Hey. It might be a burnout but i can't deal with a feeling that if you would rate the importance of factors that make you win, tactics would be by far the least important one.
1. Listbuilding. It seems to be the cornerstone of success. You can look at lists before the game and have a 95% success rate at guessing who's gona win.
2. First turn and general dice luck. With how killy things are and with how little you can do to protect your forces other than bring the 'right' ones (see listbuilding) this is more important than ever before.
3. Tactics. Seems that it goes last after all the other things. There is just not much you can do.
At least i feel so. And i'm not alone within our gaming group. We've tried some new games like walking dead and seen the diffedence. Even necromunda and shadowwar armageddon aren't that hollow. And it's hard to say this, but EVEN 7th edition was better than what 8th currently is.
Less than in former editions.
E.g., Refused flank and symetrie de position were decent tactical options.
But tactics got killed a bit in the world of maelstrom. Same goes for the 8th edition shallow board game variant.
I would say this is only true in competitive circles. In non-competitive games, tactics starts taking a higher and higher position. As for first turn and general dice luck, again, I feel like first turn wins only matters for tourney-level lists where they ARE crazy-killy, but otherwise isn't a dominant factor. Dice are dice, and you can't control them, but I feel like 8th has done a remarkable job of reducing "lulz, the dice" compared to many previous editions, as it's so much rarer to one-shot vehicles, and monsters have many wounds.
I'm tempted to do a very careful recording of a game, making notes on every group of dice rolled, tracking the value of every dice rolled, and tracking expected values for dice roll results. In this way, I could determine if one player or another was truly lucky, and if so, in which way.
Yarium wrote: I would say this is only true in competitive circles. In non-competitive games, tactics starts taking a higher and higher position. As for first turn and general dice luck, again, I feel like first turn wins only matters for tourney-level lists where they ARE crazy-killy, but otherwise isn't a dominant factor. Dice are dice, and you can't control them, but I feel like 8th has done a remarkable job of reducing "lulz, the dice" compared to many previous editions, as it's so much rarer to one-shot vehicles, and monsters have many wounds.
I'm tempted to do a very careful recording of a game, making notes on every group of dice rolled, tracking the value of every dice rolled, and tracking expected values for dice roll results. In this way, I could determine if one player or another was truly lucky, and if so, in which way.
Perhaps. But it's still 'lists' that you're excluding.
1. I don't know that you've got a 95% prediction accuracy based on the lists today; that might have been true in 7th, but I suspect it's closer to 60-70% these days. List-building is still important but I don't think it renders the rest of the game irrelevant anymore.
2. This one varies widely depending on what you're doing; armies that roll a lot more dice (e.g. Guard) and armies with more redundancy rather than single critical models (no superheavies, for instance) care a lot less about a few spikey rolls, and the first-turn problem is dramatically more of a problem when you've got hardcore gunlines and squishy armies on the table. I've found that while first turn helps with my Custodes the immensely high defensive stats (which render S3-S5 (easily spammable weapons) vastly less useful) let me survive the alpha strike with enough damage output left that I'm not really on the back foot, except for some extreme edge cases.
3. Tactics in 40k is certainly simpler than it is for many other games, and how relevant it is does depend heavily on what missions you're using and how much terrain you're using, but tactical decisions can make some difference.
So I'd say in summary that I sort of agree with your assessment, but I think you're blowing the difference between said three factors out of proportion. List-building and dice can make victory more difficult, but an experienced player who's making more intelligent tactical decisions (movement/target priority) can make a lot more of a difference today than they could back in 7th.
Yarium wrote: ...I'm tempted to do a very careful recording of a game, making notes on every group of dice rolled, tracking the value of every dice rolled, and tracking expected values for dice roll results. In this way, I could determine if one player or another was truly lucky, and if so, in which way.
The problem with this methodology is that some die rolls matter more than others; there aren't very many single rolls on which the whole game rest anymore (unless you're, say, trying to play something like a ten-man Custodian Warden squad at 1,000pts, at that point the charge roll is very much a win/loss thing), but it should be fairly obvious that a hit roll with a lascannon is more important than one with a lasgun, or that a save against a lascannon is more important than a save against a lasgun.
Yes for armies that have to do something besides just spam one undercosted thing in a gunline. Target priority & screening is the weakest form of tactics.
40k has never been heavy on tactics. It was always the easy simpler game between it and whfb, called checkers to the whfb chess.
I'd say that today's game is even simpler and less tactical than ever before, but that slope started slipping after 5th to be honest.
The game uses modern game design philosophies that stress fun, easy to grasp, and synergy building over all else.
The only tactic that I can find in 40k is target priority. The rest really plays itself and is a form of knowing some middle school math to make ssure your statistics are going to be in your favor or at least make yourself not at a disadvantage to the RNG.
Screening / bubble wrap is also required now that movement doesn't matter anymore and you can just deploy models wherever you want with deepstrike.
There's tactics like falling back a unit out of combat so that you can shoot at the attackers, charging with one tough/survivable unit to prevent overwatch taking out more effective but softer units, blocking line of sight to small units with big units, using pile-in and consolidation moves to trap units in combat, surrounding transports so that all the passengers die, spacing out units so that enemy deep strikers and assault troops can't access their ideal targets, and charging shooty units so that you can prevent them from shooting in the next turn. That's off the top of my head.
MinscS2 wrote: The main "tactic" in 40katm seems to be target priority.
Movement/positioning is important as well, for most armies.
I'd say it's unfair to both the game and the players to claim that there's no tactics involved in 40k.
This is about right to me.
1. List building only determines the winner in advance when you have competitive vs. non-competitive. Once lists clear a certain level of alpha strike power, movement/terrain becomes more important. Some armies struggle to clear this level, which is one of the big reasons we see imbalance.
2. This is true when your meta has one of two things: 1. Lack of LoS blocking terrain. 2. Lots of fielding of units that ignore LoS. Tables with lots of terrain and that don't utilize tons of indirect fire units don't fall into this. So this is on the players, not GW.
3. This can reverse with 2 depending on table and unit comp.
The problem is really if you don't min/max or spam the undercosted units your already fighting a lossing battle. Unless you have both chosen to do so at which point its more friendly so win/loose doesn't matter.
Pick up games and comp games are pretty obvious who should win once deployment is over.
First turn depends upon the army as to importance of first time.
Tactics these days with nols, screening and deepstrike bombs has crushed any real manoeuvring for advantage. Its either static gunlines for days or a first turn rush rush rush. Its still tactics just very low player involving.
Terrain and cover use to really matter as it restricted movement and gave bigger defensive bonuses which created more difficult target priority decisions and gives defensive options to the player (which units you keep in hard cover, which units you keep behind screens for soft cover, which vehicle facing do you keep exposed and which is getting cover, etc). Now it's just mathhammer the most dakka and use the ideal weapon against the ideal target with little option for the defender to protect their units outside of list building options. Add to that the lack of a robust morale/status effects which takes pinning, retreating, blinded, shaken, etc from the equation which gave ways to incapacitate a unit outside of just outright killing the target.
I'm going to disagree here and say yes there are 100% tactics.
Just as an example - understanding not just screening but also how to replenish screens as well as gaining more board control with screening is a very valuable skill in the game. Much the same as understanding how to effectively charge vs. just moving everything in a line (avoiding OW and then using pile-ins to wrap a unit for example). I'm sure this will be belittled as 'gaming the system' or something similar as opposed to tactics but ultimately it is a decision made inside the rules of the conflict that can garner you an advantage if you understand how and when to apply.
So I'd say in summary that I sort of agree with your assessment, but I think you're blowing the difference between said three factors out of proportion. List-building and dice can make victory more difficult, but an experienced player who's making more intelligent tactical decisions (movement/target priority) can make a lot more of a difference today than they could back in 7th.
The problem is that "movement/target priority" is just a math equation.
There is an optimal position for shooting this gun and assaulting wit this unit. And these are the targets where on average they will have the most impact this turn.
It's not interesting, there is no real risk vs reward. It's just knowing what works best and then doing it.
When people say they feel like tactics don't exist in 8th I think what they actually mean is meaningful choice doesn't exist in the game. They are correct. All you do is move your entire army into the best position you can and shoot at the best targets you can pick, see what gets weakened/removed and then wait for you to suffer the same. To have the amount of actual tactical choice people are looking for you need more nuance to the situation so there is no clearly optimal positioning and shooting. You have to gamble doing this instead of that.
40k has no had meaningful tactical choice outside of list building/deployment in a long time.
Yarium wrote: ...I'm tempted to do a very careful recording of a game, making notes on every group of dice rolled, tracking the value of every dice rolled, and tracking expected values for dice roll results. In this way, I could determine if one player or another was truly lucky, and if so, in which way.
The problem with this methodology is that some die rolls matter more than others; there aren't very many single rolls on which the whole game rest anymore (unless you're, say, trying to play something like a ten-man Custodian Warden squad at 1,000pts, at that point the charge roll is very much a win/loss thing), but it should be fairly obvious that a hit roll with a lascannon is more important than one with a lasgun, or that a save against a lascannon is more important than a save against a lasgun.
For funnies then, how would you wish to change that methodology? My current thought was in how I would break down the different "luck" results, like "whom was luckiest with damage rolls" or "whom was luckiest with Advancing rolls", etc.
Tactics as we related to them in a real world setting? Warhammer 40,000 has never ever come close to a wargame that simulated actual combat, so I'd give it a sweeping no. Not just now, but ever.
Outside of "don't stand in the open", there's very little that would crossover into a normal historical wargame kind fo approach.
Are there strategies within Warhammer 40,000 as a game? Certainly. I would not confuse them with actual military based tactics, however.
- Charge with a rhino to delay/silence a unit
- Swap a spell out to adjust to developing opportunities
- Sacrificed a character to spawndom to teleport him into a unit
- Shoot out a unit closest to my helbrute so that Fire Frenzy can double tap a more desirable target
- Reposition psykers to use CF on an incoming termie sorc
- Deployed Tzaangors as if they were a screen and then DMC'd them when all the support was in position
- Deployed a predator in an odd position to try and give a sense of security and then push it out 12" along with Blasphemous to get it hitting full strength
Elbows wrote: Tactics as we related to them in a real world setting? Warhammer 40,000 has never ever come close to a wargame that simulated actual combat, so I'd give it a sweeping no. Not just now, but ever.
Outside of "don't stand in the open", there's very little that would crossover into a normal historical wargame kind fo approach.
Are there strategies within Warhammer 40,000 as a game? Certainly. I would not confuse them with actual military based tactics, however.
I think the term "tactics" in warfare during the actual battle really means the same thing as it does in 40k. It's target priority. Think about the battle of midway - target priority lost that battle for the Japanese - attacking the airfield at midway rather than American carriers early in the battle. Same for Napoleon at Waterloo spending much of the battle wasting time trying to capture a worthless farmhouse - when he should have been making a flank move to cut the British off from the ocean and their supply. I just don't see any kind of tactic that exist in real warfare battles that doesn't exist in 40k. If we are talking about pre battle tactics (which 40k doesn't even touch) there is a lot missing. However - it's almost impossible to simulate that kind of tactics when you just play the battle. Axis and allies does a pretty good job at representing those tactics but the battle just comes down to lining up and blowing each other up (but target priority is removed).
I assume that Chess has no tactics, at the end of the day a Computer is unbeatable because its always know whats the best movement.
But we humans aren't computers. No one will in any game do all movements in the MOST optimal way. And when you make mistakes, and we all do mistakes in the middle of the game, things get dire, and when they gent dire you have to adapt and improvise, as Bear Grylls sais. Those are the tactics of the game.
I can agree that in the extremely skew competitive meta where lists are made to win if they go first, lose if they go second, tactics are much less relevant. But thats not how 90% of the games are played.
Elbows wrote: Tactics as we related to them in a real world setting? Warhammer 40,000 has never ever come close to a wargame that simulated actual combat, so I'd give it a sweeping no. Not just now, but ever.
Outside of "don't stand in the open", there's very little that would crossover into a normal historical wargame kind fo approach.
Are there strategies within Warhammer 40,000 as a game? Certainly. I would not confuse them with actual military based tactics, however.
I think the term "tactics" in warfare during the actual battle really means the same thing as it does in 40k. It's target priority. Think about the battle of midway - target priority lost that battle for the Japanese - attacking the airfield at midway rather than American carriers early in the battle. Same for Napoleon at Waterloo spending much of the battle wasting time trying to capture a worthless farmhouse - when he should have been making a flank move to cut the British off from the ocean and their supply. I just don't see any kind of tactic that exist in real warfare battles that doesn't exist in 40k. If we are talking about pre battle tactics (which 40k doesn't even touch) there is a lot missing. However - it's almost impossible to simulate that kind of tactics when you just play the battle. Axis and allies does a pretty good job at representing those tactics but the battle just comes down to lining up and blowing each other up (but target priority is removed).
As much as people said that WHFB had better tactics than W40K, ad the end of the day is what you are saying. You put your army in lines, you move forward. You use some small units to redirect tactics, and you try to game the sistem to be where you want to be. Thats it, the rest is maths.
The tactics are when things go different from what you where expecting. How you adapt to those situations and how you use your tools to win the batle are the real tactics. Thats why stratagems are so good. Yeah, some are just auto use, but others offer you actual choices, for when or in what to use them.
- Charge with a rhino to delay/silence a unit
- Swap a spell out to adjust to developing opportunities
- Sacrificed a character to spawndom to teleport him into a unit
- Shoot out a unit closest to my helbrute so that Fire Frenzy can double tap a more desirable target
- Reposition psykers to use CF on an incoming termie sorc
- Deployed Tzaangors as if they were a screen and then DMC'd them when all the support was in position
- Deployed a predator in an odd position to try and give a sense of security and then push it out 12" along with Blasphemous to get it hitting full strength
These all fall under deployment and target priority. Getting the most out of your units - like charging with a rhino that has nothing else to do. I'm not sure that's tactics...That is just common sense.
These all fall under deployment and target priority. Getting the most out of your units - like charging with a rhino that has nothing else to do. I'm not sure that's tactics...That is just common sense.
Give me an example of an in-battle tactic (40K or otherwise) that isn't deployment or target priority.
- Charge with a rhino to delay/silence a unit
- Swap a spell out to adjust to developing opportunities
- Sacrificed a character to spawndom to teleport him into a unit
- Shoot out a unit closest to my helbrute so that Fire Frenzy can double tap a more desirable target
- Reposition psykers to use CF on an incoming termie sorc
- Deployed Tzaangors as if they were a screen and then DMC'd them when all the support was in position
- Deployed a predator in an odd position to try and give a sense of security and then push it out 12" along with Blasphemous to get it hitting full strength
These all fall under deployment and target priority. Getting the most out of your units - like charging with a rhino that has nothing else to do. I'm not sure that's tactics...That is just common sense.
Whats tactics then?
By Oxford Dicctionary a tactic his:
1An action or strategy carefully planned to achieve a specific end.
- Charge with a rhino to delay/silence a unit
- Swap a spell out to adjust to developing opportunities
- Sacrificed a character to spawndom to teleport him into a unit
- Shoot out a unit closest to my helbrute so that Fire Frenzy can double tap a more desirable target
- Reposition psykers to use CF on an incoming termie sorc
- Deployed Tzaangors as if they were a screen and then DMC'd them when all the support was in position
- Deployed a predator in an odd position to try and give a sense of security and then push it out 12" along with Blasphemous to get it hitting full strength
These all fall under deployment and target priority. Getting the most out of your units - like charging with a rhino that has nothing else to do. I'm not sure that's tactics...That is just common sense.
These are actually all Tactics. A tactic is any action you're taking at the moment. Charge with the Rhino to Delay/Silence a unit (assuming "silence" means either preventing overwatch or forcing the unit to be unable to shoot the next turn) is very definitely a tactic. You could choose not to employ this tactic, but "common sense" tells you that it's probably a good move. Still, probably isn't definitely, since there are many possible reasons that you WOULDN'T charge with the Rhino (nearby strong CC character that might Heroic Intervention, Rhino only has 1 or 2 wounds remaining, moving Rhino may leave an objective more vulnerable to being captured, etc.).
All of these are balanced by the player's Strategy, which guides the use of all tactics. Deploying the Tzaangors as if it were a screen is a tactic, but is also part of the player's strategy to go nuts with them later, meaning the player is ready to use multiple tactics on unit in the future. It's a tactic that further's the player's strategy.
These all fall under deployment and target priority. Getting the most out of your units - like charging with a rhino that has nothing else to do. I'm not sure that's tactics...That is just common sense.
Tomato, tomato. Looks like tactics to me.
Not sure why you're trying to make it sound like "common sense" and "tactics" are mutually exclusive.
- Charge with a rhino to delay/silence a unit
- Swap a spell out to adjust to developing opportunities
- Sacrificed a character to spawndom to teleport him into a unit
- Shoot out a unit closest to my helbrute so that Fire Frenzy can double tap a more desirable target
- Reposition psykers to use CF on an incoming termie sorc
- Deployed Tzaangors as if they were a screen and then DMC'd them when all the support was in position
- Deployed a predator in an odd position to try and give a sense of security and then push it out 12" along with Blasphemous to get it hitting full strength
These all fall under deployment and target priority. Getting the most out of your units - like charging with a rhino that has nothing else to do. I'm not sure that's tactics...That is just common sense.
Not saying we're Sun Tzu here, but what is common sense to one is tactical mastery to another. They ARE tactics. I'd say a tax tical game should strive to have more and varied of them though.
Part of the problem isn't 40k exclusive. It's just part of game design culture. Currently, developers view premade combos and modifiers as tactics. They are, but they're very obvious ones. Complex tactics, like we see in the real world, are harder to provide for in a game because they're meant to play on perceptions or break norms as a rule.
One good example is commanders who had their soldiers hold two torches apiece at night instead of one. This made the army seem twice as large to the enemy. How could you do this in game mechanics?
What about Zhuge Liang's mythic borrowing of arrows at Chi Bi? He secretly filled the boats with hay and taunted the enemy army. He then collected all the arrows into the hay.
Napoleon crushed a retreating army by having his artillery break the ice under their feet after pushing them onto the water.
Multiple commanders used the empty fort strategy: staying quiet in the woods near a village so the enemy thought they were hiding in the village and deployed their backsides to the woods.
These are examples of tactics, but figuring out a way to allow players this kind of freedom of thought and ability in a game like 40k is a quick way to frustrate your mind.
I don't want to harp on the "alt activation" or "interruptions" aspect, but 40k does have a certain degree of "target dummy syndrome," where you can pop-up and play reverse-whack-a-mole before your opponent gets to do stuff. It becomes more noticable as the scale of 40k climbs ever-higher.
The question is: What sorts of tactics should a game be able to model? Suppression, bounding overwatch, spot barrages (artillery generally gets used more for area denial than for direct elimination), and such sound like a reasonable start. However, 40k doesn't have any real "suppression mechanic", Overwatch is simply an automagic "oh, so you're charging" mechanic, and Basilisks might as well be the Railgun from Eraser (or the Farsight from Perfect Dark).
So I'd say in summary that I sort of agree with your assessment, but I think you're blowing the difference between said three factors out of proportion. List-building and dice can make victory more difficult, but an experienced player who's making more intelligent tactical decisions (movement/target priority) can make a lot more of a difference today than they could back in 7th.
They are correct. All you do is move your entire army into the best position you can and shoot at the best targets you can pick, see what gets weakened/removed and then wait for you to suffer the same. To have the amount of actual tactical choice people are looking for you need more nuance to the situation so there is no clearly optimal positioning and shooting. You have to gamble doing this instead of that.
40k has no had meaningful tactical choice outside of list building/deployment in a long time.
That's interesting because I've played several games lately where making sure that I deployed my screening units in turns 1, 2, and 3 were incredibly important to my being able to win the game. Where they could assault and shoot were of no real concern so much as zone and board control were.
Not saying we're Sun Tzu here, but what is common sense to one is tactical mastery to another. They ARE tactics. I'd say a tax tical game should strive to have more and varied of them though.
Part of the problem isn't 40k exclusive. It's just part of game design culture. Currently, developers view premade combos and modifiers as tactics. They are, but they're very obvious ones. Complex tactics, like we see in the real world, are harder to provide for in a game because they're meant to play on perceptions or break norms as a rule.
One good example is commanders who had their soldiers hold two torches apiece at night instead of one. This made the army seem twice as large to the enemy. How could you do this in game mechanics?
What about Zhuge Liang's mythic borrowing of arrows at Chi Bi? He secretly filled the boats with hay and taunted the enemy army. He then collected all the arrows into the hay.
Napoleon crushed a retreating army by having his artillery break the ice under their feet after pushing them onto the water.
Multiple commanders used the empty fort strategy: staying quiet in the woods near a village so the enemy thought they were hiding in the village and deployed their backsides to the woods.
These are examples of tactics, but figuring out a way to allow players this kind of freedom of thought and ability in a game like 40k is a quick way to frustrate your mind.
Like you say these things are pretty impossible on the table top without fog of war, morphable terrain, and absolute freedom of choice.
Which one could argue these fall into 'target priority' and 'deployment'. e.g. the torches affect their target priority. I feel like those trying to lump everything into those two categories (not you) are using it as a crutch to turn their nose up at 40K and pretend like it's a shallow game. I mean, sure, we're not going to get lauded for our profound genius, but the game has choice, depth, and exploitable consequences.
I'm not going to give a list of tactics like others have, but I'm definitely going to disagree with the "no tactics" team.
I've watched games where one team lost by turn 2, we reset the game, deployed differently and approached the game differently and won the game instead.
I've been to tournaments where "OP lists" were on the bottom tables. And I've experienced myself learn how to deal with certain lists in more effective ways to squeeze out wins.
It's not really a "git good" argument. But if you allow yourself to blame the dice, you'll never improve. I play an under powered army and do average with my list, but I've seen similar lists to mine do extremely well in multiple tournaments. When I lose I know it's because I should have done something different, and that's tactics.
edit: and another thing. I don't know if its the average attitude of a 40k player, but these forums definitely focus too much on list building compared to tactics. No one in the Orks thread really talks tactics, even though our list building is virtually solved. But tactics are certainly the reason why some people are doing better than others, it's not luck when its 6 or 8 games in a row (in a tournament), to think those results are thanks to the dice is blinding yourself.
I think we're in a world where playing a melee force is much more tactical than in 7th, and a shooting/psyker based force is much less.
With melee, you have a whole lot more latitude than you did in 7th. Who you declare as a target, where you declare from, where you move your chargers, where you are then positioned for your pile in, who you choose and do not choose to pile in, who you choose to base, how you divide your attacks, which units you choose to activate in what order, how you move in your consolidation and which models you remove as casualties all directly impact the performance of your army.
Compare to 7th ed, where you would charge, and after that declaration EVERYTHING was prescribed except for the choice to challenge/refuse.
Meanwhile, in the world of shooting, vehicle facings, cover/concealment, blast positioning, and not having universal split fire is all gone. In competitive play, the first three mattered...basically not at all, because all those had been removed by sparse competitive board setups, the weakness of vehicles, and Invisibility strats rendering blasts ineffectual. But in casual play, players felt that draining of depth.
But man. When I play my Dark Eldar+Harlequins, all the hollowness of the game drains away. Every decision is critical, and every mistake has an impact. I absolutely cannot wait until they get their codexes.
I'm honestly not certain what "tactics" you're looking for.
I play a variety of tactical wargames, and it's not really any different, just that there's expensive models instead of cardboard counters on hexboards.
List building actually adds some strategy to it that scenario-based tactical games don't have.
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the_scotsman wrote: I think we're in a world where playing a melee force is much more tactical than in 7th, and a shooting/psyker based force is much less.
With melee, you have a whole lot more latitude than you did in 7th. Who you declare as a target, where you declare from, where you move your chargers, where you are then positioned for your pile in, who you choose and do not choose to pile in, who you choose to base, how you divide your attacks, which units you choose to activate in what order, how you move in your consolidation and which models you remove as casualties all directly impact the performance of your army.
Compare to 7th ed, where you would charge, and after that declaration EVERYTHING was prescribed except for the choice to challenge/refuse.
Meanwhile, in the world of shooting, vehicle facings, cover/concealment, blast positioning, and not having universal split fire is all gone. In competitive play, the first three mattered...basically not at all, because all those had been removed by sparse competitive board setups, the weakness of vehicles, and Invisibility strats rendering blasts ineffectual. But in casual play, players felt that draining of depth.
But man. When I play my Dark Eldar+Harlequins, all the hollowness of the game drains away. Every decision is critical, and every mistake has an impact. I absolutely cannot wait until they get their codexes.
I wouldn''t really say that. I definitely feel the dramatic improvement in close combat, but I don't really feel a reduction from shooting. The nitty-gritty of exactly 2" spacing to avoid my manticore barrage, or the exact angle my tank was facing, basically were irrelevant to all things. When in doubt, just pivot the tank and point it right at the target, all guns can shoot forward.
I couldn't really care less about all that stuff about CQC you mentioned though. What matters to me is the ability to remove yourself from combat voluntarily, and the ability of CQC to shut down shooting. This makes is a very powerful tactical tool on the field that can considerably augment the power of a force. The rest of the stuff basically doesn't matter. For all the talk about activation order in CQC, its probably adds the least to the game of all the CQC changes.
Tactics play a role, but thats also heavily embedded within list building. You build your list around a tactic and deploy around it, so that when your army hits the table it's pretty much just hitting the "go" button.
40k is not, and never has been, a deep tactical game. The actual combat is extremely attritional, the objectives typically are just a point on the board you control by proximity, not much to it.
"Tactics" within a game like 40k to me means being able to make choices that will give me a better chance of winning.
I think that the game does have tactics in this sense. I make choices to move, to shoot, to charge, and where and when to do that. There will be optimal choices and knowing which ones to take are "tactics".
Would playing armies with more nuance than just my super killy character smashes you in the face, make these choices less obvious and therefore more dependent on player skill to win? Probably, yes.
It's interesting to think about whether Chess is a tactical game? All the moves are known beforehand and some units are more powerful than others. Most people would say winning comes down to being able to make more "best" choices in your decisions than your opponent. Which is not dissimilar to 40k.
Vaktathi wrote: Tactics play a role, but thats also heavily embedded within list building. You build your list around a tactic and deploy around it, so that when your army hits the table it's pretty much just hitting the "go" button.
40k is not, and never has been, a deep tactical game. The actual combat is extremely attritional, the objectives typically are just a point on the board you control by proximity, not much to it.
List building and deployment is 95% of the game.
Two identical lists face each other. There are no major dice swings. Which one wins?
Plenty of strategies starting from list building, to objective placements, choice of going first or second (lol) making the decision to go for objectives over going full ham to table.
Tactics according to google would be how you end up moving things around and using what you already brought.
target priority being one, order in which you shoot and do things which can come up for things like charging or positioning to take an objective.
These all fall under deployment and target priority. Getting the most out of your units - like charging with a rhino that has nothing else to do. I'm not sure that's tactics...That is just common sense.
Tomato, tomato. Looks like tactics to me.
Not sure why you're trying to make it sound like "common sense" and "tactics" are mutually exclusive.
technically everything you do on a battlefield is a "tactic". I guess I was thinking to deeply into it. You are right.
Vaktathi wrote: Tactics play a role, but thats also heavily embedded within list building. You build your list around a tactic and deploy around it, so that when your army hits the table it's pretty much just hitting the "go" button.
40k is not, and never has been, a deep tactical game. The actual combat is extremely attritional, the objectives typically are just a point on the board you control by proximity, not much to it.
List building and deployment is 95% of the game.
Yet in a mirror match with mirrored deployment there is clearly an element of understanding the importance of in game movement, movement denial and screening, and a variety of other factors. I'm not arguing the game is incredibly complex but the idea that its 95% deployment list building is too far, those are major elements but not to that degree.
These all fall under deployment and target priority. Getting the most out of your units - like charging with a rhino that has nothing else to do. I'm not sure that's tactics...That is just common sense.
Tomato, tomato. Looks like tactics to me.
Not sure why you're trying to make it sound like "common sense" and "tactics" are mutually exclusive.
technically everything you do on a battlefield is a "tactic". I guess I was thinking to deeply into it. You are right.
Using a rhino to eat over watch would be a tactic. common sense or not. fish o fury was a tactic.
sultansean wrote: ...It's interesting to think about whether Chess is a tactical game? All the moves are known beforehand and some units are more powerful than others. Most people would say winning comes down to being able to make more "best" choices in your decisions than your opponent. Which is not dissimilar to 40k.
The difference, to me, and the thing that makes people belittle the tactical aspect of 40k, is that when you "do something" in chess you set it up over a number of turns and your opponent has the ability to interact with/disrupt a game state you're trying to achieve as you build it. In 40k I've got a constant, straightforward goal each turn (remove threatening enemy models, position to be on objectives) and my decisions are made in order to further those goals efficiently, whereas in a game of chess I need to consider each move in the context of the game stat I'm trying to achieve, what my opponent might do in response, and how the game state is going to be affected by said decision a few moves down the line.
In practice there are fewer decisions to make in 40k, the quality of a decision is easier to evaluate quickly, and the difference between a "bad" decision and a "good" decision is less significant, which is why people point at 40k as a less "tactical" game than others; the problem, however, is that trying to make a game more tactical not only makes it harder to learn but it makes playing it as a newbie a lot more frustrating. Consider for the moment Warmachine (where a common adage from experienced players is "you will lose to everything the first time you see it"); in 40k a fairly new player can work out what something does and how to deal with it by reading the datasheets, whereas in Warmachine the interaction between abilities is complex enough and board positioning difficult enough that sticking something disruptive like an ability you aren't familiar with into a game can trip you up and make a game very one-sided.
So yes, Warhammer is less tactical than a lot of games, but it's also a lot more forgiving and a lot more n00b-friendly than more complicated games because you don't spend six months getting stomped by things you weren't prepared for before you can get your feet under you.
Yarium wrote: ...I'm tempted to do a very careful recording of a game, making notes on every group of dice rolled, tracking the value of every dice rolled, and tracking expected values for dice roll results. In this way, I could determine if one player or another was truly lucky, and if so, in which way.
The problem with this methodology is that some die rolls matter more than others; there aren't very many single rolls on which the whole game rest anymore (unless you're, say, trying to play something like a ten-man Custodian Warden squad at 1,000pts, at that point the charge roll is very much a win/loss thing), but it should be fairly obvious that a hit roll with a lascannon is more important than one with a lasgun, or that a save against a lascannon is more important than a save against a lasgun.
For funnies then, how would you wish to change that methodology? My current thought was in how I would break down the different "luck" results, like "whom was luckiest with damage rolls" or "whom was luckiest with Advancing rolls", etc.
I might break it down based on an attack as a whole rather than individual die rolls, see how your damage compares to the average for that attack. A given lucky hit roll is rendered irrelevant by an unlucky wound roll, take the attack as a whole and you don't end up tracking pseudo-relevant data (learning that your hit rolls are 20% better than they should be is misleading if you also learn that your wound rolls are 20% worse than they should be, for instance).
Strategy is list building, knowing the meta, choosing units with complimentary rules, picking a preferred path to victory, and including counters to other strategies.
Tactics is Target prioritization, maneuver, managing objectives, and executing/changing strategy.
When one has issues, both suffer. Like in 7th ed when there were apex predator lists that were just unbeatable by the vast majority of lists, tactics suffered because the best you could manage was loosing by less. An example of it working the other way would be if shooting were better than CC, so the requirement for viable tactics constrains strategy.
In real life strategy is tactics superior in every way, Tactics is what you use when strategy hasn't already assured you victory. In a game though, you want a good balance between the two, and right now I feel like strategy is much more complicated and possibly much more rewarding than tactics.
Vaktathi wrote: Tactics play a role, but thats also heavily embedded within list building. You build your list around a tactic and deploy around it, so that when your army hits the table it's pretty much just hitting the "go" button.
40k is not, and never has been, a deep tactical game. The actual combat is extremely attritional, the objectives typically are just a point on the board you control by proximity, not much to it.
List building and deployment is 95% of the game.
Yet in a mirror match with mirrored deployment there is clearly an element of understanding the importance of in game movement, movement denial and screening, and a variety of other factors. I'm not arguing the game is incredibly complex but the idea that its 95% deployment list building is too far, those are major elements but not to that degree.
when you hold all equal, then only that 5% matters
That said, a lot of those factors are also part of list building and deployment. For example, if your army has no screening units, if you deploy your units incorrectly (say putting your screen behind your big guns), or dont have support elements for the screeners, then your tactics arent going to work.
The game isn't devoid of tactics but in general its lacking in terms of player agency. There are wrong choices to be made, but for the most part its a game of focusing fire on threatening pieces to reduce the return fire to the point where taking sub-optimal attacks to ensure destruction is more valuable than spreading more damage around by attacking optimal targets. None of this is exactly rocket science though.
I'm generally of the opinion that a game with a winner and loser is competitive by definition, but playing a bit, I do understand the "forging the narrative" kind of mentality. The lack of agency can make it easy to not care who wins and just put down models to see how the game resolves itself.
The primary issue the game has is that positioning doesn't matter a whole lot after deployment. Most models have relatively low mobility compared to threat range (I consider this true even while assaulting as a charging unit attacks more like a gun by moving farther there then they did in the movement phase). The lack of movement is really only noticeable laterally, where its pretty common for the game to get where its a 3 turn hike to get to an objective. This really limits how the game can interact with objectives.
40K has never really had tactics at least not in the way most people think. The vast majority of the game is in list building and finding combos, which is what people think is the Pinnacle of skill in the game.
There are some minor tactical applications such as Target priority and knowing where to apply the use of force but for the most part I find Warhammer of any flavor to be pretty low on the actual tactics that can be applied during the game
AnomanderRake wrote: [quote=sultansean 751974 9859706 nullSo yes, Warhammer is less tactical than a lot of games, but it's also a lot more forgiving and a lot more n00b-friendly than more complicated games because you don't spend six months getting stomped by things you weren't prepared for before you can get your feet under you.
But do you think that tactics necessarily requires complexity? 40k is a more complex game than Chess. Way more rules, pieces and potential interactions, but it is a more tactical game? I don't know, I think it depends on how you define tactics.
For example my preferred game Kings of War, is not as complex as 40k but I would say it is more tactical. There are less units and less rules, but within games there are many more times where my opponent's pre-planning and positioning of units has me pulling my hair out because he has left me no "good" or obvious options.
Based on this I don't think that a tactical game needs to be complex but it does need to put restrictions on players choices so that one can plan for an opponents actions. In 40k because units are very free to move and shoot this is hard to do. I would think that having terrain that prevents movement, would be a short terms solution. Less units on the table with longer range and more line of sigh blocking terrain would also do it. Letting close combat units move up under cover and having shooting movements move to gain good fire lanes are all things that are "tactics" in my opinion which could be represented in the game.
Wayniac wrote: 40K has never really had tactics at least not in the way most people think. The vast majority of the game is in list building and finding combos, which is what people think is the Pinnacle of skill in the game.
There are some minor tactical applications such as Target priority and knowing where to apply the use of force but for the most part I find Warhammer of any flavor to be pretty low on the actual tactics that can be applied during the game
Its kinda hard to call target priority minor.
its a core concept in most if not all games.
if anything there is a hand full of universal Core tactics, some less important than others depending on the system. but i can see how some gamers ignore that for more of the super flashy combo type tricks and put more value into it that they should.
MinscS2 wrote: The main "tactic" in 40katm seems to be target priority. Movement/positioning is important as well, for most armies.
I'd say it's unfair to both the game and the players to claim that there's no tactics involved in 40k.
Positioning and movement is made less important due to plethora of LOS ignoring, board wide range weapons certain armies can spam.
Outside of Imperial Guard and Eldar Reapers there are significant tactics in this game.
I'll give an example of where i used some tactics to win big on the final table of a tournament. I intentionally deployed my hive guard forward, as far as they'd go behind 1 thin line of Hormagaunts, with the intent of pulling the majority of my opponent's forces into the center of the map. He went after my Hive Guard hard, and this allowed me to get 12 points of secondaries in 2 turns at the cost of the Hive Guard, because i set myself up to counterattack the sides of his approach (pincer). Additionally, I chose to go second so he could control more of the board and really deny my deep strike. But when i hollowed out my lines, everything arrived in the center of my army and attacked out as my forward forces retreated. He couldn't fall back with a critical chunk of his force and I won easily, as I just kited him for the remainder of the time denying points, having scored well enough to win.
Meanwhile nothing like this works against or with guard. "I put down my screens and rolled my artillery dice. I knew the <insert here> was capable of wounding T7 so i shot it first. Call me Sun Tzu 2."
As one poster mentioned, armies that are focused on melee AND shooting are the most complex and interesting.
- Charge with a rhino to delay/silence a unit
- Swap a spell out to adjust to developing opportunities
- Sacrificed a character to spawndom to teleport him into a unit
- Shoot out a unit closest to my helbrute so that Fire Frenzy can double tap a more desirable target
- Reposition psykers to use CF on an incoming termie sorc
- Deployed Tzaangors as if they were a screen and then DMC'd them when all the support was in position
- Deployed a predator in an odd position to try and give a sense of security and then push it out 12" along with Blasphemous to get it hitting full strength
I've done similar stuff (minus the Tzeentch).
in every game I've played of 8th, my opponent has been surprised at something (tactics wise) I've done.
the_scotsman wrote: I think we're in a world where playing a melee force is much more tactical than in 7th, and a shooting/psyker based force is much less.
With melee, you have a whole lot more latitude than you did in 7th. Who you declare as a target, where you declare from, where you move your chargers, where you are then positioned for your pile in, who you choose and do not choose to pile in, who you choose to base, how you divide your attacks, which units you choose to activate in what order, how you move in your consolidation and which models you remove as casualties all directly impact the performance of your army.
Compare to 7th ed, where you would charge, and after that declaration EVERYTHING was prescribed except for the choice to challenge/refuse.
Meanwhile, in the world of shooting, vehicle facings, cover/concealment, blast positioning, and not having universal split fire is all gone. In competitive play, the first three mattered...basically not at all, because all those had been removed by sparse competitive board setups, the weakness of vehicles, and Invisibility strats rendering blasts ineffectual. But in casual play, players felt that draining of depth.
But man. When I play my Dark Eldar+Harlequins, all the hollowness of the game drains away. Every decision is critical, and every mistake has an impact. I absolutely cannot wait until they get their codexes.
ITC Invisibility still allowed Blasts, and you could "bring your own cover" by setting up formations. Rhino-Training was a common trick in 5th and while less present could still be done in 7th versus non-Tau opponents. Sure, your opponent could plop Hunters Eye on a Bike Command Squad toting Grav...but just how many points are we talking?
As for Assault, yes the actual fight was primarily resolution, but when it comes to fiddling with "do I pile in," that's definitely getting into minutiae IMO. There is an old Dashofpepper thread from 5th (his oldcron assault tactica) which talks about using the Deceiver to "force-kite" his opponent away from objectives. 40k as a whole sadly lacks positional shenanigans in that aspect; GW overreacted to Lash being semi-popular and nerfed Tank Shock, removed Mawloc pushing, and made Magna-Grapnels just make you run into melee instead of doing Scorpion's "GET OVER HERE!" And that's just boring.
Part of the problem with positional shenanigans is that the game is very abstracted, which means most of the time any positional tricks are more an exploitation than an intentional tactic. There's a sense than whenever positioning matters; its an exploit in the way the rule is worded and not something that's really intended to work that way.
Meanwhile nothing like this works against or with guard. "I put down my screens and rolled my artillery dice. I knew the <insert here> was capable of wounding T7 so i shot it first. Call me Sun Tzu 2."
Its not complexity of mechanics that it needs it need complexity of choice.
There are obvious better or worse choices you can make. You're either optimal or you're not for whatever it is you are doing in 40k. Sometimes what is or is not better is less obvious to the player but the impact is absolute.
For 40k to have meaningful tactics it needs more nuanced meaningful choice.
Well ITC would be a case of house ruling not everyone really did it though it makes sense. there is something shimmering over there but i cant see, lets take some pot shots at them. but lets not use our flamers or large blast weapons for some raisin.
but yeah there is a lack of movement shenanigans. sort of. there is a lot more offensive shenanigans to be had with melee, pile ins and disengages. i can see the changes though seem to be so you as a player cannot move your opponents stuff. maybe some of those warhammer world guys got sick of cheeto fingers fiddling fine figures.
LunarSol wrote: Part of the problem with positional shenanigans is that the game is very abstracted, which means most of the time any positional tricks are more an exploitation than an intentional tactic. There's a sense than whenever positioning matters; its an exploit in the way the rule is worded and not something that's really intended to work that way.
Except 40k itself really isn't abstracted in a consistent manner. An abstract 40k game would have "Small Arms," "Bolt Weapons," etc. rather than Bolters vs Bolt Rifles vs Bolt Carbines, wouldn't have lots of minute rules for special kung-fu wardances, etc.
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Desubot wrote: Well ITC would be a case of house ruling not everyone really did it though it makes sense. there is something shimmering over there but i cant see, lets take some pot shots at them. but lets not use our flamers or large blast weapons for some raisin.
but yeah there is a lack of movement shenanigans. sort of.
i can see the changes though seem to be so you as a player cannot move your opponents stuff. maybe some of those warhammer world guys got sick of cheeto fingers fiddling fine figures.
Lash was the only ability that had your opponent physically move your stuff. Tank Shock, Mawlocs and Magna-Grapnels had explicit displacement instructions. Likewise, Death is Not Enough was almost like a cleaner Lash, since you used it to nominate a board edge for your opponent to flee towards; even disregarding Fearless and other means shutting the aforementioned ability down, such abilities let you manipulate your opponent's position without risk of Cheetosplosion.
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Lance845 wrote: Its not complexity of mechanics that it needs it need complexity of choice.
There are obvious better or worse choices you can make. You're either optimal or you're not for whatever it is you are doing in 40k. Sometimes what is or is not better is less obvious to the player but the impact is absolute.
For 40k to have meaningful tactics it needs more nuanced meaningful choice.
Usually, the games I've found the most memorable are those where victory was through some unexpected vector of units that don't normally "team up" with each other.
In one 5th ed game, I was up against Jump Pack Blood Angels. My opponent has the Sanguinor, I have some Wagons and Kanz. My opponent is out of assault range, so I Tank Shock the Sanguinor. Note that since displacement is "closest legal distance" and the Battlewagon is the stretch limo of 40k vehicles, this ironically pulled the Sanguinor towards my army and into assault range, letting me tarpit him while I focused on killing the rest of the Blood Angels.
In another game, my opponent ran a Draigostar. I did the unexpected and actually charged a unit of 5 Lootas into the multiassault mess; thus most of the killiness of said Paladins was wasted on overkilling said Lootas while the rest of the MANz and Klaws got to do most the krumpin' unimpeded.
In 7th, I found that Horrors were better as a "sniper" unit than for mere tarpitting. This was partially due to the wonkiness of being able to run after the Psychic Phase, but it was also due to the Brotherhood of Psykers rule meaning I could choose the "point of origin" for Flickerfire. The unit shot 2d6 shots...from a single model, while splitting allowed for counter-sniping. (Inversely, splitting made you more vulnerable to melee on account of Instability acting very similar to WHFB Unstable/crumble wounds).
One thing I'm experimenting with in my game is replacing Phases with a "two-action" system, and replacing "free actions" and "explicit overwatch" with an "interrupt stack" system. In a weird way, it actually simplifies a lot of the game ("Move twice" instead of Advance, "Interrupt to shoot/Interrupt to charge" instead of Overwatch/Heroic Intervention," etc) while increasing the depth of play by an order of magnitude.
Unfortunately, with the current meta being built around turn 1 alpha-strikes, there's not a whole lot of room for tactical development.
The core ruleset definitely allows for tactics to develop, earlier games in the edition before the big leafblowers came to be ubiquitous can show this. The problem is GW's current and constant arms race with the armies. Until they come to understand that the raw offense of the game needs to be dialed back, we're going to keep getting games that are decided in the deployment phase, with everything else just following the motions.
Alpha strike is strong because shooting is too strong. Every list is stuffed with DS oblits, Guard artillery, and reapers. Everyone else is just twisting in the wind.
You want more tactics? Make the strongest guns have the shortest range. Or have degrading profiles based on distance.
And designate artillery properly:
Distance 24" or less - cannot shoot the target
Distance 24"-36" - -1 to hit
Distance 36"+ - No penalties to hit
Artillery without line of sight to the target suffers -1 to hit.
Also, set it so that in matched play, one out of every three units can be placed into Deep Strike reserves. More starts out on the table, and people aren't just blowing each other away from across the table without moving.
Also, set it so that in matched play, one out of every three units can be placed into Deep Strike reserves. More starts out on the table, and people aren't just blowing each other away from across the table without moving.
Alternatively make reserves cost CP or make them unreliable with a roll.
Also, set it so that in matched play, one out of every three units can be placed into Deep Strike reserves. More starts out on the table, and people aren't just blowing each other away from across the table without moving.
Alternatively make reserves cost CP or make them unreliable with a roll.
Only if these are accompanied by MASSIVE nerfs to Imperial Guard, Eldar, and all ranged shooting. Yikes. I use reserves primarily now so my units don't get eliminated turn 1... from long range shooting.
Also, set it so that in matched play, one out of every three units can be placed into Deep Strike reserves. More starts out on the table, and people aren't just blowing each other away from across the table without moving.
Alternatively make reserves cost CP or make them unreliable with a roll.
Only if these are accompanied by MASSIVE nerfs to Imperial Guard, Eldar, and all ranged shooting. Yikes. I use reserves primarily now so my units don't get eliminated turn 1... from long range shooting.
I mean in all honesty, how would everyones games be if people stopped using eldar and imp guard specific problem units.
i know monster mash chaos was pretty big. but other then those three i dont hear much about the other forces.
40K without abuse of broken units is damn fun...that's what it is. Skip Maelstrom and create heavier terrain on a table and play without the super-optimized list (i.e. mathhammer) and the game is plenty enjoyable.
It's one of the reasons I don't particularly care that certain units are broken. Playing with buddies of mine, we simply don't use them (or use them very sparingly). Shocking, I know, but it's quite enjoyable when a close fought fun game is the objective.
Marmatag wrote: Only if these are accompanied by MASSIVE nerfs to Imperial Guard, Eldar, and all ranged shooting. Yikes. I use reserves primarily now so my units don't get eliminated turn 1... from long range shooting.
You know that reserves abuse favors shooting as well, right? IG deep strike plasma arriving turn 1 wherever you want it with no scatter or chance of failure is one of the worst "no tactics" offenders in reducing 40k to a really expensive CCG. Nerf reserves and now the IG player has to choose between taking their chances with the reserves system vs. trying to move the plasma guns up the table via transports. And in either case it isn't getting to shoot until turn 2-3.
Or they could just fix plasma from it's broken auto include kills anything profile and cheap cost.
But yes reserves should have an element of randomness to them I'm not sure adding scatter back in is the right move but heck needing to roll even a 3+ would make reserves have a risk for the reward of being untouchable
At 1000 points the game allows for a lot of choices. Long range shooting is inexistent or severely limited, troops compose a big part of the list and in general the game is at it's best. Unfortunately at that point level, lists have match up problems.
At 2000 points the match ups are better, all lists are reasonably balanced (except for a couple of infamous ones). Problem here is that the table is overcrowded, and there is a lot of long range shooting, so you are severely limited in the ways you can influence the outcome (it still counts for at least 30-35% of the outcome though, good players with bad lists can win against bad players with good lists).
At 1500 you sort of mix the pro's and con's of 2000 and 1000. The table has a lot of free space for movement, there is an average amount of long range shooting and you have some cases of unbalanced match ups.
Also, set it so that in matched play, one out of every three units can be placed into Deep Strike reserves. More starts out on the table, and people aren't just blowing each other away from across the table without moving.
Alternatively make reserves cost CP or make them unreliable with a roll.
Terrible idea. We want more tactics so we are going to take away control and choice from the player? How does that help build tactical game play to have it come down to a die roll on wether or not you can actually implement your plan?
koooaei wrote: Hey. It might be a burnout but i can't deal with a feeling that if you would rate the importance of factors that make you win, tactics would be by far the least important one.
1. Listbuilding. It seems to be the cornerstone of success. You can look at lists before the game and have a 95% success rate at guessing who's gona win.
2. First turn and general dice luck. With how killy things are and with how little you can do to protect your forces other than bring the 'right' ones (see listbuilding) this is more important than ever before.
3. Tactics. Seems that it goes last after all the other things. There is just not much you can do.
At least i feel so. And i'm not alone within our gaming group. We've tried some new games like walking dead and seen the diffedence. Even necromunda and shadowwar armageddon aren't that hollow. And it's hard to say this, but EVEN 7th edition was better than what 8th currently is.
You hit the nail on the head. 8th edition 40k killed my entire 40k gaming group. We still play 30k but how long until they fubar that up?
Aos did the exact same thing to my fantasy group. We had over 13 armies represented , now that group is dead too.
We went from 100% GW all the time with both systems to basically abandoning all that is "NEW GW".
Everyone in the group has turned to not believing that any GW game release will be one of quality and will be "pumped and dumped" from now on.
We are going to differ on what we regard as “tactics”, but I’d say the game played RAW is very shallow in this regard. There are some choices to be made on deployment, but after that it’s kind of stupid simple. Not even saying stupid simple is a bad thing for 40k, but there really aren’t a lot of real choices to be made once the game starts.
Many would argue the somewhat gamey and uncessarily complex way every single model needs to be micromanaged in the movement and combat phases are tactics but I think it’s just silly.
I’m actually ok with it right now though. It’s shallow but fun (as long as you like rolling lots of dice), and approached as a casual miniature game it’s better than it’s been in a long while.
Lance845 wrote: Terrible idea. We want more tactics so we are going to take away control and choice from the player? How does that help build tactical game play to have it come down to a die roll on wether or not you can actually implement your plan?
It works because it forces you to make risk vs. reward tradeoffs and figure out how to deal with it when things don't go as planned. If your deep striking plasma is unreliable is it still worth putting it in reserve? How do you deal with the intended target of the plasma with your other units if you don't pass your reserve rolls? These were interesting choices to make in previous editions, where deep striking gave you a ton of power at the cost of reliability. In 8th there's no choice to make, any unit that can deep strike is always going to deep strike because it's strictly better than starting the game on the table. The only possible choice you could ever have is with the 50% limit, if you have too many units with the option and can only use some of them. Tactics-wise you just count up how many plasma shots you're going to drop on turn 1 and then roll some dice. It's just like putting "plasma bolt" in your CCG deck.
Marmatag wrote: Alpha strike is strong because shooting is too strong. Every list is stuffed with DS oblits, Guard artillery, and reapers. Everyone else is just twisting in the wind.
You want more tactics? Make the strongest guns have the shortest range. Or have degrading profiles based on distance.
And designate artillery properly:
Distance 24" or less - cannot shoot the target
Distance 24"-36" - -1 to hit
Distance 36"+ - No penalties to hit
Artillery without line of sight to the target suffers -1 to hit.
Also, set it so that in matched play, one out of every three units can be placed into Deep Strike reserves. More starts out on the table, and people aren't just blowing each other away from across the table without moving.
Another problem I see is that there is no variety in stat-lines, of both the weapons, and the units. The stronger a weapon is, the more S, AP, and range it will have. There aren't weapons that fill a variety of rolls or functions, it's either [anti-infantry], or [anti-tank/tough];
Weapons Strength
AP Damage
Range
Amount of shots
[price]
Units Toughness
SV Wounds
[Strength]
[Attacks]
[Speed]
[price]
What about a S2 gun that had high AP?
What about a S2 gun with low ap, low damage, but a massive number of shots?
What about a high S weapon with little penetration?
As it stands, you're really either an infantry (~t4, 1w), a tank-like (t7/8, 10+w, SV2/3+), or a super heavy; mix it up a little [read: lot]. Standardized stat lines, of weapons and of models, are bunk.
What about a T8, Sv6+ model?
What about a T2, Sv2+ model?
What about a model that is nothing except a pile of wounds?
Look; I don't have the best examples at the moment - but the point stands, there should be everything from a top quality weapon/unit (high values in everything, including price), to a low quality weapon/unit (low values in everything, including price); there should also be weapons/units that fill niches and statlines that don't currently exist as well - as it is, everything is standardized - and that's boring, plus bad for the game.
The simple answer is yes there are tactics involved in Warhammer (the depth of Warhammer compared to other games isn't really important just that fact that there are tactics).
Your statement seems to break down to (oversimplified)
>list can decide a game
>thus there are no tactics
While lists are important they certainly aren't the only thing in it.
1. The existence of the mirror match disproves this theory. two identical lists can be piloted by different players and have drastically different win percentages.
2. regardless of how trivial and easy it might seem things taken for granted such as target priority and deployment are done differently by each player and are thus a type of tactic
3. the same players being successful year after year at major events proves there is skill involved if it were only lists you would simply find a a much larger (more random) group of players winning major GTs
This game is actually very similar to hearthstone in the list/deck building phase of the game. While the deck you make in HS is important you dont see random players winning the championships each year and its why the same players make it to the top spots over and over... they are simply able to pilot the same deck to a higher win percentage. It's why when you go on hearthpone you will see people saying "how did you get to legends with this deck i cant get past rank 15" same thing on these forums different people of different skill levels can pilot decks to different win percentages. While you will never win if you dont take a competitive list doesn't mean that you can give some random person a top list and they will win LVO with it
fe40k wrote: What about a S2 gun that had high AP?
What about a S2 gun with low ap, low damage, but a massive number of shots?
What about a high S weapon with little penetration?
The problem is that none of these things really have any impact, because the only stat that matters is average wounds inflicted and 8th edition guarantees that you're at least wounding on a 6. In previous editions something like a S2 AP2 gun might have made sense, as a gun that could really effectively kill low-toughness infantry at the expense of being literally unable to roll dice against anything T6 or higher (or any vehicle). But now in 8th you wound a T20 titan on a 6 and ignore its (normal) save, just like a lascannon wounds on a 6 and ignores its save. The only question then becomes how much damage each gun does once it wounds, and if your D1 anti-infantry gun is cheap enough to bring several of them to beat the single lascannon's D6 damage.
This, of course, is part of the rules bloat of 40k. There are too many different defensive and offensive stats that all sum up to a single average wounds per shot value, and too many combinations of those stats that are effectively equivalent. We'd be better off simplifying the stat lines and getting rid of the illusion of depth.
What about a T8, Sv6+ model?
What about a T2, Sv2+ model?
What about a model that is nothing except a pile of wounds?
Again, none of these things really lead to interesting choices. Toughness and save value are linked, so you just calculate out the chance to wound. Wounding on a 2+ and saving on a 2+ is exactly equivalent to wounding on a 6+ and saving on a 6+. Sure, whether it gets its defense from saves or toughness changes whether it's more vulnerable to strength or AP, but can you really say that either of those vulnerabilities stands out as worse? It's certainly less interesting than comparing a T3 Sv5+ guardsman to a T4 Sv3+ marine, where instead of details over the exact implementation of two equivalent defense values you have a cheap and fragile horde model vs. an expensive and durable elite model.
Worse than this mathematical equivalence is the fact that you aren't providing any interesting strategic choices. If there's any difference in all your unconventional combinations it's something that is only found when you get out a calculator and figure out the averages for all of your math. You might discover that you can gain a 5% increase in damage by going with weapon X instead of weapon Y to deal with this weird T8 Sv6+ model, but that's a very shallow sort of strategy. It changes your list building, but it doesn't have any meaningful impact on your on-table choices. Nor does it have much of an impact on the player with the weird model, it's still a "tough" model for strategic purposes and therefore used the same as other "tough" models. And that's how it should be, you want players making strategic choices based on unit roles, not calculating out mathematical averages and obsessing over optimizing their dice.
Look; I don't have the best examples at the moment - but the point stands, there should be everything from a top quality weapon/unit (high values in everything, including price), to a low quality weapon/unit (low values in everything, including price); there should also be weapons/units that fill niches and statlines that don't currently exist as well - as it is, everything is standardized - and that's boring, plus bad for the game.
If you ever want tactics in 40k you will have to be open to the idea that you can't have information. I can look at at ANY list and go, "oh X unit is going to screen, Y unit will charge".
There is no traps to spring, no bluffs to call, no way to force your opponent's hand. I can't place down a mystery unit and force my opponent to scout it out with an expendable unit, lest the unit he uses to engage it gets mulched by not the minimum strength Tactical Squad he thought it was BUT was actually a 5-man Honor Guard!
I can't disguise my Leman Russ Exterminator to look like an Annihilator! I can't deploy 9/10ths of my list and have my opponent think that is all of it, when I secretly have a Terminator squad ready to drop right next to his warlord. Conversely I can't bluff that I have stuff in reserve when I actually don't!
40k Needs a SIDEBOARD if you ever want REAL tactics to develop.
Automatically Appended Next Post: 40k Is still stuck in the list-building phase, and will REMAIN there until deception and misinformation actually is possible.
Quickjager wrote: If you ever want tactics in 40k you will have to be open to the idea that you can't have information. I can look at at ANY list and go, "oh X unit is going to screen, Y unit will charge".
There is no traps to spring, no bluffs to call, no way to force your opponent's hand. I can't place down a mystery unit and force my opponent to scout it out with an expendable unit, lest the unit he uses to engage it gets mulched by not the minimum strength Tactical Squad he thought it was BUT was actually a 5-man Honor Guard!
I can't disguise my Leman Russ Exterminator to look like an Annihilator! I can't deploy 9/10ths of my list and have my opponent think that is all of it, when I secretly have a Terminator squad ready to drop right next to his warlord. Conversely I can't bluff that I have stuff in reserve when I actually don't!
40k Needs a SIDEBOARD if you ever want REAL tactics to develop.
Automatically Appended Next Post: 40k Is still stuck in the list-building phase, and will REMAIN there until deception and misinformation actually is possible.
Traps and such aren't a requirement for tactical thought to exist in a game it simply adds another layer. Secondly, we do have a version of traps and counter play now that exists in strategies. For example like the custodes "swooping dive (i think thats the name)' or even simple things like auto passing moral. You can force your opponent to waste fire to wipe a unit that would otherwise disappear from moral. Sideboard play comes into account by trying to guess when and how your opponent will utilize their command point abilities. This will continue to update and develop into a small side meta to any game as more and more armies get access to more strategems.
Quickjager wrote: 40k Is still stuck in the list-building phase, and will REMAIN there until deception and misinformation actually is possible.
The problem is that implementing things like that in a tabletop game is difficult, if not impossible. You'd have to throw out WYSIWYG, accurate measuring, rolling dice openly, etc, and trust your opponent not to cheat. And then you'd have to add a bunch of complexity in mechanics to reveal the deception. For example, your disguised LRBT still has the actual lascannons or autocannons mounted in its turret, so it should be possible for a careful observer to reveal the deception. But how exactly will that work? And how do you prevent me from realizing that you have a hidden ambush unit when I add up the points of your army list, realize that you don't have a full X points on the table, and conclude that you must have something in reserve?
Also, it's entirely possible to have tactics without that kind of hidden information. 40k already has hidden information in the outcome of the dice, and even games (such as chess) with zero hidden information still have tactics. The problem with 40k is that IGOUGO eliminates the possibility of action vs. reaction depth, while GW has relentlessly removed the relevance of anything but dice and list building by minimizing the effects of terrain, extending movement distances to absurd levels, etc. Fix that and you have a game with a lot more depth.
40k definitely feels like a pretty simple game. That said, lots of people still play it very poorly. If you watch other people play or watch youtube battle reports or whatever, you're going to see lots and lots of misplays.
I guess I'd say it's a lot like Spades (the card game). Ultimately, there's not a whole lot to it, and playing is basically automatic for people with lots of experience. But there are actually a lot of people who have to think about what they're doing, because they lack the requisite experience to just immediately see what the best play is.
40k tactics seems to mostly fall into 2 areas. First, there's understanding the importance of certain distances and rules interactions. You improve your play significantly if you're used to thinking about what your opponent will be able to shoot after walking forward, or where your opponent will be forced to deep strike if you put a screen in a given spot, etc. Second, there's target prioritization.
These aren't actually trivial. Most players are probably never going to get very good at either. Even picking targets is deceptively difficult for many people, since it requires either lots and lots of preparation or a great deal of mathematical intuition. It is almost certainly the case that many of the people complaining that the game isn't tactically deep are also not actually good at it.
But at the same time, once you have these skills you can mostly play on autopilot. I think it is very rare that a great player will have to stop in the middle of a game and re-think what he's doing because his opponent busted out some unexpected tactic. Usually it is pretty obvious from the start of the game what the best plan is for each army.
Also, set it so that in matched play, one out of every three units can be placed into Deep Strike reserves. More starts out on the table, and people aren't just blowing each other away from across the table without moving.
Alternatively make reserves cost CP or make them unreliable with a roll.
Terrible idea. We want more tactics so we are going to take away control and choice from the player? How does that help build tactical game play to have it come down to a die roll on wether or not you can actually implement your plan?
How does taking one thing away that makes 3-4 different tactics irrelevant especially for certain armies that dont do it well not a good thing.
koooaei wrote: Hey. It might be a burnout but i can't deal with a feeling that if you would rate the importance of factors that make you win, tactics would be by far the least important one.
1. Listbuilding. It seems to be the cornerstone of success. You can look at lists before the game and have a 95% success rate at guessing who's gona win.
2. First turn and general dice luck. With how killy things are and with how little you can do to protect your forces other than bring the 'right' ones (see listbuilding) this is more important than ever before.
3. Tactics. Seems that it goes last after all the other things. There is just not much you can do.
At least i feel so. And i'm not alone within our gaming group. We've tried some new games like walking dead and seen the diffedence. Even necromunda and shadowwar armageddon aren't that hollow. And it's hard to say this, but EVEN 7th edition was better than what 8th currently is.
You hit the nail on the head. 8th edition 40k killed my entire 40k gaming group. We still play 30k but how long until they fubar that up?
Aos did the exact same thing to my fantasy group. We had over 13 armies represented , now that group is dead too.
We went from 100% GW all the time with both systems to basically abandoning all that is "NEW GW".
Everyone in the group has turned to not believing that any GW game release will be one of quality and will be "pumped and dumped" from now on.
While this may be the case (and if so, that sucks), please understand that you're a small sample size, and appear to be the exception and not the rule. I don't mean to discredit your opinion, but understand your "group" is not indicative of 40K gamers.
Lance845 wrote: Terrible idea. We want more tactics so we are going to take away control and choice from the player? How does that help build tactical game play to have it come down to a die roll on wether or not you can actually implement your plan?
It works because it forces you to make risk vs. reward tradeoffs and figure out how to deal with it when things don't go as planned. If your deep striking plasma is unreliable is it still worth putting it in reserve? How do you deal with the intended target of the plasma with your other units if you don't pass your reserve rolls? These were interesting choices to make in previous editions, where deep striking gave you a ton of power at the cost of reliability. In 8th there's no choice to make, any unit that can deep strike is always going to deep strike because it's strictly better than starting the game on the table. The only possible choice you could ever have is with the 50% limit, if you have too many units with the option and can only use some of them. Tactics-wise you just count up how many plasma shots you're going to drop on turn 1 and then roll some dice. It's just like putting "plasma bolt" in your CCG deck.
No it doesn't because the risk vs reward based on a single arbitrary dice roll. Your not gambling on a distraction, hoping your opponent takes the bait. Your not attempting a flank, or making a dash for some cover.
I am not saying what 40k has now is good. It's not. But bringing back totally arbitrary bull gak that makes it so you cannot even build a cohesive strategy isn't what is going to make it better. All the player agency is removed. Both between you and your opponent when you start making it so just being able to act requires a dice roll.
How does taking one thing away that makes 3-4 different tactics irrelevant especially for certain armies that dont do it well not a good thing.
As above, you remove player agency in the game. One of the best changes from 7th to 8th was the increase in player agency. We can actually make a plan and then do it on the table without having to worry about passing test after random test just to see if things will work out properly. Did you play nids in 8th? How great were trygons! oh man. First you had to roll to have them show up. Maybe if they did that first you could place the tunnel marker for them and on the NEXT turn something could come out of the tunnel. But hey, if the trygon DOESN'T show up first and the thing you wanted to come out of the tunnel DID then you could place it on your table edge and the tunnel would be worthless!
8th has auras. If your roll is successful for the character but not the unit he should be supporting what then?
Again, players agency in forming and executing strategies and tactics are removed by that random dice roll. You want more tactics, but you don't get it by making a choice a total crap shoot.
The problem is at the moment not deepstriking as much as possible is rarely the better option. I get no-one wanting to go back to everything arriving in a way the play hadn't any control over.
However by the same token giving free 100% reliable turn one deepstrike or flanking means there isn't a downside to doing so, thier is no downside. So its not player agency its a you should do this or your at a disadvantage.
Personally I would say at the start of a players turn they role a dice for each unit in reserve. make it a role of 5+ for each unit to be on station. But that once a unit is on station the player can call them in any subsequent movement phase. In second turn roll for any units not on station and on a 3+ they are on station. Turn three all reserves are on station.
You always get your reserves but its not a guaranteed turn one alpha strike of death.
Absolute no to reinstating randomness to reserves. Maybe a limitation on how many units you can bring in each turn; two each on turn one and two, and then you can bring in everything you still have in reserves on turn three. There have to be other solutions than just taking control out of the player's hands.
Quickjager wrote: 40k Is still stuck in the list-building phase, and will REMAIN there until deception and misinformation actually is possible.
The problem is that implementing things like that in a tabletop game is difficult, if not impossible. You'd have to throw out WYSIWYG, accurate measuring, rolling dice openly, etc, and trust your opponent not to cheat. And then you'd have to add a bunch of complexity in mechanics to reveal the deception. For example, your disguised LRBT still has the actual lascannons or autocannons mounted in its turret, so it should be possible for a careful observer to reveal the deception. But how exactly will that work? And how do you prevent me from realizing that you have a hidden ambush unit when I add up the points of your army list, realize that you don't have a full X points on the table, and conclude that you must have something in reserve?
Also, it's entirely possible to have tactics without that kind of hidden information. 40k already has hidden information in the outcome of the dice, and even games (such as chess) with zero hidden information still have tactics. The problem with 40k is that IGOUGO eliminates the possibility of action vs. reaction depth, while GW has relentlessly removed the relevance of anything but dice and list building by minimizing the effects of terrain, extending movement distances to absurd levels, etc. Fix that and you have a game with a lot more depth.
Tactics without hidden information would involve weapon ranges no longer than 24 inches, something the game has far outstriped. Hidden information doesn't mean statistics, to say dice is hidden information is like me saying a politician on a certain party issue has a hidden policy; that is to say you can completely infer what is likely. Chess itself as described by professionals has tactics in so far as you must find out the method of attack your opponent will be using, THAT MEANS THERE IS BLUFFING it means they must infer from the information in front of them what pieces their opponents see as key to their strategy and remove without losing your own.
It is almost as if you ignore the concept of a sideboard. Let us put a sideboard limit of 300 points in a 1500 points game. This LIMIT prevents the player from switching off an Imperial Knight, Guilliman, Baneblade, etc. as they cost more points that 300. So these center-piece units become key in the OVERALL strategy of a player and the opponent is allowed to react to them (Meaning these centerpiece units are also open to being buffed as they become more easily countered) however this sideboard of 300 points allows a player to choose how to react. These 300 points of sideboard units could be picked AS THE GAME PROGRESSES, meaning you can choose to spend and deploy the 300 points right at the start to gain a alpha strike advantage. OR you could hold the 300 points back for a turn or two to decide what would be the best unit to bring in.
If you cry foul and say but they might cheat on the points! Well have the opponent have a list of what the sideboard unit costs. You could even limit what units are sideboard eligible. ALL THIS WITHOUT SACRIFICING WYSIWYG OR ACCURATE MEASUREMENTS.
There are numerous ways to add misinformation in 40k.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Oh yea add being in cover means -1 to hit not +1 armor bs. 2+ armor means gak in cover then unless you make it so 2+ in cover means 1s are NOT autofail.
Seems like the meaning of tactics and strategy are being intermixed a bit.
40k is full of tactics. A tactic is a method of employing actions to achieve a goal, such as throwing a grenade under a tank to damage the treads. A strategy is a plan designed to achieve goals, such as taking out enemy tanks first in an engagement to reduce their impact on your own forces.
First you have to understand what you're talking about in order to convey your thoughts. You can't say a game has no tactics, because by the very definition of the word the game cannot be played without them! Choosing where to deploy your troops during deployment is a tactical choice. Moving your troops is a tactic. Shooting the enemy with a gun is a tactic. Using cover, tactics. Calling reinforcements, tactics. Any and all games employ tactics. Using Star Power in Super Mario is a tactic. A tactic is an action taken to achieve a goal.
A strategy is an overall plan for how you will employ tactics to achieve a larger goal. Using scout units to deny enemy deep striking is a strategic choice. You recognize an inherent danger and formulate a plan to prevent it. Your strategy is to prevent/use deep striking, or to dominate the psykic phase. How you use your army to accomplish these tasks is part of your strategy and yes building a list to perform a task is a strategic choice. List building is part of your strategy and it's always been a part of the game. I don't understand why people rail against it when making a custom army is 90% of the draw.
So when you approach a table to play a game of 40k with your army and you review the opponent's force and begin to think how you will beat it you are in fact engaged in strategic planning. Your plan to win is your strategy, how you employ that plan is with the tactics of moving and shooting and fighting with your models.
So by definition 40k is bereft of neither strategy or tactics, but it sounds like people are unimpressed with the way both these concepts play out on the tabletop. The only thing I can think of is to play more narrative oriented games where the objectives are more than card draws or protect/attack certain areas. Try your hand at designing your own missions and definitely brainstorm with your group as to how you can inject more interest in the story rather than the crunch of the games you play.
8th overly simplified a lot of the mechanics that gave more complexity to the game and by complexity I mean it put more factors in play to muddy the waters of decision making. All the fiddly mechanics, niche special rules, and more varied profiles added more things to consider so it made decisions feel less cut and dry. While generally not all that deep or complex, it did throw in more mental balls to juggle and gave more opportunity for players to try different strategies/tactics. That being said I will continue to point out that 8th's BROKEN AS GAK (holy terra how did this get though play testing?) terrain and cover system shot itself in the foot for complexity and tactics because most boards will lack enough of the correct terrain for it to have any real impact on the game.
Come on Vankraken, 8th is the Most Playtested Edition.
Anyway, when I think Sideboard, I think Steamroller and playing for skew instead of the system being all-comers and that"s a turn-off. Now, rather than sideboards being for minis, it could be for auxiliary gear: Dozer Blades and Extra Armor and Grapplehooks, etc. You know, support stuff that you normally wouldn't spend points on anyway.
I agree that 8th is probably oversimplified for us long time players who are used to seeing the same WS chart for years, but I have to point out one major advantage 8th has over any other edition I've played and that's playability. This also may be affected by my very casual and fluffy approach to the game nowadays, but I find on the whole it is much easier to get through a game and with much more enjoyable results. Yes there are things I miss like vehicle facing and LOS rules in general but I find that most of what I dislike about 40k is actually really things I dislike about GW the company. Once I was able to separate the company from the game and engage in the hobby how I wanted I soon saw a lot of my issues were actually with a corporate mindset and not really connected to how I was going to play the game. Knowing that, I'm able to sort of forgive the game and the rules and focus on stuff like names for the Exarch who survived getting hit with a Force Sword last game and things like that.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I mean, outside of a competitive setting there is no reason why 40k games should be boring. Like, damn. How can a bunch of awesome painted minis duking it out with stupidly OP weapons be boring? It might be because my first army was 6th Ed Khorne DP + Zerker swarm but, I love it when any model dies. The bigger the better. Guardians getting misted by autocannons, IKs falling over on gak, psykers brains popping and killing power armoured models with two wounds with a single overheated plaspistol shot is actually where the game is at. Getting eaten by a swarm of hundreds of Nids should be on your tactical to do list.
Enfilading and defilading fire are irrelevant. Flanking a unit receives no real benefit. You can simply set up units wherever you like on the battlefield rather than actually work as a unit to get them into position. Pinning a unit down is not even in the rules. Cover is negated by half of the weapons in the game, and units like guardsmen are overall less protected by cover than better armor save units. Vehicles no longer have different armor values, so flanking them is irrelevant now as well.
No 40k does not have any real tactics. It's more of a list building game with target priority thrown in and a lot of dice. Any real decision making is lacking.
darkcloak wrote: Seems like the meaning of tactics and strategy are being intermixed a bit.
40k is full of tactics. A tactic is a method of employing actions to achieve a goal, such as throwing a grenade under a tank to damage the treads. A strategy is a plan designed to achieve goals, such as taking out enemy tanks first in an engagement to reduce their impact on your own forces.
First you have to understand what you're talking about in order to convey your thoughts. You can't say a game has no tactics, because by the very definition of the word the game cannot be played without them! Choosing where to deploy your troops during deployment is a tactical choice. Moving your troops is a tactic. Shooting the enemy with a gun is a tactic. Using cover, tactics. Calling reinforcements, tactics. Any and all games employ tactics. Using Star Power in Super Mario is a tactic. A tactic is an action taken to achieve a goal.
A strategy is an overall plan for how you will employ tactics to achieve a larger goal. Using scout units to deny enemy deep striking is a strategic choice. You recognize an inherent danger and formulate a plan to prevent it. Your strategy is to prevent/use deep striking, or to dominate the psykic phase. How you use your army to accomplish these tasks is part of your strategy and yes building a list to perform a task is a strategic choice. List building is part of your strategy and it's always been a part of the game. I don't understand why people rail against it when making a custom army is 90% of the draw.
So when you approach a table to play a game of 40k with your army and you review the opponent's force and begin to think how you will beat it you are in fact engaged in strategic planning. Your plan to win is your strategy, how you employ that plan is with the tactics of moving and shooting and fighting with your models.
So by definition 40k is bereft of neither strategy or tactics, but it sounds like people are unimpressed with the way both these concepts play out on the tabletop. The only thing I can think of is to play more narrative oriented games where the objectives are more than card draws or protect/attack certain areas. Try your hand at designing your own missions and definitely brainstorm with your group as to how you can inject more interest in the story rather than the crunch of the games you play.
I dont think anyone has been really confusing stratagy and tactics. And yeah, you have to make the choice to shoot the las canon at the tank. On the other hand the choice to shoot the las canon at the tank instead of the guardsman is obvious. The closest thing to meaningful tactical choice we get is stratagems and since those are based on a limited currency its not great for the games tactical choices to be carried on the back of those.
darkcloak wrote: You can't say a game has no tactics, because by the very definition of the word the game cannot be played without them! Choosing where to deploy your troops during deployment is a tactical choice. Moving your troops is a tactic. Shooting the enemy with a gun is a tactic. Using cover, tactics. Calling reinforcements, tactics. Any and all games employ tactics.
That's just nitpicking the definition of "none". Would you prefer that we say 40k has incredibly shallow tactics? Most of the choices you make in 40k are obvious, and most of them are made during list construction. For example, you don't plan out a careful movement approach (using cover, suppressing fire, etc) to get your short-ranged plasma guns into position without getting shot up first. You just deploy them within 12" of whatever you want to kill and roll dice to see how much damage they do.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
darkcloak wrote: How can a bunch of awesome painted minis duking it out with stupidly OP weapons be boring?.
Because when everything is "OP" nothing is OP. There's no complex game of move vs. counter-move, you don't earn those moments of spectacle, you just roll lots of dice and see what the dice say. So why even bother playing the game? Just write some fanfiction about how cool your army is and how "OP" all of its weapons are.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Vankraken wrote: All the fiddly mechanics, niche special rules, and more varied profiles added more things to consider so it made decisions feel less cut and dry.
The problem is that it makes decisions harder, but "this is hard because I don't understand the rules" is really poor game design. It isn't difficult because you're trying to out-smart your opponent and you aren't sure which move is going to be the right one to counter their plans, it's difficult because there are too many random dice involved to quickly do the math necessary to make an accurate evaluation (and don't want to bog the game down getting out a calculator for every shot). So yeah, it's less cut and dry, but in a way that takes away the value of player choices and encourages you to just flip a coin between your options and see what the dice decide.
This is going to be me being kind of a broken record about this, but beyond the gates of antares has alternating unit activation with orders issued to the units having different permissions and effects.
That gives you a tactical choice of which unit to activate and when. And then a tactical choice of what order to issue to it.
Just as a base line, before you ever get into the much better and more meaningful los and terrain rules that make movement significantly more tactical as well, that makes your every action in the game vastly more tactically rewarding for the players involved.
Again, the issue with 40k is that its 2 players taking turns swinging clubs at each other. The best choice, always, is to deal as much damage as possible to the enemy to weaken their retaliation. So you build your list to find ways to do that and then deploy intelligently to mitigate their first turn and maximize yours. And then you shoot the lascanons at the tanks, the anti infantry at the infantry, and charge the guns to tie them up on their next turn.
I am not saying everyone should just play btgoa with 40k models (though i basically do and its great) but 40k needs to be built to have more of that. It needs tactical movement. Tactical choices that matter with not obvious answers.
Well ya know Peregrine I do have to wonder at your assessment of the game since you were pretty salty about 40k several years ago when I first started playing and discovered this forum. I can't help but note that after taking a break my own outlook on the game has changed rather drastically having come back to this new ruleset.
If you really want to play a game where movement and planning ahead matter go play Xwing. Seriously, it's awesome. If 40k is so cut and paste then why are we here? Obviously the choice to shoot the lascannon at the tank is obvious. But what were you doing with them before when you thought the rules were more tactical? Shooting tanks I'll bet. Like, come on. Movement doesn't matter because I can just put plasma spam on the board wherever I want and go boom. Well, yeah if that's how you want to play then sure. Go ahead and do that. But let's not pretend that flanking an opponent is suddenly useless or that the cookie cutter approach to competitive list building has any impact on what happens at your game table.
If you ask me, which no one does but I say anyways, 40k is better off for the simplification in rules for the simple fact that it's easier to actually play. People who for years declined to play warhammer on account of the hours of reading stats and flipping through books are now sitting down and going oh yeah, this is fun. So, yeah sure, the game is simpler, but it runs a hell of a lot better. There are kinks to be worked out and I'm still personally leery of investing too heavily in books right now but overall I'm more happy with GW than I've ever been in the past.
But that's beside the point, if you really feel like your gameplay experience is 'extremely shallow' then perhaps it's not the games fault.
If you ask me, which no one does but I say anyways, 40k is better off for the simplification in rules for the simple fact that it's easier to actually play. People who for years declined to play warhammer on account of the hours of reading stats and flipping through books are now sitting down and going oh yeah, this is fun. So, yeah sure, the game is simpler, but it runs a hell of a lot better. There are kinks to be worked out and I'm still personally leery of investing too heavily in books right now but overall I'm more happy with GW than I've ever been in the past.
But that's beside the point, if you really feel like your gameplay experience is 'extremely shallow' then perhaps it's not the games fault.
Once again, it's not mechanical complexity that 40k needs. The simplification of the over all mechanics going into 8th is great. The game should be easy to play. But easy to play and tactically shallow are not synonymous. You can have both tactical depth and simple mechanical game play. 7th was a train wreck of overly complex mechanics. 8th did a great job of making the game, for the most part, actually enjoyable. But that doesn't mean it isn't lacking in certain areas or that it's perfect and cannot possibly be improved. 40k can be improved A LOT. Ad right now it's biggest failing isn't it's complexity or lack there of. It is it's depth.
darkcloak wrote: If you really want to play a game where movement and planning ahead matter go play Xwing. Seriously, it's awesome.
X-Wing is my primary game.
Obviously the choice to shoot the lascannon at the tank is obvious. But what were you doing with them before when you thought the rules were more tactical? Shooting tanks I'll bet. Like, come on.
Obviously shooting tanks, but at least there were tactical questions like moving vs. shooting, how to get side/rear armor shots, etc. It was never an especially deep game, but 8th has only made the problem worse.
But let's not pretend that flanking an opponent is suddenly useless
It is useless. Units have no concept of facing, shooting a unit with a pair of units on opposite sides is no better than shooting both from the same side. All that matters is if you're in range, and if you're sitting on objectives to score points. Unless there's an objective located on the flank there's zero incentive to be there.
or that the cookie cutter approach to competitive list building has any impact on what happens at your game table.
Why wouldn't it? Are we supposed to pretend that building good lists is a thing that doesn't happen?
But that's beside the point, if you really feel like your gameplay experience is 'extremely shallow' then perhaps it's not the games fault.
Or perhaps it is the game's fault. It's hardly a unique claim, and even you admit that the game has been simplified.
If you ask me, which no one does but I say anyways, 40k is better off for the simplification in rules for the simple fact that it's easier to actually play. People who for years declined to play warhammer on account of the hours of reading stats and flipping through books are now sitting down and going oh yeah, this is fun. So, yeah sure, the game is simpler, but it runs a hell of a lot better. There are kinks to be worked out and I'm still personally leery of investing too heavily in books right now but overall I'm more happy with GW than I've ever been in the past.
But that's beside the point, if you really feel like your gameplay experience is 'extremely shallow' then perhaps it's not the games fault.
Once again, it's not mechanical complexity that 40k needs. The simplification of the over all mechanics going into 8th is great. The game should be easy to play. But easy to play and tactically shallow are not synonymous. You can have both tactical depth and simple mechanical game play. 7th was a train wreck of overly complex mechanics. 8th did a great job of making the game, for the most part, actually enjoyable. But that doesn't mean it isn't lacking in certain areas or that it's perfect and cannot possibly be improved. 40k can be improved A LOT. Ad right now it's biggest failing isn't it's complexity or lack there of. It is it's depth.
Yeah. Even though I'd say it has much improved compared to 7th edition in that there actually are some meaningful decisions to make and positioning has become quite important now, it's still a long way to lotr for example. Or Star Trek Attack Wing. The only thing that's still quite useless is morale as 80% of the units in the game still outright ignore it. And that's similar to what made the bloat in 7th edition. All those tank rules were nice and flavorful, but when a tank had only 3-4hp and could explode on a 4+ it made the whole system of armor facings an unnecessary waste of time.
Tactics in 40k involve knowing the rules to the fullest and taking advantage of them (surrounding ennemies so they can't fall back, removing front models to prevent assault, etc...)
They rarely (if ever) involve outsmarting your opponent.
If you want this kind of tactics, you should try Bloodbowl, another game by GW. It's closer to Chess and you will need to think of a strategy if you want to win.
For 7th, cover and flanking did go hand-in-hand. Granted, the cover and casualty allocations for 7th were mostly heavily adapted from 2nd ("Closest model dies first") but it was intuitive to a point and made sense to some degree. It was mostly folks complaining that specials/heavies couldn't be "taken up" by the guy next to them that led to the system for 8th being so painfully abstracted, to the point that it's now impossible to snipe out squad sergeants/Exarches.
The real issues were the disconnect between "regular" vehicles/monsters and superheavies, the latter having many a snowflake exception to the rules which resulted in more minute finangling with the rules to decipher. Stuff like how Helfrost Weapons removed enemy models on failed Strength Checks instead of having Instant Death, leading to OHKO Magnus but a Wraithknight taking some wounds.
7th had the issue of "soft decay" for Psychic Powers. Since Psykers could pool Warp Charge, yet the amount of Warp Charge available for powers was outpaced by the number of Psykers wanting to cast, you ended up with "Batteries + the one Caster that matters." (Usually: The one Caster with Invisibility using everyone else's WC). 8th just doubled-down on that system by creating Psychic Focus (IMO, a form of Fake Balance). Want to attempt to cast more than one Da Jump? Nope. What about more than one 'Eadbutt? Nope. Invisibility totally would have been balanced if you could only attempt it once per turn; it's not like the most mathematically efficient use of the power would have been on your Wraithknight/Barkstar/etc.
Of course, the same situation comes up with Stratagems and powers too. "Gee, do I use Take Cover on my unit of Guardsmen with a regular 5+ save, or on my unit of Crusaders with a 3+ Invulnerable?" If the Pacific were as deep as the 40k decision matrix, the Japanese could drive their cars to Malibu Beach.
There are absolutely tactics in 40k. Loads. Do I deep strike or deploy as normal? Deep strike within 9" to get rapid fire while risking auspex scan casualties? This determines which order you should deep strike in. Advance towards the objective or get more firepower by standing still? Pop smoke and advance or sit back and shoot? How to deploy to deny having too many vehicles locked in combat? That deployment will be different if the enemy has flyers as well. Do you pop "take cover" stratagem now, or wait until they target the more important squad you have? Or is he just bluffing? Do you remove casualties from the front to take you out of combat or from the back to keep you on the objective?
There are tons of tactics. I'm really enjoying it.
Just yesterday a raven guard player infiltrated half his army up close to my tanks and charged me 1st turn locking down 4 vehicles. I was able to back up and blow away most of his forces but he pulled the brilliant tactic to charge his Shrike into a basilisk I had wedged into a corner so I couldn't back out. And as long as he didn't kill my basilisk, I couldn't shoot his shrike (which was worth a ton of secondary points for me).
ThePorcupine wrote: There are absolutely tactics in 40k. Loads. Do I deep strike or deploy as normal? Deep strike within 9" to get rapid fire while risking auspex scan casualties? This determines which order you should deep strike in. Advance towards the objective or get more firepower by standing still? Pop smoke and advance or sit back and shoot? How to deploy to deny having too many vehicles locked in combat? That deployment will be different if the enemy has flyers as well. Do you pop "take cover" stratagem now, or wait until they target the more important squad you have? Or is he just bluffing? Do you remove casualties from the front to take you out of combat or from the back to keep you on the objective?
There are tons of tactics. I'm really enjoying it.
Just yesterday a raven guard player infiltrated half his army up close to my tanks and charged me 1st turn locking down 4 vehicles. I was able to back up and blow away most of his forces but he pulled the brilliant tactic to charge his Shrike into a basilisk I had wedged into a corner so I couldn't back out. And as long as he didn't kill my basilisk, I couldn't shoot his shrike (which was worth a ton of secondary points for me).
Lets see... 1,2,3,4,5,6.... 6 of things you just mentioned are deployment.
1 was a stratagem, that again, is built on a limited currency.
1 was a choice between shooting or claiming an objective, the answer to which is obvious depending on the mission you're playing.
1 was popping smoke and advancing or sitting back and shooting. The answer is shooting unless advancing will reach an objective to get you a VP, it's always shooting.
Oh gak you're right. Smart deployment isn't tactics. Silly me. Neither are smart use of strategems and CP, target priority, balancing firepower vs mobility. You're right. Carry on. 40k is garbage and I should throw all my models in the trash.
Also cute how you don't mention the smart locking of a vehicle in combat against a wall to make yourself immune to shooting.
ThePorcupine wrote: Oh gak you're right. Smart deployment isn't tactics. Silly me. Neither are smart use of strategems and CP, target priority, balancing firepower vs mobility. You're right. Carry on. 40k is garbage and I should throw all my models in the trash.
It's tactics by the strictest definition of the word, but it's not very deep or interesting tactics. Do I deep strike my unit? What a tough question. I can either deploy it in my deployment zone at the start of the game, or I can deploy it anywhere outside 9" of enemy models (including anywhere in my deployment zone) at the start of any of my turns with no penalties at all. Maybe you can come up with some weird edge case scenario where this isn't true, but 99.999999% of the time you deep strike every unit that can do it. Same thing with other decisions. Do I shoot this lascannon at a tank, or at a horde of guardsmen? I don't know, that's a tough one...
Also cute how you don't mention the smart locking of a vehicle in combat against a wall to make yourself immune to shooting.
Probably because it's neither clever (everyone knows about this, and it's the automatic thing to do every time you get the chance) nor realistic (it only works because of the arbitrary table edge, and is just exploiting badly-designed rules).
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ThePorcupine wrote: Oh gak you're right. Smart deployment isn't tactics. Silly me. Neither are smart use of strategems and CP, target priority, balancing firepower vs mobility. You're right. Carry on. 40k is garbage and I should throw all my models in the trash.
It's tactics by the strictest definition of the word, but it's not very deep or interesting tactics. Do I deep strike my unit? What a tough question. I can either deploy it in my deployment zone at the start of the game, or I can deploy it anywhere outside 9" of enemy models (including anywhere in my deployment zone) at the start of any of my turns with no penalties at all. Maybe you can come up with some weird edge case scenario where this isn't true, but 99.999999% of the time you deep strike every unit that can do it. Same thing with other decisions. Do I shoot this lascannon at a tank, or at a horde of guardsmen? I don't know, that's a tough one...
Also cute how you don't mention the smart locking of a vehicle in combat against a wall to make yourself immune to shooting.
Probably because it's neither clever (everyone knows about this, and it's the automatic thing to do every time you get the chance) nor realistic (it only works because of the arbitrary table edge, and is just exploiting badly-designed rules).
ThePorcupine wrote: Oh gak you're right. Smart deployment isn't tactics. Silly me. Neither are smart use of strategems and CP, target priority, balancing firepower vs mobility. You're right. Carry on. 40k is garbage and I should throw all my models in the trash.
Also cute how you don't mention the smart locking of a vehicle in combat against a wall to make yourself immune to shooting.
It's not cute and it's not tactically deep. It's the obvious choice. Remove your ability to gain points AND remove your unit from the fight at the same time. Not because locking it into a combat is some tactically genius move but because one player deployed poorly and the other player capitalized on it in the most obvious way possible. If you had a gun and you could either shoot the person trying to kill you or shoot yourself in the foot which one would you do? TACTICS!
Deep striking units within 9" is absolutely not 100% by the very example I gave in my post. Every time I've done it to a marine player I've lost 2-3 men to auspex scan. In hind sight I probably would've done better deep striking them into ruins for additional cover even though I'd be foregoing rapid fire plasma with a couple guys. And in cases where your army gets -1 to hit from more than 12" away, maybe you don't want to come up close and lose that benefit.
Locking a trapped basilisk in combat to deny me a kill for several turns is absolutely clever. He had the option to bolt out of there into some ruins to try and survive, but ultimately did the counter-intuitive thing of charging head-first into my army which made him almost invulnerable. In most cases I could back off and blow him off the board. Not in this case.
I feel you're seriously oversimplifying the decision-making in 8e to fit your "8e sux" narrative.
ThePorcupine wrote: Deep striking units within 9" is absolutely not 100% by the very example I gave in my post. Every time I've done it to a marine player I've lost 2-3 men to auspex scan. In hind sight I probably would've done better deep striking them into ruins for additional cover even though I'd be foregoing rapid fire plasma with a couple guys. And in cases where your army gets -1 to hit from more than 12" away, maybe you don't want to come up close and lose that benefit.
Thats all just a math equation. There is a statistically best option for you to do and you should do it. And not doing it is sub optimal. That is why it's tactically shallow. You can math hammer out the average losses you will suffer from aspex scan and act accordingly. The difference between a good player and a great player isn't interesting tactical decisions. It's memorizing and understanding formula. Building a list with a cohesive strategy and then understanding how to most optimally minimize your enemy and maximize yourself. It's why some 70% of all games are won by the player who goes first. 30% are people making dumb mistakes or bad lists.
Locking a trapped basilisk in combat to deny me a kill for several turns is absolutely clever. He had the option to bolt out of there into some ruins to try and survive, but ultimately did the counter-intuitive thing of charging head-first into my army which made him almost invulnerable. In most cases I could back off and blow him off the board. Not in this case.
Maybe you haven't come across it before so you were taken by surprise? You make your own argument against you. You call it counter intuitive but it's not. It made him invulnerable. It made you helpless. Thats the MOST intuitive thing to do.
I feel you're seriously oversimplifying the decision-making in 8e to fit your "8e sux" narrative.
I don't think 8th sux. I think 8th has made huge stride forward. I just cannot figure out for the life of me why the feth they stuck with IGOUGO. It's the least interesting thing in the game and the root cause of all the shallow tactical decision making, all the down time, all the alpha/beta strikes, all the obvious choices.
Everything is a math equation. That's a silly argument. Unless you introduce actual real-time twitch controls into the game, everything can be reduced to a math equation. Everything but positioning, which you and peregrine seem to reduce to obvious and holding no tactical depth. So I'm not really sure what you consider to be of "tactical depth" that can't be reduced to a math equation.
And it wasn't obvious because I was even the one to suggest it to him. 9 times out of 10 there's always a way for my vehicles to back out of a battle with a single model. But if he positioned his Shrike JUST RIGHT on the corner of my basilisk, it was trapped. It was very much not obvious. The game doesn't scream at you "MOVE INTO THE JAWS OF THE ENEMY TO BE INVULNERABLE"
Terrain, turn zero, the designer, and the player: A player who can have certain expectations about the battlefield (play space) will have far more agency in designing an army ahead of time. And for the designer, to know that there will always be specific features available to the player, allows them to better design the units according to how the two interact. As it stands, to my knowledge, 40k has the least/worst defined battlefield setup rules. This leads even more so to math wins.
The flow of knowledge against the current of expectation: The info available to a player as they make decisions, based on expectations of what will happen should change as often between decisions as possible. That is to say, for every major unit of action(s) a player takes there would ideally be a chance for the opponent to make a decision as well. Like in Chess or checkers or go or almost any other board game. Both Warhammer games have this bizarre hell bent on an entire army activating at once. This is akin to having every Chess piece on the board have a chance to do one move each, then the other player performs a move with each of theirs. This has several disadvantages, like making it difficult to hide overall intent, and again favoring math and volume. Many designs for games now use some sort of alternating activation system that passes between players far faster. AoS even switched to that for the Melee probably of the round, and this has been well received and seen as a marked uptick in the level of tactics, though at times the decisions offered to the player can seem obvious/forced/
ThePorcupine wrote: Everything is a math equation. That's a silly argument. Unless you introduce actual real-time twitch controls into the game, everything can be reduced to a math equation. Everything but positioning, which you and peregrine seem to reduce to obvious and holding no tactical depth. So I'm not really sure what you consider to be of "tactical depth" that can't be reduced to a math equation.
And it wasn't obvious because I was even the one to suggest it to him. 9 times out of 10 there's always a way for my vehicles to back out of a battle with a single model. But if he positioned his Shrike JUST RIGHT on the corner of my basilisk, it was trapped. It was very much not obvious. The game doesn't scream at you "MOVE INTO THE JAWS OF THE ENEMY TO BE INVULNERABLE"
From the Tyranid Tactica
Spoiler:
Traceoftoxin On charge/pile in/consolidate rules and how Hormagaunts 6" pile in is better then you might think.
[spoiler]One thing I keep seeing people misunderstanding (Not in this thread, specifically) is basic charge, pile in and consolidate rules, and how these apply to Hormagaunts. I've made some pics to illustrate the strength of the 6" pile in.
People who are paying attention to the charge and fight phase rules understand how positioning and movement can be used to surround and block units and tie them up. It's not some genius tactic. It's just understanding how the mechanics work.
Not everything is math in other systems. Again, other games (Bolt Action and BtGoA which were built on the back of 40ks old mechanics by one of 40ks old game designers) uses alternating unit activation and issuing order to the units to add a lot of tactical depth. Which units you activate and in what order matters a lot. Do you activate psykers early to buff or late to hit enemies who get close? Every action you take you enemy can answer. You have to guess at what he is going to do and in that way it becomes much more like chess. It's no longer just about calculating odds. Your not playing against the mechanics your playing against the other player. Because not every unit can do everything all the time because you issue orders to them what order you issue is a second layer of tactical decision making. Do they go to ground? Do they advance and shoot? Do they hold their ground? Do they set up for doing reactions to enemy orders?
40k is tactically shallow. Not all games are tactically shallow.
1. The tyranid example you posted is far from the norm at local shops. Is it common knowledge in competitive circles and tournaments? Yeah. Probably. And common push timings are common knowledge to masters and grandmasters in starcraft. I feel like the example you just posted undermines YOUR argument that 8e is tactically shallow. Moving gaunts in a specific order to consolidate AROUND the unit you don't care about and INTO the unit you do care about is pretty fascinating stuff. To me anyway.
2. Your main gripe seems to be "40k is not alternating unit activation." to which I say... Yep. you're right. It's not. It never was and it never will be. I'm very sorry.
Would it lead to more tactical depth? Probably. But that ship has sailed long long ago. And as far as a IGOUGO game, 8e is pretty damn impressive.
ThePorcupine wrote: 1. The tyranid example you posted is far from the norm at local shops. Is it common knowledge in competitive circles and tournaments? Yeah. Probably. And common push timings are common knowledge to masters and grandmasters in starcraft. I feel like the example you just posted undermines YOUR argument that 8e is tactically shallow. Moving gaunts in a specific order to consolidate AROUND the unit you don't care about and INTO the unit you do care about is pretty fascinating stuff. To me anyway.
2. Your main gripe seems to be "40k is not alternating unit activation." to which I say... Yep. you're right. It's not. It never was and it never will be. I'm very sorry.
Would it lead to more tactical depth? Probably. But that ship has sailed long long ago. And as far as a IGOUGO game, 8e is pretty damn impressive.
The knowledge of the example I posted from the tyranid tactica is there for anyone who cares to actually read and understand the implications of one page of the 8 page core rules to play the game. Has everyone realized how to actually use the fight phase rules to their advantage yet? Clearly not. But it's there and easy enough to understand if you just follow it step by step. That specific example is about how great the hormagaunts 6" pile in/consolidate is, but the implications of the actions are there for everyone to use.
No, my main gripe is that IGOUGO is bad all on it's own. It has certain inherent implications on the mechanics of the game and thus the way players end up playing it. IGOUGO is the reason alpha strikes exist. Its the reason the player who goes first wins the majority of the time. Its the reason for almost all of 40ks root problems.
AA is just the most obvious and most easily implemented solution. And also a great example to show you how your wrong about how all games are just math. They arn't. 40k is. Even just issuing orders to units would go a long way to changing the way the game is played and our tactical options on the field. But they don't have that. Tactics don't win games in 40k. Math equations do.
8th is only impressive in comparison to what came before it. And 7th was such a steaming pile of hot garbage that to be an impressive improvement isn't much of an achievement.
ThePorcupine wrote: There are absolutely tactics in 40k. Loads. Do I deep strike or deploy as normal? Deep strike within 9" to get rapid fire while risking auspex scan casualties? This determines which order you should deep strike in. Advance towards the objective or get more firepower by standing still? Pop smoke and advance or sit back and shoot? How to deploy to deny having too many vehicles locked in combat? That deployment will be different if the enemy has flyers as well. Do you pop "take cover" stratagem now, or wait until they target the more important squad you have? Or is he just bluffing? Do you remove casualties from the front to take you out of combat or from the back to keep you on the objective?
There are tons of tactics. I'm really enjoying it.
Just yesterday a raven guard player infiltrated half his army up close to my tanks and charged me 1st turn locking down 4 vehicles. I was able to back up and blow away most of his forces but he pulled the brilliant tactic to charge his Shrike into a basilisk I had wedged into a corner so I couldn't back out. And as long as he didn't kill my basilisk, I couldn't shoot his shrike (which was worth a ton of secondary points for me).
Basically what everyone else said, there is no choice in any of those. There is a clear answer 99% of the time and to not take it is not a tactic but a failure of the player to recognize it.
Agree to disagree with you fellas. There is absolutely choice. I specifically outlined pros and cons to each of the situations in my post.
And I know it's common to say "1st turn wins. might as well quit. stupid alpha strike grumble grumble." That's certainly true when it comes to just two armies slapped down on the table with the objective of "kill the other guy" but I think the heavier emphasis on objectives and secondaries in things like ITC evens things out. Fully? Don't know. But I would like to see statistics of how often the players who go first win and what rule types those games use.
ThePorcupine wrote: Agree to disagree with you fellas. There is absolutely choice. I specifically outlined pros and cons to each of the situations in my post.
And I know it's common to say "1st turn wins. might as well quit. stupid alpha strike grumble grumble." That's certainly true when it comes to just two armies slapped down on the table with the objective of "kill the other guy" but I think the heavier emphasis on objectives and secondaries in things like ITC evens things out. Fully? Don't know. But I would like to see statistics of how often the players who go first win and what rule types those games use.
ITC missions, terrain rules, and restricted time, are all house rules. The house is ITC. Claiming they make the game better is exactly like me saying using alternating unit activation makes the game better. Just because they are widely accepted house rules doesn't make them anything other than house rules. 40k the game has official missions. Those are the ones that matter when talking about 40k official game.
Martel732 wrote: Being widely accepted is actually very important.
Not particularly. It's one tournament circle for a relatively small % of the game playing community. Just because a bunch of people have HEARD of it and a bit of people end up playing the missions with people who go to the tournaments and even less then that go to the events themselves... well... that doesn't count for much.
"House rules" taking over "official rules" is actually pretty common. For example, the most competitive game, StarCraft, did not use actual Blizzard maps for tournaments, it used maps specifically made for competitive play. Does this mean StarCraft was a trash competitive game? Far from it.
ThePorcupine wrote: "House rules" taking over "official rules" is actually pretty common. For example, the most competitive game, StarCraft, did not use actual Blizzard maps for tournaments, it used maps specifically made for competitive play. Does this mean StarCraft was a trash competitive game? Far from it.
No, it means that there is a very small % of the player base who played tournaments and that smaller % of the player base doesn't get to dictate to the majority how good or bad the game is based on their house rules.
Also, Starcrafts tourneys were not making up new rules for the way terrain worked and if they applied a time limit, time limits were not necessarily a core component of the majority of players games.
I played a gak load of SC. And online, it was mostly 5/10 min no rush. Or UMS because goofy matches were great.
I can't say that Hydra Farmer or Tower Defense being a super popular match types should dictate the conversation on what is balanced or not in starcraft.
Or do you think Hydra farmer is a good metric with which to judge Starcrafts gameplay?
There can be tactics. Smaller games on a larger board shows it better.
Yeah, a lot of it involves fire priority, smart targeting and deployment. Those are still tactics though.
Let say you have three objectives in the middle of the board. Tactics would include how would you allocate forces to take them.
Space marines vs guard. What can the guard player get on the objective quickly? Can he get AT weapons there? A lot of AP weapons? If he has missiles and lascannons, should I send a rhino in, or is footing it better? What artillery is in range, and how important is the objective? (AKA will he use all, some, or none of his artillery to fight off an attack there.) What cover is available, and will popping smoke be enough? Can I devote enough shooting to defeat him there? Can I devote enough to either suppress him and get into melee, or hold the objective? (Suppressed in this case would mean force the player to choose between keeping his models in cover in a less ideal location, or have them destroyed/engaged.). If I'm strong on this objective, but too weak on others, what can he send to reinforce? What deep strikers do either side have availible, and are they worth using here?
Another example, could be self objectives. Not a point to take and hold on the battlefield, but goals that let you take the initiative. A personal objective might be to use shooting/melee to clear a zone for deep-strikers, or clear a zone to threaten deep-strikers to force your opponent to move to cover that area. Getting a screen in place after the initial screening units are killed. Keeping 'counter charge' units on hand and in cover for where they're needed.
Deployment. Can I deploy so I can take objectives? Is my opponent massing in one spot, and can I cover for that? Should I spread out to claim targets, or should I mass to fight him off. Can my opponent infiltrate, and if so in significant numbers? What can cross the board in one turn? How should I counter-deploy? What should be in reserves to strike further up the board? What should be in reserves to protect it from fire? What should be in reserves to make a first turn more likely?
These are all tactics. So is "what do I shoot first", and while frequently the answer is the nastiest thing your opponent has, that's not always the case. It could be that squad sitting on an objective, or preparing to charge.
At larger games, as the board gets more crowded, these choices become smaller as there is less room to maneuver (too much stuff, and danger no matter where you go).
I feel like the sweet spot for a 6x4 board right now is probably somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 pts, with a good mix of terrain.
ThePorcupine wrote: There are absolutely tactics in 40k. Loads. Do I deep strike or deploy as normal? Deep strike within 9" to get rapid fire while risking auspex scan casualties? This determines which order you should deep strike in. Advance towards the objective or get more firepower by standing still? Pop smoke and advance or sit back and shoot? How to deploy to deny having too many vehicles locked in combat? That deployment will be different if the enemy has flyers as well. Do you pop "take cover" stratagem now, or wait until they target the more important squad you have? Or is he just bluffing? Do you remove casualties from the front to take you out of combat or from the back to keep you on the objective?
There are tons of tactics. I'm really enjoying it.
Just yesterday a raven guard player infiltrated half his army up close to my tanks and charged me 1st turn locking down 4 vehicles. I was able to back up and blow away most of his forces but he pulled the brilliant tactic to charge his Shrike into a basilisk I had wedged into a corner so I couldn't back out. And as long as he didn't kill my basilisk, I couldn't shoot his shrike (which was worth a ton of secondary points for me).
Basically what everyone else said, there is no choice in any of those. There is a clear answer 99% of the time and to not take it is not a tactic but a failure of the player to recognize it.
So, shrike just magically appeared where he needed to be (assuming he had to pass a screen)? The other player didn't have to work him over to the Basilisk? There was no other plan if shrike died before it got there? There were no other plans for shrike to choose between and this was the only valid option? Feels like you're leaving a lot out there.
Lance845 wrote: Also, Starcrafts tourneys were not making up new rules for the way terrain worked
They absolutely were. Within the confines of the game engine, sure, because they couldn't mod the game or release a new client. For example it was discovered that workers could be pushed through certain terrain obstacles if their AI also had a harvesting target, or was in the process of building an adjacent building. Would never happen on standard starcraft maps, but some tourneys worked this quirk into their maps to allow for new scouting routes and rush strategies. Same with neutral zerg eggs as part of the map. Tournament maps would include these destructible eggs to block potential expansions or wall off chokes.
Why... did you bring up "starcraft tourneys never messed with how terrain worked" then?
I must be missing your point. I said the heavier emphasis on objectives in missions like ITC balances out the 1st turn advantage. You said ITC doesn't count because it's "house rules" and not official 40k and that people who play ITC are a minority. Martel said being widely accepted is very important, and I agree. When I'm talking about "balance" and "tactics" I'm very much talking about the more competitive scene. Most tournaments now use either ITC or some iteration thereof. Do most people who come into a store to play a friendly game of 40k use rulebook missions? Probably. And that's fine. They're happy mashing two armies against each other without too much thought like you're happy playing goofy starcraft maps.
ThePorcupine wrote: Why... did you bring up "starcraft tourneys never messed with how terrain worked" then?
I must be missing your point. I said the heavier emphasis on objectives in missions like ITC balances out the 1st turn advantage. You said ITC doesn't count because it's "house rules" and not official 40k and that people who play ITC are a minority. Martel said being widely accepted is very important, and I agree. When I'm talking about "balance" and "tactics" I'm very much talking about the more competitive scene. Most tournaments now use either ITC or some iteration thereof. Do most people who come into a store to play a friendly game of 40k use rulebook missions? Probably. And that's fine. They're happy mashing two armies against each other without too much thought like you're happy playing goofy starcraft maps.
Competitive 40k can be played in any place at any time and not necessarily emulating a tournament. You can get super competitive play groups that play out of a few garages. Again, the amount of people who actually go to tourneys are a minority, and the people who play using tourney rules are a slightly larger minority. This thread asks "Is there any tactics in 40k tabletop" and the answer is what 40k has for tactics barely meets the text book definition of it and has about as much depth as a sheet of paper.
You argue that ITC missions and rules add to the tactical depth. Sure. But those are house rules. Not actual 40k any more than me deciding to alternate activating units with my opponent is. Because it's just house rules. Even if you have 20 people to the every 1 that use ITC over AA the amount of people who just play out of the book are going to outnumber us combined by 100 to 1. So it doesn't matter how widely accepted as far as house rules go your play style is. They are meaningless when discussing 40ks actual game play. And even if ITC missions and rules DO add more tactical depth, your now up to the depth of 3 sheets of paper instead of 1. Great.
Missions can only do so much when one of the most dominate strategies is to just table the opponent as games tend to run out of models to kill before you run out of turns to play. If time limits are an issue (like in tournament play) then objectives might matter but that's mostly to due with the logistical limitations of running a tournament in a timely manner than good game/mission design.
Vankraken wrote: All the fiddly mechanics, niche special rules, and more varied profiles added more things to consider so it made decisions feel less cut and dry.
The problem is that it makes decisions harder, but "this is hard because I don't understand the rules" is really poor game design. It isn't difficult because you're trying to out-smart your opponent and you aren't sure which move is going to be the right one to counter their plans, it's difficult because there are too many random dice involved to quickly do the math necessary to make an accurate evaluation (and don't want to bog the game down getting out a calculator for every shot). So yeah, it's less cut and dry, but in a way that takes away the value of player choices and encourages you to just flip a coin between your options and see what the dice decide.
Its not about lack of understanding rules but more to do with multiple factors that make the answer less obvious. With 8th right now its generally straight forward enough to point the AT weapons at the vehicles, anti infantry weapons at the infantry, throw buckets of dice at anything, etc. Terrain is in a lot of ways a non factor as it doesn't limit movement and it doesn't come into play very often for defense (non infantry or large squads tend to not be able to trigger the conditions to allow for any cover save modifications). Lack of blast weapons means that it doesn't matter how jam packet an area of the board is because that battle cannon is only going to do D6 shots. Battlefield conditions such as units in or out of cover, units packed in close together (say after deep striking in or a low consolidation roll), proximity to other units, etc gave opportunity for viable usage of weapons outside of their designed target priority (firing a mortar at a group of deepstruck terminators because while it will generally plink off that armor, their in base to base so that small template is going to get a lot of hits per shot) or making target priority more difficult (you would normally fire your plasma weapons at those marines but they are in ruins but those scouts are only in light cover). Niche rules such as pinning or blind while core rules like morale checks/falling back can be a risk/reward way to neutralize units without having to fully dedicate the firepower required to wipe a unit off the board. Same with trying to neutralize a "parking lot" strategy by spreading shaken/stun results to multiple vehicles instead of trying to focus fire down two or three at a time. Defensive options like jinking or going to ground gave risk/reward decision making to the defender as it might be worth risking not jinking to potentially have better shooting next turn or it might be better to just go ahead and go to ground for a better cover save than having a worse save and then end up pinned anyway. Again less clear cut decisions but none of that is based on lack of player knowledge. Being able to do the math quickly and easily leads to min/maxing being too obvious and limits your real options outside of playing to a handicap. End up with situations like Dark Reaper spam being the best option because the math says it is and there aren't enough variables to throw a wrench into the works for other units to shine.
ThePorcupine wrote: There are absolutely tactics in 40k. Loads. Do I deep strike or deploy as normal? Deep strike within 9" to get rapid fire while risking auspex scan casualties? This determines which order you should deep strike in. Advance towards the objective or get more firepower by standing still? Pop smoke and advance or sit back and shoot? How to deploy to deny having too many vehicles locked in combat? That deployment will be different if the enemy has flyers as well. Do you pop "take cover" stratagem now, or wait until they target the more important squad you have? Or is he just bluffing? Do you remove casualties from the front to take you out of combat or from the back to keep you on the objective?
There are tons of tactics. I'm really enjoying it.
Just yesterday a raven guard player infiltrated half his army up close to my tanks and charged me 1st turn locking down 4 vehicles. I was able to back up and blow away most of his forces but he pulled the brilliant tactic to charge his Shrike into a basilisk I had wedged into a corner so I couldn't back out. And as long as he didn't kill my basilisk, I couldn't shoot his shrike (which was worth a ton of secondary points for me).
Basically what everyone else said, there is no choice in any of those. There is a clear answer 99% of the time and to not take it is not a tactic but a failure of the player to recognize it.
So, shrike just magically appeared where he needed to be (assuming he had to pass a screen)? The other player didn't have to work him over to the Basilisk? There was no other plan if shrike died before it got there? There were no other plans for shrike to choose between and this was the only valid option? Feels like you're leaving a lot out there.
According to him, yes he did in fact magically pass the screen because he somehow got 4 of his vehicles charged the FIRST TURN! He either played incompetently by failing to position his vehicles correctly or he didn't in fact HAVE a screen in which case he lost in the LIST-BUILDING part of the game.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Let us look at his army list, oh armored company? Hmm no screens at all, alright yes I see.
He lost in the list building part of the game.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Or perhaps it was his ITC competitive list? Hmm he DOES have a screen, but he STILL got charged first turn!
Daedalus81 wrote: Despite list or play goofs there are many choices to be made. And when the dice aren't on your side you have to be able to adjust accordingly as well.
If you guys really think 40K has nothing to offer then why play?
For a lot of reasons.
First and foremost 40k has the largest and most easily accessible player base. I would much rather play something like Konflikt 47'. Weird War II is an amazing setting and the rule set is much more tactical and to my liking. But feth,,, I got nobody to play with. So no point in investing in it.
Secondly, it's easy enough to fix most of the problems with 40k with house rules. Beyond the Gates of 40k IS the much better game with much better tactics and game play. I don't have as many people as I would like playing it yet. But I get a few more every now and then. Even just these house ruled LoS and terrain rules ( https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/750334.page ) make a pretty significant difference in the game play.
Finally the models are good and the conversion/painting is fun. The hobby is actually about more than the game itself. While I have the most fun having a real good game, between games having good models to build and paint is worth something in and of itself.
Quickjager wrote: According to him, yes he did in fact magically pass the screen because he somehow got 4 of his vehicles charged the FIRST TURN! He either played incompetently by failing to position his vehicles correctly or he didn't in fact HAVE a screen in which case he lost in the LIST-BUILDING part of the game.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Let us look at his army list, oh armored company? Hmm no screens at all, alright yes I see.
He lost in the list building part of the game.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Or perhaps it was his ITC competitive list? Hmm he DOES have a screen, but he STILL got charged first turn!
Haha. Boy you just can't WAIT to be right, can you? You can feel it in your bones! Yes it was the ITC list I posted about 3 weeks ago. Good job digging through my post history, kiddo! You's a real detective now.
This was 1250 vs 1250 I had ~50 guardsmen for a screen, and 7 vehicles to screen (4 basilisks, Pask, tank commander, and regular russ). The screen was 1 squad thick. I didn't know where he was gonna come from. He showed up with aggressors and some jetpack bois and shrike. The aggressors blew right through my screen (not that they needed to thanks to jetpack bois) and everyone charged in.
I still think I deployed correctly, as, apart from the screen and sniping Pask, he didn't kill much, and the following turn I blew him away. The trick with Shrike bought him another few turns and made it closer than it maybe should have been, but I ended up winning the game regardless. Sorry to disappoint.
Daedalus81 wrote: Despite list or play goofs there are many choices to be made. And when the dice aren't on your side you have to be able to adjust accordingly as well.
If you guys really think 40K has nothing to offer then why play?
For a lot of reasons.
First and foremost 40k has the largest and most easily accessible player base. I would much rather play something like Konflikt 47'. Weird War II is an amazing setting and the rule set is much more tactical and to my liking. But feth,,, I got nobody to play with. So no point in investing in it.
Secondly, it's easy enough to fix most of the problems with 40k with house rules. Beyond the Gates of 40k IS the much better game with much better tactics and game play. I don't have as many people as I would like playing it yet. But I get a few more every now and then. Even just these house ruled LoS and terrain rules ( https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/750334.page ) make a pretty significant difference in the game play.
Finally the models are good and the conversion/painting is fun. The hobby is actually about more than the game itself. While I have the most fun having a real good game, between games having good models to build and paint is worth something in and of itself.
I mean those are mostly better terrain rules, but I don't see how those escape the perception that there is no choice.
Screening for -1 to hit? That's just deployment and list building.
Hopping onto a hill to beat a screen and shoot behind it? Deployment.
Hiding behind dense cover? Deployment.
Either it drastically changes the outcome so that you always do it or it doesn't change it enough to matter - or that seems to be the refrain.
Do you think adding 1st turn penalties will improve the game?
For example, a variation of the old Night Fighting rule where the first turn has a -1 to hit. Certain wargear allows you to fire without penalty in the first turn - i.e. roll back in:
[Search light [3 pt]: A model equipped with searchlight can illuminate an enemy unit instead of shooting. Select a single enemy unit within 24" - all shooting attacks made against the illuminated target and the model equipped with the searchlight does not suffer -1 to hit penalty during the first turn.]
[Blacksun Filter [5 pt]: A model equipped with Blacksun Filter is immune to -1 to hit penalty during first turn.]
[Auspex [5 pt]: A model equipped with Auspex can scan for nearby enemies instead of shooting. Select a single enemy unit within 24" - all shooting attacks made against that unit does not suffer -1 to hit penalty during first turn.]
etc.
You can name the rule something like "The Calm Before the Storm" to describe the moment before all hell breaks loose that is current 40k turn 1 alpha strike.
Technically speaking, every "choice" you make is actually an impulse driven by hormones, instincts, and fight-or-flight responses, and the only reason you play wargames in the first place is that they stimulate responses in your brain that make you think that you're increasing your chances to pass on your genes.
Really, every game of 40k is won or lost in the EVOLUTION stage, there is no list-building because markings on a piece of paper only have significance when interpreted as light signals on the retina of an eyeball!
...you can pseudo-intellectually BS until the cows come home, it doesn't make your point not crap. Yes, if you classify deployment, exploiting mistakes by your opponent, and twisting odds to maximise a favorable outcome "not tactics" then there is no tactics in 40k. If you sort everything that happens in a game into a bin labeled "obviously not tactics, but some other thing" then you can correctly make the statement that there is no tactics in 40k.
Congratulations. You have achieved something, apparently. Pat yourself on the back.
Thanks the_scotsman, I was waiting for a post like that one.
No one is saying Warhammer40k is marvelous game of tactical depth, but some people seems too invested in spreading the word that is a extremely shallow game without any kind of player involvement.
Daedalus81 wrote: Despite list or play goofs there are many choices to be made. And when the dice aren't on your side you have to be able to adjust accordingly as well.
If you guys really think 40K has nothing to offer then why play?
For a lot of reasons.
First and foremost 40k has the largest and most easily accessible player base. I would much rather play something like Konflikt 47'. Weird War II is an amazing setting and the rule set is much more tactical and to my liking. But feth,,, I got nobody to play with. So no point in investing in it.
Secondly, it's easy enough to fix most of the problems with 40k with house rules. Beyond the Gates of 40k IS the much better game with much better tactics and game play. I don't have as many people as I would like playing it yet. But I get a few more every now and then. Even just these house ruled LoS and terrain rules ( https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/750334.page ) make a pretty significant difference in the game play.
Finally the models are good and the conversion/painting is fun. The hobby is actually about more than the game itself. While I have the most fun having a real good game, between games having good models to build and paint is worth something in and of itself.
I mean those are mostly better terrain rules, but I don't see how those escape the perception that there is no choice.
Screening for -1 to hit? That's just deployment and list building. Hopping onto a hill to beat a screen and shoot behind it? Deployment. Hiding behind dense cover? Deployment.
Either it drastically changes the outcome so that you always do it or it doesn't change it enough to matter - or that seems to be the refrain.
Because movement and positioning matters again without requiring facings. Being in or behind terrain that slows movement can help prevent chargers. If you have light terrain, your unit, and then another unit behind you than 1) the unit behind you is untargetable, and your unit behind the terrain has a -1 to hit. On the other hand you also suffer a -1 to hit against everything beyond the terrain. And if the enemy moves into the terrain first they will gain the bonus to sv and exposed both your first unit and make the second unit targetable. Whats better? Occupying the terrain early and exposing the other unit or taking the penalty on yourself to keep the other unit a little safer from that angle and risk your opponent claiming the terrain bonus?
During your every movement phase you look at the lay of the land and it's not just where the terrain sits but also where your own units sit and how they are spread out that can impact what in your army can be shot at and at what if any penalty. But also what in your army can shoot back and at what penalty. You need to actually move into firing positions. And sometimes that means exposing yourself to enemy fire to do so.
I can see the obvious and sad attempt to just mimic me. But it falls flat because you're wrong. Those terrain rules DO add some tactical depth to the game that is sorely lacking. Not a ton mind you. But a hell of a lot more than ITC missions.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
skchsan wrote: Do you think adding 1st turn penalties will improve the game?
For example, a variation of the old Night Fighting rule where the first turn has a -1 to hit. Certain wargear allows you to fire without penalty in the first turn - i.e. roll back in: [Search light [3 pt]: A model equipped with searchlight can illuminate an enemy unit instead of shooting. Select a single enemy unit within 24" - all shooting attacks made against the illuminated target and the model equipped with the searchlight does not suffer -1 to hit penalty during the first turn.] [Blacksun Filter [5 pt]: A model equipped with Blacksun Filter is immune to -1 to hit penalty during first turn.] [Auspex [5 pt]: A model equipped with Auspex can scan for nearby enemies instead of shooting. Select a single enemy unit within 24" - all shooting attacks made against that unit does not suffer -1 to hit penalty during first turn.]
etc.
You can name the rule something like "The Calm Before the Storm" to describe the moment before all hell breaks loose that is current 40k turn 1 alpha strike.
No. Your just prolonging the alpha strike or shifting it to the second player. You don't actually address the problem you just move when it hits the hardest.
the_scotsman wrote: Technically speaking, every "choice" you make is actually an impulse driven by hormones, instincts, and fight-or-flight responses, and the only reason you play wargames in the first place is that they stimulate responses in your brain that make you think that you're increasing your chances to pass on your genes.
Really, every game of 40k is won or lost in the EVOLUTION stage, there is no list-building because markings on a piece of paper only have significance when interpreted as light signals on the retina of an eyeball!
...you can pseudo-intellectually BS until the cows come home, it doesn't make your point not crap. Yes, if you classify deployment, exploiting mistakes by your opponent, and twisting odds to maximise a favorable outcome "not tactics" then there is no tactics in 40k. If you sort everything that happens in a game into a bin labeled "obviously not tactics, but some other thing" then you can correctly make the statement that there is no tactics in 40k.
Congratulations. You have achieved something, apparently. Pat yourself on the back.
Not sure if you were referencing my post there. I was just demonstrating the common retorts about how 40K doesn't have tactics..
Because movement and positioning matters again without requiring facings. Being in or behind terrain that slows movement can help prevent chargers. If you have light terrain, your unit, and then another unit behind you than 1) the unit behind you is untargetable, and your unit behind the terrain has a -1 to hit. On the other hand you also suffer a -1 to hit against everything beyond the terrain. And if the enemy moves into the terrain first they will gain the bonus to sv and exposed both your first unit and make the second unit targetable. Whats better? Occupying the terrain early and exposing the other unit or taking the penalty on yourself to keep the other unit a little safer from that angle and risk your opponent claiming the terrain bonus?
I'll respond with your own words.
The best choice, always, is to deal as much damage as possible to the enemy to weaken their retaliation. So you build your list to find ways to do that and then deploy intelligently to mitigate their first turn and maximize yours. And then you shoot the lascanons at the tanks, the anti infantry at the infantry, and charge the guns to tie them up on their next turn.
Because movement and positioning matters again without requiring facings. Being in or behind terrain that slows movement can help prevent chargers. If you have light terrain, your unit, and then another unit behind you than 1) the unit behind you is untargetable, and your unit behind the terrain has a -1 to hit. On the other hand you also suffer a -1 to hit against everything beyond the terrain. And if the enemy moves into the terrain first they will gain the bonus to sv and exposed both your first unit and make the second unit targetable. Whats better? Occupying the terrain early and exposing the other unit or taking the penalty on yourself to keep the other unit a little safer from that angle and risk your opponent claiming the terrain bonus?
I'll respond with your own words.
The best choice, always, is to deal as much damage as possible to the enemy to weaken their retaliation. So you build your list to find ways to do that and then deploy intelligently to mitigate their first turn and maximize yours. And then you shoot the lascanons at the tanks, the anti infantry at the infantry, and charge the guns to tie them up on their next turn.
And for the most part you are (read: I am) not wrong! Your options in the shooting phase are exactly as shallow. The terrain rules only really improve the movement phase by dictating what can be shot and to try and manipulate enemy movement by attempting to force them into certain avenues to find favorable shooting positions. There is risk and reward involved with significantly less clear answers as to what is the best place to be. As opposed to the current, "Am I in range? Yup, ok then I shoot it."
Lance845 wrote: There is risk and reward involved with significantly less clear answers as to what is the best place to be. As opposed to the current, "Am I in range? Yup, ok then I shoot it."
If only it actually played out like this consistently as opposed to actually having to think about casualty removal, charges in the current turn, breaking your screen, and exerting board control. The fact of the matter is that no that isn't the best answer, especially against a skilled opponent who is capable of taking advantage of that kind of positioning to block out further movements or open up avenues to counter your shooting units.
If you ask me, 40k has tactics, as much as any wargame.
If the only thing that makes a game "tactically deep" is how obfuscated the best course of action is, then clearly the most tactical game is one with 700 pages of rules that is very disorganized. After all, there's no obvious best course of action.
It is true that in 40k, there is always a best course of action for any given movement/shooting/assault. This is true for both players. However, assuming lists and terrain are fair, there's still outplaying and outsmarting your opponent. Lascannons should obviously shoot at tanks and not IG, right? But my opponent didn't plop down his tanks right in front of my lascannons (though that itself isn't tactics, because apparently deployment isn't tactical or something). So now my lascannons have to move. Clearly that's the best course of action. Which direction? Right? They can see around the terrain easily, but they're exposed to enemy guns. Left? They can shut down his vehicle's ability to move safely out of the cover, but can't fire this turn. They'll be protected though. Not move them at all? Shuts down most of the enemy's movement options, but if he keeps his tanks still, they don't really get to participate in the game, and the lascannons are a bit exposed. My flyers, instead, could fly over and hit his tanks, but he's got jump infantry nearby that will assault them and hurt 'em bad. Perhaps instead I should pivot and fly along his line, hitting some infantry, even if they're AT flyers. Or I could even drop into hover, and try to tempt his vehicles out from hiding for easy shots at the flyers, but also return fire from my lascannons...
oh wait, it's mathematically best to ... well, I'm sure one of those options is clearly the best. Math will prove it.
Unit1126PLL wrote: If you ask me, 40k has tactics, as much as any wargame.
If the only thing that makes a game "tactically deep" is how obfuscated the best course of action is, then clearly the most tactical game is one with 700 pages of rules that is very disorganized. After all, there's no obvious best course of action.
It is true that in 40k, there is always a best course of action for any given movement/shooting/assault. This is true for both players. However, assuming lists and terrain are fair, there's still outplaying and outsmarting your opponent. Lascannons should obviously shoot at tanks and not IG, right? But my opponent didn't plop down his tanks right in front of my lascannons (though that itself isn't tactics, because apparently deployment isn't tactical or something). So now my lascannons have to move. Clearly that's the best course of action. Which direction? Right? They can see around the terrain easily, but they're exposed to enemy guns. Left? They can shut down his vehicle's ability to move safely out of the cover, but can't fire this turn. They'll be protected though. Not move them at all? Shuts down most of the enemy's movement options, but if he keeps his tanks still, they don't really get to participate in the game, and the lascannons are a bit exposed. My flyers, instead, could fly over and hit his tanks, but he's got jump infantry nearby that will assault them and hurt 'em bad. Perhaps instead I should pivot and fly along his line, hitting some infantry, even if they're AT flyers. Or I could even drop into hover, and try to tempt his vehicles out from hiding for easy shots at the flyers, but also return fire from my lascannons...
oh wait, it's mathematically best to ... well, I'm sure one of those options is clearly the best. Math will prove it.
Maybe another way of saying this is, risk plays a large role in outcomes in 40k. Tactics in 40k often boil down to understanding risk and how to manage it.
I can understand why so many people would say list-building is more important than tactics. It doesn't feel like you are making tactical decisions by aiming the Lascannon at the tank or the Heavy Bolter at the Mob - you picked them beforehand.
But there is so much random stuff that pops up in 40k. For me, it's common to move from plan A to plan D after a bad dice roll. It's usually not the Lascannon that takes down the last tank, it's a random krak grenade. It's usually not the Heavy Bolter that takes out the Mob, it gets left on the board so I can deal with another priority target.
I don't know... having a good list is important, being able to respond when things going wrong seems to be what wins games. Saying this as a CSM player.
It's not that deployment isn't tactical. It's that if your whole argument is that deployment is tactical then the tactics end before turn 1 begins.
If the deepest 40ks tactics get is pregame list building and set up then what the hell is going on for the next 5 turns? Shouldn't the actual game play be the most tactical aspect of the game?
And again, it's not complexity of mechanics, it's playing against the other player and complexity of choice.
It mostly boils down to how every unit can always do all their things coupled with you activating every unit, all at once, every turn.
The enemy has no chance to respond. You have no risk of response. So you don't worry about what the other player is going to do with your each action because they can't DO anything. Does it actually matter where the enemy moves a single unit? No. Because it doesn't actually impact your next decision. The only thing that actually matters to your decision making is the enemies position at the end of their entire turn and what you have left that survived it.
Because of that your less making decisions based on the other players actions and more based on probabilities of causing the most damage to the enemies force. You KNOW that if they are in range to smite that they will smite. Because why wouldn't they smite? They can. It costs them nothing. So they will. You know they will shoot every gun they have at probably the best target they can reach. If all they have is a tank in range of the anti infantry guns they will shoot all those guns at that tank just on the chance that it causes some damage. Because to NOT do that is just to waste the opportunity that shooting their guns provides.
That is the shallowness of 40ks tactical depth. Failure to fire off your smites or shoot your guns isn't a tactical choice, it's a failure of the player to recognize opportunity and take it.
Again, the one exception to this, is stratagems. They are the one method through which players can, sometimes, depending on the army, have options to interrupt your actions and make you question your decisions. Auspex scan being one that has come up a bit. But they are only usable on a limited currency and only usable once per phase (and since most can only be used in a specific phase often once a turn). So their actual impact is drastically limited by the very nature of their cost and use.
In other systems, AGAIN, you can interrupt the players turn with reactions. Kind of half activations that eat up your activation for the turn but get to mess with the players actions. It makes overwatch not something you do because you can and you have to, but a tactical decision you make. Do you shoot with these guys NOW, or do you set them up to make a reaction so that the enemy has to worry about retaliation when you deepstrike in or attempt a charge? If you set them up for a reaction they might be avoided and not get to shoot at all. On the other hand they might save themselves or other units because of it. You can shoot at that unit to try to remove them, but they might just decide to react by taking cover. They won't get to shoot back this turn but they might have mitigated your activation in return. 40k doesn't have those kinds of choices. It doesn't have the DEPTH of those kinds of choices.
Lance845 wrote: It's not that deployment isn't tactical. It's that if your whole argument is that deployment is tactical then the tactics end before turn 1 begins.
If the deepest 40ks tactics get is pregame list building and set up then what the hell is going on for the next 5 turns? Shouldn't the actual game play be the most tactical aspect of the game?
And again, it's not complexity of mechanics, it's playing against the other player and complexity of choice.
It mostly boils down to how every unit can always do all their things coupled with you activating every unit, all at once, every turn.
The enemy has no chance to respond. You have no risk of response. So you don't worry about what the other player is going to do with your each action because they can't DO anything. Does it actually matter where the enemy moves a single unit? No. Because it doesn't actually impact your next decision. The only thing that actually matters to your decision making is the enemies position at the end of their entire turn and what you have left that survived it.
Because of that your less making decisions based on the other players actions and more based on probabilities of causing the most damage to the enemies force. You KNOW that if they are in range to smite that they will smite. Because why wouldn't they smite? They can. It costs them nothing. So they will. You know they will shoot every gun they have at probably the best target they can reach. If all they have is a tank in range of the anti infantry guns they will shoot all those guns at that tank just on the chance that it causes some damage. Because to NOT do that is just to waste the opportunity that shooting their guns provides.
That is the shallowness of 40ks tactical depth. Failure to fire off your smites or shoot your guns isn't a tactical choice, it's a failure of the player to recognize opportunity and take it.
Again, the one exception to this, is stratagems. They are the one method through which players can, sometimes, depending on the army, have options to interrupt your actions and make you question your decisions. Auspex scan being one that has come up a bit. But they are only usable on a limited currency and only usable once per phase (and since most can only be used in a specific phase often once a turn). So their actual impact is drastically limited by the very nature of their cost and use.
In other systems, AGAIN, you can interrupt the players turn with reactions. Kind of half activations that eat up your activation for the turn but get to mess with the players actions. It makes overwatch not something you do because you can and you have to, but a tactical decision you make. Do you shoot with these guys NOW, or do you set them up to make a reaction so that the enemy has to worry about retaliation when you deepstrike in or attempt a charge? If you set them up for a reaction they might be avoided and not get to shoot at all. On the other hand they might save themselves or other units because of it. You can shoot at that unit to try to remove them, but they might just decide to react by taking cover. They won't get to shoot back this turn but they might have mitigated your activation in return. 40k doesn't have those kinds of choices. It doesn't have the DEPTH of those kinds of choices.
TL;DR I don't like the types of choices you make in 40ksIGOUGO system and instead of acknowledging that a different form of activation or interruption based system has DIFFERENT choices I think they're BETTER choices. To be fair that's fine for you to have your opinion but you've already posted several times that 40k somehow boils down to 'get in the best place to shoot the best' and don't seem willing to walk back from that line.
What? No response? No, that's not true at all, stop please.
I oftentimes deliberately place one of my superheavy tanks out of position early in deployment to see if I can bait out enemy anti-tank weapons.
The enemy can certainly fire his anti-tank weapons at that superheavy. He can even deep-strike next to it and nuke it. But that's the point. I'm building a house of cards to conceal my house of iron. If the enemy takes the bait, my response will be swift and crushing, typically crippling his anti-tank units so my two remaining superheavy tanks can participate. I'm literally planning on being able to respond to the enemy, that thing you claim which cannot be done.
And do you know what? All it takes on his part is a bit of tactics to compensate. A single move, say, a Predator Annihilator out of LOS or holding back some deep-striking units or something.
But that could leave my tank alive, and so the equation changes again, because while my response may be less successful at crippling his army's AT capacity, it is also augmented now with the firepower of the third vehicle...
something as little as a single move (e.g. a tempted charge, or hiding something out of LOS) can alter the gamestate and the opponent's ability to respond to it...
... which is something you (wrongly) assert to be impossible.
ThePorcupine wrote: Agree to disagree with you fellas. There is absolutely choice. I specifically outlined pros and cons to each of the situations in my post.
And I know it's common to say "1st turn wins. might as well quit. stupid alpha strike grumble grumble." That's certainly true when it comes to just two armies slapped down on the table with the objective of "kill the other guy" but I think the heavier emphasis on objectives and secondaries in things like ITC evens things out. Fully? Don't know. But I would like to see statistics of how often the players who go first win and what rule types those games use.
ITC missions, terrain rules, and restricted time, are all house rules. The house is ITC. Claiming they make the game better is exactly like me saying using alternating unit activation makes the game better. Just because they are widely accepted house rules doesn't make them anything other than house rules. 40k the game has official missions. Those are the ones that matter when talking about 40k official game.
I agree with this 100%. ITC is just house rules - It's not even a better game because of it ether.
TL;DR I don't like the types of choices you make in 40ksIGOUGO system and instead of acknowledging that a different form of activation or interruption based system has DIFFERENT choices I think they're BETTER choices. To be fair that's fine for you to have your opinion but you've already posted several times that 40k somehow boils down to 'get in the best place to shoot the best' and don't seem willing to walk back from that line.
And it's fine for you to have your opinion. Lets face it, end of the day it doesn't matter what any of us think. Were just a bunch of dick heads talking about a board game on the internet. I didn't say it was JUST 'get in the best place to shoot the best'. I said there was an optimal decision to make. Like popping smoke and advancing to grab a VP. Just MOST of the time that decisions IS get in the best position to shoot the best. 99.9% of all decisions in 40k can be mathed out. Yeah, there are the .1% edge cases where things get foggy, but they are so rare as to be non existent. Especially because without time limits 40k is so killy that it mostly boils down to tabling the other player.
TL;DR I don't like the types of choices you make in 40ksIGOUGO system and instead of acknowledging that a different form of activation or interruption based system has DIFFERENT choices I think they're BETTER choices. To be fair that's fine for you to have your opinion but you've already posted several times that 40k somehow boils down to 'get in the best place to shoot the best' and don't seem willing to walk back from that line.
And it's fine for you to have your opinion. Lets face it, end of the day it doesn't matter what any of us think. Were just a bunch of dick heads talking about a board game on the internet. I didn't say it was JUST 'get in the best place to shoot the best'. I said there was an optimal decision to make. Like popping smoke and advancing to grab a VP. Just MOST of the time that decisions IS get in the best position to shoot the best. 99.9% of all decisions in 40k can be mathed out. Yeah, there are the .1% edge cases where things get foggy, but they are so rare as to be non existent. Especially because without time limits 40k is so killy that it mostly boils down to tabling the other player.
You're making statements that you don't understand. Some critiques: 1) Every situation has an optimal decision. 40k's may be easier to see than others, but in literally any game I can think of, the cost-benefit analysis has always been a thing, and only rarely (e.g. .1% that you cite) actually offers up any meaningful choice. 2) "Mathematically optimal" is not the same thing as "Tactically optimal." When I think tactics, I think of deception. I think of trying to compel your opponent to make a mistake while mitigating your own. I think of my opponent's psychology as much as I do what's on the board, and sometimes change my decision about what's happening on the board based on my opponent's psychology. 3) I would love to play a game against an opponent that makes each decision the most mathematically optimal in a vacuum. Sure, it's most mathematically optimal to point all of your antitank weapons at a single Superheavy, so you can kill it, rather than spreading out your firepower. So I'll put a superheavy out in a place where it is easy to kill, and two others where it is a bit harder. Obviously, the math favors killing the easy to kill superheavy, since it lacks cover / screens / whathaveyou. Therefore, you will point and use all of your AT weapons at it. And I know you're going to do that. I've planned accordingly..
I've just outsmarted you with better tactics, and you may very well find that the temporary mathematically-assured success of destroying a single superheavy was not worth the price of most of your anti-tank capability, even though it was mathematically optimal.
I don’t understand, are you saying destroying a 1/3 of an armies firepower is a worse choice than plinking away a few health off all 3 superheavies to little effect? It’s not like you have to declare every single attack all at once. If a super heavy dies early I can just redirect the extra firepower elsewhere. Maybe I’m not following what you’re getting at with your example.
dosiere wrote: I don’t understand, are you saying destroying a 1/3 of an armies firepower is a worse choice than plinking away a few health off all 3 superheavies to little effect? It’s not like you have to declare every single attack all at once. If a super heavy dies early I can just redirect the extra firepower elsewhere. Maybe I’m not following what you’re getting at with your example.
What I am getting at is that I'm ready for it. I know that's the mathematically superior option, so I can deploy and act accordingly in the assumption that my opponent is going to take that route.
It's telling that in most of the games I lost at NOVA that I feel like were lost to tactics (instead of list, e.g. Necron Pylon), I usually didn't lose a superheavy until the third turn or later, because my opponent was being cagey with his anti-tank, hiding it, and allowing it to take opportunity shots from cover rather than planning to alpha-strike one Baneblade and then wipe its hands and call it a day.
IMHO losing 1/3rd of your firepower turn one should always be a plan, because it's pretty much guaranteed to happen. Even if you're going second, it is fairly likely, such is the lethality of the game we're in.
dosiere wrote: I don’t understand, are you saying destroying a 1/3 of an armies firepower is a worse choice than plinking away a few health off all 3 superheavies to little effect? It’s not like you have to declare every single attack all at once. If a super heavy dies early I can just redirect the extra firepower elsewhere. Maybe I’m not following what you’re getting at with your example.
There are situations where bracketing two vehicles is a better choice than an attempting to destroy one. It is situational but depending on what your chances to limit movement look like and what kind of board control/target control you can exert.
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Unit1126PLL wrote: IMHO losing 1/3rd of your firepower turn one should always be a plan, because it's pretty much guaranteed to happen. Even if you're going second, it is fairly likely, such is the lethality of the game we're in.
This is also generally correct. It can be prevented and limited depending on how much LoS blocking terrain you have and what options you have to hide units (native or stratagem deepstrikes, infiltrates out of effective LoS, etc.)
dosiere wrote: I don’t understand, are you saying destroying a 1/3 of an armies firepower is a worse choice than plinking away a few health off all 3 superheavies to little effect? It’s not like you have to declare every single attack all at once. If a super heavy dies early I can just redirect the extra firepower elsewhere. Maybe I’m not following what you’re getting at with your example.
There are situations where bracketing two vehicles is a better choice than an attempting to destroy one. It is situational but depending on what your chances to limit movement look like and what kind of board control/target control you can exert.
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Unit1126PLL wrote: IMHO losing 1/3rd of your firepower turn one should always be a plan, because it's pretty much guaranteed to happen. Even if you're going second, it is fairly likely, such is the lethality of the game we're in.
This is also generally correct. It can be prevented and limited depending on how much LoS blocking terrain you have and what options you have to hide units (native or stratagem deepstrikes, infiltrates out of effective LoS, etc.)
I mean, baiting out AT weapons with a high-value target.... that is specifically countered by AT is.... understandable. Especially when most people will be focusing one to begin with seems a bit of a stretch to call a tactic. I would have to look at the list to say more, but I suppose deciding which SHV was the least valuable and sacrificing it to keep your actually target-effective weapons is good enough to be called a tactic. Being faced with 3 superheavies tends to cause people to go into table mode.
I can't say however it is a good list still, which I will maintain as it does have glaring weaknesses which ALL skew lists do. Once again relying on overloading on one unit type to cause half of the opponents weapons to become useless isn't really a tactic... Further the line Unit used "something as little as a single move (e.g. a tempted charge, or hiding something out of LOS) can alter the gamestate and the opponent's ability to respond to it..." is incredibly dumb because yes of course the gamestate changed. That is what it does.
Quickjager wrote: According to him, yes he did in fact magically pass the screen because he somehow got 4 of his vehicles charged the FIRST TURN! He either played incompetently by failing to position his vehicles correctly or he didn't in fact HAVE a screen in which case he lost in the LIST-BUILDING part of the game.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Let us look at his army list, oh armored company? Hmm no screens at all, alright yes I see.
He lost in the list building part of the game.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Or perhaps it was his ITC competitive list? Hmm he DOES have a screen, but he STILL got charged first turn!
Haha. Boy you just can't WAIT to be right, can you? You can feel it in your bones! Yes it was the ITC list I posted about 3 weeks ago. Good job digging through my post history, kiddo! You's a real detective now.
This was 1250 vs 1250 I had ~50 guardsmen for a screen, and 7 vehicles to screen (4 basilisks, Pask, tank commander, and regular russ). The screen was 1 squad thick. I didn't know where he was gonna come from. He showed up with aggressors and some jetpack bois and shrike. The aggressors blew right through my screen (not that they needed to thanks to jetpack bois) and everyone charged in.
I still think I deployed correctly, as, apart from the screen and sniping Pask, he didn't kill much, and the following turn I blew him away. The trick with Shrike bought him another few turns and made it closer than it maybe should have been, but I ended up winning the game regardless. Sorry to disappoint.
When someone is so wrong so frequently yes I can't wait. Of course I would go through your profile to see what your lists are in the 40k army list section, its called using your tools so quit being one. The fact he used superior "tactics" and still lost to a gunline shows exactly what is wrong with thinking the game is weighted more heavily in the active part of the game rather than the list building one.
Marmatag wrote: Oh here we go again with people claiming ITC missions are house rules.
I would have quit 40k a while ago if we only could play book missions. Additionally, I would wager more people play ITC in the USA than GW missions.
"House rules" means "rules not officially sanctioned by GW".
I strongly oppose the pejorative usage in which "house rules" means "wildly untested/unbalanced gibberish created by people who'd rather write rules that let them win than get good with the official rules", and as such I don't find calling ITC "house rules" to be inaccurate or insulting.
GW uses ITC data to balance the game.
GW has a presence at ITC events.
GW involved FrontLine in the 8th edition beta tests.
GW involves the ITC in beta-testing of rules.
I would argue these give a tacit approval of what the ITC is doing.
So, it's easy to argue that GW has indeed sanctioned ITC.
Of course none of that is relevant, and i'm mainly bristling at the attempt to denigrate the mission pack because it isn't printed in a GW publication.
To people who say the tactics are obvious and simplistic, I assume you
1) Can predict with an extremely high degree of accuracy the winner of every game before it has begun, and when your prediction is wrong, 3) Can categorically prove that luck won/lost the game.
Unless one of those things are true in every game, then the game has skill-based, non-obvious tactics as a deciding factor. Tactics such as deployment, movement, timing of abilities and target priority.
Mymearan wrote: To people who say the tactics are obvious and simplistic, I assume you
1) Can predict with an extremely high degree of accuracy the winner of every game before it has begun, and when your prediction is wrong,
3) Can categorically prove that luck won/lost the game.
Unless one of those things are true in every game, then the game has skill-based, non-obvious tactics as a deciding factor. Tactics such as deployment, movement, timing of abilities and target priority.
My take (validity suspect) is that once players reach a certain competency player agency is on the low side relative to comparable games. There obviously are meaningful decisions to be made and the random factor will always give rise to plans needing to be altered on the fly. The problem with using the predictability of games as a guide is the fallibility of players, in game it is easy to miss things (I still forget the psychic phase occasionally ^.^). People make sloppy movements, things get knocked over/replaced in the wrong place, rules get misremembered or misapplied, people are distracted/drunk/hungover/whatever etc etc all of which can diminish the impact of perfect decision making in a vacuum.
dosiere wrote: I don’t understand, are you saying destroying a 1/3 of an armies firepower is a worse choice than plinking away a few health off all 3 superheavies to little effect? It’s not like you have to declare every single attack all at once. If a super heavy dies early I can just redirect the extra firepower elsewhere. Maybe I’m not following what you’re getting at with your example.
There are situations where bracketing two vehicles is a better choice than an attempting to destroy one. It is situational but depending on what your chances to limit movement look like and what kind of board control/target control you can exert.
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Unit1126PLL wrote: IMHO losing 1/3rd of your firepower turn one should always be a plan, because it's pretty much guaranteed to happen. Even if you're going second, it is fairly likely, such is the lethality of the game we're in.
This is also generally correct. It can be prevented and limited depending on how much LoS blocking terrain you have and what options you have to hide units (native or stratagem deepstrikes, infiltrates out of effective LoS, etc.)
I mean, baiting out AT weapons with a high-value target.... that is specifically countered by AT is.... understandable. Especially when most people will be focusing one to begin with seems a bit of a stretch to call a tactic. I would have to look at the list to say more, but I suppose deciding which SHV was the least valuable and sacrificing it to keep your actually target-effective weapons is good enough to be called a tactic. Being faced with 3 superheavies tends to cause people to go into table mode.
I can't say however it is a good list still, which I will maintain as it does have glaring weaknesses which ALL skew lists do. Once again relying on overloading on one unit type to cause half of the opponents weapons to become useless isn't really a tactic... Further the line Unit used "something as little as a single move (e.g. a tempted charge, or hiding something out of LOS) can alter the gamestate and the opponent's ability to respond to it..." is incredibly dumb because yes of course the gamestate changed. That is what it does.
This thread isn't about list power, but yes, it does have glaring weaknesses, with only between 400-800 points of non-superheavy at 2k for support depending on which three vehicles I run. But the point is twofold, which you avoided addressing:
1) The tactic isn't about lists, that's the whole point. You could do it with Russ squadrons or Predator tanks and fundamentally it is the same: throwing at least one vehicle under the bus to tempt out enemy AT assets which may otherwise hide or make themselves hard to kill.
2) Why is it dumb to point out that the gamestate changed? That's what tactics are. To say there is "no tactics" is to claim that the gamestate does not change, because there is nothing to react to. You can't simultaneously out of one side of your mouth say "of course the gamestate changes" and then out the other side say "but there is no tactics." Reacting to the game-state in an appropriate manner is good tactics, reacting to it badly (including not reacting at all) is bad tactics. But it's tactics either way, no two ways about it.
dosiere wrote: I don’t understand, are you saying destroying a 1/3 of an armies firepower is a worse choice than plinking away a few health off all 3 superheavies to little effect? It’s not like you have to declare every single attack all at once. If a super heavy dies early I can just redirect the extra firepower elsewhere. Maybe I’m not following what you’re getting at with your example.
There are situations where bracketing two vehicles is a better choice than an attempting to destroy one. It is situational but depending on what your chances to limit movement look like and what kind of board control/target control you can exert.
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Unit1126PLL wrote: IMHO losing 1/3rd of your firepower turn one should always be a plan, because it's pretty much guaranteed to happen. Even if you're going second, it is fairly likely, such is the lethality of the game we're in.
This is also generally correct. It can be prevented and limited depending on how much LoS blocking terrain you have and what options you have to hide units (native or stratagem deepstrikes, infiltrates out of effective LoS, etc.)
I mean, baiting out AT weapons with a high-value target.... that is specifically countered by AT is.... understandable. Especially when most people will be focusing one to begin with seems a bit of a stretch to call a tactic. I would have to look at the list to say more, but I suppose deciding which SHV was the least valuable and sacrificing it to keep your actually target-effective weapons is good enough to be called a tactic. Being faced with 3 superheavies tends to cause people to go into table mode.
I can't say however it is a good list still, which I will maintain as it does have glaring weaknesses which ALL skew lists do. Once again relying on overloading on one unit type to cause half of the opponents weapons to become useless isn't really a tactic... Further the line Unit used "something as little as a single move (e.g. a tempted charge, or hiding something out of LOS) can alter the gamestate and the opponent's ability to respond to it..." is incredibly dumb because yes of course the gamestate changed. That is what it does.
This thread isn't about list power, but yes, it does have glaring weaknesses, with only between 400-800 points of non-superheavy at 2k for support depending on which three vehicles I run. But the point is twofold, which you avoided addressing:
1) The tactic isn't about lists, that's the whole point. You could do it with Russ squadrons or Predator tanks and fundamentally it is the same: throwing at least one vehicle under the bus to tempt out enemy AT assets which may otherwise hide or make themselves hard to kill.
2) Why is it dumb to point out that the gamestate changed? That's what tactics are. To say there is "no tactics" is to claim that the gamestate does not change, because there is nothing to react to. You can't simultaneously out of one side of your mouth say "of course the gamestate changes" and then out the other side say "but there is no tactics." Reacting to the game-state in an appropriate manner is good tactics, reacting to it badly (including not reacting at all) is bad tactics. But it's tactics either way, no two ways about it.
Are you saying you can hide all 3 on a regular basis? that you would rather lose one than not? I'm not sure. Whatever, I don't think debating the merits of an obvious (?) tactic with a super skew force means much in the big picture of this discussion.
Ix_Tab wrote: [spoiler]Are you saying you can hide all 3 on a regular basis? that you would rather lose one than not? I'm not sure. Whatever, I don't think debating the merits of an obvious (?) tactic with a super skew force means much in the big picture of this discussion.
No? I am saying there's usually a way to get them cover, or put screens around them, or do any number of other things to protect them, and usually only two. The third I put ou- you know what I've explained it twice already.
The point is that tactics exist. I used my own anecdote as an example of tactics which exist, and people don't seem to be able to look past that. You can't say "tactics don't matter because of list" and then when an example is given, just say "well, it's a skew list so it doesn't matter." Yes, yes, if you exclude all the lists that do tactics then there are no tactics. Similarly, if we only play chess against pigeons we somehow always lose.
Ix_Tab wrote: [spoiler]Are you saying you can hide all 3 on a regular basis? that you would rather lose one than not? I'm not sure. Whatever, I don't think debating the merits of an obvious (?) tactic with a super skew force means much in the big picture of this discussion.
No? I am saying there's usually a way to get them cover, or put screens around them, or do any number of other things to protect them, and usually only two. The third I put ou- you know what I've explained it twice already.
The point is that tactics exist. I used my own anecdote as an example of tactics which exist, and people don't seem to be able to look past that. You can't say "tactics don't matter because of list" and then when an example is given, just say "well, it's a skew list so it doesn't matter." Yes, yes, if you exclude all the lists that do tactics then there are no tactics. Similarly, if we only play chess against pigeons we somehow always lose.
The title of this thread is unfortunate, the question would perhaps be better posed "what degree of player agency do the tactical options emerging in a game of 40k give rise to". Frankly anyone saying there are no tactics in 40k is probably not worth engaging with.
You are describing a strategy which we may or may not decide is prescribed by the list. Where it gets interesting is in how many decisions go into enacting that strategy on the table and the degree to which they impact outcomes.
Ix_Tab wrote: [spoiler]Are you saying you can hide all 3 on a regular basis? that you would rather lose one than not? I'm not sure. Whatever, I don't think debating the merits of an obvious (?) tactic with a super skew force means much in the big picture of this discussion.
No? I am saying there's usually a way to get them cover, or put screens around them, or do any number of other things to protect them, and usually only two. The third I put ou- you know what I've explained it twice already.
The point is that tactics exist. I used my own anecdote as an example of tactics which exist, and people don't seem to be able to look past that. You can't say "tactics don't matter because of list" and then when an example is given, just say "well, it's a skew list so it doesn't matter." Yes, yes, if you exclude all the lists that do tactics then there are no tactics. Similarly, if we only play chess against pigeons we somehow always lose.
The title of this thread is unfortunate, the question would perhaps be better posed "what degree of player agency do the tactical options emerging in a game of 40k give rise to". Frankly anyone saying there are no tactics in 40k is probably not worth engaging with.
You are describing a strategy which we may or may not decide is prescribed by the list. Where it gets interesting is in how many decisions go into enacting that strategy on the table and the degree to which they impact outcomes.
We can have that discussion if you want. I think there's actually a lot of player agency in 40k, but not as much as there could be, perhaps.
An example of a misconception is I once heard someone say "you might as well try to shoot; no reason not to." when discussing their in-turn plans with their teammate. That's a terrible misconception. Advancing can have distinct advantages in gaining, expanding, and securing board-control, blocking charge lanes, and can contribute to being in the right place at the right time, even if it precludes shooting for most weapons. In the case of a vehicle, blowing smoke launchers may affect the opponent's target priority in confusing ways. Sometimes you want to charge, and so shooting is the wrong decision because it gives the opportunity to the opponent of removing the nearest models and extend the charge distance. Other times you may not shoot an opponent because that would make their job easier (a destroyed unit is one fewer units to think about after all, while a crippled unit that might be saved can severely alter people's thinking, depending on the player). Perhaps shooting the enemy requires you to put yourself in a dangerous position, moving in the open in front of enemy guns or wandering within charge range of a nasty charger. Perhaps shooting the enemy will inhibit your ability to get an objective (e.g. Blood and Guts in the Maelstrom deck) or only gives them the opportunity to make some kind of retaliation (e.g. killing a SOB character means you may get shot in the face in your own shooting phase). There are tons of reasons not to shoot.
And shooting is one of the simplest, most straightforward things in the game.
IMHO the ITC missions change the dynamic of the game but in the wrong way. They encourage MORE listbuilding/skewing. I personally feel the Chapter Approved Eternal War missions (changing the first two to be progressive scoring rather than end-of-game scoring) are really good for encouraging non-skew/TAC type lists over ITC where you want to game the system to minimize points your opponent can get while making sure you can get the most secondaries yourself.
ITC basically stays popular because during 6th/7th they had to "fix" the game for tournament play to happen at all, since GW at that time didn't care. However, it is rather telling that ITC uses house ruled 40k while their AOS rules are basically "Use the General's Handbook as written" with zero adjustments to the actual game.
FWIW, our group has never used the ITC missions. Granted, except for myself most of our members have never attended a major tournament, nor do they have any desire to do so. Having read the ITC missions I personally prefer the Chapter Approved ones. It just seems too easy to game the secondary objectives the way the ITC ones are designed. JMO though and I confess the last time I attended an ITC event was years ago so take that with as much salt as you wish.
Wayniac wrote: IMHO the ITC missions change the dynamic of the game but in the wrong way. They encourage MORE listbuilding/skewing. I personally feel the Chapter Approved Eternal War missions (changing the first two to be progressive scoring rather than end-of-game scoring) are really good for encouraging non-skew/TAC type lists over ITC where you want to game the system to minimize points your opponent can get while making sure you can get the most secondaries yourself.
ITC basically stays popular because during 6th/7th they had to "fix" the game for tournament play to happen at all, since GW at that time didn't care. However, it is rather telling that ITC uses house ruled 40k while their AOS rules are basically "Use the General's Handbook as written" with zero adjustments to the actual game.
i think ITC stays popular, because it seems well thought out and makes for fun games. Remove the crazy top end lists and there isn't much I can complain about currently.
Yes there are certainly tactics - advantageous positioning, screening, target denial, dispersal and concentration of forces, using terrain to advantage, feints, etc, but it is at heart an action game, there's definately not a strong emphasis on tactics compared to games like Gates of Antares, Warpath or even Bolt Action which add unit orders, supression and alternate activation. Even these I would consider 50:50 action:tactical games. Further along the scale there are games like Force on Force / Tomorrow's War.
Unit1126PLL wrote: If you ask me, 40k has tactics, as much as any wargame.
If the only thing that makes a game "tactically deep" is how obfuscated the best course of action is, then clearly the most tactical game is one with 700 pages of rules that is very disorganized. After all, there's no obvious best course of action.
We've played walking dead and it has tons more tactics in an 8-page rulebook cause of threat, noise, alternative activation, how terrain 'works' and the 3-d party of zombies you got to deal with either. It's not about the volume of rules, it's about their quality.
Actually, adding suppressing fire as an option might be fairly do-able.
Have a unit declare suppressing fire, and roll a die based on BS. If the unit succeeds, then the target gives whoever it shoots at (A: 6+ FNP, or +1 to FNP), or (B: cover, even in the open), or (C: takes a -1 to hit.) I'm not suggesting there should be options for what happens, but that A/B/C are three possibilities of what SF could grant.
Maybe have the roll on a -1 BS, so guard would need a 5+, Space marines would need a 4+, ect. You could give orks a bonus so they keep their 5+ as that basically all they end up doing anyway. Set it for anti-infantry weapons, basically rapid fire, assault, and a selection of heavy weapons, such as heavy bolters and multi-lasers, and maybe things like frag grenades.
, but I can understand that most people do.
