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.

I decided to post a new thread on this to avoid a flame war in a different thread!

The argument I put forward was that certain units have a reputation (either due to players having bad experiences against them, being talked up on the interwebz and in some cases just being generally overpowered ) and that these would attract a disproportionate amount of attention from your opponent.

The result would be to allow you to use less 'feared' units to greater effect - in effect using the fear factor of one unit as a force multiplier for others by diverting attention from them. The response to this was that I was obviously just playing rubbish players (anyone is welcome to challenge people in my group and see how it pans out...) and that it wouldn't work against anyone good.

So the question is - has anyone else experienced this? Do people go overboard against certain units and if so how can you use the psychological impact in your favour?


Now I want to make this absolutely clear. I am NOT talking about comparing apples to oranges. Of course a Redeemer full of TH/SS termies is going to attract more firepower than a LS Storm full of scouts, but when comparing two similar choices (ie units from the same part of the FOC with similar points values) can you use less well regarded units to better effect because your opponent will ignore them?

I guess the 'psychological effect' will depend on several things.
First: Where are you playing? In a tourney people will be calm about their decissions analyzing the bord every turn. No zomfg, goo in the pants because of one unit.
Second: Who are you playing? A new player won't know which units are scary but also won't know which are in fact high value targets.
Third: What are you playing? Depending on the mission target priority changes.
fourth: Just for fun? In a casual game I sometimes hardly find the discipline to do what makes most sense but go for fun moments (like that IG-Commander with his PF assaulting those Khorne zerkers... rock'n'roll Baby )

So IMO you won't be able to get much use of a psychological effect in the situations where you'd want it.

I can't say for myself - I don't have too many games under my belt, and all of my games have been played with a very small group of people, so I haven't seen many different types of players

Still, just yesterday I was watching a great video on youtube that is exactly this. It talks about the psychological impact that the otherwise useless (according to the video - I don't know myself) Space Marine Whirlwind, has on your opponent's tactics: how, even though the whirlwind has a weak weapon, its large blast template, and indirect fire, causes people to throw undue force at it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgmsG8bjRkA

I actually find the whirlwind to be a good support weapon, but on another note when I used to play chaos using the dread always drew attention even though it was an unreliable piece of poo poo, but it did its job with drawing attention away from my army.

really dependant on who your fighting, i've been playing 40k for so long there are no units that strike fear in me when i see them hit the board.

but i build my lists to be more than one trick ponies so it takes alot for someone to field something that i can not handle. usually my dice take care of the not being able to handle it part more than the fear of a given unit.

In general, anything that depends on your opponent making a mistake is not a reliable tactic. It tends not to work against the really good players, and if you've weakened your army in order to include a sub-optimal unit because it's scary, then that can cause you to lose.

A better option, IMO, is to include in your army units that are scary because they actually represent a threat--or to use non-scary units during the game in such a way that they create a threat. For example, I like to use scouts to bait my opponent to move in a particular way at the start of the game. But even if the opponent doesn't take the bait, the scouts are ideally still in a position to threaten an objective or do some significant harassment damage.

From a slightly different angle: I find this game is more fun when I give in to my feelings a bit. Getting a bit scared and sweaty over a nasty TH+SS unit in a LR can be very enjoyable. In the same vein as hyping a nasty/new/pimped unit for both myself and my opponent before the game. It might affect my win/loss ratio a fair bit, but that's detatches less from my gaming experience.

40k is like B-movies and sex. The less you analyse the more enjoyable the experince.

TheTrueProtoman wrote:I actually find the whirlwind to be a good support weapon, but on another note when I used to play chaos using the dread always drew attention even though it was an unreliable piece of poo poo, but it did its job with drawing attention away from my army.

This is true. I've noticed that my Dreads and Kharn seem to draw a lot of fire, despite both their tendencies to attack my own units.

I tend to think most players understand that, in order to win, it’s important to be as rational as possible in all decisions. This includes the evaluation of opposing units and their tactical and strategic value to your opponent.

In chess, the Queen has a nasty and well deserved reputation for being a very powerful piece. However, every rational chess player knows that any figure on the board can checkmate his king and any figure of his can take the opposing Queen.

Maybe I approach 40k differently than most players though.

incarna wrote:I tend to think most players understand that, in order to win, it’s important to be as rational as possible in all decisions.

Of course most players understand this. But a lot of players (me included) value immersion in the game higher than winning.

Mellon wrote:

incarna wrote:I tend to think most players understand that, in order to win, it’s important to be as rational as possible in all decisions.

Of course most players understand this. But a lot of players (me included) value immersion in the game higher than winning.

The topic is about the strategic value of psychological warfare. Implicit in the term ‘strategy’ is a drive toward winning. If you’re playing against an opponent who doesn’t prioritize winning than that certainly strategically valuable – but not because you’ve managed to freak them out with your ultimate unit, but because you happen to be playing someone whose chosen to place themselves at a strategic disadvantage.

Yes, indeed. My points is: "Sometimes psychology and knowledge about fluff is indeed a powerful tool, because not everyone plays this game with the same detatchment that they would play chess with." A player that aims to win can, and should, use knowledge of his/her opponent to the best advantage.

So if you want to win, tempt the SW player to do stupid heroic things with their characters. You are likely to win and be happy. They are allowed to howl at the top of their voice and will be just as happy. This of course also plays an important part in an environment when you can choose who to play at the gameclub. Pick the fluffy players if you want a bigger chance to win. Pick the detatched players if you want a more challenging fight.

I’ve been playing this game for over ten years and I’ve never encountered anyone who’s immersed themselves in the game so much as to make tabletop decisions based on fluff.

I’ve known people who’ve made emotional decisions because they were losing and frustrated.
I’ve known people who’ve made emotional decisions because they were angry at a series of catastrophic die rolls.
I’ve known people who’ve made emotional decisions because they had a particularly positive (boyfriend/girlfriend) or negative (opponent who cheated them in the past) relationship with their opponent.

But I’ve never known anyone to scream “Blood for the Blood God” as they charged my full-strength sear council with their lone Khorn berserker who’d be better utilized moving and running to hold a game winning objective.

I suppose it could happen though… not something I’d count on… but possible.

Oh, I do stuff like that quite often, as do the people I regularly play with. We bring models that are newly modded or beautifully painted, rather than optimized for the army. We do yell "blood" or "brains" every now and then. We play unbalanced scenarios with complete disregard for FOCs etc. It might be due to most of us being in the 30+ age bracket and primarily pen and paper RPGers, so pretty relaxed about the conflict-gaming part of the hobby. We do play some better balanced strategy board games instead when we want that sort of challenge.

So good stories and fluff is the most enjoyable part for me and my regulars. For example: My last game sort of stalled at the end of turn two when we both realised that with a bit of defensive playing by my opponent we would have an unavoidable draw (Capture and Control mission of course) and any form of dedicated advance from his side would mean him loosing. So we decided that fighting it out was a lot more fun that anticlimatically doing tactical movement and a little shooting for three to five turns. Hence I won, and we both had a hell of a lot more fun.

@CHimera Calvin: Yes I have seen this work many times in my travels across the country in tournaments, etc. It seems every region has their feared units, etc. but also each region seems to have units that look bad on paper, but with practice, patience, decent list construction, and generalmanship...work really well. A classic example of this is Blackmoor's foot eldar army which the internet community claims doesn't work. Although he has had great success with it. Same thing with many other examples I could list.

Part of the problem for these players (non-believers) is they assume certain things will appear within lists and account for them. For instance, most people assume all marine players are going to have TH/SS terminators in their list. When the marine players don't and have a completely different list build it throws the opponent a curve ball. Suddenly all the mental notes and "what if" scenarios go out the window and they have to formulate a plan on the fly...thus leaving room for mistakes. Suddenly their scripted approach of "what to do if I face TH/SS terminators" doesn't help.

Is that the essence of what you mean in your opening post, or am I off base?

Yep. Everyone in my gaming group is terrified of Fire Prisms. Obviously, they're pretty high-priority anyway, but whenever our Eldar player fields them, everybody freaks out and tries to take them off the board first thing, ignoring targets that *could* be more important in the long run.

I try to play foot Eldar (don't play much anymore sadly due to work, school, etc.) but in my limited expirience it tends to throw people off. "Where's your grav tanks? You need them!" kind of thing.

I guess that's confusion not fear...

Two words - Land Raider.
Makes most enemies kind of scared, at least. I mean, they have all AV14, so they're hard as feth to kill, and even harder to avoid.

Executioners can cause a little fear.
on a side note, there is a guy in our local group that is terrified of Punishers... go figure.

I find that MANz in a trukk take an unusual amount of fire power. Actually, so do regular nobz and warbosses. Coupled with Snikrot, and you got a opponent that doesn't know whether to move his units forward or backwards.

I have this list and I get to put down three Dreads w/ 2 TL Autocannons, three LS with HF/MM, Ten Termies with Librarian. etc

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/273135.page

While my opponents are not scared of it or freaking out at all. I love the army and it definitely has a psychological effect on me when I play it instead of something optimized for winning.

My friends also like playing against it, because it is a fun list but not a pushover list. So the psychological effect is everyone having fun. Success!!

In my gaming group, my tanks and heavy support ( I play vanilla Marines) are always targeted first. Some people have bad history with them (like a tau player who lost all his scoring units because my Thunderfire Cannon had a lucky shot and killed his Ethereal) others just focus fire my Vindicator or Whirlwind because theyre scared of the big templates. It allows my other units to go unmolested... At least until the tanks die.

I kitbashed a Black Reach dreadnought into a Deff Dredd by cutting out the front faceplate and gluing in a torso and the ork skull bit to look like an emaciated, screaming Ork inside a captured Dreadnought hull. I named him Zog, and his name was painted large upon his shins. 'Zog the Dred'. No upgrades beyond the mandatory and cheapest shoota/skorcha combo, either.

Zog never made it to combat in any game that he was part of. Never ever. I don't think he's even killed a model. Now that I mention it, I'm not certain he ever even shot at a model in anger.

The reason why is because whenever anyone saw Zog the Dred running toward them from the other side of the table, every single gun would WTFPWN him on turn 1 or 2. Without fail, people hated the very idea of Zog existing. He was a big scary mofo, and never mind the KFF Battlewagon Mek driving alongside, or the 9 Grotzooka Kans trundling along, Zog had to die. Zog's combat abilities were stunningly underwhelming but his ability to interdict incoming gunfire for the Kan squadrons led that list to many victories. I've still got no idea why it all worked out that way, but it did, and irrational fear of Zog helped quite a bit.

Mellon wrote:Oh, I do stuff like that quite often, as do the people I regularly play with. We bring models that are newly modded or beautifully painted, rather than optimized for the army. We do yell "blood" or "brains" every now and then. We play unbalanced scenarios with complete disregard for FOCs etc. It might be due to most of us being in the 30+ age bracket and primarily pen and paper RPGers, so pretty relaxed about the conflict-gaming part of the hobby. We do play some better balanced strategy board games instead when we want that sort of challenge.

So good stories and fluff is the most enjoyable part for me and my regulars. For example: My last game sort of stalled at the end of turn two when we both realised that with a bit of defensive playing by my opponent we would have an unavoidable draw (Capture and Control mission of course) and any form of dedicated advance from his side would mean him loosing. So we decided that fighting it out was a lot more fun that anticlimatically doing tactical movement and a little shooting for three to five turns. Hence I won, and we both had a hell of a lot more fun.

I like your style, this is how we play as well.

Land Raiders are literally the perfect example of this. They're hard to kill and deliver extremely deadly cargo, and in the case of the Space Marine ones, have some very nasty guns.

For me, my Manticore always freaks out my opponent, but he never draws fire because by the time they get to it, it's already bombed their army, popping their Land Raiders.

Additionally, my friends freak out at Marbo, they assault him with everything nearby, assuming that he already didn't nuke them to Kingdom Come.

My necron friend's monolith strikes fear into me. Mainly because he's had it since July and has only ever suffered a weapon destroyed once.

Every single game has a psychological aspect. This is extremely obvious in chess where you can be the smartest/best chess player alive, but if you lose your cool or despair after a bad move it can ruin you. The competition portion of this hobby is a battle of the minds and if you mess with your opponents mind he can make mistakes.

The problem is that most tournament veterans are not going to be afraid of any particular unit. They will know how to counter the most types of "uber" units and have balanced armies to take them down. That doesn't mean you can't "psych" your opponent out in other ways, but I don't think taking certain units will do the trick in a real competition.

Land Raiders are a good example. If an army has melta guns and long ranged firepower it's best to just ignore the land raider until meltas can be brought to range instead of dumping lascannon fire into it when there are other more viable targets.

As a chaos player my single unit of mechanized thousand sons tend to control the battle plans of MEQ opponents.

Land Raiders are always fun, especially when you can use them to keep your other models alive. Yes, by all means ignore my 3 typhoons and my 4 TL Lascannon Razorbacks to shoot at my LRC full of hammer-unit (that by the way isn't scoring anyway). Go ahead and shoot at the tank that has an Iron Priest within, and ignore all the vehicles that Don't have Extra Armor.

LR will always draw alot of fire but I see my Vindacator draw alot also. Most the time it takes fire before the LR even see's an enemy shot