How do you Play-test your army lists?

Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:

No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.

If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

**tetrisphreak**

I was wondering, how do people here on Dakka play-test their lists for upcoming games when nobody else is around to roll dice?

I find myself doing it in one of two ways:

Most commonly I will simply find an empty box lid, and roll some dice to simulate my units i have in my list versus commonly found units my friends field against me. I will assume certain variables are true: weapons are within range, every model is engaged in cc, etc, and i will simulate whether or not i get the charge in melee.

The longer (but more fun way, i think) I like to test things out is to simply play game using two armies by myself. I have a space marine force totaling around 4,000 pts, and my tyranids (who are my favorite...and somehow manage always to come out on top in these proxy games..hmm) are around 6,000 pts so far.

So how about you? How do you test your combos/strategies/lists in general?

**warpcrafter**

I usually make up my army list a few minutes prior to the game, depending on who I'm facing. Once in awhile, I'll have a theme I'm wanting to try out, but otherwise it's a spur-of-the-moment thing.

**don_mondo**

Ummm, I play games with it against other people, lots more fun than playing against myself..............
Sure, means I lose a game once in a while just because a list I put together doesn't work as well on the table as I thought, but hey, that's part of the game.

**Doombot001**

I'm glad my group of friends are cool as hell. I have enough Tau options to play what I want and figure out what works and what doesn't.

After playing against them, I know what works and what doesn't, but then again...sometimes the dice rolls throw a huge mofo wrench in my plans and I have to try and redo how I think.

Normally I just play what I think is gonna be both fun and what works and do the most damage. If things don't work, I try to change it up....although sometimes I like to play radical and do something totally unexpected.

**Sanctjud**

Vassal.
Best thing ever. It has actually made me spend money on GW products.

Though the GW lawyers think the opposite, it's most likely the case.

At the end of the day, much of it is Theoryhammer. I generally mimic new armies after my old one...at least they look similar in troop distributions and the supporting elements are doubled or tripled.

**wuestenfux**

I noticed that play testing does not always help.
Usually I don't.

**Locclo**

Sanctjud wrote:Vassal.
Best thing ever. It has actually made me spend money on GW products.

Though the GW lawyers think the opposite, it's most likely the case.

At the end of the day, much of it is Theoryhammer. I generally mimic new armies after my old one...at least they look similar in troop distributions and the supporting elements are doubled or tripled.

QFT. Vassal is tech.

Personally, I have a few various army lists that I know work well (The entire reason I went with Space Wolves as a second army was because it was the only one I could make a decent list for that challenged my Tau forces

) so I just throw a new list against one of my few working lists.

**Ravenous D**

I generally just use the gaming table in my basement and throw down a bunch of blank bases against friends.

**Lysenis**

I have a 1000 point game between my space marines and my tyranids and I play test new ideas or i go to my gaming store and I just test it out right then and there.

**Lunchmoney**

I believe the question was how does one playtest when "no one else is around to roll dice."

To answer you, if I'm simply trying to figure out odds against individual types of units, I just mathhammer. If I want to see how things do synergistically(spelling?) I do generally line up and play a game vs myself. Or proxy from another army I'm familiar with. Truthfully it ends up revealing a lot of things I wouldn't normally notice because in that instance I play to counter my own strategies, whereas a real opponent will occasionally misread what you are attempting to do.
Keep in mind I still find playing against real opponents far more informative, as they will throw things at me that I couldn't have predicted on my own.

**ArtfcllyFlvrd**

I don’t think you can play test when no one else is around. You can theorize and chatter online which helps, but that’s about it.

I have rolled some dice by myself, but that’s more out of extreme boredom than anything. I really would not recommend playing by yourself. It’s way on the nerdy side of an already nerdy hobby, and it’s impossible to tactically challenge yourself. You will never see anything new, never see anything unexpected, never be able to do anything but play in a fashion that you already know. You would do just was well theorizing various scenarios as you would playing alone.

**Doombot001**

Oh, if you're playing against non-existant gamers....I consider that a "power-gamer"

Personally, that's just sad. I don't mind when you lose to someone consistently and try and retry making an army list to try and beat them, but when you take it to the next level and actually try to fight it out....that's too much.

Too much variables involved. Dice rolling, your opponent thinks totally different from you, he picks a different' army list....too much options.

**Reecius**

I spend far too much otherwise useful time going through my library of codexes and math hammering out units until I find combinations that I like. Once I feel confident that the army will perform on the table as it does in Theory I just buy it and then take it out for a test drive, fine tuning it as I go through test games.

**Eos Rahh**

I will do the dics rolls of x unit vs y unit just to see how well it does. Over all but thats about it.

**Locclo**

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:I don’t think you can play test when no one else is around. You can theorize and chatter online which helps, but that’s about it.

I have rolled some dice by myself, but that’s more out of extreme boredom than anything. I really would not recommend playing by yourself. It’s way on the nerdy side of an already nerdy hobby, and it’s impossible to tactically challenge yourself. You will never see anything new, never see anything unexpected, never be able to do anything but play in a fashion that you already know. You would do just was well theorizing various scenarios as you would playing alone.

While this much is true, playtesting is a very useful way to see how a list functions. Afterwards, you can look over the list and go,
"Oh, I thought these units would have better synergy, but they aren't working together."
"Hmm, this unit costs way more than it managed to kill, and it attracts lots of attention to itself - maybe there's something else I can spend points on."

And so on, and so forth. In essence, a play-test is more a way to see if your list functions in the way you intend it to function, or test the effectiveness of units. It's not a perfect system, but it's a great way to give you a rough idea of how your army works, and whether or not you should take it to a tournament/league or not.

**Iron_Chaos_Brute**

Locclo is dead on. I'll playtest against myself just to see how the list works.

**JohnHwangDD**

tetrisphreak wrote:I was wondering, how do people here on Dakka play-test their lists for upcoming games when nobody else is around to roll dice?

Some of us don't do this. We simply pick units that we like against a theme for the game, and let that be the end of it.

**Wildstorm**

If you play in tournaments, keep a copy of the missions and write down your opponents and their stratagies.

When you get a new list, pull the missions out, consider the objectives and your previous opponent. Think about how you would deploy and if you have a counterpunch for everything that they did against you before.

Or just call someone and waste and hour talking theory.

**DarkHound**

I love Vassal. Play testing made easy. I can even play test at school.

**Nurglitch**

Nurglitch wrote:Play-testing only really works if you have practice and careful documentation; i.e.: going by feel and eye-balling it really doesn't work. You get things like confirmation bias (stuff that seems to work because you expected it to work, but works no better than blind luck), un-accountable elements such as the skill of the other player, and an incomplete data. You'd be better off playing yourself - literally playing both sides of the table, with detailed notes describing the statistical expectations of the dice, a written plan to refer to, and a "tree" of decision elements that you can then back-track to determine why things happened (was it a bad decision, were the dice off in the deep end of the bell curve, was it the resources - your army - that lacked?). You need to practice, literally, with a ruler in your hand and solid documentation. It'll also help train you to recognize distances without measuring, recognize losing propositions, and draw your attention to how all that math-hammer actually plays out within the decisions made on the board. You could get lucky with play-testing, to be sure, but so what?

**eldarbgamer13**

I get the codex and use random models in a game, usually anihillilation, then seize ground.