see the solutions.

I have played death guard on foot for nearly a decade. Same army, and yes I'm that cheap. Initially I thought running across the field was great, leaving my heavies behind. Then I thought keeping them in the backfield every time was just as wise. Now I keep everything clustered close and moving forward slowly so it's hard to engage without engaging the entire army. I change my deployment and my tactics to each of my opponents.

One final point please. List making is tactics. Choosing what resources to allocate to a battle is the same as knowing where to place and move them. It is every bit as important, but not more so that the use of those resources.

I'm not sure what's actually being argued here anymore. In a nutshell, I think everyone agrees that good lists are better than bad lists, and being a smart/experienced player is better than being a dumb/inexperienced player. We may be too far in the forest to see the trees, so lets take it from a different angle...

Magic The Gathering, in many ways, is similar to 40k. We have deck building (list building), game management (battlefield tactics), and random chaos that will effect the game, be it the way the deck is shuffled in Magic vs. dice rolling in 40k. Now, I have a friend I used to play magic with that basically COULD NOT beat me in magic unless I got mana screwed. It didn't matter what deck he used....we could play 3 games with 2 given decks, and then switch decks and play 3 more, I'd beat him every single time unless I got totally mana screwed.

Oddly enough, now that we both play 40k, it's pretty rare that he wins games unless something insane happens in his favor. Usually dice related.

Is my friend dumb? Not really. Am I the greatest Magic or 40k player alive? Not by a long shot. It's just happens that when it comes to playing games, I have and edge over him when it comes to tactics...or something....

Frankly, the idea that tactics don't matter in 40k is absurd. If the game only consisted of building the best list, people would meet at their LFGS, exchange lists, then go home. There would no point in actually playing the game.

Of course, as I said, this is absurd. We do have to play the game because the choices we make during the game affect the outcome.

Conversely, to say that list building has no effect on the game is also absurd. If that were true, I could pick units from a codex at random and still win every time.

The reality is somewhere in the middle. The list you make informs an overall strategy, and the choices you make during the game affect the outcome.

The only point up for debate is where in the gray area you think the division between list-building and tactics lies. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.

Oh yeah, deployment is important too! That's a tactically situation, along with deciding reserves and such. Yes, it flows from your list but decisions change every game depending on opponent, their list, the mission, number of objectives, which type of deployment. All tactics right?

Also, I have 1 psychological tactic. I tell every opponent how easy it is to kill Orks, they're nothing to worry about etc. I win most games. Therefore: what exactly?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Kingsley wrote:
For instance, let's say there's a Land Raider coming at me. I have many options, some of which are "soft" and some of which are "hard."

But that's just math. If the Land Raider is a priority threat you attack it with anti-tank weapons in descending order of effectiveness until it dies. That's just basic target priority and understanding the odds of success for your various units, not a complex tactical decision. And it's a situation where you probably already know the answer, since part of list construction was "how do I deal with AV 14" and all you need to do is apply the anti-tank weapons you brought.

But target priority is itself contingent on many other factors, such as what units have line of sight to what other targets, whether or not you have First Blood and your opponent's chance of claiming it in their next turn if you don't. You also have to commit to a lot of this in the Movement phase prior to seeing the results of any shooting.

 Peregrine wrote:
I think you're vastly overstating how much these factors really matter. Yes, there are slight advantages and disadvantages to consider, but they're offset by the randomness of the dice. Once you cut it down to the options that are actually a viable plan (for example, taking a scoring unit off an objective on turn 6 to melta it is easily dismissed) you usually have a very small set of options, and your default answer is probably going to be the one you picked in list construction.

I dunno. I usually have 3-4 good or at least interesting options for any given threat. When you get right down to it, even basic tactical decisions don't seem to be fully understood by the community (such as "going second is better in the abstract"), while there's tons of information out there about list building. The way I see it, listbuilding should stay in the Army Lists forum, while actual tactics are in the Tactics forum.

Wow this turned into a FW legality type debate. This will have to be added to the list of topics not to bring up if you want to stay on track.

I understand what you guys are saying and I guess I took an overstatement as the statement message. Do we agree that 40K>checkers? Therefore some tactical discussion can be valid?

Back to topic I agree that the real tactical discussion happens in the battle report section while here we basically say X or Y is better or X beats Y target. If you want real tactical discussion then the OP will have a heavy burden to put forth and carry the discussion as there are so many factors in any tactical decision worth discussing. Pictures would also help a great deal, perhaps linking a battle report or two in to ask opinions or share a tactic you thought was good?

 ansacs wrote:
Back to topic I agree that the real tactical discussion happens in the battle report section while here we basically say X or Y is better or X beats Y target. If you want real tactical discussion then the OP will have a heavy burden to put forth and carry the discussion as there are so many factors in any tactical decision worth discussing. Pictures would also help a great deal, perhaps linking a battle report or two in to ask opinions or share a tactic you thought was good?

Those seem like good suggestions. But why does the Tactics forum even exist if the good tactical discussion is in Battle Reports and the listbuilding is in Army Lists?

Cause some times we just wanna ask is unit X better than unit Y.

Humblesteve wrote:

 TheLionOfTheForest wrote:
I get where you are coming from, especially with the gunline guard example. I do find that my guard follow more of the situation you described.... guard can only do one thing really... shoot.

Where I do disagree with this situation is when i am playing my BA. We cant assault well anymore... we get outshot easily. What we do have on our side is mobility, which leads to more thinking outside the box.

I guess any codex that is considered out of date and not cometative anymore will require more intelligent use from the player.

I'm not calling you out lion, but this is exactly the kind of thinking that sells the tactics of 40k short. Gunlines are a great example of tactics in 40k. Every decision that you make is one with tactics. In a gunline, do you line up at the 12''? Your initial volley will likely include more guns, but you will be closer later. Maybe at the 6''? You are sacrificing firepower for survivability late game. Tanks in front of men or men in front of tanks? Men in front is bubble wrap, tanks in front is partial cover. Do you sit heavy left to draw assaulters away from your right? You will give the right the freedom to move up in safety if they don't commit resources to it. Should you spread infantry out wide so the assault elements don't sweep through you in seconds? It will make it harder to kill all of your resources, but you may limit your ability to respond to threats with firepower.

THAT WAS JUST DEPLOYMENT. Every decision you don't see, you don't make. Every decision you don't make, your opponent has made for you. When we fail to see the tactics of the scenario, we fail to see the solutions.

I have played death guard on foot for nearly a decade. Same army, and yes I'm that cheap. Initially I thought running across the field was great, leaving my heavies behind. Then I thought keeping them in the backfield every time was just as wise. Now I keep everything clustered close and moving forward slowly so it's hard to engage without engaging the entire army. I change my deployment and my tactics to each of my opponents.

One final point please. List making is tactics. Choosing what resources to allocate to a battle is the same as knowing where to place and move them. It is every bit as important, but not more so that the use of those resources.

I've been playing since 95. All these things you have assumed I don't do are pretty much second nature at this point. Don't make assumptions. I was only stating that a gun line type army such as guard, without the ability to attack in hand to hand are delegated to having fewer serious options available to them. As opposed to an army like space wolves who can do a variety of styles.

Making gross generalizations from 2 sentences assumes a lot. I never actually stated "when i play gun line guard I just blindfold myself, deploy my minis and stop thinking."

 Kingsley wrote:
But target priority is itself contingent on many other factors, such as what units have line of sight to what other targets, whether or not you have First Blood and your opponent's chance of claiming it in their next turn if you don't. You also have to commit to a lot of this in the Movement phase prior to seeing the results of any shooting.

Sure, there are decisions to make. The problem is that those decisions come in two types:

1) Extremely situational decisions with little or no broad relevance. For example, you might have to decide between shooting your lascannons at a Land Raider with passengers that will need to roll a 7+ to successfully charge you or a Land Raider that has a 5+ cover save but the passengers will only need to roll a 6+. Whatever you end up deciding in that game it's not going to be much of a subject for discussion because it's going to be very rare that the same situation will happen again (for anyone) and it's not really worth thinking about and discussing in advance.

2) Subtle details that are less important than optimizing your list properly. Yes, those factors influencing target priority exist, but the total effect of them is much less than the effect of whether or not you brought enough anti-AV 14 units in your list. In my experience this is true for most tactical questions: I rarely, if ever, see any kind of tactical decision (by either player) that stands out as a truly brilliant move, and most games are decided by questions like "how well did I roll to kill their AA unit" and "did I bring enough melta" while both players pretty much autopilot their list according to the game plan they came up with in list construction.

So, given that the question was "why list-building over tactics" and not "does 40k ever involve tactical decisions", the answer is that list-building takes priority because it's the dominant factor and has the most relevance to the wide range of people participating in the discussion.

I dunno. I usually have 3-4 good or at least interesting options for any given threat. When you get right down to it, even basic tactical decisions don't seem to be fully understood by the community (such as "going second is better in the abstract"), while there's tons of information out there about list building. The way I see it, listbuilding should stay in the Army Lists forum, while actual tactics are in the Tactics forum.

That's probably because people insist on trying to find a single universal answer to going first or second instead of looking for an answer for each type of list. But that's a good example of the kind of non-list-building thread that is a relevant discussion, and why those threads exist and have interesting debates. If you want to see more discussion of tactics then you need to look for that kind of basic question as a starting point, not specific situations for a single list/player/opponent combination.

I think Peregrine has summed up the issues here very well. Actual pushing plastic tactics are very hard to discuss apriori. There are too many no brainers like, "Don't let DC charge you".

 Kingsley wrote:
For instance, let's say there's a Land Raider coming at me. I have many options, some of which are "soft" and some of which are "hard."

But that's just math. If the Land Raider is a priority threat you attack it with anti-tank weapons in descending order of effectiveness until it dies. That's just basic target priority and understanding the odds of success for your various units, not a complex tactical decision. And it's a situation where you probably already know the answer, since part of list construction was "how do I deal with AV 14" and all you need to do is apply the anti-tank weapons you brought.

No, it’s definitely not just math. In terms of evaluating one weapon’s chances of success vs. another’s, sure that’s math. But that’s not the only factor going into the decision. You also need to consider what other targets each of those weapons can be engaging, and whether that’s a better use for them. And where each unit needs to move to engage those targets, and the risks and rewards of moving to those locations.

Whether a given shot is the better option to take is more complex than just “which has the best odds to kill”; sometimes one option may be worth risking a lower percentage of success, because the potential reward is higher. I might have the option to fire my assault cannon at the Land Raider or at a few scoring IG who happen to be in the open this turn. The IG guys are clearly easier to kill, and may be important (perhaps they are a scoring unit in an advanced position) but depending on how important stopping the Land Raider is to the overall tactical situation, it may be worth taking the lower-percentage shot.

Depending on the situation, the Land Raider may or may not actually need to be stopped. This is a qualitative assessment more than a mathematical one. Maybe you can safely ignore it, due to there being enough objectives on the table that you can afford to let your opponent’s nasty unit inside the LR take or contest one, while you instead focus on killing his backfield scoring units and taking those objectives away from him. Whether the LR is important to kill or disable in any given turn depends on its current position and the overall board state. A Tau player may find a Land Raider a very worthwhile target on turn 1 before it goes anywhere, when a kill will strand the contents in their own deployment zone. He may find that if it survives to turn 2 or 3, once it’s advanced well up the board, that the value of shooting it is less because the contents are already in threat range. Maybe he needs to just accept the damage it’s going to do, retreat and/or cofferdam the assault (using blocking units, like Piranhas or Kroot), and focus his own killing resources elsewhere.

Sometimes a higher-percentage play also has a higher cost. For example, if I allocate a squad with several meltaguns to kill a Land Raider, I can reasonably expect that unless I’ve also got overwhelming firepower available to apply to the contents, the squad that gets out will probably kill my meltagun team. Now, whether that’s a worthwhile investment or not depends on the overall table situation, the real importance of the Land Raider, and the opportunity cost of using the unit that way, when it could be doing something else.

The above is mostly just talking about target priority decisions, and how they change based on board state and game turn. Those aren’t hard and fast if-then propositions. Different players may legitimately make different decisions based on their evaluation of the situation, their immediate plans for units and overall plans for the remainder of the game. These plans may need to be adjusted mid-game to adapt to unexpected circumstances, like a given unit dying more quickly than expected due to lucky dice, or contrariwise a given unit living longer than expected against the odds. As fortunate and unfortunate events occur regularly, being able to adjust to them is critical. A closely-related consideration is movement to maximize your ability to take advantage of these situations. If I position my units well, I can give myself a wider/longer decision tree, allowing myself to allocate additional resources to a target if needed, or to re-allocate those resources to a lower-priority target if I get lucky and disable the first one more quickly than expected. Smart movement allows us to minimize the negative impact of bad luck, and to maximize the benefits of good luck. Smart movement allows an army to win more consistently, to operate more efficiently, to inflict more damage and sustain less damage in return.

Movement is really the most important part of the game, unless one player is playing a static gunline army AND the table has too little terrain. If the latter two circumstances are present, then it’s more about dice and list matchup. But as multiple folks have already noted, movement is hard to discuss online. It requires diagrams and/or photos. Even discussing small, discrete tactical uses of movement (like Ben Mohlie’s old article series on Bell of Lost Souls) takes a fairly large amount of text. Describing the overall situation on a table in a way which illustrates why moving a given unit to a given location (and in a given formation) is advantageous requires even more. Detailed battle reports are thus very helpful, because when well written they explain the reasoning behind maneuvers, and all the additional data (pictures, lists, mission, history of preceding turns) gives context to those maneuvers, illustrating the situation and showing why said maneuver is good or bad. That assessment requires knowledge of the terrain on that specific table, the opposing army list and the specific position and status of its units, the distances between given terrain pieces and units, the mission, the turn, and sometimes metagame factors like time remaining in the tournament round, or how many battle points each competitor has and whether one can afford to aim for a narrow win or draw, or whether you need to try for a big win to vault up the tournament standings.

 Mannahnin wrote:
No, it’s definitely not just math. In terms of evaluating one weapon’s chances of success vs. another’s, sure that’s math. But that’s not the only factor going into the decision. You also need to consider what other targets each of those weapons can be engaging, and whether that’s a better use for them. And where each unit needs to move to engage those targets, and the risks and rewards of moving to those locations.

Again, yes, all of those factors exist. My point is that:

1) Most of the supposed "choices" can immediately be discarded in favor of a very short list of viable options. Yes, there is still a decision to be made, but we aren't talking about deep strategy here, just a basic understanding of the game.

2) Most of the viable choices have already been made in list construction. For example, if you took deep striking melta stormtroopers to deal with Land Raiders then you've made your decision before the game even began and all you're doing in-game is executing your preset plan.

3) Most of the remaining choices have little impact on the game compared to list construction decisions. Let's look at the example I just gave: LR #1 is in the open and its passengers will need to roll a 7 for charge distance next turn, while LR #2 is in 5+ cover and its passengers will need to roll a 6. Now we have a choice between an easier target that is slightly less of a threat (less likely to charge successfully), and a target that is a bigger threat but harder to kill. Do you take the easier shot and the highest chance of getting some benefit, or do you throw everything into stopping the must-kill greater threat? Now let's say that you're going to shoot some lascannons at either target, and making the correct decision is a 10% increase in their effectiveness. The important question now is does this matter? Should we spend time debating the merits of each choice, or should we spend that time optimizing our list and removing wasted points so that we bring 20% more lascannons?


The end result is that yes, you have target priority decisions, and sometimes they're even non-trivial. But it's way better to bring an optimized list and make the obvious "good enough" target priority decisions that only newbies fail to make than to always make perfect target priority decisions with a poorly-optimized list. All your debate over target priority choices is completely trivial compared to the question of whether you've brought the right anti-Land Raider units in the first place.

I can't Agree More with what Mannahnin just posted, your List is all and good, and its important for there to be a cohesive idea and target strategy to your army, but once your on the table EVERYTHING is tactics, or just about. Movement, Deployment, Target Priority, even challenges and denying challenges is very important. And a lot of your older gamers that have been playing 20+ years all say well its second nature, i have the experience to look and assess the situation and know what to do. WELL thats tactical thinking!!! your just happen to have hundreds of games under your belt and know in certain situations what to do and when. Just like Chess Grand Masters. Many, Many Grand Masters have said that after playing their first 100-250 games they started seeing patterns and similar variations on the same games. And they knew what worked before so they did it again. EXPERIENCE is always a factor. always. And what your do when the boots hit the ground is what 40k is about. because if your don't have a flexible mind or gameplan, your going to lose.

Bringing a good list with appropriate tools to respond to various threats is certainly a prerequite to being able to compete well against various lists, at least when they're fielded by competent players.

But no, most of the choices in the game aren't made during list construction, nor are in-game decisions generally eclipsed by more important decisions made when lists are made. This is why we see mediocre and inexperienced players with netlists lose consistently to very good and experienced players with idiosyncratic lists*. This happens at every big tournament. It's a consistent and observable trend.

(*Lists that are often denigrated by random folks on the internet, like we've seen with armies fielded by folks like Ben Mohlie, Alex Fennell, Alan Hernandez, Reece Robbins, etc.)

Lews Therin wrote:
Just like Chess Grand Masters. Many, Many Grand Masters have said that after playing their first 100-250 games they started seeing patterns and similar variations on the same games. And they knew what worked before so they did it again.

The difference is that chess requires hundreds of games to earn that understanding and start to play at a higher level. 40k has a much lower threshold for being a "veteran", and only the newest players are going to struggle to see the obvious correct answers in most cases. The most experienced players might have a small advantage, but it's going to be offset by the randomness of the dice and differences in list strength.

That is not my experience. I play a lot of folks in tournaments who have good lists, and who roll just as well as I do.

 Mannahnin wrote:
This is why we see mediocre and inexperienced players with netlists lose consistently to very good and experienced players with idiosyncratic lists*. This happens at every big tournament. It's a consistent and observable trend.

Sure, if you have an inexperienced netlister playing in a competitive environment against the top players. However, most of the time you don't have that kind of skill difference, and when people are still struggling with things like understanding why Vendettas are mandatory and Sentinels are garbage it's more important to focus on fixing their fatal list problems than to worry about small details of tactics.

And of course the other half of this is that if you have two top players, one with an optimized netlist and one with the weaker* list, the one with the optimized netlist should win on average. And the player with the weaker list would probably benefit more from replacing their weak list with a better one than from trying to find better tactics to use.


*Since the whole premise of the argument is that the netlist has more raw power, otherwise the inexperienced player's mistake isn't netlisting, it's choosing the wrong netlist.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Mannahnin wrote:
No, it’s definitely not just math. In terms of evaluating one weapon’s chances of success vs. another’s, sure that’s math. But that’s not the only factor going into the decision. You also need to consider what other targets each of those weapons can be engaging, and whether that’s a better use for them. And where each unit needs to move to engage those targets, and the risks and rewards of moving to those locations.

Again, yes, all of those factors exist. My point is that:

1) Most of the supposed "choices" can immediately be discarded in favor of a very short list of viable options. Yes, there is still a decision to be made, but we aren't talking about deep strategy here, just a basic understanding of the game.

2) Most of the viable choices have already been made in list construction. For example, if you took deep striking melta stormtroopers to deal with Land Raiders then you've made your decision before the game even began and all you're doing in-game is executing your preset plan.

3) Most of the remaining choices have little impact on the game compared to list construction decisions. Let's look at the example I just gave: LR #1 is in the open and its passengers will need to roll a 7 for charge distance next turn, while LR #2 is in 5+ cover and its passengers will need to roll a 6. Now we have a choice between an easier target that is slightly less of a threat (less likely to charge successfully), and a target that is a bigger threat but harder to kill. Do you take the easier shot and the highest chance of getting some benefit, or do you throw everything into stopping the must-kill greater threat? Now let's say that you're going to shoot some lascannons at either target, and making the correct decision is a 10% increase in their effectiveness. The important question now is does this matter? Should we spend time debating the merits of each choice, or should we spend that time optimizing our list and removing wasted points so that we bring 20% more lascannons?


The end result is that yes, you have target priority decisions, and sometimes they're even non-trivial. But it's way better to bring an optimized list and make the obvious "good enough" target priority decisions that only newbies fail to make than to always make perfect target priority decisions with a poorly-optimized list. All your debate over target priority choices is completely trivial compared to the question of whether you've brought the right anti-Land Raider units in the first place.

@ Peregrine

Your right about the stormtroopers, but thats a tactic. But let me put this possiblity up to your stormtrooper scenario : What if he baited you into using your stormtroopers before and while they put 3 glances on his LR he had "armour plating" or whatever it is that gives "no extra roll to meltas" ??? and now your stormtroopers are dead, his LR or LRs keep rolling right up to your (most likely if your playing IG) ADL and spew out all that Terminator goodness against 5+ squishy guardsmen??? Your tactics failed, and his worked. He didn't even have to play the numbers game. You fell into his trap play and your threw your troops in too soon???

and i know i'm putting this up in a vacuum but while having and optimized TAC list is great, there are many armies out there and a lot of ways to get burned. Take a touney format for example. you play can play 3-5 possibly even 6+ armies with your same loadout. You can't possible tell me that you think there are Lists that can go undefeated like that without using really great tactics, and thinking on the fly.

Now Peregrine i have never played against you so i don't know your lists or how you play your armies but do you string together 3+ or 5+ perfect games? where the dice go exactly on their average and the numbers stay just how you predict? because if they do then you Sir should quit 40k and go to VEGAS because clearly you have tapped into something amazing!

I'm just saying that most of my games don't go at all how i plan and i have to do some seriously creative thinking just to pull out draws, victories or just close defeats because of the Dice and or my opponent not going or doing what i planned on.

There are definitely some easy list fixes for many bad lists, and one or two fairly no-brainer choices for most codices; Vendettas are amazing, of course. That said, most books have a good range of units which serve important functions at reasonable cost, and just because (for example) Wraiths are effective, doesn't mean every Necron list needs them.

The truth is that most netlists aren't really better than a strong list with varied tools and synergies come up with by a good player. Most netlists basically come down to copy pasting a few "best of" units from a given codex over and over; but those lists wind up being predictable and sometimes more inflexible than anticipated. They're demonstrations that mathematics is not the only basis for a good list, as it's not so easy to quantify other factors, like movement speed and various special rules.

 Mannahnin wrote:
The truth is that most netlists aren't really better than a strong list with varied tools and synergies come up with by a good player. Most netlists basically come down to copy pasting a few "best of" units from a given codex over and over; but those lists wind up being predictable and sometimes more inflexible than anticipated. They're demonstrations that mathematics is not the only basis for a good list, as it's not so easy to quantify other factors, like movement speed and various special rules.

I never said that pure math was the only way of building a list, just that building a list is the most important part of winning. You're not providing any counter-argument here, you're just talking about different approaches to list building.

Lews Therin wrote:
Your right about the stormtroopers, but thats a tactic. But let me put this possiblity up to your stormtrooper scenario : What if he baited you into using your stormtroopers before and while they put 3 glances on his LR he had "armour plating" or whatever it is that gives "no extra roll to meltas" ??? and now your stormtroopers are dead, his LR or LRs keep rolling right up to your (most likely if your playing IG) ADL and spew out all that Terminator goodness against 5+ squishy guardsmen??? Your tactics failed, and his worked. He didn't even have to play the numbers game. You fell into his trap play and your threw your troops in too soon???

What's your point? Ignoring the issue of being unable to choose when a deep striking unit arrives (and therefore no ability to hold it back for later), all that means is that your dice failed. It doesn't mean there was some kind of brilliant tactical decision by your opponent ("move my LR forward and hope it doesn't die before it delivers the passengers" isn't a very deep strategy), or a bad one by you, just that you took a 70/30 coin flip and it landed the wrong way.

Now Peregrine i have never played against you so i don't know your lists or how you play your armies but do you string together 3+ or 5+ perfect games? where the dice go exactly on their average and the numbers stay just how you predict? because if they do then you Sir should quit 40k and go to VEGAS because clearly you have tapped into something amazing!

That's missing the fact that the metagame exists. Let's say flyerspam lists are popular in your area, so you bring lots of AA to counter them. In a four-round tournament you might win two games against flyerspam where the odds are stacked in your favor, one first-round game against a newbie with a battleforce list, and one game where you get luckier than your opponent at a critical moment. No, it won't work every tournament, but someone has to go undefeated and it doesn't take much luck for an average player with a powerful list to be that person.

I'm just saying that most of my games don't go at all how i plan and i have to do some seriously creative thinking just to pull out draws, victories or just close defeats because of the Dice and or my opponent not going or doing what i planned on.

And in my experience that rarely happens. When I win it's usually because I had a better list or better dice luck, when I lose it's usually because my opponent had a better list (or at least one that is strong against mine) or better dice luck. The "tactics" involved tend to be pretty straightforward and obvious, with very few cases of doing something incredibly creative to change the outcome of the game.

@ Peregrine

Wow.... i just don't know how to reply to some of what you say. I guess we just have very different view of 40k. Do you enjoy or have fun playing a game where after the first turn you know the outcome of the match? why wast the next 2-3 hours then? just shake hands and put your army back in its case....

The meta where i play is hardly ever static, and even the Flyers lists that are around, evolve pretty consistantly. Now i understand that, thats prob not the norm everywhere. But i would say that most people don't bring an army to a tourney that they tailored to their meta game. You bring an army your comfortable with and that you know inside and out and that you can use to counter whatever you find sitting across the table from you on the fly.

Where i play Hordes, Flyers and Helldrakes, and just plain Marines are all represented. So whenever we play, you kinda have to be prepared to face just about anything. And you have to have the tactics and the wherewithal to think on the fly and to pull out a win.

And you mentioned a powerful list ?!?! who deems a list powerful? last time i checked who was winning Tourneys across the USA it was a very varied list of Armies. So you saying and average player with this "Power Army" could beat out everyone and win a tourney just because of his list? now i know you plugged in the words "on average" but is this what your saying? Because i would totally 100% disagree. but then again i would like to know what you would consider an "average" player? because i think that has relevance to his chances to win.

And my last comment on your post would be do you play with terrain, and how big of a board do you use?
I know that i am asking a semi person question here, but it seems as if your games are really flat and stagnant. Because the way you present yourself and your ideas your games hardly ever change. Its just "X and Y and oh no he brought Z so i guess its a foregone loss...." at lest this is how i am reading what you are posting. Try using terrain. or play Cities of Death? idk, it just seems as if the games have little to no randomness in them. Again i am sorry that this is semi personal, but i just am trying to see the point of view you are coming from.

 Lews Therin wrote:
Wow.... i just don't know how to reply to some of what you say. I guess we just have very different view of 40k. Do you enjoy or have fun playing a game where after the first turn you know the outcome of the match? why wast the next 2-3 hours then? just shake hands and put your army back in its case....

40k is fun because of the awesome models, the background fiction, etc. If I want a game of deep strategy I'm going to play something else.

The meta where i play is hardly ever static, and even the Flyers lists that are around, evolve pretty consistantly.

That was just one example. The point is that you'll win some games because you made the right metagame choice, and win some other games because you're playing against poorly-optimized lists (the "casual" players who show up at tournaments for "fun" without any plan to win it), so you don't need to luck your way through 5+ games to win a tournament.

last time i checked who was winning Tourneys across the USA it was a very varied list of Armies.

There's variation, yes. But that's not the same thing as a list with Sentinels and penal legions winning just as frequently as lists with Vendettas and blob platoons. The "varied" tournament winners are a small and predictable subset of the whole range of potential lists.

So you saying and average player with this "Power Army" could beat out everyone and win a tourney just because of his list? now i know you plugged in the words "on average" but is this what your saying?

That's exactly what I said: a player with a powerful list can win tournaments without being a tactical genius.

And by "on average" I'm talking about the dice. Obviously it's possible for weird things to happen when one player rolls much better than the other, so we look at a long series of (theoretical) matches and see who wins more frequently.

And my last comment on your post would be do you play with terrain, and how big of a board do you use?

Standard 6'x4' table, approximately the standard 25% of the table for terrain.

Its just "X and Y and oh no he brought Z so i guess its a foregone loss...."

More like "I brought X and he brought Y, Y is a good counter to X so I have to hope the dice give me an opportunity to regain an advantage". And even if there aren't any brilliant decisions made during the game we still don't know for sure which of us has the list advantage, so the outcome is still in doubt and the game is worth playing.

@ Peregrine

I wasn't talking deep strategy at all, i guess i'm talking about enjoyment and fun playing the game. If i want to play deep strategy i'll play ADG: World in Flames (6th Ed). And i would never say rely on Luck its a fickle Lady, but tactics is not the same as luck. and Playing with sound tactics isn't knowing what the percentages are in every situation. It has to do with, as a bunch of us have said before: Movement, Deployment, Target Priority, and Where and when and who to assault, plus many other facets of the game where timing and precision is important.

And if, as you say the Tourny winners have a "small and predictable" list of armies then why not make a "Power List" (your term LOL) to combat them, and become the undesputed master of the 40k metaverse? is it because no matter what the List is "powerful" or not the Tactics on the board are important to winning the games. The powerful list ideal that you are putting forth i think is pure folly, its how you use the Army when the Die says Turn 1. And historically and currently i am proven correct in that Nobody has completely dominated the Tourney scene. Ever. I will say this tho, There are a number of players who consistantly win or come in top finishes, and this is because of their tactics and the flexibility of their minds and how they use their Armies.

 Lews Therin wrote:
It has to do with, as a bunch of us have said before: Movement, Deployment, Target Priority, and Where and when and who to assault, plus many other facets of the game where timing and precision is important.

And, like I already said, those questions are usually pretty straightforward ones. Remember, the subject of this thread is "more tactics, less listbuilding", not "40k has no tactics at all". My point is not that 40k never involves any decisions at all, it's that once you've figured out the basic obvious things the biggest factor in winning (and best place to improve) is optimizing your list better and therefore discussion of 'tactics' inevitably focuses on improving your list.

And if, as you say the Tourny winners have a "small and predictable" list of armies then why not make a "Power List" (your term LOL) to combat them, and become the undesputed master of the 40k metaverse?

Because if I'm going to invest that much time and money (building/painting, travel, etc) I'd rather spend it on playing MTG where the prizes are better. 40k is the game I play because I like the models and setting, keeping up with the tournament metagame for tiny prizes just isn't worth it.

@ Peregrine

Um i am aware of the the OP my winged friend. The only person here who is saying there are little to no tactics in 40k is you...

And while i agree having a List the you like and compliments your play style is important, what i don't think oyu are quite grasping is that its how you use it that matters the most. The tactics you employ on the board. And i believe that the OP was asking why nobody bothers to write Tactics on the "Army Tactics" page. Instead we list, Lists and debate how they will play. i don't have a problem with the Lists or with discussing Tactics, it just seems that there was a faction of thought saying that on board tactics are not important and what is, is if your list is deemed "powerful" by by certain peoples idea of the current meta.
So you are correct we have definately drifted from the OP topic, but i think that the discussion on "Lists and on board tactics" is a valid question and opinion.

Your last Comment has stunned me Peregrine,

"Because if I'm going to invest that much time and money (building/painting, travel, etc) I'd rather spend it on playing MTG where the prizes are better. 40k is the game I play because I like the models and setting, keeping up with the tournament metagame for tiny prizes just isn't worth it"

Because the way you have presented yourself and your ideas on this post your speaking about "Powerful Lists" which would be played at Tournements as I would hazard a guess, because when your playing at your FLGS its more about fun and just trying new things and combos out. So a "Power List" wouldn't be fun to play against or a challenge to yourself. so its a lose-lose match-up. Your not being challenged and your opponent is discouraged and put out by your "Power Lsit." So with my gray matter and deductive reasoning cap on i figure that you would of course be talking about a Tourney setting where a "Power List" would grant you wins uncountable. But now you are saying that 40k tourney's are not worth it. which is fine and dandy, that is of course a valid opinion. But then i would ask if you just play for the Gak and giggles of it (your words "I like the models and setting" ), why are you posting about "Power Lists" and then shooting down other Poster's ideas when you just said you don't keep "up with the tournament metagame for tiny prizes" ???

As you can see its slightly confusing.

 Peregrine wrote:

Because if I'm going to invest that much time and money (building/painting, travel, etc) I'd rather spend it on playing MTG where the prizes are better. 40k is the game I play because I like the models and setting, keeping up with the tournament metagame for tiny prizes just isn't worth it.

Just out of curiosity, what are the prizes like for M:TG?

DrunkPhilisoph wrote:
Just have a look at a chess tactics description, and how extensive they are. There are very few "standard" situations that crop up in Warhammer, and they are all pretty self explanatory (counter-charging, hitting rear armor)..

Discovered Attack, Pinning, Double Attack, Fork, Skewer.
Those are the standard chess tactics. You can describe them in a few paragraphs. Strategy is a different matter, you could talk for countless books on strategy.

You do see tactics discussed on this forum, not just army lists. While it may not be as common you do see it. These are some threads on tactics I've started in the past.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/482623.page
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/483493.page
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/447870.page
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/447806.page
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/429366.page
Many other people have made posts on tactics. If you want to discuss more tactics, start a post on it. While they are not as popular (mine usually fall off pretty darn fast) they are good to add to the conversation.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 schadenfreude wrote:
It's easier to discuss if something is worth it's points than to explain maneuvering and deployment. The later is more difficult to teach and/or explain.

And most people are just not very interested. Most 'tactic' posts I make fall off the front page in a day. Posts about how "Abbadon taking your lunch money" or "beat this unit" stay up for weeks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:
Honestly, how many new decisions are you making each game? Are you really coming up with new tactics every time based on a changing situation or are you just following a set of "IF X THEN DO Y" rules that you learned long ago and use every single game?

Actually, I do. So should you.

I take pics of all my tourney games, and after each game I ponder "What could I have done differently?".
- What if instead of focusing my helldrake on those paladins, could I have used it to go after the rhino the acolytes were in?
- Starting with that GUO on the board did not work out so well against the GK player. Maybe next time Ill deep strike it near his objective.
- I saw a lot of deep striking melta yesterday. Maybe I should figure out a way to prevent people from doing that to my land raiders if I'm bringing a triple land raider list.
- Going 'derka derka' with my black mace DP only gets it shot down and hands my opponent a KP. Maybe I should move it up the sides?
Going over what you did wrong in each game makes you analyze your mistakes and not make them again. Perhaps you never make any mistakes. I know I do, and I'm always learning and improving my 'tactics' (and strategy)

 Lews Therin wrote:

Um i am aware of the the OP my winged friend. The only person here who is saying there are little to no tactics in 40k is you...

That's actually incorrect on multiple accounts - Peregrine is not saying 40k has no tactics, only that those tactics are very simple, and he is by far the only person from advocating this position, actually *read* the damn thread and that's tragically obvious. If the sentence preceding this one isn't immediately obvious to you you either haven't read the thread or aren't clever enough to add anything to the conversation, period.

Moving on, it's really easy to take something that is legitimately simple to smart people, and make it sound overcomplicated and hard (or "Tactical" in the case of this thread) Ex. -

I want to walk to the store and grab a soda, and Peregrine says that's actually pretty easy, but it's totally not! I have to consider tons of legitimately tactically difficult factors every time! Are my pants on? Are my shoes tied? Are they resurfacing the street? What if I can make it a few seconds quicker with different shoes on? What if those faster shoes are harder to lace up and wind up losing me time anyway? How cold is it outside? What if my raging agoraphobia kicks in halfway across the street? What time is it? Are the streets busy? Do I have exact change? Should I wipe the cheetos dust off this shirt before I go? Do I have a car? Does it have gas? Should I take my car instead? Do I actually live within walking distance of a store that sells soda? Is it the kind of soda I want?

This is all that most of the people in here are doing. Shooting a land raider is not the agonizing warfare-textbook spawning crisis of the century. Nobody here has presented an actual example of legitimately brilliant or skilled tactics; it's just been alot of "Well I COULD charge those fire warriors, but what about overwatch? Do I have enough swords? Are they on an objective? Will it take me away from an objective? Will I kill them? Should I shoot them instead?" kind of obfuscation that's pretending it's real complicated tactics but it's not remotely close, it's just things a decent player factors out in half a second before picking the correct unit to charge with. Find someone who claims to be an expert in a given field that actually doesn't know very much about it, and ask them to explain a difficult concept from said field to you, and you'll get an answer just like the stuff you're seeing in this thread - alot of what if? that doesn't actually matter and no real concrete examples or concise explanations.

MikeMcSomething wrote:

 Lews Therin wrote:

Um i am aware of the the OP my winged friend. The only person here who is saying there are little to no tactics in 40k is you...

That's actually incorrect on multiple accounts - Peregrine is not saying 40k has no tactics, only that those tactics are very simple, and he is by far the only person from advocating this position, actually *read* the damn thread and that's tragically obvious. If the sentence preceding this one isn't immediately obvious to you you either haven't read the thread or aren't clever enough to add anything to the conversation, period.

Moving on, it's really easy to take something that is legitimately simple to smart people, and make it sound overcomplicated and hard (or "Tactical" in the case of this thread) Ex. -

I want to walk to the store and grab a soda, and Peregrine says that's actually pretty easy, but it's totally not! I have to consider tons of legitimately tactically difficult factors every time! Are my pants on? Are my shoes tied? Are they resurfacing the street? What if I can make it a few seconds quicker with different shoes on? What if those faster shoes are harder to lace up and wind up losing me time anyway? How cold is it outside? What if my raging agoraphobia kicks in halfway across the street? What time is it? Are the streets busy? Do I have exact change? Should I wipe the cheetos dust off this shirt before I go? Do I have a car? Does it have gas? Should I take my car instead? Do I actually live within walking distance of a store that sells soda? Is it the kind of soda I want?

This is all that most of the people in here are doing. Shooting a land raider is not the agonizing warfare-textbook spawning crisis of the century. Nobody here has presented an actual example of legitimately brilliant or skilled tactics; it's just been alot of "Well I COULD charge those fire warriors, but what about overwatch? Do I have enough swords? Are they on an objective? Will it take me away from an objective? Will I kill them? Should I shoot them instead?" kind of obfuscation that's pretending it's real complicated tactics but it's not remotely close, it's just things a decent player factors out in half a second before picking the correct unit to charge with. Find someone who claims to be an expert in a given field that actually doesn't know very much about it, and ask them to explain a difficult concept from said field to you, and you'll get an answer just like the stuff you're seeing in this thread - alot of what if? that doesn't actually matter and no real concrete examples or concise explanations.

That's because tactics are never brilliant or innovative past the original use. For example, the ambush has not changed much from the days of bows and arrows to the IED. Tactics, even in the real world, are first and foremost about risk management. Where do you accept risk in a given situation and where do you not? Part of this is done in 40K during list building (i.e. I except to see alot of flyers, so I better include a storm talon to go with the ADL) and part of it is done with in game decisions (i.e. its turn 4, do I push my landraider onto the objective now and inside the threat range of his multimelta attack bikes (the risk being that I don't kill them and they can get 2d6 penetration shots on the LR) or do I wait a turn and see how my shooting goes, knowing he could move those bikes forward to block my route to the objective and force me to tankshock into them on turn five if I don't kill them this turn?). You will also find that tactics are harder to discuss because the application of tactics is more art than science. The underlying question of 40K tactics is: "Given the variables of terrain, deployment type, primary and secondary objectives, and my opponent's army list, how do I best set myself up for a win?" The underlying assumption is that as the game progresses, the randomness of the dice rolls will change the situation as both your and your opponents army suffer various degrees of damage. The stronger players can adjust their plan to the new situation and continue to play for the win. The weaker players generally continue to fight their base plan, even if it isn't viable anymore.

MikeMcSomething wrote:
[
That's actually incorrect on multiple accounts - Peregrine is not saying 40k has no tactics, only that those tactics are very simple, and he is by far the only person from advocating this position, actually *read* the damn thread and that's tragically obvious. If the sentence preceding this one isn't immediately obvious to you you either haven't read the thread or aren't clever enough to add anything to the conversation, period.

Moving on, it's really easy to take something that is legitimately simple to smart people, and make it sound overcomplicated and hard (or "Tactical" in the case of this thread) Ex. -

I want to walk to the store and grab a soda, and Peregrine says that's actually pretty easy, but it's totally not! I have to consider tons of legitimately tactically difficult factors every time! Are my pants on? Are my shoes tied? Are they resurfacing the street? What if I can make it a few seconds quicker with different shoes on? What if those faster shoes are harder to lace up and wind up losing me time anyway? How cold is it outside? What if my raging agoraphobia kicks in halfway across the street? What time is it? Are the streets busy? Do I have exact change? Should I wipe the cheetos dust off this shirt before I go? Do I have a car? Does it have gas? Should I take my car instead? Do I actually live within walking distance of a store that sells soda? Is it the kind of soda I want?

This is all that most of the people in here are doing. Shooting a land raider is not the agonizing warfare-textbook spawning crisis of the century. Nobody here has presented an actual example of legitimately brilliant or skilled tactics; it's just been alot of "Well I COULD charge those fire warriors, but what about overwatch? Do I have enough swords? Are they on an objective? Will it take me away from an objective? Will I kill them? Should I shoot them instead?" kind of obfuscation that's pretending it's real complicated tactics but it's not remotely close, it's just things a decent player factors out in half a second before picking the correct unit to charge with. Find someone who claims to be an expert in a given field that actually doesn't know very much about it, and ask them to explain a difficult concept from said field to you, and you'll get an answer just like the stuff you're seeing in this thread - alot of what if? that doesn't actually matter and no real concrete examples or concise explanations.

I think it's obvious that list building is a key part of the 40k experience. If you didn't bring the right tools, you're not going to get the job done. The stormtroopers with melta guns are there to shoot tanks.

Just as it is annoying when people ask "I have an ork battleforce, how do I effectively fight Cron Air?", it is equally annoying when every question is answered with "Just get saber platforms, vendettas and vultures". Both of these are pointless.

I think the original post was suggesting that perhaps we can actually illustrate a situation we encountered during a game and then have a discussion about what would have been the best course of action. Often times after you make a mistake during the game you will know it immediately, but it's not always clear if the course of action you chose was the best one.

Infinite terrain creates infinite possibilities for play. Tactics are required both to MITIGATE terrains effect on you AND to maximize its effect on the enemy. Angles matter.

Tactical generals plan a couple moves ahead, knowing if they move a certain way, even if its closer to an enemy, if it puts more terrain between you, you're actually LENGTHENING the time the enemy may take to get to you. Just ONE extra round of fire into an enemy thats been lured by the promise of the death of your Fire Warriors may be the fatal momnt for the enemy.

This calculated risk is an example of tactics. A normal person who hears the question: "should you get closer to enemies that charge" would likely never say yes. The tactician says "yes...when X is true and you want to feint someone into a bad situation; and are wiling to pay the cost if the enemy gets a little lucky". RISK analysis is tactics and good Generals are really good at it.

Another thing that is tactical about 40K is deployment. Here again, you're doing two things: mitigating terrrains effects on you and inflicting it on the enemy to the extent possible. The use of reserves is a balancing act between the need to kill, the timing within the game and again risk analysis: Can I afford the absence of these units, and if so, how long. Plus if it happens thatr they come out on turn 4, do I still win?

Anyways, just some thoughts. I think tactics, but more importantly strategy, matter. It shows in every game against a noob. That noob may know my codex up one side and down the other, but can he anticipate ME?

Nothing as fun as baiting some DC or or expensive CC unit into a charge that will leave them in a shooting gallery.

Jancoran , PanzerLeader and Labmouse42 are both 100% right, overall army strategy and "on Board Tactics" are extremely important and while they will most likely change from game to game, those tactics you Learn will help you win more games and become more flexible with your army and with obscure units that your opponent isn't use to playing against.

@ mikey mc-whatever

Did you add anything even romotely constructive with your post? or just prove that you can successfully buy soda? What our winged friend Falco Peregrinus is saying is that List Building is the most important part of the game. And that if your have built a "power List" then you should, if the dice stay "Average," win.

So while i respectfully disagree with Peregrine, I believe that on board tactics with your army is very important and integral part of the game, he and I can at least dialogue about our views. You Sir come off antagonistic and rude, plus offering no view of your own. Your Post saying, "you'll get an answer just like the stuff you're seeing in this thread - alot of what if? that doesn't actually matter and no real concrete examples or concise explanations." is very incorrect, a couple of people have posted links to tactical sites and threads, perhaps it is you who hasn't "*read* the damn thread" again quoting your very eloquent post. So i want to say sorry for being a little personal in my reply but your brutish remarks have piqued my intrest and i felt compelled to answer in kind.

MadmanMSU wrote:
Just out of curiosity, what are the prizes like for M:TG?

Anywhere from $50-100 in cards for a weekly FLGS tournament to $40,000 cash for first place at a pro tour event.

PanzerLeader wrote:
That's because tactics are never brilliant or innovative past the original use.

Of course they are. MTG, especially limited formats, has MUCH greater depth of strategy/tactics than 40k. You actually have to anticipate your opponent's plans (and, unlike in 40k, do so without complete information about what they can do), bluff/counter-bluff, improvise solutions with limited resources, etc. Even if you're re-using elements of things you've done before interesting choices happen much more frequently, and a lot more games are decided by out-playing the other person rather than just bringing a better deck and/or getting better luck.

 Lews Therin wrote:
And while i agree having a List the you like and compliments your play style is important, what i don't think oyu are quite grasping is that its how you use it that matters the most.

You're missing the point here. How you use your list is important. However, those decisions are usually either incredibly obvious and not interesting enough to talk about or so specific to one situation that nobody else finds them relevant. Once you reach a (fairly low) skill threshold the most important thing you can do to win more frequently is to improve your list.

But then i would ask if you just play for the Gak and giggles of it (your words "I like the models and setting" ), why are you posting about "Power Lists" and then shooting down other Poster's ideas when you just said you don't keep "up with the tournament metagame for tiny prizes" ???

Because this is the tactics forum where the goal is to figure out the best way to win the game. If I want to discuss whether I'd prefer to paint a Medusa or Thunderbolt next I'll go to the painting forum (or just decide based on my own opinion at the time).

 Lews Therin wrote:
Did you add anything even romotely constructive with your post? or just prove that you can successfully buy soda?

You're missing the point of the analogy. The soda purchase has tons of trivial "decisions" that aren't worth talking about, just like an average 40k game has tons of trivial "decisions" that aren't worth talking about. What certain people in this thread have done is elevate these trivial "decisions" to the level of actual tactical choices that are worth discussing in detail.

What our winged friend Falco Peregrinus is saying is that List Building is the most important part of the game. And that if your have built a "power List" then you should, if the dice stay "Average," win.

No, that is NOT what I said. I said that given roughly equal skill it should work that way, I'm not saying that a clueless newbie with a netlist will beat a veteran with a weaker list. The point I'm making, however, is that the threshold of getting roughly equal skill is not a very high one.

I really am not qualified enough to speak about MTG because i have only played a handful of time and personally didn't find it that appealing or interesting. kinda like Pokemon when i was in Elementary School.

@ Peregrine

"Because this is the tactics forum where the goal is to figure out the best way to win the game. If I want to discuss whether I'd prefer to paint a Medusa or Thunderbolt next I'll go to the painting forum (or just decide based on my own opinion at the time)."

Yes this is a Tactics Forum where people discuss Tactics if your want to discuss List Building Lo' and Behold !!! there is a List Building Forum as well LOL

But i digress, it is easier to just throw up a List on the Tactica Forum and then say why you are taking it. Discribing what you envision your units doing. Whether its Melta Stormtroopers tank popping, or a Deathstar of Paladins wrecking face. I get that. But you are changing what we have all been discussing here. You have postulated that 40k has a very low threshold for Tactics and that after gaining a littler experience most if not all decisions are easy to see and counter. So all that is left to differentiate between two players is their Army Lists. And if one player has a "Power List" he will win if the Dice stay average. What i disagree with you is the way you brush off in Game tactics and decisions as no-brainers. I have said and will keep on saying that there is a fairly high degree of Tactical Decisions that could and should be made during a game no matter the List make-up. If you have a "Power List" and fail to make Accurate and or Tactically appropriate decisions you will lose. Especially if you are playing in a competative setting where the lists make-up is "small and predictable" then it comes down to IN GAME TACTICS and your ability to have an OPEN and FLEXIBLE MINDwhile playing said army.

You're ignoring the fact that the "List Building Forum" forum is for complete army lists. It doesn't deal with issues pertaining to individual units, how to build an army around them, or how to mitigate their influence in an opponent's army.

If I want to have a discussion on the merits of Chaos Bikers relative to Chaos Spawn, the appropriate place for that conversation is the tactics forum. Not the Army Lists forum. But ultimately, these conversations amount to "listbuilding." And they are just as much a tactical issue as anything that happens once the models hit the table.

 Lews Therin wrote:
Yes this is a Tactics Forum where people discuss Tactics if your want to discuss List Building Lo' and Behold !!! there is a List Building Forum as well LOL

Corollax beat me to it. The list building forum is where people post complete specific lists to get feedback, and usually get ignored. The tactics forum is for general principles about how to win the game, including how to build the best list.

What i disagree with you is the way you brush off in Game tactics and decisions as no-brainers.

And you keep ignoring the other set of decisions that I've mentioned several times: the ones that are too situational to discuss. Beyond the obvious decisions there are subtle choices to make, but those choices are usually specific to an exact situation and have little relevance to a broad audience. Nobody reading the thread is going to have experience with that exact situation to contribute, and the OP will never be in the exact situation again to benefit from the discussion. So even when these choices are occasionally more important than list-building ones there's still very little room for discussion. That time and effort would be far better spent on making a better list, especially since most of the people looking for advice here seem to be struggling with basic list-building concepts.

And in fact, there aren't many actual tactics I've picked up in the last few months. Sure, there's general strategies that everyone learns when they start playing. "Shoot the Choppy, Chop the Shooty." But these are broad generalizations that become subconscious over time. An experienced general will be executing these strategies on autopilot -- because if they're not capable of doing so, they're going to miss something more important.

Here's an example of something that I consider an exception to the rule. The CSM codex allows their HQ units to purchase mounts for their lords to ride on. Often, these lords will be escorted by a squad of Bikers. This keeps an enemy from just lobbing lascannons at their warlord, since they can just roll a 2+ to allocate the wound onto a cheap model with a cover save.

If an opponent chooses to mix these units, I can single out their cavalry units with focused fire. Barrage fire can snipe characters to some extent, but this works even I scatter off of my intended target. If I'm shooting S10 blasts, this is an excellent way to inflict instant death. And while the opponent can use LoS to allocate the wound elsewhere, it's easier to make the target roll a 1 with this than the more general tactic of barrage sniping.

Wow way to ignore anything that was being said before and jumping on the "Army Lists Forum" versus "Tactica Forum" and what they are used for. okay. Thank You for letting me know what the different forums are for.

And while i have never said anything about the "Tactica Forum" having mainly discussions relating to different List builds and what units are the best per-Codex. Because like the OP and others have said, it is very hard to discuss tactics without pictures or diagrams showing where the units were and what was going on. What we were discussing was that "Tactics" are of little to no value because everyone can grasp them and that Power List Building is paramount to success. And i objected stating that in game, on board decisions were every bit as important as a properly made list and that you can gain experience and ideas with every game. Hence comingup with strategies and tactics to use in game.

@ Corollax

Thats a great tactic! Great for IG palying with artillery !!

Lews Therin, question for you: you haven't played MTG, but have you played any other competitive games? Warmachine, chess, etc? Or does your entire competitive gaming experience consist of 40k?

I agree with with the OP. I have been wargaming for years and I have come to the conclusion that it is not about what you bring, its about how you use it. I myself LOVE all the tyranid fluff, The Parasite of Mortrex, Harpies, Ripper swarms, Lictors, in tournies or at local GW stores everyone just rips them a new one and says they are bad units. But I have used them wisely and they have pulled their fair share of points and even won games.

 HiveFleetKerrigan wrote:
I agree with with the OP. I have been wargaming for years and I have come to the conclusion that it is not about what you bring, its about how you use it. I myself LOVE all the tyranid fluff, The Parasite of Mortrex, Harpies, Ripper swarms, Lictors, in tournies or at local GW stores everyone just rips them a new one and says they are bad units. But I have used them wisely and they have pulled their fair share of points and even won games.

This is a common mistake, and one reason why understanding list building dominates the discussion. ANY unit can win games, if you play enough games. As long as you're taking actions and rolling dice you might happen to do well enough with a given unit to win a game, especially if your opponent is playing with equally weak units/rolling poorly/etc. So the question is not "can unit X win a game", it's "will using unit X allow me to win MORE games than using unit Y". Until people figure this out and stop talking about how good a unit is based on anecdotes of it occasionally winning a game the most important goal of strategy discussion is going to be getting the bad units out of lists.

@ Peregrine

OMFrakinG really ?!?!

Everything you have just said goes again your previous posts that "Power Lists" rule and that its the Units and if they are the Elite or Best Choices to bring?!?! and now you are saying "ANY unit can win games, if you play enough games." and "As long as you're taking actions and rolling dice you might happen to do well enough with a given unit to win a game" and also "So the question is not 'can unit X win a game', it's 'will using unit X allow me to win MORE games than using unit Y' " Yeah just to clue you in Peregrine those are called Tactics and also thats playing with experience. Learning to use whatever Army and Units you feel comfortable with and that you know inside and out. Whether they are "Power Units" from so-called "Power Lists" or underrated units from Armies that generally don't field well.

Look at the Sisters of Battle they have placed Great recently in Britain / Europe and the USA and they have a fairly simple List build. But these Gamers have been playing them and know their armies well enough to counter so-called "Power Lists". and all they have is a WD army Codex

@ Hive Fleet Kerrigan

Great!! This is exactly how i feel! If used tactically, underrated units and Armies can win. And it has nothing to do with "Power Lists" but about "On Board Tactics"

@ Peregrine (on previous Post)

Competitive games? yes Halo 2, Halo 3, Mortal Kombat and Black Ops 1 (Regional Championship wins in All and have placed Nationally in both Halo's) i also play StarCraft and StarCraft 2 competitively, Chess (Tho i am not any kind of Master, just enjoy the game), ADG's World in Flames (which might just be the most indepth WW2 board game ever made) and WarMachine, Flames of War and Warhammer Fantasy. I just have found 40k to be a Hobby that i can enjoy and embrace the most.

I don't really understand your question. Are you asking if i play games in a Tournement settings? or if i play competitive games? Because frankly any game you play versus an opponent is competitive. And yes i have played MTG i just didn't find it that entertaining or particularly challenging. I kinda moved away from card based games after 6th grade and Pokemon. But i kno many people find it fun and it is their game of choice. I just don't. I'm sorry if that makes me "less" of a competitor. I just don't find laying cards down is much of a game. I prefer Armies that i can see and move. But again i am not bashing MTG, i have many friends who play it and i understand it is a very popular game, just not my game of choice.

It's not about whether something can win, it's about whether it provides a statistical advantage over another unit that would predispose you to win more often.

Cheetahs run fast today because, in the past, the ancestors which ran faster were statistically more likely to pass on their genes to the subsequent generation. That's not to say that a slower cheetah might not have survived where a faster cheetah died -- but when you look at the overall trend, a faster cheetah was better adapted to pass on its genetic material.

We're discussing trends, here. Just because you can present an anecdote where a unit which was perceived as weak nevertheless achieved victory does not mean that the general trend is invalidated.

 Lews Therin wrote:
Everything you have just said goes again your previous posts that "Power Lists" rule and that its the Units and if they are the Elite or Best Choices to bring?!?! and now you are saying "ANY unit can win games, if you play enough games." and "As long as you're taking actions and rolling dice you might happen to do well enough with a given unit to win a game"

Sigh. Read again and try to understand the point of that post rather than taking random statements out of context. Any unit can win a game. That is not the same thing as being likely to win a game. For example, if you take lots of ratlings (a bad unit) and play a lot of games against an opponent who takes their own weak units eventually the ratlings will probably contribute something to winning. But that is NOT the same thing as the ratlings being a good choice.

I don't really understand your question. Are you asking if i play games in a Tournement settings? or if i play competitive games?

The point is that it's a lot easier to believe that 40k has a lot of strategic depth if 40k is the only game you've played and you haven't seen what a real game with strategic depth looks like. For example, coming from MTG I find the idea that 40k has lots of strategic depth absurd because MTG has way more complex and interesting decisions to make.

And yes i have played MTG i just didn't find it that entertaining or particularly challenging.

Clearly you never played it seriously, because they don't give away $40,000 cash prizes in tournaments for a game that isn't particularly challenging.

One interesting note is that fielding units that appear weak may in fact be helpful, as many of these units can be underestimated by the opponent, allowing them to perform better than other factors might indicate. Similarly, if a unit is not often fielded, people probably have less experience facing it and thus are less likely to react properly.

One of my friends called this "Thunderfire Cannon syndrome" in 5th edition, when Thunderfire Cannons were just as powerful damage-wise as they are now but much easier to kill-- because the Thunderfire Cannon had been widely panned as trivial to destroy (and it was, providing you hadn't used blockers to restrict enemy line of sight or taken cover for a defense of last resort), most players didn't take them and hence many people didn't have experience facing them, thought they were bad, and were in for a rude awakening.

 Kingsley wrote:
One interesting note is that fielding units that appear weak may in fact be helpful, as many of these units can be underestimated by the opponent, allowing them to perform better than other factors might indicate. Similarly, if a unit is not often fielded, people probably have less experience facing it and thus are less likely to react properly.

Of course this only works if you're playing against an inexperienced opponent who doesn't understand the game very well. If you're playing against someone who has studied the game carefully you're just taking a bad unit.

@ Corollax

I respect your opinion and while MathHammer and dice averages are something to think about when tweaking an army or building a list. This is Warhammer 40k, if you are running numbers and statistics play Poker or shoot Craps, heck play the Stock Market. Playing on the laws of averages is great and wonderful at your FLGS because you might play the same people over and over (So the averages will work) in a tourney you play 3+, 5+ different players with different Armies. So your averages are pretty much skewed since your not playing against the same thing over and over again. To gain acurate data to even formulate "Averages" you need to run them against the same simulation dozens of time.

All your saying is on average units that aren't "statistically" great will lose. But what about using those "underrated" units properly to win? also equating 40k to evolution is kinda Apples and Rocks. 40ks a game that changes like every 3-5 years, Evolution if you believe in it takes 100,000s if not millions of years. So the analogy is pretty much null and void. But you bring up the point that the game Meta changes over time, this is why its important to playtest and gather experience with your army so you know what your tactics and or general strategy will be when facing a "Power List" that is exploiting the Meta or current rule set. Again "On board tactics" and a flexible approach to the game is what is most important. Well...and having Fun

 Peregrine wrote:

 Kingsley wrote:
One interesting note is that fielding units that appear weak may in fact be helpful, as many of these units can be underestimated by the opponent, allowing them to perform better than other factors might indicate. Similarly, if a unit is not often fielded, people probably have less experience facing it and thus are less likely to react properly.

Of course this only works if you're playing against an inexperienced opponent who doesn't understand the game very well. If you're playing against someone who has studied the game carefully you're just taking a bad unit.

Even experienced players are going to be more effective at predicting what will happen with units they've faced before. Besides, even on the top tables at major tournaments, a lot of people are at a little less than their best by the time they hit their third or fourth 40k game of the day-- having potentially done the same the day before, not slept particularly well, traveled for hours to get to the venue, etc.

 Lews Therin wrote:
Playing on the laws of averages is great and wonderful at your FLGS because you might play the same people over and over (So the averages will work) in a tourney you play 3+, 5+ different players with different Armies. So your averages are pretty much skewed since your not playing against the same thing over and over again.

Nonsense. Half the armies in the game are MEQs, AV 11 vehicles are AV 11 vehicles, etc. You don't have to have the exact same opponent every game to figure out a meaningful average, especially if you're smart enough to break it up and look at averages in various common situations (for example, giving anti-tank numbers for each target AV).

To gain acurate data to even formulate "Averages" you need to run them against the same simulation dozens of time.

Or you just need to know how to do math. 40k is a game of dice, which means that calculating averages is just basic statistics.

But what about using those "underrated" units properly to win?

Why bother, when using good units properly will win more often?

also equating 40k to evolution is kinda Apples and Rocks.

You missed the point of the analogy entirely. It's not about change over time, it's about the fact that even weaker units/animals/whatever "win" occasionally if you repeat the trial enough times.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kingsley wrote:
Even experienced players are going to be more effective at predicting what will happen with units they've faced before. Besides, even on the top tables at major tournaments, a lot of people are at a little less than their best by the time they hit their third or fourth 40k game of the day-- having potentially done the same the day before, not slept particularly well, traveled for hours to get to the venue, etc.

Sure, that's a potential factor, but it isn't one you can count on. I'd much rather just bring a list with better raw power that works even if my opponent knows how everything works.

@ Peregrine

I actually do take ratling snipers, and they usually (on average) do very well for me. Then again i like and enjoy using snipers, i take a vindicare when playing GKs as well. Sniper shots are very underrated. and honestly i don't know why. They are precision shots and can with enough shots pop Warlords fairly easily. I use them with great success against Tau, Orks, IG and Space Marines. And thats just games played this past weekend off the top of my head.

And any kind of "game" isn't really going to have strategic depth. There games. But i do think that 40k offers plenty of simulated strategic value for a Hobby. and i'm sorry that you disagree.

Yes MTG gives away grand prizes of $40,000. it also is fairly cheap to pick up and easy to play, so there is a huge consumer base. the Company can afford to have $40,000 dollar prizes. Clearly i have touched a nerve here, i am sorry Peregrine.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Kingsley wrote:
One interesting note is that fielding units that appear weak may in fact be helpful, as many of these units can be underestimated by the opponent, allowing them to perform better than other factors might indicate. Similarly, if a unit is not often fielded, people probably have less experience facing it and thus are less likely to react properly.

Of course this only works if you're playing against an inexperienced opponent who doesn't understand the game very well. If you're playing against someone who has studied the game carefully you're just taking a bad unit.

I agree with Kingsley, I've seen very good IG players firing off banks of lascannon and autocannon weapons teams (9 bases worth) at a dakka pred, when the dakka pred was next to a lascannon razorback (only two tagets I had given them - I was after a valkarie on the otherside of the board!). Dakka pred was luck to survive but then the razor back took a shot at the valkarie (old rules before they could swoop around) and took it out. Dakka pred was bait to take the heat off the tank killer next to it. The lucky dakka pred then straffed the weapons team and took some of them out; but it was lucky.
This particular trick has worked several times for me, on my terms, against experienced players because everyone underestimates a single razor back. But then to pull it off you must be prepared to lose the pred and the razor back (after it has taken its shot - so there is luck in there) and you need to find the opportunity in the deployment phase. There is a lot to consider when trying to pull off a bait trick. Shooting ones are more difficult than combat ones. When yo get it wrong its just a shoot fest on both sides.

@ Peregrine

I would rather field a List that i am comfortable playing with and have fought against many, many situations so that i have a general game plan and i can then be flexible against any and every army i am paired against.

@ Jasper

Great Tactic and advice. honestly i too would have probably gone after the pred, thinking about my Leman Russ' that it could pop and totally overlook the Razor

 Lews Therin wrote:
I actually do take ratling snipers, and they usually (on average) do very well for me.

To be fair, Ratlings aren't as bad as they used to be. Monstrous creatures got a few significant buffs in 6th edition, and sniper rifles excel against high toughness targets. I still wouldn't take them, but they do have a place in a meta with many high toughness targets. Dark Eldar Venomspam is still going to make them look bad, though.

 Lews Therin wrote:
Sniper shots are very underrated. and honestly i don't know why.

Because precise shots only happen on a 6, and then you need a 4+ to wound at all and another 6 to get a rending wound that won't just bounce off armor. And then you potentially have cover/invulnerable saves, FNP, and/or LoS to reduce your chances of success even more. By the time you've brought enough snipers to get reliable results you could have just brought better guns and shot the entire target unit to death.

The Vindicare is the exception to the rule because it isn't a normal sniper weapon.

But i do think that 40k offers plenty of simulated strategic value for a Hobby. and i'm sorry that you disagree.

Why be sorry? I don't play 40k because of the deep strategy, so it costs me nothing to admit that it's a very shallow game once you get past list construction.

Yes MTG gives away grand prizes of $40,000. it also is fairly cheap to pick up and easy to play, so there is a huge consumer base. the Company can afford to have $40,000 dollar prizes. Clearly i have touched a nerve here, i am sorry Peregrine.

The point is that shallow non-competitive games don't usually have tournaments with huge cash prizes, dedicated competitive communities, etc. It might not be your favorite game, but it's absolutely absurd to say that it's "not particularly challenging" when there's a whole world of high-level competitive play you're completely ignoring.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jasper wrote:
This particular trick has worked several times for me, on my terms, against experienced players because everyone underestimates a single razor back.

That makes no sense. I wouldn't even consider ignoring the Razorback unless I didn't have any tanks I needed to protect, it's a much bigger anti-tank threat than the Predator (which is weak, its sole redeeming factor is it's dirt cheap) and is much less durable. Your opponent made a newbie mistake, and that strategy isn't going to work against someone who has a better understanding of the game.

Again Peregrine you are just full of things that i can't disagree more about. Ratling while fluffy i have found great, clearly you don't roll 6's consistantly but you hav 2 chances to completely wreck face with sniper weapons, both in the "to hit" phase and the "to wound" phase. but i don't need to go into details of why i like them or why i enjoy using them in my army.

"Why be sorry? I don't play 40k because of the deep strategy, so it costs me nothing to admit that it's a very shallow game once you get past list construction." - This comment right here is why i feel sorry my feathered friend. This is a dismal view of any game. And now i can understand the context of your comments and views.

 Peregrine wrote:

PanzerLeader wrote:
That's because tactics are never brilliant or innovative past the original use.

Of course they are. MTG, especially limited formats, has MUCH greater depth of strategy/tactics than 40k. You actually have to anticipate your opponent's plans (and, unlike in 40k, do so without complete information about what they can do), bluff/counter-bluff, improvise solutions with limited resources, etc. Even if you're re-using elements of things you've done before interesting choices happen much more frequently, and a lot more games are decided by out-playing the other person rather than just bringing a better deck and/or getting better luck.

MTG requires better risk management because of the increased friction (in this case, lack of information), but that doesn't disprove my original point. Once someone creates an original combo and plays it at a major event, it will hit the internet and become discussed ad nauseum. Players will begin constructing similiar decks and anticipating the possible combos in it. It's not brilliant and innovative once it becomes emulated.

I still think people are missing the point that has been made over and over again in this thread.

It's not that 40k requires NO tactical thinking. It's just that is doesn't require a LOT of tactical thinking. At the highest levels of play everyone know what units do what and how well. You won't be able to rely on taking kooky or rarely used units to surprise people. They already know what it does. Two equally skilled players will only be able to decide who wins a game of 40k by how optimized their lists are and how lucky they are.

I'll reiterate another point. There are hundreds of absolutely trivial tactical decisions that are all calculated automatically. Cover, range of weapons, how that landraider is turned slightly to the right...they're automatic. It's not terribly brilliant to say "I should put my unit in cover...so they have a cover save." And that's honestly about as tactical as it gets.

40k is a dice game. In dice games you try to skew the odds as best you can in your favor. That's all the tactics in 40k boil down to. What's the likelyhood that this action that I should clearly take will succeed? You create the best odds you can, and all those decisions are pretty obvious. Does that unit have cover? I use something to take the cover save away. Does that unit have an armor save? I use something that takes that armor save away. Really simple stuff. If A then B. All the minutiae of a particular scenario are either too trivial to discuss or the situation comes up so rarely that it won't ever come up in an average game of 40k.

These points have all been said before, and I haven't heard many compelling arguments to the contrary. As far as I can read, they are as follows:

1. "But this unit won me a game, and it totally wasn't optimized!" - It's a dice game. Play enough games with a crappy unit and eventually you'll get lucky.

2. "Using underrated units will catch people off-guard and cause them to make mistakes." - People who've played the game long enough know what a unit does. You may get lucky and pull the wool over someone's eyes once, at best. But if you continue playing the math will go more and more in favor of the optimized "Power" list.

So it's Luck and Listbuilding, with tactics as a trailing third. Doesn't mean you can't talk about tactics, just don't expect to go all Sun Tzu on someone with a power list and many years of experience. It won't work, especially in a game with as much transparency as Warhammer 40k.

 beerbeard wrote:
I think part of the problem is that many of us have certain tactics we love to use with certain units, so the variety of answers is not great. Also, when you ask a question about a unit, invariable the most common answer you get is, don't take it.

That said, I'm game. Based on my recent experience with Leman Russ tanks, I am thinking of running one of these:

Leman Russ Vanquisher
Lascannon
Multi-Melta Sponsons
Pask

It's a lot of points, and so I want it to be the most effective possible and last as long as possible. So, does anyone have any tactical suggestions?

Bb

To be honest I run something similar , key differences being plasma cannon sponsons and no Pask , that. Creates an extremely flexible tank for my common MEQ and TEQ meta , run them in pairs and they will do fairly well , I'm not an advocate of squadrening vehicles but I can see where it would work what I generally do with my full Mech army is put the Russ's I front of my Chimeras in order to act as a fire sink . What might be a good consideration is building you core army to operate in conjunction with your supporting units , in my case my core is 5 Vet Squads supported by 2 vanquishers, 2 Vendettas and a manticore - that for me has worked amazingly and prevents large scale issues in my MEQ meta , when you can crawl nex to cover , armor especially heavy armor of the Russ is prone to being glanced like a stolen cars paint , cover is just SS useful to mech guard as it is infantry guard

 gpfunk wrote:
I still think people are missing the point that has been made over and over again in this thread.

It's not that 40k requires NO tactical thinking. It's just that is doesn't require a LOT of tactical thinking. At the highest levels of play everyone know what units do what and how well. You won't be able to rely on taking kooky or rarely used units to surprise people. They already know what it does. Two equally skilled players will only be able to decide who wins a game of 40k by how optimized their lists are and how lucky they are.

I'll reiterate another point. There are hundreds of absolutely trivial tactical decisions that are all calculated automatically. Cover, range of weapons, how that landraider is turned slightly to the right...they're automatic. It's not terribly brilliant to say "I should put my unit in cover...so they have a cover save." And that's honestly about as tactical as it gets.

40k is a dice game. In dice games you try to skew the odds as best you can in your favor. That's all the tactics in 40k boil down to. What's the likelyhood that this action that I should clearly take will succeed? You create the best odds you can, and all those decisions are pretty obvious. Does that unit have cover? I use something to take the cover save away. Does that unit have an armor save? I use something that takes that armor save away. Really simple stuff. If A then B. All the minutiae of a particular scenario are either too trivial to discuss or the situation comes up so rarely that it won't ever come up in an average game of 40k.

These points have all been said before, and I haven't heard many compelling arguments to the contrary. As far as I can read, they are as follows:

1. "But this unit won me a game, and it totally wasn't optimized!" - It's a dice game. Play enough games with a crappy unit and eventually you'll get lucky.

2. "Using underrated units will catch people off-guard and cause them to make mistakes." - People who've played the game long enough know what a unit does. You may get lucky and pull the wool over someone's eyes once, at best. But if you continue playing the math will go more and more in favor of the optimized "Power" list.

So it's Luck and Listbuilding, with tactics as a trailing third. Doesn't mean you can't talk about tactics, just don't expect to go all Sun Tzu on someone with a power list and many years of experience. It won't work, especially in a game with as much transparency as Warhammer 40k.

+1 to everything said by gpfunk.

Just because my Fire Warriors some how manage to beat Fate Weaver and Flyrant in assault doesn't mean they are uber effective in close combat. It all comes down to luck and chance of success.

As for non-optimized units that catches opponents off guard, it's really a one trick pony. As the famous idiom goes, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."

 gpfunk wrote:
I'll reiterate another point. There are hundreds of absolutely trivial tactical decisions that are all calculated automatically. Cover, range of weapons, how that landraider is turned slightly to the right...they're automatic. It's not terribly brilliant to say "I should put my unit in cover...so they have a cover save." And that's honestly about as tactical as it gets.

40k is a dice game. In dice games you try to skew the odds as best you can in your favor. That's all the tactics in 40k boil down to. What's the likelyhood that this action that I should clearly take will succeed? You create the best odds you can, and all those decisions are pretty obvious. Does that unit have cover? I use something to take the cover save away. Does that unit have an armor save? I use something that takes that armor save away. Really simple stuff. If A then B. All the minutiae of a particular scenario are either too trivial to discuss or the situation comes up so rarely that it won't ever come up in an average game of 40k.

I think perhaps there is a terminology issues here. What your saying sounds exactly like someone whose game will never get any better, which is doubtfully true.

Your 'tactics' should always be evolving and growing. If you are not learning anything new from every game played, your game is not getting any better. That might be fine if you don't want to get better at 40k. If you want to be the best player you can be, learning from each game is mandatory!

If you don't believe me, let me give you some real-world examples of 'tactics' that I have learned in the past few months.
HellDrakes
Don't leave your helldrakes rear armor where it can be shot when you can avoid it. If your vector striking a rhino, and there are targets that draw line to the rear arc of the helldrake -- its better to just go off the board and enter ongoing reserves after vector striking.
Vector strikes are money on ADLs. They are great ways to take them out.
If someone bring a black-mace DP, vector strike it with 2 helldrakes. Problem solved. Their only defense is to keep the DP 30" from your board edge


Rhinos to Block Assault
When facing a slow moving assault unit that can destroy a rhino (MANZ after their truuk was destroyed, TH/SS termies after LR) its an effective tactic to say 12" away and double tap them with plasma. Given the charge range, its doubtful they will be able to block all the access points and block you from exiting if they assault the rhino. The rhino means your models cannot be assaulted directly.
This does not work with fast moving assault units, like beasts. In those cases you want to get out early so your rhino is not completely surrounded and wrecked.


GUO placement
Since you get a 5+ cover save when shooting through units, I have been putting the GUO right behind my plague marines on foot. Shooting at the GUO gives a 3+ cover save! The tactic here is to take advantage of the 'shrouding'.
The strategy behind this is to cover a weakness of my PMs -- rapid moving dedicated assault units like DE beast packs. The placing of the GUO behind the PMs is a tactic.


Fateweaver
Fateweaver, when grimoired, has a 35/36 chance of saving. You can just park him on top of an objective and watch him annoy the hell of your opponent who can't kill him. This is highly effective when there are 2-3 objectives. You don't even need to swoop -- just sit on the objective and blast with 2 witchfires per turn.
Your opponent will probably assault him -- but that's fine. Fatey is still camping that objective and keeping it secure.


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 SabrX wrote:
Just because my Fire Warriors some how manage to beat Fate Weaver and Flyrant in assault doesn't mean they are uber effective in close combat. It all comes down to luck and chance of success.

As for non-optimized units that catches opponents off guard, it's really a one trick pony. As the famous idiom goes, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."

Catching your opponent off guard is great against mid-tier opponents, but don't plan on this working against seasoned opponents (An exception being a new codex. You will get a few months of WTF as you clobber someone)

Using Fire Warriors to out-assault fatey is not a tactic, it was crazy luck. Using TL drones to force grounding checks before shooting with your fire warriors is.

good examples. Things that might seem obvious when you read them but are of course learned things that make you better when you actually observe them in real play. And some of these lessons are hard earned over time. Not everyone recognizes their own mistakes right away and talking about the fundamental things like this is good.

 Jancoran wrote:
good examples. Things that might seem obvious when you read them but are of course learned things that make you better when you actually observe them in real play. And some of these lessons are hard earned over time. Not everyone recognizes their own mistakes right away and talking about the fundamental things like this is good.

School of hard knocks is the best way to learn. When I make a critical mistake in a game, its something I don't forget.
I always bring my iphone with me to tourneys. I take pics of all my games (I try for 2 per turn) After each tourney I will review the pics and ponder what I did wrong, and what I could have done better.

And your right, hindsight is 20/20.
Now it makes perfect sense to never leave a helldrake where a psyfleman can draw a rear shot to it, but at the time I was thinking "Now if I vector strike the rhino I can burn the acolytes inside!".

In regards to the OP, that's the kind of stuff thats in small supply on this forum.

Yeah, say what some will, I find that the fundamental simple truths are the ones that cost games.

Like for example im discusing Creed on another thread. Someone made the point that much of his bubble is lost off theback board edge, and I thought to myself: "So...don't put him there when it matters?" Lol.

Some say Stingwings are terrible because they get killed too easily in the open. So i think to myself "so...use them on an obscured flank? Wait til theres wreckage and bounce them behind it on DS?"

A lot of people really miss out on playing opportunities and fun units and for what? A glittering generality thats only true when the General has a brain fart? Pointing out the worst possible scenario as some reason not to do something is defeatist thinking.

So I like simple truths. We should start a thread on it. Like this:

1. When the enemy is more powerful than you are, run. If you cannot run, angle so that the enemy attack will leave them vulnerable and your lives will not be wasted. If necessary and you have the firepower, forego shooting to maximize the enemies exposure to the next turns fire or just their distance away fro mthe rest of the force or objectives.

2. When the enemy can outshoot you, deploy only what is NOT vulnerable to that shooting. Let the clock mitigate the damage they can do to you. Let the clock lower the value of units they chose.

3. The game length is not infinite. the board is not infinite. Don't plan as if they were. Don't argue on forums as if they were,

4. Things will die. Pointing out how you might kill something is pointless. When and where it dies is usually more important. If it dies where it should and when it should, then you've lost nothing.

=)

PanzerLeader wrote:
MTG requires better risk management because of the increased friction (in this case, lack of information), but that doesn't disprove my original point. Once someone creates an original combo and plays it at a major event, it will hit the internet and become discussed ad nauseum. Players will begin constructing similiar decks and anticipating the possible combos in it. It's not brilliant and innovative once it becomes emulated.

I'm not talking about big things like a brilliant new combo to build a deck around, I'm talking about the small things like "do I attack with this creature or not". MTG, especially in limited formats, is full of complex and interesting decisions that make 40k's look like a joke, and those decisions still exist and are interesting even if someone has made them before.

 Lews Therin wrote:
Again Peregrine you are just full of things that i can't disagree more about. Ratling while fluffy i have found great, clearly you don't roll 6's consistantly but you hav 2 chances to completely wreck face with sniper weapons, both in the "to hit" phase and the "to wound" phase. but i don't need to go into details of why i like them or why i enjoy using them in my army.

You can like them, but the math disagrees with you. Which goes back to the original point: there's no reason to waste time discussing tactics for using ratlings when people still don't understand list-building concepts like doing the math on ratlings and realizing that they don't belong in your list at all.

"Why be sorry? I don't play 40k because of the deep strategy, so it costs me nothing to admit that it's a very shallow game once you get past list construction." - This comment right here is why i feel sorry my feathered friend. This is a dismal view of any game. And now i can understand the context of your comments and views.

How is it dismal? Do you think that, for example, D&D players are all miserable because their game is about roleplaying instead of brilliant tactical decisions?

 Jancoran wrote:
Like for example im discusing Creed on another thread. Someone made the point that much of his bubble is lost off theback board edge, and I thought to myself: "So...don't put him there when it matters?" Lol.

Oh good, let's bring the argument here too.

Creed goes on the back edge because that's where you put fragile support units that you want to have alive for more than a turn or two. And putting him closer to the enemy just means that more of your bubble is wasted out beyond the front of your army instead of out the back.

Some say Stingwings are terrible because they get killed too easily in the open. So i think to myself "so...use them on an obscured flank? Wait til theres wreckage and bounce them behind it on DS?"

Because that's less efficient than just bringing fire warriors/crisis suits/etc.

A lot of people really miss out on playing opportunities and fun units and for what?

Sorry, but we're talking about how to win, not how to have fun. Fun is subjective and different for each person, if you think a unit is fun just put it in your list, there's no point in discussing it with anyone else.

It's not that 40k requires NO tactical thinking. It's just that is doesn't require a LOT of tactical thinking. At the highest levels of play everyone know what units do what and how well. You won't be able to rely on taking kooky or rarely used units to surprise people. They already know what it does. Two equally skilled players will only be able to decide who wins a game of 40k by how optimized their lists are and how lucky they are.

Disagree completely. I will say that the majority of people who play 40k either play for fun and don't care or simply aren't good. This holds true at local events (and even GTs). There are people who just show up with lists that you know won't win. The reason people bring these lists is usually a combination of not understanding the game/tactics, wanting to bring what they find fun/cool, or just not owning what they want to bring.

There are also lots of "good" players that understand the game well enough, yet who don't make top tables or win events. The difference I've found between these players and the ones that consistently win are the little things. These little things may seem "gamey", but they are tactical and important. Things like end game strategy, deployment, target priority, and the whole movement phase in general are areas where the great players separate from the good players.

To deny that there is a level of strategy that most players will never reach is laughable. It's also why players stagnate. Thinking that there isn't more for you to learn is arrogant at best.

I'm not arguing that 40k is the cleanest or most competitive game ever conceived. However, I do find it funny that we have know-it-alls who claim the game is entirely list building based, but that never win anything. That type of thinking mirrors a certain player with a blue blog. Funny that he never wins either..

 labmouse42 wrote:
Words Words Words

Aside from the insults, intended or not, all the tactics that you have outlined are part of the extremely low skill ceiling of 40k. Don't show rear armor on a vehicle? Isn't that one of the first tactics you learn if you ever have vehicles? Blocking assaults with rhinos? Sounds like a fancy form of mobile bubble wrapping which is also something you learn within the first ten games you play. GUO and using the cover rules...I feel like this is another thing that's almost a no brainer. Shroud plus intervening unit equals profit. And finally placing a hard to handle unit on an objective is well within the grasp of even the newest of scrubs.

Your skill can only evolve so far. Eventually you hit the ceiling (and it ain't that high) and you find yourself using the same thing that proved effective before. Over and over. Eventually everyone knows and is doing it. Then how can you improve? Why, by list building of course!

Seems that only the people who claim that 40k is entirely strategy with no list building are the ones throwing the insults around.

Once again, everyone seems to have missed the point. 40k isn't a game that is entirely lacking in tactical thinking, it just doesn't require a whole hell of a lot. After you master the basic mechanics the most effective way to improve your game is to improve your list. Let's put it in bold so people won't forget: It's not that 40k doesn't require smart tactics, it's just less important in the grand scheme of things than having a solid list to build your foundations on.


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 JGrand wrote:
Many words

Once again. It's not that the game is entirely based on list building. You just put yourself at a disadvantage by not optimizing your list to maximize your odds of success.

All the tactics you've talked about simply improve your odds of doing something useful. I don't claim to be the final say on any and all things tactical in 40k. I'm saying that no one in this thread has stated any sort of maneuver that has been completely knew or revolutionary to me. I'm not even close to the best or most experienced player and yet all these things are within my grasp of the game. I've played around 20 games of 5th edition and around 30 games of 6th. That's fairly green given the grand scheme of things. I'd claim that, while I don't know every single minuscule tactic and trick, I know the ones that are the most useful for improving the odds in a dice game.

And that's what it'll always be.

Luck > List Building > Tactics. In that order.

Lists are important, and good lists are a prerequisite to reliable success, but good play is more important. Again, there's a reason that you see certain players repeatedly at the top of GT standings, using a variety of codices, and often using books and unit combinations which are NOT raved about or listed at the top of folks' "most broken unit" opinion polls. It's skill. Pure and simple. It's not luck, and it's not just figuring out an objectively most powerful list and riding it until the next strong codex supplants it.

 Peregrine wrote:

PanzerLeader wrote:
MTG requires better risk management because of the increased friction (in this case, lack of information), but that doesn't disprove my original point. Once someone creates an original combo and plays it at a major event, it will hit the internet and become discussed ad nauseum. Players will begin constructing similiar decks and anticipating the possible combos in it. It's not brilliant and innovative once it becomes emulated.

I'm not talking about big things like a brilliant new combo to build a deck around, I'm talking about the small things like "do I attack with this creature or not". MTG, especially in limited formats, is full of complex and interesting decisions that make 40k's look like a joke, and those decisions still exist and are interesting even if someone has made them before.

This really sounds like you've plateaued as a player. Either you're naturally very talented at the game and will regularly win and place high at big events if you start attending them, or you're one of those guys who's better than the locals he normally faces, hasn't had to learn more advanced play, and has concluded that it doesn't exist.

I used to play tournament magic as well, and IME the games are more similar in this regard than different. In both games, with experience you will learn how to pilot a given deck or army so that many of your basic decisions are automatic, and it's when you're up against an unusual army/deck and/or unusually good opponent that you have to think more. In both cases it's also when luck goes against you that you have to improvise and adapt. Magic has the added variety of a vast array of cards to learn and combine. 40k has varied terrain to adapt to. Magic decks can be built to achieve different win conditions, but 40k has that in the form of missions.

 Mannahnin wrote:
This really sounds like you've plateaued as a player. Either you're naturally very talented at the game and will regularly win and place high at big events if you start attending them, or you're one of those guys who's better than the locals he normally faces, hasn't had to learn more advanced play, and has concluded that it doesn't exist.

I haven't concluded that it doesn't exist, you just keep over-simplifying my argument. My point is that:

1) "Advanced" play is usually incredibly situational and doesn't make good discussion. The correct decision depends on the exact details of a given scenario, and those details are unlikely to be the same for anyone else. Since the topic was about the emphasis of forum discussion rather than "does 40k have tactics" this is a very relevant factor.

2) For most people list building is more important than improving subtle details of tactics. Yes, I'm sure there are high-level tournament players who are the exception to the rule, but the average person asking "what should I arm my Sentinels with" is going to get way more benefit from fixing their list problems than anything else.

And TBH, if I had the time and money to invest in competitive 40k and cared enough to do it, I suspect that I would do well in tournaments. But it's not worth it for the fun, and it's certainly not worth it for the tiny prizes.

In both games, with experience you will learn how to pilot a given deck or army so that many of your basic decisions are automatic, and it's when you're up against an unusual army/deck and/or unusually good opponent that you have to think more.

Even if the decisions are being made on instinct once you've got a lot of experience the decisions are still more interesting. And a big part of that is because of the hidden information. With MTG you don't know your opponent's deck contents (you might be able to guess most of it as the game progresses, but you can't be 100% sure) and you don't know what's in their hand. So the "what if" decision trees get a lot more complex and you really have to out-think your opponent. With 40k, on the other hand, everything is out in the open. There are no surprises, so it's a lot easier to figure out what your opponent's obvious goal is and take appropriate actions to counter it.

And of course this applies even more to limited formats. Constructed might have more autopiloting and favor metagame analysis and deck construction, but limited formats are extremely demanding skill-wise. The decisions involved in a sealed deck tournament are far, far more interesting than anything 40k has to offer. Not only do you have huge amounts of hidden information you also have to improvise your entire strategy based on the cards you get, and you're much more likely to have to figure out a solution out of sub-optimal tools and use creative thinking to make it work.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Mannahnin wrote:
This really sounds like you've plateaued as a player. Either you're naturally very talented at the game and will regularly win and place high at big events if you start attending them, or you're one of those guys who's better than the locals he normally faces, hasn't had to learn more advanced play, and has concluded that it doesn't exist.

I haven't concluded that it doesn't exist, you just keep over-simplifying my argument. My point is that:

1) "Advanced" play is usually incredibly situational and doesn't make good discussion. The correct decision depends on the exact details of a given scenario, and those details are unlikely to be the same for anyone else. Since the topic was about the emphasis of forum discussion rather than "does 40k have tactics" this is a very relevant factor.

2) For most people list building is more important than improving subtle details of tactics. Yes, I'm sure there are high-level tournament players who are the exception to the rule, but the average person asking "what should I arm my Sentinels with" is going to get way more benefit from fixing their list problems than anything else.

I can agree with most of that. I will say that I don't think I'm over-simplifying your argument so much as you've oversimplified your argument a couple of times, and there do seem to be a couple of other posters who have agreed with the over-simplified and bad version of your argument.

I do believe there are general-use but non-obvious tricks and applications of positioning and maneuver which can be described and applied in a repeatable fashion. I maintain that the reason you don't see them discussed much is mostly because it's a lot of work to diagram and describe them. Ben Mohlie wrote some darn good articles on for BoLS, and Mike Brandt's posted a couple of excellent ones on his blog, showing several such advanced maneuvers..

 Peregrine wrote:
And TBH, if I had the time and money to invest in competitive 40k and cared enough to do it, I suspect that I would do well in tournaments. But it's not worth it for the fun, and it's certainly not worth it for the tiny prizes.

For my money, it''s significantly more enjoyable than competitive magic, and part of that is because of the smaller prizes. You encounter fewer dicks, IME, in part because no one's in it to try to win thousands of dollars. They're in it for bragging rights, to show off and check out sweet models, and for the love of the game. Not to say that there aren't great sports and creative deckbuilders in Magic. There certainly are. But IME the balance of player types in big 40k events is more slanted toward guys I enjoy playing a game and having a beer with.

 Peregrine wrote:

In both games, with experience you will learn how to pilot a given deck or army so that many of your basic decisions are automatic, and it's when you're up against an unusual army/deck and/or unusually good opponent that you have to think more.

Even if the decisions are being made on instinct once you've got a lot of experience the decisions are still more interesting. And a big part of that is because of the hidden information. With MTG you don't know your opponent's deck contents (you might be able to guess most of it as the game progresses, but you can't be 100% sure) and you don't know what's in their hand. So the "what if" decision trees get a lot more complex and you really have to out-think your opponent. With 40k, on the other hand, everything is out in the open. There are no surprises, so it's a lot easier to figure out what your opponent's obvious goal is and take appropriate actions to counter it.

And of course this applies even more to limited formats. Constructed might have more autopiloting and favor metagame analysis and deck construction, but limited formats are extremely demanding skill-wise. The decisions involved in a sealed deck tournament are far, far more interesting than anything 40k has to offer. Not only do you have huge amounts of hidden information you also have to improvise your entire strategy based on the cards you get, and you're much more likely to have to figure out a solution out of sub-optimal tools and use creative thinking to make it work.

"Interesting" is a question of taste and personal preference, of course. The flip side to the intrigue of hidden information is that sometimes you're literally just guessing. 40k does have some hidden information as well, of course (this is part of why Reserves and Deep Strike are valuable), but you're right that it's much less. I agree that limited formats (I love draft) are wonderfully fun and challenge both one's improvisational skills and one's knowledge of the set. But even there you do go in with certain strategies in mind and fundamental assumptions and preferences you're working with.

 Mannahnin wrote:
For my money, it''s significantly more enjoyable than competitive magic, and part of that is because of the smaller prizes. You encounter fewer dicks, IME, in part because no one's in it to try to win thousands of dollars. They're in it for bragging rights, to show off and check out sweet models, and for the love of the game. Not to say that there aren't great sports and creative deckbuilders in Magic. There certainly are. But IME the balance of player types in big 40k events is more slanted toward guys I enjoy having a beer with.

See, this is what I'm talking about when I say 40k is a shallow game: the fact that you CAN succeed by taking things fairly casually. Compare this to the level of effort required to get good enough at MTG to succeed in major tournaments. You're talking about countless hours of playtesting every detail of every matchup over and over again, never even considering throwing in a "fun" card that hasn't been thoroughly tested and optimized, etc. If you show up to a major event without that level of preparation you've got very little chance of winning because you simply won't understand the game as well as the players who did prepare.

On the other hand, that skill threshold just doesn't exist in 40k. You can show up with your "fun" army, have a few beers while you play, and still play well enough to win. The tactical questions are simple enough that you don't have to make 40k a full-time job to master them.


(I'll agree to disagree on the "which is more fun" thing. Personally I'd rather play MTG if I'm going to play a game competitively, but that's just subjective preference.)

You don't have the beers during the game if you want to win vs. a good player. You've gone back to claiming that there is no depth or advanced skill, which isn't true, and is probably something you write due to inexperience. The amount of effort, practice, and skill needed to win a big 40k event is comparable to that required to win a Magic event of around the same number of players.

A good Magic player can play Magic just as well after a couple of beers as a good 40k player can play 40k.

 Mannahnin wrote:
You don't have the beers during the game if you want to win vs. a good player. You've gone back to claiming that there is no depth or advanced skill, which isn't true, and is probably something you write due to inexperience. The amount of effort, practice, and skill needed to win a big 40k event is comparable to that required to win a Magic event of around the same number of players.

I didn't say there's no depth or advanced skill, I said there's less depth and advanced skill.

You said it's "a shallow game", which most folks will take to mean no depth, as shallow is the opposite of deep. Your second paragraph was kind of all over the place; I'm not sure whether you were talking about casual games, local tournaments, or big GTs in there. The context seems to suggest you mean such a casual approach can work even at big events, which I don't think is a claim you can defend.

As I've been out of the circuit for a while, perhaps you can get me up to speed on high-level Magic play as it currently stands. How many Magic players make it their full-time job? How many of them are forced to do so to master the game's tactical intricacies? What percentage of big events are won by guys for whom it is their full-time job?

 Mannahnin wrote:
You said it's "a shallow game", which most folks will take to mean no depth, as shallow is the opposite of deep.

Shallow is a relative term, not an absolute one. 40k is relatively shallow compared to other games, but that's not the same as having no depth at all.

Your second paragraph was kind of all over the place; I'm not sure whether you were talking about casual games, local tournaments, or big GTs in there. The context seems to suggest you mean such a casual approach can work even at big events, which I don't think is a claim you can defend.

But you just said that a casual approach can work, and that one of the reasons you prefer 40k tournaments to MTG tournaments is that you don't have the WAAC players doing everything they can to win lots of money. You can show off your cool models, play a game and have a beer with your friends, etc. That's describing something a lot like casual weekly FLGS tournaments in MTG, not high-level competitive play.

Just to give some context to this: when you're preparing for an event how many playtesting games do you play with your army against each archetype of opposing army you expect to encounter?

As I've been out of the circuit for a while, perhaps you can get me up to speed on high-level Magic play as it currently stands. How many Magic players make it their full-time job? How many of them are forced to do so to master the game's tactical intricacies? What percentage of big events are won by guys for whom it is their full-time job?

I don't know the specifics of how many people literally make it a full-time job, but it seems like the big events are usually won by people who are members of MTG teams. And I don't know about all teams, but as I understand it the average team spends a lot of hours preparing for each event. It might not be a literal 40-hour-a-week job, but it's certainly at least a part-time job and done very seriously and professionally, not just a few guys hanging out and playing fun games every thursday night.

Okay Peregrine these are a few, just a few of the posts you have put up just on this thread the last few days:

"40k is fun because of the awesome models, the background fiction, etc. If I want a game of deep strategy I'm going to play something else."

"I'd rather spend it on playing MTG where the prizes are better. 40k is the game I play because I like the models and setting, keeping up with the tournament metagame for tiny prizes just isn't worth it."

"MTG, especially limited formats, has MUCH greater depth of strategy/tactics than 40k"

"Once you reach a (fairly low) skill threshold the most important thing you can do to win more frequently is to improve your list."

"[C]oming from MTG I find the idea that 40k has lots of strategic depth absurd because MTG has way more complex and interesting decisions to make."

"I don't play 40k because of the deep strategy, so it costs me nothing to admit that it's a very shallow game once you get past list construction."

"MTG, especially in limited formats, is full of complex and interesting decisions that make 40k's look like a joke"

"And TBH, if I had the time and money to invest in competitive 40k and cared enough to do it, I suspect that I would do well in tournaments. But it's not worth it for the fun, and it's certainly not worth it for the tiny prizes."

"Personally I'd rather play MTG if I'm going to play a game competitively, but that's just subjective preference"

There are dozens more just like these, Peregrine i really don't mean for this to delve down to a personal level, But you clearly do not Enjoy or Value Tournement Play and added to this is the fact that by your own admission you don't play in them and you really don't want to. All you are doing is arguing for the sake of arguing. Now honestly i have no problem going round and round with you on this subject. Hell i have 8 hours here at work with nothing but forms to fill out. So i am Game. But this is not a tread about MTG or a discussion on MTG. Frankly if i wanted to discuss MTG i would talk to my 12 yr old Brother. But i don't.

This being said your original thoughts about List-Building versus Tactical on Board Moves was stimulating and enjoyable. But since then you have moved the discussion into a written fight about MTG being in YOUR own opinion better then 40k. And while that is your prerogative and your right. This thread is not about that, and the OP wasn't even close to being on that Topic.

So while i enjoyed your wit and and your vigor in your previous opinions, I Personally find that you are not only Rude to Others and very Condescending to the Game of 40k. Now i could be wrong but i am sure there are sites where you can post about the Glories of MTG but Last Time i checked, this isn't the place.

Kind of a waste to be on a tactics forum if your point is to advocate that tactics effectively is a non-issue.

I'm just saying.

For my part, I've seen how small the margin can be for victory and how seldom lists mattered in the end. The list certainly sets you up not to have a mismatch you can't handle and it allows you to flex the plan you've got... But no plan means you lose anyways. I promise.

If you define a plan as "I will roll dice and my dice will represent more powerful stuff than your dice" well... You're in for it.

The list is important. Who can say it isn't? But to try to state that strategy (not to be confused with tactics) and tactics dont matter much in comparison is to say that there is no such thing as a good General or that Generals win on paper. I don't buy that.

 Jancoran wrote:
The list is important. Who can say it isn't? But to try to state that strategy (not to be confused with tactics) and tactics dont matter much in comparison is to say that there is no such thing as a good General or that Generals win on paper. I don't buy that.

Of course there's such a thing as a good general. But the debate here is over how much being a good general in 40k matters relative to bringing a better list than your opponent.


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 Lews Therin wrote:
This being said your original thoughts about List-Building versus Tactical on Board Moves was stimulating and enjoyable. But since then you have moved the discussion into a written fight about MTG being in YOUR own opinion better then 40k. And while that is your prerogative and your right. This thread is not about that, and the OP wasn't even close to being on that Topic.

First of all, I didn't say that MTG was better than 40k. I said that MTG is a deeper game than 40k. That is not at all the same thing, since 40k has other enjoyable things to offer even if its strategic depth is limited.

Second, you're missing the point of why MTG entered the discussion. The point is to put "tactical depth" in context by comparing 40k's depth to the depth found in other games, and MTG is the one I'm most familiar with. And it's an entirely relevant counter to posts about "40k has lots of decisions" to point out that 40k's decisions are less interesting than the ones found in other games.

So while i enjoyed your wit and and your vigor in your previous opinions, I Personally find that you are not only Rude to Others and very Condescending to the Game of 40k. Now i could be wrong but i am sure there are sites where you can post about the Glories of MTG but Last Time i checked, this isn't the place.

Oh, the poor game of 40k. Maybe instead of complaining about how I'm being "condescending" to an inanimate object you should go look where I said that I enjoy 40k (you even quoted at least one instance), just not because of its tactical depth?
Because it's pretty absurd that you're acting like I just hate 40k and want to insult it every time I get the chance, when in reality I love the game and have spent vast amounts of time and money on it. And it wasn't because I enjoy being miserable and playing bad games.

Also, last time I checked, you're not a moderator. Please don't try to tell me what I can and can't say here.

Excellent topic!

I've been playing GW games on and off since the late 1980's. I'm also a professional programmer with 15+ years of programming under my belt. It is quite interesting that there seem to be a consensus on this game being "shallow" compared to chess, because while I could probably build a chess program that consistently beat most members of this forum in a few days, building one that beat you at wh40k would probably be beyond my current skill at programming. Certainly there is no lack of complexity!

In my experience GW games are notoriously unbalanced both internally within a codex and externally compared to other codices. Currently this means using the "right" codex and exploiting that codex becomes a key skill for competitive play. Usually there are only a few "good" builds per codex. This combined with the fact that in competitive play you are always on equal footing (same number of points, "standard" terrain density, table sides has the same amount of cover etc) really limits the number of tactical situations you are likely to encounter.

Personally I like to mix competitive play with a more gamemastered approach where the game is not necessarily fair and where someone put some thought into the lists and terrain to offer interesting tactical options (and a good storyline!). Both styles are fun but I find in the competitive case the challenge is mostly to come up with a strong list, while in the second you dig into the on table tactics trying to make odd units work together on an unexpected battlefield.

Oh, and I also agree battle reports are the best foundation for discussing on table tactics! Context is everything and on paper any (balanced) unit has a hard counter.

zoat wrote:
I've been playing GW games on and off since the late 1980's. I'm also a professional programmer with 15+ years of programming under my belt. It is quite interesting that there seem to be a consensus on this game being "shallow" compared to chess, because while I could probably build a chess program that consistently beat most members of this forum in a few days, building one that beat you at wh40k would probably be beyond my current skill at programming. Certainly there is no lack of complexity!

But you can only build that chess program by using a brute-force solution that depends on having raw processing power far beyond what a human can do. We're talking about depth for human players, not depth for computer analysis.

@ Peregrine

Yes you have said that MTG was better and that you would rather spend your money, time, and (debatable) talent on it, than 40k. I of course am paraphrasing and distilling the hogwash of your regular inane comments because you tend to talk in Circles.

We weren't discussing the many decisions of 40k we were saying that 40k had a wealth of Tactical in Game decisions and Strategies. and YOU brought up MTG as a more Deep and Strategic Game that offered YOU more as a player. All of these are your opinions that you have stated very plainly the last couple of pages and Posts:

"in reality I love the game and have spent vast amounts of time and money on it" - Your Last Post about 40k ??? which is funny considering these previous Posts

"And TBH, if I had the time and money to invest in competitive 40k and cared enough to do it, I suspect that I would do well in tournaments. But it's not worth it for the fun, and it's certainly not worth it for the tiny prizes."

'I'd rather spend it on playing MTG where the prizes are better. 40k is the game I play because I like the models and setting, keeping up with the tournament metagame for tiny prizes just isn't worth it."

ABOVE are your thoughts and views, they are very Contradictory to what you are saying now. Also per your previous comments on just this Thread you come off as a miserable person who doesn't win or even play many games. Outside of apparently MTG ??? Now i don't know you personly falco peregrinus, but i would caution you with the same advice "[D]on't try to tell me what I can and can't say here."

Just a quick side note I agree with Jancoran that Creed does offer a ton more options to a 2000 point or More IG army.

zoat wrote:
Certainly there is no lack of complexity!

Complexity =/= depth. The programming required to simulate all the potential movement and shooting is incredibly high, but from the player's perspective it's not a lot different whether they're moving 3" and shooting or moving all the different numbers between 0 and 6".

The tactical depth of 40k is limited by the list building process some what. The units aren't balanced so it's very easy to spam things that are incredibly strong and still do well, even without much knowledge. The knowledge required to do well isn't particularly hard to obtain either. Sure there are some people who are very good with unusual lists, but they're just skipping the first order optimal strategy approach of having unbalanced units within their army and thinking more about it.

Note: I am not a game designer, nor a programmer. I merely took a games design module at undergrad level for course credits.

 Lews Therin wrote:
Yes you have said that MTG was better and that you would rather spend your money, time, and (debatable) talent on it, than 40k.

I said I would rather spend the time and money if I am going to play competitively. Seriously, read before posting, the fact that I would rather play MTG and win real money if I'm going to spend dozens of hours a week playtesting obsessively doesn't mean that I don't enjoy playing 40k in a less competitive context.

We weren't discussing the many decisions of 40k we were saying that 40k had a wealth of Tactical in Game decisions and Strategies. and YOU brought up MTG as a more Deep and Strategic Game that offered YOU more as a player. All of these are your opinions that you have stated very plainly the last couple of pages and Posts:

I brought it up to put the "wealth in tactical in game decisions and strategies" that 40k has is pretty disappointing compared to other games.

 gpfunk wrote:
Aside from the insults, intended or not, all the tactics that you have outlined are part of the extremely low skill ceiling of 40k.... And finally placing a hard to handle unit on an objective is well within the grasp of even the newest of scrubs.

I was not trying to insult. Go back and read again, and I was inferring that there was a communication problem, and your probably not an unskilled player.
While you have inferred that all the things lately I have learned are 'low ceiling', I don't take offense. I don't think I'm a 'low ceiling', or 'scrub' player.

 gpfunk wrote:
Your skill can only evolve so far. Eventually you hit the ceiling (and it ain't that high) and you find yourself using the same thing that proved effective before. Over and over. Eventually everyone knows and is doing it.

If your playing the same small group of guys using the same armies -- then the limit of tactics you can use will be reached. If your playing in RTT with 20 people on a regular basis, or GTs with 60+ players on a regular basis, then your pool of players is much greater. In those cases your ceiling of 'tactics' will be much greater.
One's tactics should also grow when a new codex comes out. Your 'tactics' will change with a new edition of the game. Heck, your 'tactics' can evolve with a new FAQs.

I expect your in the first case. You have played with your social network and are playing the same armies. The only difference that you guys are using are different builds of the same army, but have reached that plateau. If that's the case, I suggest attending an event like Adepticon or NOVA. Its quite refreshing to see the game on a national level.

 gpfunk wrote:
Seems that only the people who claim that 40k is entirely strategy with no list building are the ones throwing the insults around.

Of course list building is important. Please don't make a straw man arguement. (Unless you can point out people who think list building does not have any relevance)
I am arguing that there are tactics you can learn has a high ceiling -- you are arguing that the ceiling on tactics is fairly low. That's the crux of it.

 gpfunk wrote:
It's not that 40k doesn't require smart tactics, it's just less important in the grand scheme of things than having a solid list to build your foundations on.

There is no doubt that list building is important, but even a moderate list in a skilled player will win over a 'top list' in the hands of an moderate player. If the 'tactics' or 'skill' of this game was as low as you infer, this would not be the case.

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Reds8n

 labmouse42 wrote:
If that was the case, why are people (like the ones I listed above) about to attend events with lists that would describe as 'meh' online -- yet win with them? I posted OrdoSean's DE/Eldar list on this forum -- and multiple people scoffed at it. OrdoSean took that list and won Templecon with it.

This isn't actually a compelling argument. The fact that people scoffed at a list doesn't mean that it was a case of a skilled player winning with a weak list, it's also possible that the scoffers were simply wrong and the list was actually a powerful one. It would hardly be the first time that people have dismissed something and then found out later that it's much better than they thought.

And also, I should point out that high-level competitive play and the tactics forum (the OP that started it) are far from the same thing. Skill and tactics may be more important at a very high level, but generally this forum isn't dealing with expert players looking to fine-tune their tactics. The majority of posts are either newbies fumbling around with terrible lists or experienced players looking to start something new, and in both of those cases list optimization is going to produce greater rewards for a given amount of effort than trying to improve skill/tactics.

I realized that after I posted it Peregrine -- it was not properly adding to my point, therefore I removed it. You 'quoted' it after I removed it

 Peregrine wrote:
The majority of posts are either clueless newbies fumbling around with terrible lists or experienced players looking to start something new, and in both of those cases list optimization is going to produce greater rewards for a given amount of effort than trying to improve skill/tactics.

You have a good point here. As I mentioned earlier, I think there is a 'definition' issue here. What kind of 'tactics' are we discussing here? Is it 'new player tactics', or 'competitive player tactics'.

One of the best tools to help teach 'tactics' to new players are youtube videos. There are a wealth of them out there for 5th edition. Perhaps someone would be willing to share his deep understanding of 'tactics' and make some with 6th edition in mind. We could ask them to be placed in the stickies at the top of this forum.

Edit : It does not change the crux of my last post -- I think 40k a high ceiling of tactics. Others think it has a low ceiling.

@peregrine
@griddlelol

Fair points both of you!

For sure. Complexity is not the same as depth!

A good example would be the huge range of weaponry in wh40k. After the first 20 or so guns each additional type of gun adds very little to the tactical aspect of the game.

Still the multitude of options each turn is what would make it difficult to program a bot. The hard part being getting the individual units to cooperate according to a common plan. I also think this is what makes it really hard for a human player to play a "perfect" game. I know for sure I still always make mistakes each game.


An interesting question is what do we mean by "depth" when comparing games?

I read a blog post on this topic a while back. Unfortunately I can't seem to find it now... However the main idea was that good game design is to make sure the decisions a player makes has a big impact on the game outcome. Forcing player decisions on matters that does not have a big impact is then bad game design. A game where you constantly have to make "big" decisions was then considered to be a "deep" game. Opinions?

The "big" decision for me when playing 40k is to decide the game plan for the army as a whole. If you decide already when you design your list how the army should play then I guess most of the big decisions are made at list making and fewer during actual play. This is quite common I think. Like a gunline for example. If your list is designed to be able to execute multiple game plans you make more of these "big" decisions at the table.

I have a feeling this is also why we often hear how good players win with "weak" lists. The list is considered "weak" because it is not optimized for a single game plan (typical netlist?), but if fact it is actually strong because the player can adapt to the current game. Just a guess...

I guess the same goes for individual units. A single purpose suicide unit is trivial to play. A multipurpose unit require more skill and thought at the table. A big problem I think is that many multipurpose units are generally not good enough at anything for competitive play.

Once again. It's not that the game is entirely based on list building. You just put yourself at a disadvantage by not optimizing your list to maximize your odds of success.

All the tactics you've talked about simply improve your odds of doing something useful. I don't claim to be the final say on any and all things tactical in 40k. I'm saying that no one in this thread has stated any sort of maneuver that has been completely knew or revolutionary to me. I'm not even close to the best or most experienced player and yet all these things are within my grasp of the game. I've played around 20 games of 5th edition and around 30 games of 6th. That's fairly green given the grand scheme of things. I'd claim that, while I don't know every single minuscule tactic and trick, I know the ones that are the most useful for improving the odds in a dice game.

And that's what it'll always be.

There are limits to what you can do in a game, sure. That doesn't mean that because you know what the opponent is capable of in theory, you are always going to make the right move.

In addition, while it is about mitigating dice rolls and knowing what you have the odds to accomplish, you need to know what to do when things start going wrong. Great players can pull out a win using strategy, movement tricks, and end game moves.

I don't doubt that in 50 games, you can be a "good" player. However, I think it's laughable that someone who doesn't go to tournaments and GTs seems to think they have almost reached the pinnacle of skill. Go to a GT and get back to me. Things often look different once you leave a small pond. I can tell you definitively that there is a higher level that separates "good" from "great" players.

If you want to talk specific tactics, that largely depends on specific armies and builds. However, there are general things that can improve one's game. There is always something to learn. Again, head to a GT with your meanest list. If the game is luck and listbuilding based, you should have no problem reaching the top bracket

Mannahnin wrote:This really sounds like you've plateaued as a player. Either you're naturally very talented at the game and will regularly win and place high at big events if you start attending them, or you're one of those guys who's better than the locals he normally faces, hasn't had to learn more advanced play, and has concluded that it doesn't exist.

Or perhaps I have seen a game with 100% transparency, where every unit and weapon is a controlled variable with a certain amount of success. It could be the fact that you view 40k as some sort of Napoleonic game of tactics while I think it's actually a very visually interesting gambling simulator. I'm allowed to theorize beyond my immediate circumstances. I theorize with the raw mathematics and averages of the game while you theorize with tournament results (which I would argue are extremely based on luck situations like list-match up, disparity in player experience, etc.). I don't think there has been a tournament yet where everyone has been equally skilled and the only difference has been the lists.

labmouse42 wrote: I expect your in the first case. You have played with your social network and are playing the same armies. The only difference that you guys are using are different builds of the same army, but have reached that plateau. If that's the case, I suggest attending an event like Adepticon or NOVA. Its quite refreshing to see the game on a national level.

Point taken on the insults. I withdraw my early statement with my apologies. It's certainly possible that you can stagnate playing the same people over and over. But when those people are equally or more skilled than you (which is what I expect I would find at a GT) and have a very good grasp of the game...how much tactical flexibility do you have? How often can you pull the wool over someone's eyes? There are no real ways to use unexpected maneuvers in 40k like there are in Warmachine. Casters can make models move up to 20" non-linearly and have them assault and then move into another assault. Stuff like that is pretty much impossible in 40k. I'd say my experience with how Warmachine works informs my opinions on 40k. Warmachine gives you much more room for creativity, and the play supports it. I'd say 40k play supports bring the most powerful lists and then playing the odds, because that has been my experience.

I will also point out that at least one tournament player, Sabr-x, has agreed with my points before. Just dig through the post and you can find it. You can knock my credentials, but you certainly can't knock his.

There is no doubt that list building is important, but even a moderate list in a skilled player will win over a 'top list' in the hands of an moderate player. If the 'tactics' or 'skill' of this game was as low as you infer, this would not be the case.

I actually think that what I am inferring is, since the skill ceiling is so accessible, if two players at the peak of 40k experience and play have a fight, their battle will be decided by luck and list-building. In an experiment where the two know all the tricks and all the unit stats, there's no room for clever technique because it'll be seen and countered. I think that luck and list-building would have the final say in 40k's ultimate test of 'skill.' I will grant you that this sort of thing means that both players must have an extreme knowledge of tactics. I'm trying to prove that in the end 40k is a game with limited variables, and thus limited tactics. The play can only get as good in the end as the list.

The experiment would be 10,000 matches with whoever won more than half being declared the winner. One plays an optimized power list, the other plays a non-optimized list. The two players are of equal skill. The result of this experiment would determine if, on average, list building is more important than tactics in a game where the most important of tactics are easily accessible.

JGrand wrote:
There are limits to what you can do in a game, sure. That doesn't mean that because you know what the opponent is capable of in theory, you are always going to make the right move.

In addition, while it is about mitigating dice rolls and knowing what you have the odds to accomplish, you need to know what to do when things start going wrong. Great players can pull out a win using strategy, movement tricks, and end game moves.

This is the most compelling argument so far. Good players know what to do in the face of poor luck. But wouldn't it still come down to taking actions to maximize your odds of success? If luck is against you wouldn't you still be better off playing the best odds you can? Your actions are something that can be decided based on a few variables like objectives, turn number, number of units left, amount of killing weapons left.

I don't doubt that in 50 games, you can be a "good" player.

I agree with your point about the fact that 50 games can make you good but not great. That's why I quoted this.

However, I think it's laughable that someone who doesn't go to tournaments and GTs seems to think they have almost reached the pinnacle of skill.

I think it's laughable that someone believes you can't theorize about something you've never actually seen/experienced yourself. Guess every space program in the world ought to shut down! In all seriousness, 40k has variables that are set. Most everything in it is set. Movement, range, when or not you can assault. With something so set out and transparent it's very easy to see how someone could draw conclusions without tournament experience.

And on this forum, you don't need direct tournament experience to draw even better conclusions. You can check out the Battle Reports forum and see hundreds of test games. From what I have seen, a lot of tournament wins involve as much luck as they do skill.

Go to a GT and get back to me. Things often look different once you leave a small pond. I can tell you definitively that there is a higher level that separates "good" from "great" players.
If you want to talk specific tactics, that largely depends on specific armies and builds. However, there are general things that can improve one's game. There is always something to learn. Again, head to a GT with your meanest list. If the game is luck and listbuilding based, you should have no problem reaching the top bracket

Is this sort of like the "Pics or it didn't happen" thing that goes around the internet? I think useful information can come from theory. If you don't then I think you'd have a problem with a lot of these forums considering a great many of them are based on theorycraft and math-hammer.

That second point of yours would be valid if I was of an equal skill as most top tournament players. Most of my points involve people of equal skill at the top of their game. So if I have somehow insinuated that I am the best 40k player in the world then I apologize, I am not. I only suggest that the tactical ceiling is low.

So summing up, I still think there is stuff for ME to learn, I just haven't found it yet in my searching. Even if I don't find it in the next hundred games...or even two hundred, the ceiling would still be much lower than other games that are made specifically with tactical depth in mind.

I played competitive MTG for a few years and I play competitive 40k. The biggest difference I see between the two is that MTG has a much larger customer base and therefore a much higher rate of attendance at events. I would hardly say the game has more depth. It is too different from 40k to easily compare. In both games however, luck, list-building and strategy are all factors. I'd also say that in both games list-building > strategy > luck. That being said, I do think that a great player with a less-optimized list will generally beat an average player with a fine-tuned list, at least that is how I have seen it play out in my experiences.

Another thing people aren't really thinking about too much in here is the use of "rogue" decks/army lists. When I played MTG I would often bring rogue decks that I knew would counter popular builds seen at my store, or the local "meta". This is where the element of surprise, or exploiting an opponent's ignorance comes in and I think it can be a pretty good way to gain an upper hand. I know that I have played people in 40k who had off kilter lists (Alex Fennell) who then gave me a really difficult game because of the nuances and relations between their units that I could not simply gauge by looking at the army-list. So while having a perfectly fine-tuned list is great, I do believe at times it is advantageous to bring something that may take others by surprise.

Ohh and one final comment that bothered me. Peregrine said something along the lines of competitive MTG players spending tons and tons of time playtesting. Competitive 40k players do the exact same thing. I know if I have an event to go to, I practice a bunch and I make sure to play-test myself against the match-ups I believe I will run into the most or that I am the most worried about.

zoat wrote:

For sure. Complexity is not the same as depth!

A good example would be the huge range of weaponry in wh40k. After the first 20 or so guns each additional type of gun adds very little to the tactical aspect of the game.

Still the multitude of options each turn is what would make it difficult to program a bot.

You really think it would be hard to program a 40k player? I don't. I think there's an illusion of having lots of options, but in reality, you can reduce them to one-three good options per unit per turn. Consider movement. The illusion is that you can move anywhere within X inches of your current location. But the reality is that most of those moves can quickly be discarded. The important options are; Move towards opponent, Move towards objective, Move away from opponent, Move towards Cover or Don't Move. For each of these basic concepts, it's then fairly easy to determine an optimal direction and distance to achieve that concept.

What's more, each unit gets to make that choice, rather than in Chess, where you get one move, total. A chessbot has to pick one move out of thousands. A 40k bot would need to pick 10 moves out of maybe 60 - the others could be quickly reduced and discarded as sub-optimal.

I think that in many ways, the decision making tree for 40k is much simpler than for chess. For one thing, there are fewer individually movable pieces in most games. Barring the transport-heavy end of 5th ed, it's typically been rare to see a game of 16 units vs 16 units (And transports are an illusion of extra units, as in most cases, 'stay in transport' was the choice to make there). And, there's a max depth to consider as well. 40k has a turn limit that chess doesn't have. Programming a computer to evaluate positions eight turns in the future isn't unreasonable in chess, but it's irrelevant in 40k. Not only that, but I know that I typically don't consider more than two turns in the future in 40k, because the dice rolling aspect of the game rewards fluidity more than just out-thinking. Most turns, and especially shooting and assaulting phases, it's preferable to maximize returns in the current phase than to plan for a couple of phases in the future.

I terms of programming the bot, I think the hardest part would be managing deployment (which is essentially setting up your strategy for the game). Once that's done, you're just maximizing the odds that it pans out, and computers can be very good at that.

This is the most compelling argument so far. Good players know what to do in the face of poor luck. But wouldn't it still come down to taking actions to maximize your odds of success? If luck is against you wouldn't you still be better off playing the best odds you can? Your actions are something that can be decided based on a few variables like objectives, turn number, number of units left, amount of killing weapons left.

Sure, there are limits in what you can do within the confines of the game. However, knowing what exactly to do isn't always so clear cut. It is easy to figure out whether or not I should charge unit X into unit Y based on dice odds. However, what does unit X do when it's done with that combat? Where does it need to be the next turn, or three turns from now? There is a larger scope than just unit v. unit variables. Lots of players either fail to keep the big picture in mind or can't learn to do so.

I think it's laughable that someone believes you can't theorize about something you've never actually seen/experienced yourself. Guess every space program in the world ought to shut down! In all seriousness, 40k has variables that are set. Most everything in it is set. Movement, range, when or not you can assault. With something so set out and transparent it's very easy to see how someone could draw conclusions without tournament experience.

Yes, you can talk about something you have never seen or experienced. However, your opinion will often be less correct than someone who actually has experienced these things. I can sit back and criticize NFL quarterbacks for bad plays, because I understand the NFL in theory. At the same time, I've never played football besides simple pickup games. So, there are nuances that perhaps I don't see or realize. I may throw my hands up after an interception and ask why a qb didn't see a safety breaking on a pass. I can understand that the qb should have looked off his target or pump faked. But until I've actually been there, I don't know exactly how hard that can be.

My analogy is similar to long tourneys and GTs. There are streams and bat reps of tourney games, and great players make mistakes in those games. While they understand "in theory" what to do, it is far different to actually play and have to make split second decisions under time constraints.

And on this forum, you don't need direct tournament experience to draw even better conclusions. You can check out the Battle Reports forum and see hundreds of test games. From what I have seen, a lot of tournament wins involve as much luck as they do skill.

Luck is important. If I roll all 1's and my opponent rolls all 6's, I will probably lose no matter what. That doesn't happen though. People love to blame luck when it goes against them and discount it when it helps them. In my experience, most games tend to even out. That isn't to say that every roll is statistically average, but that good luck early is often countered by below average luck later.

Is this sort of like the "Pics or it didn't happen" thing that goes around the internet? I think useful information can come from theory. If you don't then I think you'd have a problem with a lot of these forums considering a great many of them are based on theorycraft and math-hammer.

I'm saying that if you find yourself thinking that 40k is a shallow game, I would probably play in bigger pools of people before decisively making that claim. And yes, forums are full of theory. Theoryhammer is fun and fine, but it doesn't make one an expert. There is a ton of bad theory on here. Sometimes, I find it near impossible to reply to people because their theory is so abstracted from reality. Most players still think transports are awesome and mandatory and that Nids are trash to name some examples. Theory is not as substitute for experience.

That second point of yours would be valid if I was of an equal skill as most top tournament players. Most of my points involve people of equal skill at the top of their game. So if I have somehow insinuated that I am the best 40k player in the world then I apologize, I am not. I only suggest that the tactical ceiling is low.

Again, how do you know? Have you played with some of the better players, or is this just more theory? I can tell you that there is a definite jump in skill level.

So summing up, I still think there is stuff for ME to learn, I just haven't found it yet in my searching. Even if I don't find it in the next hundred games...or even two hundred, the ceiling would still be much lower than other games that are made specifically with tactical depth in mind.

I still go back to my point--find a bigger pool. I learn far more in the games I lose than the ones I win. You do stagnate if you play people who aren't challenging you. I'd suggest going to big events and seeing if you still feel the same.

Really interesting thread for sure. I am mostly a WHF player, ever was, ever will be but it seems some people here mixed tactics and overall strategy up a lot. Listbuilding is more the strategy part of the game while accomplishing it is the more tactical part. From a more theoretical point of view the tactical depth is a bit limited in 40k while the strategical part is what counts the most.
In WHF the most important part of the game is the deployment. No matter how good your list is, if you make mistakes during deployment it's pretty much good game before the first turn even started.
Discussing tactical stuff is - as others said - pretty hard since those decisions are made on the fly so to say and most of them are if/then decisions. So discussing lists TAC or friendly FLGS lists are the thing to go. Write a list, discuss how it would perform and optimize it. Another way might be trying to go with an odd list and try to play the mindgame but that requires pretty deep understanding of the game and quick accomplishment of that because good players will realise what's going on pretty fast. For example I run some kind of green tide in WHF with my orcs and I got told it wont work since my army lacks of killing power. I havent tried it on a big tournament yet but for now it worked quiet good. Since you just get KPs for wiped out regiments I try to get in cc with all my huge regiments while on mobile and one killy regiment trys to snag some KPs. When my opponent knows what my plan/strategy is things getting hard pretty fast but most of them dont see a treat in my list since it is very far from the cookie-cutter lists. I dont know how good such mindgames are possible in 40k but in WHF it's possible.

 JGrand wrote:

Sure, there are limits in what you can do within the confines of the game. However, knowing what exactly to do isn't always so clear cut. It is easy to figure out whether or not I should charge unit X into unit Y based on dice odds. However, what does unit X do when it's done with that combat? Where does it need to be the next turn, or three turns from now? There is a larger scope than just unit v. unit variables. Lots of players either fail to keep the big picture in mind or can't learn to do so.

That all becomes part of the calculation though. It's not only in a unit v unit vacuum that knowing the odds is useful. You just add in the odds of that unit either tying combat and staying locked or winning it outright through sweeping advance or sheer wound amount. See Red's post above as to thinking turns ahead. I think he made a very good point. The larger scope is really a large odds of success calculation, but at that point the calculation is "What are my odds of winning the game?" I think the highest level of play has people that do this calculation every turn and after every action. But the tactics would still remain relatively simple to achieve that goal, I think.

Yes, you can talk about something you have never seen or experienced. However, your opinion will often be less correct than someone who actually has experienced these things. I can sit back and criticize NFL quarterbacks for bad plays, because I understand the NFL in theory. At the same time, I've never played football besides simple pickup games. So, there are nuances that perhaps I don't see or realize. I may throw my hands up after an interception and ask why a qb didn't see a safety breaking on a pass. I can understand that the qb should have looked off his target or pump faked. But until I've actually been there, I don't know exactly how hard that can be. My analogy is similar to long tourneys and GTs. There are streams and bat reps of tourney games, and great players make mistakes in those games. While they understand "in theory" what to do, it is far different to actually play and have to make split second decisions under time constraints.

Fair and well illustrated point. For some reason the way you phrased it this time around really clicked. Most particularly the part about nuances. General theory is, more often than not, proven correct. Examples of this would be shoot the choppy units and chop the shooty units or bubble wrap your vulnerable backfield support units to avoid deep striking and fast moving units. But I think the problem there is with all these subtle nuances, how would it be best to discuss them on here? Wouldn't those subtleties be so hard to explain to newer players or so rare in terms of the situation that they'd be less than useful to the grand majority? It's been said before but I think this is another reason why list building advice is more often given than tactical advice. It's easier to say that you should have more of unit X and explain it well than it is to say unit X should have done this when the third moon is high and the wind is blowing easterly.

Luck is important. If I roll all 1's and my opponent rolls all 6's, I will probably lose no matter what. That doesn't happen though. People love to blame luck when it goes against them and discount it when it helps them. In my experience, most games tend to even out. That isn't to say that every roll is statistically average, but that good luck early is often countered by below average luck later.

I think that's generally true as well, luck evening out in terms of who rolls 6's when. But part of what luck is is WHEN those high rolls occur. If I have had decent luck all game and all I have to do is kill a single terminator model in the middle of the table without cover, that's when I really want things to go statistical or in my favor. It's bad luck if all twenty of those plasma shots I put towards that one model either miss or get pinged off the invulnerable. That's what I see in many tournament reports. I see everything going to plan, where someone has put the best odds they can on a situation, and then the dice dump on them, either losing them a major victory or losing them any victory.

It rare for luck to go completely one sided as you said, but luck has a more proportional effect on certain specific circumstances. I don't take any count on people who complain about their dice all game, but I do take note when their luck had been going well and all of a sudden a terminator absorbed twenty plasma shots and lived.

I'm saying that if you find yourself thinking that 40k is a shallow game, I would probably play in bigger pools of people before decisively making that claim. And yes, forums are full of theory. Theoryhammer is fun and fine, but it doesn't make one an expert. There is a ton of bad theory on here. Sometimes, I find it near impossible to reply to people because their theory is so abstracted from reality. Most players still think transports are awesome and mandatory and that Nids are trash to name some examples. Theory is not as substitute for experience.

Again, how do you know? Have you played with some of the better players, or is this just more theory? I can tell you that there is a definite jump in skill level.

I still go back to my point--find a bigger pool. I learn far more in the games I lose than the ones I win. You do stagnate if you play people who aren't challenging you. I'd suggest going to big events and seeing if you still feel the same.

I took a moment to read your blog and you seem like a very seasoned player yourself, so I honestly think i'll take you up on your advice. I'll scrape some money together and take some time off work to play in tournament and see what it's all about. I've always wanted to try it out just because it seemed like tournaments were a fun social gathering as well as a place to compete. Maybe i'll find that you're correct, that certain nuances of play that are useful every game and i'd been missing them. And maybe i'll find that statistics, a power list, and an application of the simpler strategies will carry the day. Either way it'll be an experience.

That all becomes part of the calculation though. It's not only in a unit v unit vacuum that knowing the odds is useful. You just add in the odds of that unit either tying combat and staying locked or winning it outright through sweeping advance or sheer wound amount. See Red's post above as to thinking turns ahead. I think he made a very good point. The larger scope is really a large odds of success calculation, but at that point the calculation is "What are my odds of winning the game?" I think the highest level of play has people that do this calculation every turn and after every action. But the tactics would still remain relatively simple to achieve that goal, I think.

You are correct in identifying overall meta tactics of the game. For instance, I know how my army functions and what I want to do with it. Generally, if I play enough games, I know what my opponent can do and wants to do. However, that doesn't mean that games always go the same way. People make good and bad choices. People make expected and unexpected ones. The key is how you respond in a limited amount of time.

Fair and well illustrated point. For some reason the way you phrased it this time around really clicked. Most particularly the part about nuances. General theory is, more often than not, proven correct. Examples of this would be shoot the choppy units and chop the shooty units or bubble wrap your vulnerable backfield support units to avoid deep striking and fast moving units. But I think the problem there is with all these subtle nuances, how would it be best to discuss them on here? Wouldn't those subtleties be so hard to explain to newer players or so rare in terms of the situation that they'd be less than useful to the grand majority? It's been said before but I think this is another reason why list building advice is more often given than tactical advice. It's easier to say that you should have more of unit X and explain it well than it is to say unit X should have done this when the third moon is high and the wind is blowing easterly.

Again, I'd agree with you here. General theory is accepted lots of the time because it has been shown in many instances. As for the nuances, you bring up a great point. It is really, really had to explain, identify, and even always show these subtle gamey things. And they are less useful to the general populace because, as you stated, becoming a "good" player really doesn't involve all of this.

I suppose that is why tactics discussions are often about lists and general stuff. It is far easier to correct and explain bad lists and general tactics. It is also exponentially more helpful. The subtle stuff is really best learned through actual games or battle reports IMO.

I think that's generally true as well, luck evening out in terms of who rolls 6's when. But part of what luck is is WHEN those high rolls occur. If I have had decent luck all game and all I have to do is kill a single terminator model in the middle of the table without cover, that's when I really want things to go statistical or in my favor. It's bad luck if all twenty of those plasma shots I put towards that one model either miss or get pinged off the invulnerable. That's what I see in many tournament reports. I see everything going to plan, where someone has put the best odds they can on a situation, and then the dice dump on them, either losing them a major victory or losing them any victory.

It rare for luck to go completely one sided as you said, but luck has a more proportional effect on certain specific circumstances. I don't take any count on people who complain about their dice all game, but I do take note when their luck had been going well and all of a sudden a terminator absorbed twenty plasma shots and lived.

Sure, there are big and small instances of luck going one way or the other. Sometimes, these instances make or break games. I suppose that is why luck is a big factor. At the same time, you just have to do your best to not end up in those situations. I had a game at an event in which I needed to kill 1 model to force a tie on objectives (I would win on tiebreakers). I pumped the "statistically correct" amount of shots into the model, but it didn't die. In hindsight, I should have shifted another unit back to shoot the model as well (and I could have). I didn't though. I made a bad choice end game and it cost me. Would the other units shooting have won me the game? Maybe, maybe not. Would it have given me a greater chance? Absolutely.

You are correct in identifying luck, but lots of games have luck involved. There are top tier poker players who consistently do well despite it being a very luck based game. Warhammer can be the same way.

I took a moment to read your blog and you seem like a very seasoned player yourself, so I honestly think i'll take you up on your advice. I'll scrape some money together and take some time off work to play in tournament and see what it's all about. I've always wanted to try it out just because it seemed like tournaments were a fun social gathering as well as a place to compete. Maybe i'll find that you're correct, that certain nuances of play that are useful every game and i'd been missing them. And maybe i'll find that statistics, a power list, and an application of the simpler strategies will carry the day. Either way it'll be an experience.

I don't claim to be the be all to end all of 40k. I haven't won a GT, but I do well enough at local events and have played with plenty of good players. When I first got back into 40k in 5th edition, I played with a group of 4 guys. While some are good players, there was a skill level that I maxed out at because I played with these players almost exclusively. When I moved, I played some different people, including some players who do well at big events. I can tell you that while the things I picked up on didn't fundamentally change my game, there were small things that I didn't think about (and never saw on forums).

I'd imagine that you have a good feel for 40k. Maybe you happen to be incredible at it, I don't know. At the same time, the best way to find out is by playing others. I used to be really awesome at Halo 2, and destroyed people on my campus network and even small local events. I got a chance to play Halo 2 with some kids training for MLG, and was completely worked. I'm not saying that you are a big fish in a small pond--you might not be. However, it is hard to know unless you jump into the bigger pond. It may change your opinion, it may not.

 gpfunk wrote:
Point taken on the insults. I withdraw my early statement with my apologies. It's certainly possible that you can stagnate playing the same people over and over. But when those people are equally or more skilled than you (which is what I expect I would find at a GT) and have a very good grasp of the game...how much tactical flexibility do you have? How often can you pull the wool over someone's eyes?

Thanks for the apology. Polite discussions are always more productive than flame wars.

There is a lot of tactical fexability when your playing armies that your not playing every day. There are over 700 units in the game (I recently counted, don't ask). This means knowing how all 700 units interact with yours can be extremely difficult. Its very possible that someone has not played a unit type and is not aware of its full implications. Last year at BFS, I 'ran' a swooping FMC. My opponent, who is a brilliant 40k mind, completely forgot that you could 'run' a swoping FMC 2d6 inches. This let the FMC contest and objective he was trying to secure.

 gpfunk wrote:
I will also point out that at least one tournament player, Sabr-x, has agreed with my points before. Just dig through the post and you can find it. You can knock my credentials, but you certainly can't knock his.

There are experts who agree in both categories. Sadly that makes using expert X not a strong point in arguements. A better question would be 'What percentage experts view the ceiling of skills on tactics to be easily accessable?' Take a look at global warming. 2% of the experts may think global warming is not man-man, but when 98% of the experts assist that it is man-made, then the odds are we are responsible for global warming.... In the same way, we can't pick one expert out, right?
So far I've counted three people on this thread that play in competitive tourneys who think that the ceiling is not easily accessible. LValx, Mannahnin, and myself.

 gpfunk wrote:
since the skill ceiling is so accessible

Again, we disagree on this assessment. If the games were decided by luck and list-building, why has Tony Kopach won the last 3 NOVA events in a row?
I am, for example, attending NOVA this year. I will be bringing an optimized list, reviewed by server tourney winners. Others will be doing the same. The reason is simple, if your paying hundreds of dollars in hotel and airfair, your going to bring the best you can! If games are decided by luck and list-building, then we can knock off list-building as a factor, as the vast majority of people will have optimized lists. This means, according to your criteria, that its just luck.

If that's the case, then that means that Tony would have a 0.78% of winning 7 games in a row and win NOVA. What are the odds that Tony managed to win 3 NOVAs in a row? 0.004768372% (about one in 21,000). Either Tony Kopach is remarkably lucky man, or tactics plays more of a role than your giving credit for.

 labmouse42 wrote:

There is a lot of tactical fexability when your playing armies that your not playing every day. There are over 700 units in the game (I recently counted, don't ask). This means knowing how all 700 units interact with yours can be extremely difficult. Its very possible that someone has not played a unit type and is not aware of its full implications. Last year at BFS, I 'ran' a swooping FMC. My opponent, who is a brilliant 40k mind, completely forgot that you could 'run' a swoping FMC 2d6 inches. This let the FMC contest and objective he was trying to secure.

I guess the big thing here is most players who aren't 100% sure about a unit will ask, and you're required to divulge the information. Bet if you tried that again that opponent would remember that and take measures to counter it. This is an example of "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

There are experts who agree in both categories. Sadly that makes using expert X not a strong point in arguements. A better question would be 'What percentage experts view the ceiling of skills on tactics to be easily accessable?' Take a look at global warming. 2% of the experts may think global warming is not man-man, but when 98% of the experts assist that it is man-made, then the odds are we are responsible for global warming.... In the same way, we can't pick one expert out, right?
So far I've counted three people on this thread that play in competitive tourneys who think that the ceiling is not easily accessible. LValx, Mannahnin, and myself.

Definitely not trying to say one expert is better than another. My points were coming into question based on my credentials. I offered up someone who had far better credentials than me as backing my idea, validating it to some extent. I was making sure people weren't brushing off the argument because I myself haven't attended any GTs.

Again, we disagree on this assessment. If the games were decided by luck and list-building, why has Tony Kopach won the last 3 NOVA events in a row?
I am, for example, attending NOVA this year. I will be bringing an optimized list, reviewed by server tourney winners. Others will be doing the same. The reason is simple, if your paying hundreds of dollars in hotel and airfair, your going to bring the best you can! If games are decided by luck and list-building, then we can knock off list-building as a factor, as the vast majority of people will have optimized lists. This means, according to your criteria, that its just luck.

If that's the case, then that means that Tony would have a 0.78% of winning 7 games in a row and win NOVA. What are the odds that Tony managed to win 3 NOVAs in a row? 0.004768372% (about one in 21,000). Either Tony Kopach is remarkably lucky man, or tactics plays more of a role than your giving credit for.

In this circumstance, bringing an optimized list is the only way to break even against the other players at the event. The only way to level the playing field odds. List building is still an enormous factor, but only insofar as it gives you a fighting chance. Then, this is when 'skill' comes in. But it only comes after the list building is as solid as it can be. Since it takes precedence, I rank it higher in terms of importance. You can't begin to think about your tactics until you have a solid bunch of units to back it up.

I don't know Tony K. and I didn't watch any of his games. He could've gotten lucky in a great many ways that would help him secure a victory. Table terrain, types of opponents, types of armies...they could've gone his way to help him secure a victory. I'd simply ask this question: Does Tony K build gimp lists?

Does he take Flash Git spam? How about an ork army made up entirely of grot mobs with a few Killa Kans as his only Anti Tank? I can only assume that he takes strong lists with strong units that he knows how to use. While they may not be 100% optimized they probably give him enough of a foundation so that he can 'outskill' players that have less experience than him. I'd say his list was a very large part of him winning, probably more than 1/3, closer to 1/2.




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 JGrand wrote:


Sure, there are big and small instances of luck going one way or the other. Sometimes, these instances make or break games. I suppose that is why luck is a big factor. At the same time, you just have to do your best to not end up in those situations. I had a game at an event in which I needed to kill 1 model to force a tie on objectives (I would win on tiebreakers). I pumped the "statistically correct" amount of shots into the model, but it didn't die. In hindsight, I should have shifted another unit back to shoot the model as well (and I could have). I didn't though. I made a bad choice end game and it cost me. Would the other units shooting have won me the game? Maybe, maybe not. Would it have given me a greater chance? Absolutely.

You are correct in identifying luck, but lots of games have luck involved. There are top tier poker players who consistently do well despite it being a very luck based game. Warhammer can be the same way.

You didn't make a mistake though. You played the odds to the best of your abilities. In that instance, your luck failed you. If you set up the situation in such a way that the model should have died, then you didn't make a mistake. In hindsight you consider it a mistake that you didn't put in more than the statistical amount, but you had a more than reasonable chance and assumption that your actions would breed success. In fact, in hindsight pretty much anything could be considered a mistake. I pumped 20 plasma shots into a terminator and it lived...if only I had brought one more plasma gun, if only I had one more unit there, etc. Given all the other conditions on the battlefield it's possible that you couldn't bring any other weapons to bear because it would have jeopardized other actions on the board, and thus your chance of success. Then again, we're arguing a vague battlefield where we don't know the exact conditions. Long and short of it is that if you play things to the statistics and they don't average out for you, it's crap luck. Then it'd be a sort of skill to shuffle around units to try and rectify this straying from statistics.

I don't claim to be the be all to end all of 40k. I haven't won a GT, but I do well enough at local events and have played with plenty of good players. When I first got back into 40k in 5th edition, I played with a group of 4 guys. While some are good players, there was a skill level that I maxed out at because I played with these players almost exclusively. When I moved, I played some different people, including some players who do well at big events. I can tell you that while the things I picked up on didn't fundamentally change my game, there were small things that I didn't think about (and never saw on forums).

I'd imagine that you have a good feel for 40k. Maybe you happen to be incredible at it, I don't know. At the same time, the best way to find out is by playing others. I used to be really awesome at Halo 2, and destroyed people on my campus network and even small local events. I got a chance to play Halo 2 with some kids training for MLG, and was completely worked. I'm not saying that you are a big fish in a small pond--you might not be. However, it is hard to know unless you jump into the bigger pond. It may change your opinion, it may not.

This I agree with. Hence why I said I would probably be doing so. Or at least moving around and trying to find more local games outside my own area.

 gpfunk wrote:
I guess the big thing here is most players who aren't 100% sure about a unit will ask, and you're required to divulge the information. Bet if you tried that again that opponent would remember that and take measures to counter it. This is an example of "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

My point was sometimes people forget to even ask. In that game Mannahnin did not ask "Can that FMC run?" because he forgot they could! As I mentioned, Mannahnin has one of the best 40k minds I've encountered. If you could have a Ph.D in 40k knowledge, he would be a doctor! If he can forget something like that, anyone can. We are human.

 gpfunk wrote:
Definitely not trying to say one expert is better than another. My points were coming into question based on my credentials. I offered up someone who had far better credentials than me as backing my idea, validating it to some extent. I was making sure people weren't brushing off the argument because I myself haven't attended any GTs.

That's a very reasonable point. Not attending GTs does not disqualify your thoughts and opinion. I do strongly suggest attending some for a multitude of reasons. To give a little backstory - I was the "big fish" at my old FLGS, and had stagnated in my skills. Since moving to New England, my 40k skills have increased considerably due to the quality and number of players I've encountered.

 gpfunk wrote:
Then, this is when 'skill' comes in. But it only comes after the list building is as solid as it can be. Since it takes precedence, I rank it higher in terms of importance.

Were in agreement on this. List building is a critical part of the game. Tony brings excellent lists. The point is others do as well, so the quality of list is nearly a non-issue.
You just said the word "skill". Do you remember when I said I suspect were having a definition issue? I expect that when I'm speaking of 'tactics', I'm thinking of something you are thinking of as 'skill'.

 labmouse42 wrote:

 gpfunk wrote:
I will also point out that at least one tournament player, Sabr-x, has agreed with my points before. Just dig through the post and you can find it. You can knock my credentials, but you certainly can't knock his.

There are experts who agree in both categories. Sadly that makes using expert X not a strong point in arguements. A better question would be 'What percentage experts view the ceiling of skills on tactics to be easily accessable?' Take a look at global warming. 2% of the experts may think global warming is not man-man, but when 98% of the experts assist that it is man-made, then the odds are we are responsible for global warming.... In the same way, we can't pick one expert out, right?
So far I've counted three people on this thread that play in competitive tourneys who think that the ceiling is not easily accessible. LValx, Mannahnin, and myself.

I don't think the skill ceiling is all that high. Whether it's "easily accessible" - well, that I don't know. I know that there are people who have played the game for less than a year with tournament wins against old veterans. It's hard to quantify what's required for someone else to learn something that you already know. I can run most stats in my head. Knowing that it's going to take three turns to get your guys from point A to point B isn't hard, but keeping your mind on the idea that they need to be at point B by turn 5 might be for some.

I also think that there are some skills that some people choose not to master. That doesn't mean it's hard to master them if someone chooses to. I've never put any time into learning how to stall effectively. I've never spent any time practicing how to roll dice. Back when it mattered, I never dedicated any time to learning how to estimate distances really well. It could be argued that any of the above could have increased my winning percentage. It could also be argued that some of those skills constitute cheating. Does that mean that they're not used?

If the games were decided by luck and list-building, why has Tony Kopach won the last 3 NOVA events in a row?

Not to restart a large debate over this, but if I recall correctly, weren't there some concerns raised about some of his wins?

I've played many of the "top players", and without naming names, I've seen some of the ones who place highly do questionable things in games. I've watched as important die rolls were made 'rolling off the side of the hand'. I've seen difficult terrain rolls 'forgotten', and measurements made from the wrong places. Sometimes, I've caught it at the time. Other times, my opponent has played an army I wasn't overly familiar with and only realized it after looking it up. I've seen "top players" stall for time, walking away from the table to take a phone call even. I've seen "top players" chipmunk other's sportsmanship scores. I've seen all manner of shady tricks from "top players". Heck, I remember one tournament where my opponent talked me out of my last turn by insisting that I went first. At some point, it's just easier not to argue anymore.

I've also played top players who did none of these things and were as straight-up and honest as can be.

I believe that there's a skill to playing this game, and there's a skill to making the right decisions during the game. But it's a game with dice and often-times poorly written rules. I believe there's also a skill to being willing to argue just a little longer than your opponent, to being able to call for cover saves incorrectly, and, unfortunately, to being able to get the 5 or 6 when needed.

When a tournament consists of two solid days of gaming, and essentially seven or eight elimination games (right, one loss and you're out of the running at Nova?), I don't see play skill alone explaining how one player essentially runs off 21 wins in a row. And when each of the videoed finals shows some manner of 'questionable' behaviour, it begs the question, what happened in the other 18 games? Think about that. 18 straight wins, in competitive games. The dice never went cold? His opponent's dice never went hot? Not once?

If games are decided by luck and list-building, then we can knock off list-building as a factor, as the vast majority of people will have optimized lists. This means, according to your criteria, that its just luck.

There are two flaws in your argument here. First, you're assuming that everyone's optimized lists are equal. Not really trying to pick on Tony too much, but you're holding him up as an example, so try and follow me here. Nova's an event that draws players from across the country. Tony's local. Tony's friends with the TO. Is it possible that Tony has a better understanding of what sort of terrain to expect? I can optimize a list for a tournament where I expect minimal terrain (ling-range shooting heavy), and I can optimize a list for a tournament where I expect city-fight-esque terrain density (short range shooting and/or assault), and these two lists will look completely different. If you assume that Tony has the most optimized list at the tournament, and others have less optimized lists, it throws off the math below.

I think the second logical error is believing that play skill has zero impact. At any event that's GT sized, you're going to have poor players as well as top players. The first few rounds should see player skill be a factor. But as you progress into the field, and poorer players move into the losers bracket, play skill is going to even out and be less of a factor, and that's where I think you start to see the play-skill cap come into effect.

In all of the games that I've played against "top players", I don't think that play skill has been the deciding factor in any of them. I've lost (and won) games on luck. I've lost and won games due to Rock-paper-scissors list issues. I've lost games due to, shall we call it, gamesmanship. But I don't think there's been a game that I've lost or won against a "top player" that's been decided by in game decisions.

That's not saying play skill is definitively not a factor. I've won plenty of games that I should have lost on paper by outplaying my opponent. But none of those against someone I'd consider a "top player".

I wasn't at Nova, and I want to be clear, I'm not accusing Tony of cheating. I am stating a fact when I say that some of his taped games drew some controversies, (and I'm sure that I could dig up appropriate citation links if I bothered) but I have no stance on any of it personally. Clearly he's a good player because he has won 21 games in a row at Nova. I just find that to be somewhat improbable. Not based on such extreme probabilities as you posited, but based on the fact that many of those games had to be against other people who had made it past day one, obviously having both decent lists and play skill. Even sixteen or nine wins in a row under those conditions, in a game where luck is a factor, strikes me as odd.

Strategy and tactics aren't the same which I was mentioning in my last post and i think that strategy in particular is the part that REALLY doesn't get the attention It deserves.

Do you think it safe to say that there are really THREE things to look at here? List,m strategy and Tactics?

 labmouse42 wrote:

Then, this is when 'skill' comes in. But it only comes after the list building is as solid as it can be. Since it takes precedence, I rank it higher in terms of importance.Were in agreement on this. List building is a critical part of the game. Tony brings excellent lists. The point is others do as well, so the quality of list is nearly a non-issue.
You just said the word "skill". Do you remember when I said I suspect were having a definition issue? I expect that when I'm speaking of 'tactics', I'm thinking of something you are thinking of as 'skill'.

Sorry, I must've missed that amongst the point and counter point what with all the quoting. Tactics are specific maneuvers used to gain an advantage in game. Skill is a generic term for ability to play 40k. Using tactics is a skill. Being skillful doesn't necessarily mean being tactical. Someone could probably be very skillful at the game by making sure to always premeasure distance to the nth degree and overall being very meticulous with movement. Being tactical would involve using specific maneuvers like the ones you mentioned earlier...not showing rear armor, using vehicles to block assault, etc.

Are we on the same page? I think that there is a small pool of specific maneuvers (tactics) that can be used in game to garner you any sort of useful advantage. All other new/unique maneuvers either give you only a minuscule advantage not worth mentioning or give you no practical advantage at all. As a result, I believe the skill ceiling is low in terms of using tactics.


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 Jancoran wrote:
Strategy and tactics aren't the same which I was mentioning in my last post and i think that strategy in particular is the part that REALLY doesn't get the attention It deserves.

Do you think it safe to say that there are really THREE things to look at here? List,m strategy and Tactics?

I think strategy really comes in during list building. If your overall strategy is to overwhelm your opponent with threats, then you will pump your list full of fast moving vehicles and units. If it is to hunker down and defend your home objectives whilst punishing the opposition, then you will have a list with many static, shooty units.

The other time strategy comes in is during deployment. You'll only ever have a limited, maximum amount of inches that any unit can move and consequently that means that where you put your models at the start of the game will have a large effect on how the game turns out. I think it's far easier to discuss deployment and the strategies involved their than an individual tactic that may only be useful once in a blue moon.

 Redbeard wrote:
I don't think the skill ceiling is all that high. Whether it's "easily accessible" - well, that I don't know. I know that there are people who have played the game for less than a year with tournament wins against old veterans

Natural talent plays a lot into it. I've met quite a few 'tourney vets' who did not have that much skill. Just like in any activity, there are some people who have more of a natural knack for it. Despite what you were told as a kid, your probably not going to be able to pick up a golf club and play better than Tiger Woods.

 Redbeard wrote:
weren't there some concerns raised about some of his wins?
I've seen some of the ones who place highly do questionable things in games.
I believe there's also a skill to being ... able to get the 5 or 6 when needed
Think about that. 18 straight wins, in competitive games. The dice never went cold? ... Not once?
Tony's friends with the TO. Is it possible that Tony has a better understanding of what sort of terrain to expect?
I'm not accusing Tony of cheating .. but .. in a game where luck is a factor, strikes me as odd.

Redbeard, this looks like a Jon Stewart skit. "I'm not saying the guys a cheater, but things just look suspicious!" I'm really not sure what to make of it.

 Redbeard wrote:
I think the second logical error is believing that play skill has zero impact.

That's my entire point though -- it does have impact! I removed player skill from the equasion to illustrate that the logic that all "top players" have the same skill level is invalid. This is what would happen if the "skill ceiling was not high".
Unless I misread your counter-point, you said "No, the skill level is the same, its just the guys who win all the time are cheaters".

My problem is with this statement. "I don't think the skill ceiling is all that high" That definition implies that 90% of the people who play this game will hit the "top of their game" within a few weeks of playing. In my experience, this simply is not true. In that, we can agree to disagree.


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 gpfunk wrote:
Sorry, I must've missed that amongst the point and counter point what with all the quoting. Tactics are specific maneuvers used to gain an advantage in game. Skill is a generic term for ability to play 40k. Using tactics is a skill. Being skillful doesn't necessarily mean being tactical. Someone could probably be very skillful at the game by making sure to always premeasure distance to the nth degree and overall being very meticulous with movement. Being tactical would involve using specific maneuvers like the ones you mentioned earlier...not showing rear armor, using vehicles to block assault, etc.

That sounds good.

There is a limit of combinations that can be used between units. With ~700 units in the game, that's a huge amount of possible combinations. However, in reality your going to see a small percentage of this in actual play. That's probably where your saying the 'tactics pool is low'. In that sense you are accurate. If your playing the same base 4 armies and using the same army then your going to learn all the tactics.
However, what happens when you pick up a new army, like the daemon codex? Do you deep strike 100 daemonettes near someone using icons to not scatter? Do you bring 5 FMCs and go 'derrka derrka' at someone? Do you use the grimoire to buff fateweaver? How about using it on a squad of 20 possessed CSM of Tzeentch giving them a 2++ save?
A whole new set of tactics open up when a new codex is released. Even if your not playing that codex, a new set of counter tactics must be used. How do you stop dual-triple helldrake? You now need to start using different tactics to survive this -- keeping out of LOS, etc.
Heck, even base ideas like 'assault the shooty units' has problems when you combine units. Do you really want to assault that block of 20 CSM if Abbadon is sitting at the front of it? Heck no! He will go 'fruit ninja' on whatever he touches.
So my point is this -- while there are limits to combinations of how units will interact, the flux in the game makes this list of interacting units always changing.

The problem again I think were finding is definition of 'tactics'. If using that grimore on a squad of possessed CSM a tactic or a 'list-building skill'? It's a tactic used in a game, but its concieved in the list-building section.

 labmouse42 wrote:

There is a limit of combinations that can be used between units. With ~700 units in the game, that's a huge amount of possible combinations. However, in reality your going to see a small percentage of this in actual play. That's probably where your saying the 'tactics pool is low'. In that sense you are accurate. If your playing the same base 4 armies and using the same army then your going to learn all the tactics.
However, what happens when you pick up a new army, like the daemon codex? Do you deep strike 100 daemonettes near someone using icons to not scatter? Do you bring 5 FMCs and go 'derrka derrka' at someone? Do you use the grimoire to buff fateweaver? How about using it on a squad of 20 possessed CSM of Tzeentch giving them a 2++ save?
A whole new set of tactics open up when a new codex is released. Even if your not playing that codex, a new set of counter tactics must be used. How do you stop dual-triple helldrake? You now need to start using different tactics to survive this -- keeping out of LOS, etc.
Heck, even base ideas like 'assault the shooty units' has problems when you combine units. Do you really want to assault that block of 20 CSM if Abbadon is sitting at the front of it? Heck no! He will go 'fruit ninja' on whatever he touches.
So my point is this -- while there are limits to combinations of how units will interact, the flux in the game makes this list of interacting units always changing.

The problem again I think were finding is definition of 'tactics'. If using that grimore on a squad of possessed CSM a tactic or a 'list-building skill'? It's a tactic used in a game, but its concieved in the list-building section.

I guess what I am getting from this statement is that new tactics generally follow new codexes, which inevitably have more(read:new) units. Most of the tactics you're coming up with are based on unit selection, which would mean that list-building is the key skill involved. There are some unit combinations that can be dismissed offhand as ineffective for the points, more trouble than they are worth, or lacking in synergy with any other units. The cap on number of tactics is dependent on number of units and unit combinations, the number of unit combinations in an army is dependent on list-building.

New codexes do raise the skill cap on 40k by adding new rules specific to the army, but even then it won't take too entirely long for people to get the long and short of it. To see what is effective and ineffective. They raise the skill cap, but not by a whole heck of a lot.

On the point of general tactics becoming less effective when more units are involved; it only mildly complicates the problem. You want to assault the CSM with a choppy unit, but Abbadon is in front of them to avoid this. His choppy is better than your choppy, so you divert more of your shooty into Abbadon until he's dead. Or you take another general tactic and avoid him. All unit combinations do is add small branches to an already limited decision tree.

On your final point: Yeah, it's a bit confusing. Sort of a "Chicken or the Egg" debate. Listbuilding is invariably first in order, but tactics could have been developed in previous games. But in those previous games you had to build a list first, right? But that list was based off tactics used in another game. But you had a list before that as well and wouldn't have found that combination without the list you built...etc. I still think list-building would be more important than the specific tactic. If you don't have strong support units to help your squad of possessed with the 3+ invulnerable then it won't matter how clever the tactic is. You'll fail based on the merits of your list.

 labmouse42 wrote:

 Redbeard wrote:
weren't there some concerns raised about some of his wins?
I've seen some of the ones who place highly do questionable things in games.
I believe there's also a skill to being ... able to get the 5 or 6 when needed
Think about that. 18 straight wins, in competitive games. The dice never went cold? ... Not once?
Tony's friends with the TO. Is it possible that Tony has a better understanding of what sort of terrain to expect?
I'm not accusing Tony of cheating .. but .. in a game where luck is a factor, strikes me as odd.

Redbeard, this looks like a Jon Stewart skit. "I'm not saying the guys a cheater, but things just look suspicious!" I'm really not sure what to make of it.

I think you know exactly what to make of it. I wasn't there, I didn't watch any of the games, and therefore, I am not willing to definitively state that I believe he did something wrong. Circumstantial evidence still isn't enough to land people in jail, right. Is it cheating to talk to a TO before an event and know what sort of terrain to design your army for? Or even to help build said terrain as part of supporting the event? I don't think so, but it's an advantage that not everyone had.

His first year, his list was over points. Did those three points make a real difference? I don't know. At the very least it means he didn't have to make a difficult decision about what to cut.
http://bloodofkittens.com/blog/2010/08/19/meat-for-meta-the-antidrama-of-novaopens-postmortem-cheating/

Second year, apparently there are accusations that he misused a fairly powerful piece. Did it happen? I don't know.
http://bloodofkittens.com/blog/2011/08/28/tournament-circuit-novaopen-drama-tracker/

Third year, questionable interactions between that same piece and Flyers, and claims that he not only knew the terrain, but the missions beforehand too.
http://bloodofkittens.com/blog/2012/09/08/tits-for-tournaments-novaopen-the-tammeny-hall-of-40k/


I didn't bring Tony's name into this discussion. You held him up as an example of how play skill really matters. I'm saying he's not a credible example of this based on the controversies surrounding those wins. There are at least a dozen other players you could have named who don't have this sort of reputation. I don't know whether he cheated. I do know that his wins have drawn more controversy than anyone else's.

 Redbeard wrote:
I think the second logical error is believing that play skill has zero impact.

That's my entire point though -- it does have impact! I removed player skill from the equasion to illustrate that the logic that all "top players" have the same skill level is invalid. This is what would happen if the "skill ceiling was not high".
Unless I misread your counter-point, you said "No, the skill level is the same, its just the guys who win all the time are cheaters".

If that was the case, why are people (like the ones I listed above) about to attend events with lists that would describe as 'meh' online -- yet win with them? I posted OrdoSean's DE/Eldar list on this forum -- and multiple people scoffed at it. OrdoSean took that list and won Templecon with it.

This isn't actually a compelling argument. The fact that people scoffed at a list doesn't mean that it was a case of a skilled player winning with a weak list, it's also possible that the scoffers were simply wrong and the list was actually a powerful one. It would hardly be the first time that people have dismissed something and then found out later that it's much better than they thought.

It doesn't seem the posted list was actually analyzed to determine if it was, in fact, an "underpowered" list, so discounting the argument that it was and that it is an example of skill on the field of battle may be premature.

And also, I should point out that high-level competitive play and the tactics forum (the OP that started it) are far from the same thing. Skill and tactics may be more important at a very high level, but generally this forum isn't dealing with expert players looking to fine-tune their tactics. The majority of posts are either newbies fumbling around with terrible lists or experienced players looking to start something new, and in both of those cases list optimization is going to produce greater rewards for a given amount of effort than trying to improve skill/tactics.

This argument seems to run along these lines:

Given that the level of skill presented by forum posts in the Tactics section is low, if someone is to be assisted in improving their odds of winning, then it is of greater advantage for them to hear advice on list-building rather than providing nuanced tactical understanding.

The argument itself has its merit.

My problem with it is that it seems, given the context in which this post was stated, that this discounts the value of engaging in those discussions of nuanced tactical decision. There are issues with that argument.

1) Individuals benefit from discussions of nuanced tactical decisions AND from discussions list-building. One may produce a greater result than the other, but that does not mean that one should be ignored for the other.

2) It may be the case that the majority of people on the Tactics forums are inexperienced, but there are individuals that are highly experienced and those people do benefit from nuanced discussion.

Therefore, nuanced discussions of tactical behaviour should still take place and should not be ignored on the basis that list-building discussions produce a greater benefit the majority of the time.

list building tactics should be mentioned, i routinely run a str 5/6 heavy shooting tau/eldar army because of the excellent milage i get from points spent and the overall ability to hurt almost anything in game, save lots of poitns by not taking the higher strength weapons and still get lots of utility cuz str 5 and 6 are for the most part able to kill stuff as long as you can roll, this oculd be a perfect example of you must have synergy in both or else your just flying blind without the knowledge of the other armies in general not specified list i could not even think to build an army that would do anything in any game, whereas my in game tactica lends to my list building

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/517437.page

This guy can't 'play harder' or somehow be brilliant to win, and once his eldar friend builds a better list it's just going to compound the problem. The eldar can almost randomly pick a target every turn with every gun and his list will win unless the DE kills his troops and the objectives go his way, which means the Eldar player's infinite myriad of tactical choices break down to 'shoot whatever DE unit with whatever Eldar unit is in range and play keep away with 20 troops for 4 turns' and his friend's tactics are "Try to kill two serpents playing keepaway while I get shredded to pieces" You can make it sound complicated by asking a thousand "What if X? What if Y? Where is Z? Am I in range of Q?" and it will sound like elevated tactics but every turn will boil down to the eldar player moving a serpent behind something/remaining behind something and rolling to shoot the woefully inadequate amount of dark eldar stuff that's capable of hurting it. The DE's infinite myriad of tactics boils down to trying to point stuff at two wave serpents and rolling to shoot.

This is a great example of why the infinite matrix of misdirection and intrigue and skilled awesome tactical mastery takes a back seat to actually knowing what you're supposed to put on the table. Because it's infinitely more important.

And I am having a hard time believing these people are able to keep a straight face when they tell us opponents are legitimately confused or 'thrown off their game' or whatever when a unit they don't see much is put on the table. If they aren't asking to see the list entry they're bad, if they're seeing the list entry and still failing they're dumb. You deserve to beat them.

"This infantry unit is like my infantry other units in terms of durability, but it's gun hits 15% harder and it costs 45% more points" -WHOA BETTER SHOOT ALL MY AT WEAPONS AT IT?!?! THE WOOL HAS BEEN PULLED OVER MY EYES BY LEGITIMATE TACTICS!

From my humble experience, I've had to fight against optimised lists so far and my fluff-focused Deathguard had only a single win yet over 4 games.

Mostly, it seems I just can't get enough heavy firepower to take down all those tanks and Land raiders sent against me for lack of S9/S10 far-ranging weapons in my list, so I have to keep trying to optimise my list for a chance to win.

With little success with daemon allies so far, I'm considering building up a 2ndary detachment of Imperial Guard just to get enough Leman Russ tanks and the Master of Ordnance's S10 template to crush the enemy and see him driven before me. So unfortunately, army list building seems to matter far more than anything else from my personal experience, aside for knowing by heart your enemy's armybook.

Therefore, tactics is something hard to discuss IMHO since you have to actually know the specific context you're playing in to discuss it - your opponent's forces and battleground disposition.

Wow, you leave for Easter Holiday and you come back to all this awesomeness LOL

can't lie, LOVE this discussion!

 silence indigo wrote:
From my humble experience, I've had to fight against optimised lists so far and my fluff-focused Deathguard had only a single win yet over 4 games.

{anecdotal experience here}

Therefore, tactics is something hard to discuss IMHO since you have to actually know the specific context you're playing in to discuss it - your opponent's forces and battleground disposition.

Those who dont "beleive" in tactics aren't going to listen to anything a tactically minded person has to say. So they aren't the audience you want and it will be hard to talk to them.

Those who "get" that terrain, enemy build, your strategy and theirs create a need to be quick on your feet and "see the game from 50,000 feet" can talk about tactics just fine.

In other words, you can have a discussion with willing people.

List-building:

You build your list with already a strategy in mind (at least for most people who know what they are doing). Some examples include:

IG gunline - this type of build is just to shoot your enemy to death. At least that is the general strategy.

Maximum Threat Overload armies - this type of army plays very aggressively and rushes the opponent with a lot of fast and dangerous threats.

Dark Eldar venom-spam - this type of build is basically a shooty build that can move out of harm's way very easily. You basically stay at a distance and keep shooting your opponents, only going for the objectives near the end.

Balanced grey knights - this build is basically a reactive "water warrior" army, with good shooting and good assault. The strategy is to react to your opponent, playing as a gunline against assault lists and as a rush army against the more shooty ones.

Deathstar armies - basically the strategy is to shove your deathstar down your opponents throat and see him gurgle and choke on his own vomit.

Assault armies - rush the enemy and play aggressively.

Space Marine Take-All-Comer's list - basically, another reactive army like the knights.


So when you build your list, you are already building a strategy in terms of how you want to play.


Tactics:

These are in-game decisions that you have to make based on who you are fighting, the type of army they are bringing, mission objective, terrain, etc. You have 1 main strategy in your mind already. However, how you execute is actually your tactics. Which target should you prioritize first, how will you get to and hold your objectives, what do you need to do against an opponent with a list more suited to fight your "type" of army, should you assault at all if you have the opportunity, should you sacrifice your unit for the greater good, etc.

To a degree, your overall strategy and your list will dictate your tactics. However, you will always have to adjust your tactics "on the fly" depending on the situation in the battlefield. Basically, list-building and overall strategy is what you want to do. In-game tactics is how you get there.


---------------------------------------------


With regards to List building and Tactics, check out my "interactive" battle report against Tomb King. We are both running optimized lists and we are both good generals and winners of a GT before (Indy Open GT for Tomb King, Golden Throne GT for myself). Perhaps what may differentiate our "list-building" are our tactics? Check it out (currently in progress):


1750 Jy2's Hive Fleet Pandora vs Tomb King's The Ugly Misfits - An Interactive Battle

It's probably just me, but I think it hard to separate tactics from one's army building.

To quote another anectodical experience :

Defensively, I use my Plague Marines to get to objectives quickly take cover under ruins, place the Rhino in a convenient space to block sight from the enemy's far guns (unless it's already destroyed) and prevent the enemy's infantry from getting near, usually with success.

Offensively, I use my offensive Obliterators (they curse a lot) to appear behind the enemy's line and wreck his tanks and heavily armoured infantry (AP2).

Occasionnaly I use the same Plague Marines or Nurgle bikers with a powerfist lord to zoom quickly to the enemy's tanks and bash them up before he kills my Plague Marines from afar.

The rest of my army's purpose seems to be to get killed and award my enemy Kill Points, according to my results so far.

So I may be myopic, but my army buidling is always made with tactical deployment and battleground targets in mind: the PM for defence and the Obliterators for offence. So I really can't separate listbuilding from tactics in light of my humble novice experience...

If I can add my grain of salt to the discussion :

One problem I see here, is that for most people, tactics are instinctive. Best exemple is cover: everyone knows you survive better prone behind a wall than with your head in the barrel of a plasma cannon.

One thing that I rarely see discussed here is deployment / movement. So let me tell you about my experience : I mainly play CSM, and mainly against daemons. It took me 3 games (and 3 losses) to understand that I should deploy my guys as a pack, and not as 2 separate forces. Now, I deploy everything bar the fast units (bikers, spawns) in a single pack to avoid being overwhelmed on a side of the table.

This is tactics (maybe even strategy). It may come natural for some of you, some of the seasonned generals might even call that "low ceiling tactics" ( @gpfunk), but for some of us (namely me), it must be learned the hard way.

If the tactical skill of every player is the same (and it is in competitive high end games), then yeah, the game is about list buildings and throwing dice. But we are not all born tacticians.

My 2 cents !

Thanks, Seb; My Deathguard is facing daemons this weekend, I'll try that tactic.

good call. The Daemons dont like massed fire, especially now!

After trying that tactic this weekend against my opponent's daemons, it appeared in fact quite true that daemons die easily to flamers, and I also noted that units of 5 chaos spawn with the mark of Nurgle (T6) are nearly unkillable even against Bloodcrushers. The best thing is getting those chaos spawn shot at by Tzeentch daemons is seeing your Feel No Pain go from none to 4+. Had the game continued for a bit longer, they might have gotten to the point of having a 2+ FnP, and 2 of them managed to tarpit in hand to hand against for several turns against a daemon walker (up until the end of the game).

In addition, his army was much more damaged than mine by his very own Storm of Chaos rules, "Khorne's wrath" actually killing a Khorne Fleshound and a Bloodletter (and nothing else).

Just don't forget that daemons have tank walkers too: I had to faced two of them and wasn't quite prepared enough...

Another thing I learned: units of 20 daemonettes on the charge will eventually destroy your vehicles, your Nurgle bikers and your obliterators, so try going for heights and beware of those very, very fast daemonic streewalkers!

w/o battle reports, which most people (myself included) are bad at doing, its next to impossible to discuss tactic as saying "Use this unit this way" works only if the other side of the table supports it.

Ive had games where i had to hoof it with lootas and shoot while i moved. The game was too city-borne to allow me to sit in one spot with them, they had like 3 spots they could shoot at if they didnt shuffle around.
w/o the opponents list and the terrain setup, tactics cannot be discussed accurately.


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w/o battle reports, which most people (myself included) are bad at doing, its next to impossible to discuss tactic as saying "Use this unit this way" works only if the other side of the table supports it.

Ive had games where i had to hoof it with lootas and shoot while i moved. The game was too city-borne to allow me to sit in one spot with them, they had like 3 spots they could shoot at if they didnt shuffle around.
w/o the opponents list and the terrain setup, tactics cannot be discussed accurately.

 silence indigo wrote:
After trying that tactic this weekend against my opponent's daemons, it appeared in fact quite true that daemons die easily to flamers, and I also noted that units of 5 chaos spawn with the mark of Nurgle (T6) are nearly unkillable even against Bloodcrushers. The best thing is getting those chaos spawn shot at by Tzeentch daemons is seeing your Feel No Pain go from none to 4+. Had the game continued for a bit longer, they might have gotten to the point of having a 2+ FnP, and 2 of them managed to tarpit in hand to hand against for several turns against a daemon walker (up until the end of the game).

In addition, his army was much more damaged than mine by his very own Storm of Chaos rules, "Khorne's wrath" actually killing a Khorne Fleshound and a Bloodletter (and nothing else).

Just don't forget that daemons have tank walkers too: I had to faced two of them and wasn't quite prepared enough...

Another thing I learned: units of 20 daemonettes on the charge will eventually destroy your vehicles, your Nurgle bikers and your obliterators, so try going for heights and beware of those very, very fast daemonic streewalkers!

Were those losses from the blast scattering? Just want to make sure your opponent wasn't rolling Khorne's Wrath for his Khorne units (if he was, he was doing it wrong).

I think tactics discussions hold an enormous amount of value in 40k. Mostly for new players, though. Tacticas on bubblewrapping, properly spreading out, denying the flank, and mutual support really helped me develop as a player. So, too, did articles on real world military concepts such as defence in depth and force concentration. While rehashing concepts like these would not be of great help to me, personally, there are always new players coming into the game who have never heard of these things, and encouraging a continual discussion about these ideas helps to ensure that new players can catch up with the rest of us.

The list forum is great for new players, helping them to see what constitutes a great list, but often times the list forum skips over why it is that those lists are great and why they take the units that they do. I have several very intelligent friends who refuse to believe that Necron Wraithwing can be a competitive list (we don't have any serious competitive Necron players in our area), and one friend who refuses to believe that Termie Spam Grey Knights is anything less than an auto lose against non-fluffy armies ("Any competent player will Instant Death them off the table!") despite actually seeing Termie spam used to great effect on a number of occasions. The great flexibility of the Wraithwing list is not necessarily apparent when all you do is look at the list, nor is the great resilience of the Termie army due to its homogenized and extremely efficient defensive profile. Consider the minor back and forth about Pink Horrors and Plaguebearers that's happening right now. A lot of players are taking Plaguebearers as their go-to objective campers right now when, nine times out of ten, Pink Horrors are significantly more resilient, and the few times that Plaguebearers do edge out Pink Horrors--when they are being targeted by a weapon that ignores cover/locked in close combat--the plaguebearers still only benefit from a point higher toughness while having a worse save. When a player compares Plaguebearers and Pink Horrors in a vacuum the Plaguebearers seem to be far better suited to camping objectives while the Pink Horrors look like a niche unit at best, but when someone points out that the Horrors can gain access to the same cover save that the Plaguebearers have natively by taking advantage of GtG in ruins and Aegis Defense lines, and that those saves will, in fact, end up being much better due to the Tzeentch ability to re-roll saving throws of one, the Horrors turn out to be the go-to objective campers for the Daemons codex and Plaguebearers turn out to be the niche unit. These are tactical considerations that make a list work and, without them, there's a very good chance that players will either dismiss good lists and good unit choices out of hand or fail to utilize them appropriately. The tactics forum, I feel, can serve very well to explain tactics of this sort, which enhances the worth of the list forum.

Agree with OP, as someone stated before there are a lot of tournament players on Dakka they probably just don't want to share their tactics so no one can use it against them at tournaments.

For me, building the list is the only tactical part of the game that can really be discussed on a forum. The list building is were you think about every possible army list you could face and think of a way to beat it with your army. The tactics when you go out and actually play are spur of the moment and require the player to think on their feet. Every situation in 40k is different, with board layouts and unlucky dice rolls requiring you to change your tactics. So if you think there's too much list building discussed, then I don't know what to tell you, cause the army lists and the statistics are the only pieces of hard data that players can use to prepare for the next game.

Anecdote coming.

Yesterday, my friend Nate scheduled a game with a guy. He got shelled. He's a newer player but with a fair number of games under his belt, hasn't really gotten his list perfected to his style of play QUITE yet. The Tyranids simply ate him alive. We are talking a basic list too. StormRaven, 5 Termies, Mephiston, 3 Assault troops, a Pod, a Furioso. Pretty standard stuff really for 1850. Nothing out of the ordinary. Played against PsykerZilla Tyranids.

I was suppoed to play Nate's same opponent next but I open my bag and realize I brought Flames of War on accident. OOPS. So Nate was kind enough to let me borrow his BA's, jut so the guy can get his tourney practice games in. Keep in mind, I dont PLAY Space Marines!

I wiped the Tyranid off the table.

What was the difference? Threads like this. I played an army I dont really "know" per se, for the first time ever and trucked the opponent who had just trucked it. That can't happen without tactics and witrhout the sound advice some do give in places LIKE this.

Of course we know that my friend, being newer but with a pretty fair number of games under his belt, had maybe a 50/50 shot against a tourney player. But it illustrates the difference in SKILL between players even of supposedly eqaul tourney motivation. Threads on tactics matter. It's why I can't wait to start blogging on the Tau. Such a tactics rich army, always has been. Fun to talk about.

What the heck, I'm bored at work, I'll throw in:

I play at a lot of GT's on a yearly basis (5-7) and have played from coast to coast and border to boarder (with the exception of New England). I generally play in RTT's at least once a month. I rarely have the chance to get out more often than that due to wife and life.

I win a lot. At GT's I'm normally sitting at a single loss for the weekend or undefeated. At RTT's I lose from time to time but mostly only when a wild hair takes me and I've started branching into a new list. I see the same people generally in the top brackets at major events on a yearly basis with 1-2 new people sometimes sliding in. It's strange that it's all list and luck driven but that still happens.

The reason people don't discuss tactics in the the tactics forums to me is that it's nearly impossible to do so via the written word. The variables of terrain, movement, and modeling can't really be discussed. Let alone outlook, natural tendencies, and playstyle. How you react to a single poor difficult terrain test and the rolling effect that has on your overall strategy. It's all things that can't really be taught by word. And if you try to be abstract and discuss you get the guy who already knows everything who jumps on the math train or diverts the conversation.

Now, that being said lists honestly barely matter once you hit a certain point. And are very, very heavily dependant on your playstyle or personality. If the list has the tools you, as a player, need to deal with what you're likely to see then you're in good shape. How you get to that goal differs between people. Look at the lists of generally top placing players. It's never what the internet says is amazing. It might contain some elements but it's normally a pretty heavy departure.

That said lists can help people on their way to that point. And math sometimes helps. Points to damage ratios are a good starting point for people so inclined but I find myself personally drawn to abstract value over pure point efficiency at list building. Things like multiple deployment options, disruption capability, general and direct support. Those are just a few off the top of my head.

Basically I don't think it's to hard to get "good" (winning 2/3 games) at this game. But I do think it's pretty hard to get "excellent" (winning 80%+) at it.

If we are going to discuss tactics then during the game, maybe we should use some pictures of units on the table and some terrain so we can give examples of tactics in use.

 Hulksmash wrote:


Now, that being said lists honestly barely matter once you hit a certain point. And are very, very heavily dependant on your playstyle or personality. If the list has the tools you, as a player, need to deal with what you're likely to see then you're in good shape. How you get to that goal differs between people. Look at the lists of generally top placing players. It's never what the internet says is amazing. It might contain some elements but it's normally a pretty heavy departure.

Things like multiple deployment options, disruption capability, general and direct support. Those are just a few off the top of my head.

Basically I don't think it's to hard to get "good" (winning 2/3 games) at this game. But I do think it's pretty hard to get "excellent" (winning 80%+) at it.

I agree to the essence of this right here (though the meta may drastically change your win ratios if you play in a pool of tourney enthusiasts).

If your army fits your style, the enemy is in for a tough row to hoe because you already know that your army an do X and so it becomes a matter of anticipation and execution rather than a math contest. Over time as you learn to use your Codex, you will see that it is sometimes about what you take away from the enemy that is important. feints work when you face an enemy that wants to come to grips. Knowing that and when to do it is the trick. Recognizing the opportunity you can set up in the next turn (anticipation) is a playstyle and skill thing.

In my games, I feel like I use TIME as a weapon against the enemy. Its a game element that I can control if i am WILLING to tailor tactics to it. I nver hear much about this particular tactic or how to execute it with XYZ army but it's a valuable tool in the tol bag. Some enemy armies are just built in a way wherein the clock penalizes them. recognizing when that is and using it is a skill that can be taught.

I differ in this regard: I think its not hard to use words to describe tactics. I think if a person is cerebral enough to comprehend the thought PROCESS that got you to a conclusion, they'll follow what you are saying. I think if you can give them the THEORY that goes with the advice, they will retain it and remember it for later so that when the terrain is there to execute something cool, they know to do it.

Just my opinion.

That time comment sits poorly with me. Discussing using time against your opponent implies a failure to play as swiftly as possible to reach a proper conclusion. In other words stalling/slow play.

Then you can safely assume that isn't what I am talking about.

Explain how to use time against your opponent then? I'm genuinely curious as it's not something I apparently have in my tool kit

 Hulksmash wrote:
Explain how to use time against your opponent then? I'm genuinely curious as it's not something I apparently have in my tool kit

First you need a time machine. You go back in time and kill your opponents mother before your opponent is born. If that fails you can go back in time and try to kill your opponent when they are a kid.

 Seb wrote:

This is tactics (maybe even strategy). It may come natural for some of you, some of the seasonned generals might even call that "low ceiling tactics" ( @gpfunk)

It's just nice to be noticed.

Time is as much an abstract concept as it is the idea that you have a finite amount of actions in which to accomplish them.

Let's say it's turn 4, and your opponent has nothing within 12" of your deployment zone. It's tight, you want to make sure they don't get linebreaker.

So, you use time. Trade material for his ability to get upfield. Toss something throwaway in front of him to deny him movement.

Or at least that's what I take away from his comment. Not stalling the clock, but stalling the turn counter.

I was up against a Space Wolves that had ADL and just sat there the entire game with 36" weapons...

The game doesnt allow tactics it allows camping.

 Hulksmash wrote:
Explain how to use time against your opponent then? I'm genuinely curious as it's not something I apparently have in my tool kit

PM sent.


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Dracoknight wrote:
I was up against a Space Wolves that had ADL and just sat there the entire game with 36" weapons...

The game doesnt allow tactics it allows camping.

The diamtric opposite of what I use. Lol. But everyone has a way they LIKE to play. Or... a way they cannot depart from and win as the case may be. but its not because the game says no.

I created a thread some time ago (back in 5th) about tactics in 40k that had a lot of broad ideas in it. Although much of the information is outdated, some people may still find it helpful. I've been kicking around the idea of updating it for some time now (maybe making it into an article.)

Here it is: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/320368.page

If you get any use out of it glad I could help! It's old though, so don't necro it...

 Jancoran wrote:

 Hulksmash wrote:
Explain how to use time against your opponent then? I'm genuinely curious as it's not something I apparently have in my tool kit

PM sent.


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Dracoknight wrote:
I was up against a Space Wolves that had ADL and just sat there the entire game with 36" weapons...

The game doesnt allow tactics it allows camping.

The diamtric opposite of what I use. Lol. But everyone has a way they LIKE to play. Or... a way they cannot depart from and win as the case may be. but its not because the game says no.

Still my point is that such weaponry just allows people to stay in cover across the map without even MOVING, then again i play tyranids and the longest weaponry they have is 18" or pick something flying, but i got shot from his deploy zone to mine ( even tho i can blame the board for lack of LOS barriers ) but still, there isnt any negatives picking mass "across the board" weaponry at all, so tactics is basically reduced to "pick stuff that shoot further" or "things that get close fast"... thats like picking a paper cut or burn yourself on hot water.

 Omega_Warlord wrote:
I created a thread some time ago (back in 5th) about tactics in 40k that had a lot of broad ideas in it. Although much of the information is outdated, some people may still find it helpful. I've been kicking around the idea of updating it for some time now (maybe making it into an article.)

Here it is: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/320368.page

If you get any use out of it glad I could help! It's old though, so don't necro it...

Well this thread isn't a terrible one to use for some tactics. Would love for you to post on my blog about any good newer tactics.I myself am kinda gearing up for a big post but I love reading tactics stuff. It's the part of the game I enjoy the most. Planning out the moves and counter moves is fun.


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Dracoknight wrote:

Still my point is that such weaponry just allows people to stay in cover across the map without even MOVING, then again i play tyranids and the longest weaponry they have is 18" or pick something flying, but i got shot from his deploy zone to mine ( even tho i can blame the board for lack of LOS barriers ) but still, there isnt any negatives picking mass "across the board" weaponry at all, so tactics is basically reduced to "pick stuff that shoot further" or "things that get close fast"... thats like picking a paper cut or burn yourself on hot water.

My copious outflankers may not be in agreement that there is no penalty for sitting and shooting. I feast on that. =)

My most recent (admittedly NOT my normal) list had three Dominion squads. Would not recommend turtling up with them around, just as one example.

 Hulksmash wrote:
Basically I don't think it's to hard to get "good" (winning 2/3 games) at this game. But I do think it's pretty hard to get "excellent" (winning 80%+) at it.

Well said.

I know that every time I attend a tourney, local or GT level, I tend to see the same faces at the top tables. This is anecdotal of course, but I do think it serves as some evidence of there being a definite and tangible skill factor in the game.

As others have said, almost all games have an element of luck, it's how you react to luck and mitigate luck that really sets the good apart from the bad or average players.

Tony Kopach.

**Drops mic and walks away**

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 Jasper wrote:
This particular trick has worked several times for me, on my terms, against experienced players because everyone underestimates a single razor back.

That makes no sense. I wouldn't even consider ignoring the Razorback unless I didn't have any tanks I needed to protect, it's a much bigger anti-tank threat than the Predator (which is weak, its sole redeeming factor is it's dirt cheap) and is much less durable. Your opponent made a newbie mistake, and that strategy isn't going to work against someone who has a better understanding of the game.

In this particular case he just valued his weapons teams more and went for the dakkapred, not realisting that I was not one bit interseted in his weapon teams.

(Bit random go back to page 4, I've just slogged through from there)

 Jancoran wrote:
Tony Kopach.

**Drops mic and walks away**

This was actually brought up earlier by Redbeard. The circumstances revolving around his "wins" were incredibly suspicious.

 gpfunk wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:
Tony Kopach.

**Drops mic and walks away**

This was actually brought up earlier by Redbeard. The circumstances revolving around his "wins" were incredibly suspicious.

I was there it really isn't that just internet woolgathering on the last tournament.

Also keep in mind I wouldn't hold up his results from that tournament for one reason 6th had just been released there were still several kinks that had not been fixed yet.

and...he won with the same kinks everyone else had.

Look Im not into hero worship. But the dude has shown MORE than enough times that he can take what I think is a "normal" Space Puppies list and beat the face in of some very good players, repeatedly.

Skill matters. The General matters! Beleive it or not, there is such thing as skill and I have proven it many times. So have a lot of Generals.

There is a large percentage of Netexperts who like to point out the "suboptimal" nature of some of my army lists To which I respond "And have you seen my win totals?"

And then they proceed with the usual litany of lame "Well who did you play" crap. Look. Tony Kopachs wins happened. So did many other notable and well known Generals. They happened and in some cases it happened using a pedestrian well thought out but ultimately normal, EXPECTED list.

The scoreboard does not lie. You can bring whatever list you want. Triple Heldrakes? Bring it. I'll still win if I have the better plan and I execute (which the dice DO have a say in). If dice beat me I can live with it. I wont beat myself.

Tony won't either 99% of the time. So build your lists til the cows come home. You still gotta' play the game on an infinite number of Battlefields with an infinite number of possibilities against you.

 Jancoran wrote:
and...he won with the same kinks everyone else had.

Look Im not into hero worship. But the dude has shown MORE than enough times that he can take what I think is a "normal" Space Puppies list and beat the face in of some very good players, repeatedly.

Skill matters. The General matters! Beleive it or not, there is such thing as skill and I have proven it many times. So have a lot of Generals.

There is a large percentage of Netexperts who like to point out the "suboptimal" nature of some of my army lists To which I respond "And have you seen my win totals?"

And then they proceed with the usual litany of lame "Well who did you play" crap. Look. Tony Kopachs wins happened. So did many other notable and well known Generals. They happened and in some cases it happened using a pedestrian well thought out but ultimately normal, EXPECTED list.

The scoreboard does not lie. You can bring whatever list you want. Triple Heldrakes? Bring it. I'll still win if I have the better plan and I execute (which the dice DO have a say in). If dice beat me I can live with it. I wont beat myself.

Tony won't either 99% of the time. So build your lists til the cows come home. You still gotta' play the game on an infinite number of Battlefields with an infinite number of possibilities against you.

Read the links in Redbeard's post. It's just a page back. I don't think he won with the same kinks at all. I think he had distinct advantages that didn't involve his player skill or tactics. They're all enumerated pretty well. That aside, I think the point of the thread got lost a bit back. If you really want to get my opinion on this, just look back at the previous posts. There isn't much more to say. Now it's sort of like regurgitation from both sides.

the best way to efficiently teach tactics is to look at battle reports. Produce your own video battle reports, or whatever, then get other people to go over them and see what you did wrong, why it was wrong and what its consequences were.

 gpfunk wrote:
Read the links in Redbeard's post. It's just a page back. I don't think he won with the same kinks at all. I think he had distinct advantages that didn't involve his player skill or tactics.

Sure it involved tactics. Maybe this is the problem, we're too focused on legal tactics instead of looking for better ways to optimize our cheating. Maybe that's the solution, the list building forum can focus on optimizing the perfect list, while the tactics forum can focus on optimizing the perfect cheating methods.

A lot of the anti-Kopach stuff is a bit silly. Brandt releases the tourney scenarios for everyone, multiple people from their gaming group attended NOVA, anyone who has played there knows what to expect terrain-wise, they even post pictures before the event.

Also, players make mistakes with rules. I've seen it happen to very good players. That in no way invalidates Tony doing well. Watch him play and you can see why he does well. He is calculated and makes good decisions.

Indeed. Mistakes happen. made a bone headed one tonight, to my own detriment. Still won though. Hooray.

LValx wrote:

Also, players make mistakes with rules. I've seen it happen to very good players. That in no way invalidates Tony doing well. Watch him play and you can see why he does well. He is calculated and makes good decisions.

Like bringing lists that are over points? Sorry, low hanging fruit and all.

I agree, he makes good decisions in-game. But so do a lot of other people who didn't have the advantages that he had going into the event.

 Redbeard wrote:

LValx wrote:

Also, players make mistakes with rules. I've seen it happen to very good players. That in no way invalidates Tony doing well. Watch him play and you can see why he does well. He is calculated and makes good decisions.

Like bringing lists that are over points? Sorry, low hanging fruit and all.

I agree, he makes good decisions in-game. But so do a lot of other people who didn't have the advantages that he had going into the event.

3 Points is hardly backbreaking. It's a silly mistake, but lets be real about it, 3 points doesn't swing a game. All it does it put you up for scrutiny. I agree that it was dumb for him to do, but only because it lets people on the internet rag on him.

And once again, you said "advantages." One NOVA he was over in points.... All the other "advantages" he had, other folks had too. In fact, MVBrandt even runs local events before NOVA with NOVA missions and terrain setups. So you can have the experience before attending. In that case, I guess I had an unfair advantage too? I guess a nice chunk of MD/DC/VA did. But I disagree with this. If you read his blog, he updates and does a good job of filling in all prospective attendees about what to expect, mission and terrain-wise.

LValx wrote:
3 Points is hardly backbreaking.

I disagree wholeheartedly. Those 3 points could've been part of a 20 point upgrade or even a hundred point tank. 3 points makes a huge difference and it is why most tournaments have a hard cap point level. It's what makes the game fair. Any time you're over points, you're cheating. End of story. Tournament players should be expected to be very precise with their calcualtions. Someone as 'skilled' as Mr. Kopach would surely be able to do simple mathematics and addition, right?

Right?

We're talking tournaments here. No one gets let off the hook so easy.


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 Peregrine wrote:
Sure it involved tactics. Maybe this is the problem, we're too focused on legal tactics instead of looking for better ways to optimize our cheating. Maybe that's the solution, the list building forum can focus on optimizing the perfect list, while the tactics forum can focus on optimizing the perfect cheating methods.

Like bringing lists over points!