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Just curious how high you rank yourself. I know this can be heavily context-dependent, like how competitive you want to be.

For my part I'm definitely below average. At a regional tournament last year, I ended up with a 2-4 record, which was roughly what I was expecting. During a crusade more recently, I did even worse (only one win and one tie out of 9 games), though in all fairness it was while my faction (SoB) was at its weakest, after a slew of nerfs that overcorrected for their perceived advantages. In friendly games, my win rate averages out to maybe 25% to 33%.

Overall, I'd say my biggest weakness is forgetfulness. I'll forget mission objectives, rules that could give me an advantage, abilities my opponent has, etc.


EDIT: Crap, I voted for the wrong option in my own poll lol (meant to choose "Not too good", selected "I lose almost every game").

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I’m middle of the pack, but I don’t play tournaments. I tend towards more fluffy lists, but play at a casual FLGS, so it evens out.

I probably could be a bigger fish in my small pond, but I enjoy using units I like, getting fresh paint down on the table, etc.

I've got a pretty solid record, winning most of my casual games (even with the separate fluffy/meme lists I run for those) and placing X-0 or X-1 in most local tournaments. Playing the very solid, but constantly underestimated, Kroot Hunting Pack as my competitive army certainly gives me a bit of an X factor in events too as my opponents have often never played against a list like mine before.

That being said, while I think I would really love getting into the highly competitive scene, I just don't have the time to put in the amount of practice it would take to tighten up my gameplay to that level, nor the funds to travel to big events outside my city. Maybe in a few years when the kids get older, but for now, I'm stuck as one of the larger fish in a moderate sized pond.

I am pretty damned good at this stuff (miniature wargaming)
And have been for many years/editions/game systems/genres.
I'll win about 75-80% of my games. Even with sub-par lists.

That said? I'm 99.9999% a casual gamer these days.

I didn't see the option: You look good playing games.

To be completely honest, I don't track my win/loss record.

If the game was fun (and if I was able to tear the still-beating heart from my opponent and sacrifice it to the God-Emperor as my broken enemy cries to their false gods in a puddle of their own making as they are mentally shattered by the carnage left by my Imperial Knights in a friendly pickup game, while I eat chocolate chip cookies whose crumbs rain down upon the table in an orgy of caloric glory permanently disfiguring the tabletop as a reminder to all who dare challenge me, that there is no equal who can stand up to the honor and glory of an Imperial Knight player!) is all that really matters.

I can't rate myself for the current game, but up through 8th I was typically among the top players in local environments since starting in 2nd ed.

I had a break from late 4th to mid 5th, and getting back in during 5th it took me about 6 months to work my way back up the ladder again as I was rebuilding my army and only playing with painted models.


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 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I didn't see the option: You look good playing games.

I dunno 'bout me but my army is fire!

I tended to place in the mid tables in most tournaments when I played in them. I only won tournaments in Warmachine and Hordes. I'd say my win rate in casual games is 50% but I don't really track it and am more interested in a fun close game than the outcome.

Depends a bit on the game, but more often than not, I tend to be on the losing side. Only exception being KT21, where I have been improving a bit over the years.

I guess I'm more into the modelling side of wargaming. I tend to not try to win too hard I guess, and if its a gotcha-wombo-combo cardgame, like modern 40K, I never try to max out on the cardgame synergies and that usually costs me the game.. I also do make tactical errors during most games, but those lessons are taken to heart by the next game. Suppose I'd need to play a lot more to improve, whatever, wargaming is just one of my hobbies, and not being good at them isnt something that would make me lose any sleep.

Picked the bottom option as I rarely play, and then only play against one of two people - but I'm also proper gak...

All my victories are Pyrrhic victories.

I believe that there should be a handicap system in place.

You lose nineteen games in a row? You get 250 extra points to play with.

I'm fine. I win casual games fairly often, but 40k isn't a game I put a lot of competitive time into.

As someone who got into this hobby for the building and painting, I am slightly below average. but that's my fault for bringing what looks cool.

But if I'm going to lose, I'm going to look good doing it.

 Quixote wrote:
I believe that there should be a handicap system in place.

You lose nineteen games in a row? You get 250 extra points to play with.

This is probably a thing that Crusade and other campaign systems should emphasize. Don't make your campaigns dragged out snowball situations where one player takes an early lead and is then unstoppable. Instead, seek to keep things tense for them every game.

I think I'm a pretty good player.

I don't do tournament play, so I'm generally just up against my local GW crowd, but I win a lot more than I lose. Beyond that, I've got a pretty good head for rules and numbers, so I usually know what to do.

It’s hard to say, my group is very small and we are all similarly old and casual so equally bad probably.

Varies by army too, play my ORKS and struggle with them but when I play marines seems a lot easier, they’re way more forgiving.

Not great; I tend to make tactical decisions based on 'let's see what happens', and most battles I'll forget something or other - I'm particularly bad at Legionaries' reroll Wounds special rule, and my Lords' enhancements, although now I'm using Creations of Bile it's far from certain I'll remember to apply the augmentations I rolled up at the start once it comes to actual fighting. I'm not particularly bothered, since I'm still having fun - my list is now more or less locked down (I don't bother taking the army out of its case when I get home anymore), and I've compacted the datasheet info down into a single laminated A4 that has everything I'd otherwise forget, so I expect as time goes on my brain's equivalent of muscle memory will become more reliable on dotting the t's and crossing the i's without me really thinking about it.

20+ years ago, during 2nd/3rd/3.5? I was pretty good, winning on average 66%-75% depending on the event, occasionally 100% at RT's.

Today? I literally have no idea what I'm doing, just trying to get back into the hobby by watching tactics videos and battle reports.

I play in a very small group of friends that never exceeded 5-6 people, and while I usually won mostly, it's I believe mostly because I've got 6th guard and 7th crons against 6th Chaos and Orks so well...

Nowadays we almost only play narrative and that's way more satisfactory to everyone.

As far as other games are concerned, we are even fewer to play it so that is not conclusive.

As a result, ticked the bottom box.

I used to be fairly decent. Won more than my fair share of games, but never saw the point in getting Tournament Good, as they never appealed to me.

But I’ve not played properly in years, so I’m almost certainly dreadful.

I can still spot tasty combos like based on the rules, but I wouldn’t rate my skills at pulling them off with any reliability.

What I was good at was risk taking where someone keen on math hammer might’ve not bothered. For instance, in 3rd-6th (I think that’s the edition I largely stopped playing due to commute), I’d taken out tanks with bolt pistols into the rear armour, when my opponent thought it safe. And whilst not always the case, that could easily prove decisive.

I began using the Tabletop Battles app last fall. It has recorded 65 games which includes pick up games, 1 day and 2 day tournaments.

58.5% win rate. I did well in 1 day events but don't do as well in 2 day events.

Fairly middle of the road.

Just an aside? I wonder if there’s a general drop-off in win rates across multiple day events?

I mean, mental exhaustion is a thing. And if you’re more used to say, a single three hour game once a week, having two or three in a day, over two days, might lead to a loss of mental performance and worse decision making?

I'm merely good.

Dropped out of tournaments a long time ago. Mostly I play against friends and randoms at the FLGS.

My great talent in the game is putting together skew lists for fighting specific opponents. I'd have a harder time if I were playing TAAC lists.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Just an aside? I wonder if there’s a general drop-off in win rates across multiple day events?

I mean, mental exhaustion is a thing. And if you’re more used to say, a single three hour game once a week, having two or three in a day, over two days, might lead to a loss of mental performance and worse decision making?

I've seen this fall off but don't attribute it to fatigue.

At some level, 40k is a game of pattern matching. You need to know what matches up best against what else.

Some people have limited thresholds for what they can keep straight in their head. For instance, they might know how to deal with an Imperial army but maybe they haven't faced too many Xenos armies so they only know what they've read online. And some people just have blind spots. I consistently underestimate Ork armies and find ways to mess up games against them.

The best predictor I've found is number of games played against a variety of factions. The people who play the most tend to win the most.

The results are showing more people lost than win. Are so many of us just that bad? Are the few who win winning that much?
It is probably a bias towards remembering the losses, and thinking we lost more than we really did.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Just an aside? I wonder if there’s a general drop-off in win rates across multiple day events?

I mean, mental exhaustion is a thing. And if you’re more used to say, a single three hour game once a week, having two or three in a day, over two days, might lead to a loss of mental performance and worse decision making?

I fell asleep on the last day of an Adepticon Tournament, during a team game, where I literally could not harm my opponents, but my opponents still planned and acted like my Stormtroopers and Chimeras could defeat Land Raiders parked across the board.

Wanna guess who lost?

I don't care about winning. The reason I play the game is it's a cool thing to tell stories with my well painted miniatures. The only goal i have when playing a game is for epic gak to happen on the tabletop.

My favoured opponent and I have more than 500 games versus each other. Over those games the split is pretty close to 50:50(depending on codex relevance lining up with our mini collections).

30k is an entirely different kettle of fish. Both my IIIrd & XVIIIth seem to do pretty well in spite of my goal of Epic gak above all.

 Skinnereal wrote:
The results are showing more people lost than win. Are so many of us just that bad? Are the few who win winning that much?
It is probably a bias towards remembering the losses, and thinking we lost more than we really did.

My best guess would be sampling bias. Perhaps the better players, for whatever reason, don't tend to be on this forum.

You'd probably get a skew towards the upper skill tiers if this poll were posted on r/WarhammerCompetitive. It's also possible that some good players prefer videos and streaming to text-based forums, or would rather spend their time actually playing the game than engaging with the online community.

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-Guardsman- wrote:

 Skinnereal wrote:
The results are showing more people lost than win. Are so many of us just that bad? Are the few who win winning that much?
It is probably a bias towards remembering the losses, and thinking we lost more than we really did.

My best guess would be sampling bias. Perhaps the better players, for whatever reason, don't tend to be on this forum.

You'd probably get a skew towards the upper skill tiers if this poll were posted on r/WarhammerCompetitive. It's also possible that some good players prefer videos and streaming to text-based forums, or would rather spend their time actually playing the game than engaging with the online community.

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I think the Dakka community is a lot more casual than some of the "win at all costs - damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead," mentality you find elsewhere online.

To each their own, but I can't remember the last time an army list was posted here and critically math hammered into submission under the watchful eyes of the Masters of the Meta.

I am logging my games in an app, I had won my last game of 40k 1 year ago. Played 15 games.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

-Guardsman- wrote:

 Skinnereal wrote:
The results are showing more people lost than win. Are so many of us just that bad? Are the few who win winning that much?
It is probably a bias towards remembering the losses, and thinking we lost more than we really did.

My best guess would be sampling bias. Perhaps the better players, for whatever reason, don't tend to be on this forum.

You'd probably get a skew towards the upper skill tiers if this poll were posted on r/WarhammerCompetitive. It's also possible that some good players prefer videos and streaming to text-based forums, or would rather spend their time actually playing the game than engaging with the online community.

.

I think the Dakka community is a lot more casual than some of the "win at all costs - damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead," mentality you find elsewhere online.

To each their own, but I can't remember the last time an army list was posted here and critically math hammered into submission under the watchful eyes of the Masters of the Meta.

I think it's also how small a subset of 40k players are that top tier competitive level. For example, I'm one of the better players in my city and we have a fairly large pool of 40k players, a couple hundred that I've at least heard of, and probably many more beyond that. Even so, I wouldn't consider myself a top tier player and marked myself in the second category.

I know the post says top 5%, but in reality, it's probably more the top 0.5% that really have that hardcore competitive tournament grinder mindset.