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Hey I was discussing deception and 40k with some of the guys at my local store and it inspired me to write this article for CNC. Check it out. Basically we had a few guys talking about how deception and meta gaming was basically cheating my response to which was, in part, the article. What do you guys think. Is deception relevant in 40k or is it basically a meta form of cheating?

Deception is difficult to achieve in a game like 40k. About all you can do is bluff your opponent into thinking you're going to do one thing, and then do another.

But if you can do that, and you know your army, and you know your opponents army, you'll win.

The day somebody complains about me making a feint in a wargame and calls it cheating is the day I sell off all my armies and stop playing games that require human interaction.

One of the great ways to screw an opponent is to make your last assault of the turn completely wrong. Assault the wrong unit, or move your units in such a way that they obviously can't assault. For one bad play on your part, your opponent thinking he has an easy win makes for an entire turn full of bad plays on his part.

I did one this weekend, my core army was all together in the middle of my deployment zone, he was coming down from the middle with his main army and also to my left with a daemon prince, Rhino and Raptors.

I sent a 10man tactical squad to flank on my left and gave the appearence I planned to flank him from behind when he charged in.

He took the bait and sent his Daemon prince and Rhino to intercept them, thus taking them out of the game for several turns while they battled my "throw away" unit allowing my main force to have a more comfortable time dealing with the rest of his army


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So yes, within reason, deception is possible

IMO, the only 'deception' is used with Reserves, Outflank, and Deepstrikers where they will not know for a fact where you will be coming in or dropping in.

Otherwise, much of 40K is transparent.

Regarding the article, no one should ever hide what type of unit they are using. That is not deception, that is just pure, simple immaturity. "What are those?" "They're Chaos Chosen oh no lol they're just knights!" Stop this behavior instantly. There are plenty of effective ways to deceive an opponent right here on this thread that don't involve being a spanker.

On second thought, I haven't played WFB since 4th edition, so maybe the rules have changed about these things, but I never recall it being legal to pretend a unit was something other than what it was.

Modeling something one way when it is definitely not what you're modeling it to be is called modeling for advantage and cheating. Definitely can't encourage that one.

In terms of deception, closed lists are also not typical for friendly games and against tournament standards, so no deception there. It is standard to ask your opponent what units are in which transports, accompanied by which characters.

In terms of a bait unit.....I'll address this one. Baiting is an absolutely valid tactic in 40k. In this Battle Report I specifically set aside a couple of units and moved them into a position where my opponent had to make a hard choice - go for the bait unit with his army, split his army, or ignore the bait unit and let them hit him from the rear. That's a perfectly valid tactic but not deceptive. Picking a flank and dropping a bait unit there...drop podding in....

Look: When I play against people with reserves / outflankers, infiltrators, drop pods....I PRESUME that they are going to deploy them, deep-strike them, and otherwise use them in such a way as to cause the maximum possible damage to my army. Its a pretty safe assumption. My counter is to do my best to negate the ability of those units to cause damage as much as I can. That's also a standard 40k topic.


I *do* think bluffs and feints have a place in 40k. Here's a few examples of things I might try during a game.

1. If I'm playing Dark Eldar and you win the roll off in a seize ground game and are having trouble trying to decide whether you want to go first or second....I might throw in that I have 24" moving fast skimmers, and if I go second, you can bet that I'll turbo-boost onto every objective at the end of the last turn." That statement isn't necessarily true because you might kill my raiders and prevent me from being able to do so. The deception is in the effort to make you think that picking first turn is disadvantageous to you and influence you to go second (since I'd prefer to go first). This obviously isn't really going to work against seasoned players unless they're playing Mech Eldar and they want to go second for the same reason.

2. If I'm trying to disrupt an enemy line, or a charge, or nullify a particular unit (using your chosen in a rhino example), if your chosen are moving up a flank to get into position to do something, I might say something like "I HATE chosen; I have a personal vendetta against them, and those dudes absolutely MUST die a miserable horrible and gruesome death. C'mere so I can kill them." Then I move several raiders towards your chosen, in a bisecting line between them and your army - such that your 12" move, 2" deployment, 12" melta (26" range) won't hit me next turn, but possibly making you believe I'm going to dedicate significant resources to killing it the following turn....in turn making you move it backwards / behind cover / laterally / less than maximum distance; anything to disrupt your plans or sow doubt.

3. If I have Snikrot in my army (who can ambush from the rear table edge) and you have....devastators in yours, I might start the game with "Here's my list. Yes, it has Snikrot. You should know that he hasn't had any devastators to eat in a while and I brought him hungry." I probably have no interest in your devastators if you have predators or any AV10 vehicles near enough the back that I can assault. But if I can disrupt your deployment and cause you to doubt yourself through a comment like that, so be it.
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Now, with all that said.....all of those tactics are easily negated. If you presume that your enemy is always going to do the worst possible thing to you, none of this works. It has the added benefit that when they DON'T do the worst possible thing to you, the harm they do is less painful. Back to a Dark Eldar example again....if I have Lelith Hesperax moving up to gain favorable position to assault something, I know that she's my most deadly close combat unit. So I will screen her raider with other raiders to get a cover save - the worst thing that could happen to me is to lose her raider...actually the worst would be stunned or immobilized because she can't then jump into another raider the same turn. Then I'll put an empty raider or two close to them.

I'm discouraging my enemy from shooting at Lelith by giving it a cover save, and providing a closer target for them to shoot at - I'm trying to direct their fire. The worst thing they can do for me is to shoot at Lelith anyway and ignore the empty raider. I took those steps to try stopping it. Some people will pick the closer target because it seems like a more immediate threat; I try capitalizing on people's seeming tendency to pick the closest target to shoot.

But the one theme remains constant - if you look at your list and your deployment and your movements and your firing...and if you look at an enemy list and deployment, and PRESUME that all that can go wrong will...if you make judgements about where you would be hurt the most if they did certain things and presume those things will happen - then take steps to keep them from happening...then nothing in 40k will catch you by surprise. Except for codexes with special rules you don't know and need to learn about.

Every player should read the above post tbqh.

Dashofpepper wrote:Modeling something one way when it is definitely not what you're modeling it to be is called modeling for advantage and cheating. Definitely can't encourage that one.

In terms of deception, closed lists are also not typical for friendly games and against tournament standards, so no deception there. It is standard to ask your opponent what units are in which transports, accompanied by which characters.

I agree with you, but I can see where this could be acceptable. If the player you are playing sees said unit and just assumes that they are something they are not without saying anything, are you at fault for modeling your unit in a intimidating or awesome way?

On the subject of closed lists. I don't hide my list from my opponent, but if he doesnt ask to see my list am I obligated to name every unit in my army and tell him their wargear ?

I played a game recently where an objective was in a building in my deployment zone. I deployed a unit of devastators in the building ready to shoot out of the windows, I also deployed a unit of scouts at the same time and hid them from view in the building. The enemy player was oblivious to my scouts the whole game thinking I had left the objective alone, needless to say he was quite surprised when i managed to win the game.

The point I am getting at is the advantage in this case was created not by lying to my opponent or not telling him something that he asked, the advantage was created by being a little clever on my part, and because my opponent was ignorant. I'll be damned if I cant exploit my opponents ignorance in war

i think deception is a perfectly legitimate way to play.


now let me define deception as it applies to 40K.(at least when playing a player of similer or higher caliber then yourself)


you are required to tell your opponent what units are in your list(and what each unit is if there are proxies or "counts as"

HOWEVER! you are not obligated to remind him(unless there are proxies involved. bad proxies )

IMHO: i think you shouldn't be required to tell your opponent what units are in a transport, only that there is something inside.

it is perfetly fine to fool your opponent into reacting to a move of yours in a way that is benifical to you.

There are some things you can truly bluff with though, Space Marine scout bikes have mines. It's an intresting ability that makes a unit take damage uppon entering a piece of terrain where the mines are laid, you don't have to tell your opponent which piece of terrain you put the mines in.

Also, old Daemonhunters can take an orbital strike, it's a poor choice for heavy support, but it can mess with your opponent's mind, because it is also keyed into a piece of terrain.

For both of these, you ARE supposed to write it down before the game starts, this is so your mines don't magically appear in terrain that just happens to be near an objective that your troops wandered into for cover. Good placement of mines is neat though, I was at a tournament where a guy didn't have his scout bikers even come in from reserve, yet they managed to kill an entire unit of grots when they wandered into terrain, with nothing but mines they destroyed a scoring unit!

Edit: Painting in bright colors can work against you, my friend paints his eldar up in very bright colors, and my other friend plays wolves sometimes. "Well, I can see a bright paint-job through that window, so I'm going to shoot at that tank with my long fangs"

Deception is perfectly acceptable, provided it's the right kind of deception.

In my group of gamers, we explain what is on the field. However, we do not show eachother our lists, and I almost always bring out more units and put them with my deepstrikers, even if I am not using them in game. Basically, I may only have one unit of 2 obliterators in reserves, but I will pull out 2 units of 10 and those 2 obliterators, just to keep my opponent guessing. They do the same to me, when they have stuff in reserves.

However, not telling what your units are upon entry to the field is frowned upon, and will result in, but not limited to: Yelling, dirty looks, and punches.

Hey my first post on here!

I thought deception was a 4th edition thing (secret army lists, not required to tell opponnent your reserves if you have them). I thought they eliminated that in 5th until recently.

I was playing a game and my opponent had nothing but rhinos and LRs. I asked what was in each and he replied "I dunno, we'll find out later". I took the high road and found the rule that says you are required to know...I thought it was funny. Needless to say, he still didn't say anything about what was inside each. It drained a lot of the fun from the game. To me it wasn't cool, but having a FW LR in that small of points wasn't cool either.

He showed that there still is some secrecy in 40k, but only if you want transports.

imukuni wrote:Hey my first post on here!

I thought deception was a 4th edition thing (secret army lists, not required to tell opponnent your reserves if you have them). I thought they eliminated that in 5th until recently.

I was playing a game and my opponent had nothing but rhinos and LRs. I asked what was in each and he replied "I dunno, we'll find out later". I took the high road and found the rule that says you are required to know...I thought it was funny. Needless to say, he still didn't say anything about what was inside each. It drained a lot of the fun from the game. To me it wasn't cool, but having a FW LR in that small of points wasn't cool either.

He showed that there still is some secrecy in 40k, but only if you want transports.

See, he shouldn't have done that. Those units were on the board, he should have told you what they were. I hope you find some better people to play.


Edit: Welcome to DakkaDakka, the Forum-with-the-funnest-name-to-say-on-the-internet.

I had a friend who painted his cityfight army of scouts and speeders in greys and blacks.

Almost every fight half his army was invisible and overlooked by his opponent.

It was only when they had messed his commander up or done something equally annoying that you could see them and then it was too late.

Well, no one has any right to complain about your beautifully modeled and painted Kroot.

What most people are calling "deception" I would call "tactics."

However, lying to your opponent concerning a unit of yours is abhorrent and a form of cheating.

All those things just mentioned are just fine.

Painting your army a certain color, deploying a unit inside a building and hoping no one notices - your opponent has to be not paying attention for those things to work, and it comes back to generalship. If you're playing the kind of person who will fall for a trick...you probably didn't need the help in the first place to be honest.

@Dashofpepper I need to clarify something from the article. My friend who was playing the beautifully modelled and painted Chaos Knights didn't lie about what the models were to his opponents. He was always honest, I don't think I did a good job of making that clear in the article (especially after re-reading the article after reading the comments here) and have gone back and changed it so the meaning is more clear. You, and the others who mentioned it, are absolutely correct. Lying to your opponent about what a unit or model on the board is most certainly constitutes cheating. I apologize for the mix up, I do not condone modelling/painting a unit contrary to it's true nature or purpose in an attempt to lie about it. My point was simply that nicely painted conversions can often throw your opponent for as much of a loop as grey camo IG on a cities of death board.

Here is the link to the article now that I clarified the part about the WHFB unit of Chaos Knights. I hope the new language has cleared things up.Capture and Control: New Player 101: Deception and 40k


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Slarg232 wrote:

imukuni wrote:Hey my first post on here!

I thought deception was a 4th edition thing (secret army lists, not required to tell opponnent your reserves if you have them). I thought they eliminated that in 5th until recently.

I was playing a game and my opponent had nothing but rhinos and LRs. I asked what was in each and he replied "I dunno, we'll find out later". I took the high road and found the rule that says you are required to know...I thought it was funny. Needless to say, he still didn't say anything about what was inside each. It drained a lot of the fun from the game. To me it wasn't cool, but having a FW LR in that small of points wasn't cool either.

He showed that there still is some secrecy in 40k, but only if you want transports.

See, he shouldn't have done that. Those units were on the board, he should have told you what they were. I hope you find some better people to play.


Edit: Welcome to DakkaDakka, the Forum-with-the-funnest-name-to-say-on-the-internet.

If I played someone who refused to tell me what was in his transports even after pointing out the rule that says he must tell me I would do one of two things. If it were a tournament or league game I would immediately call the TO or LO over to our table. If it weren't a tournament or league game and no such "authority" were around I would congratulate my opponent on his win, shake his hand, pack up my things and go home. There is no reason to play with people who are going to so blatantly break the simplest of rules, you will end up bitter and having played a game with a fun factor of 0.

Hmm, I have done something that is somewhat deceptive.

For those opponents who only look at the end result on the movement ruler:

I tend to move my models using the back of the base, moving forward but stopping at 6" with respect to the front of the base.

It's when the opponent thinks they are gonna get a Raider charge, using the board length as a gauge to where I am on it.
Essentially, it looks like I've moved the full 6", but it's only 5"...and that lack of 1" has meant alot in the past with respect to failed charges.

This only works when there is a non-fleeting unit in a raider equivalent that is looking for a fist turn charge on a unit I deploy directly across from it 3" back from the deployment line.

Now, I'm not covering up the movement, it's just that it looks like I'm moving the 6" when I'm not, and not every opponent asks how far they move, they only assume what they see.

Now if they ask me, then the jig is up and 1" deficit I am at.

Sanctjud wrote:Hmm, I have done something that is somewhat deceptive.

For those opponents who only look at the end result on the movement ruler:

I tend to move my models using the back of the base, moving forward but stopping at 6" with respect to the front of the base.

It's when the opponent thinks they are gonna get a Raider charge, using the board length as a gauge to where I am on it.
Essentially, it looks like I've moved the full 6", but it's only 5"...and that lack of 1" has meant alot in the past with respect to failed charges.

This only works when there is a non-fleeting unit in a raider equivalent that is looking for a fist turn charge on a unit I deploy directly across from it 3" back from the deployment line.

Now, I'm not covering up the movement, it's just that it looks like I'm moving the 6" when I'm not, and not every opponent asks how far they move, they only assume what they see.

Now if they ask me, then the jig is up and 1" deficit I am at.

Yeah, but then his 12" assault, fleet wyches will get you!

Meh, deceptive isn't as bad as cheating I guess...

I cheated once, I accidently took a singing spear when I shouldn't have, and was 2 points over! They're useless anyway.


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Grey Templar wrote:i think deception is a perfectly legitimate way to play.


now let me define deception as it applies to 40K.(at least when playing a player of similer or higher caliber then yourself)


you are required to tell your opponent what units are in your list(and what each unit is if there are proxies or "counts as"

HOWEVER! you are not obligated to remind him(unless there are proxies involved. bad proxies )

IMHO: i think you shouldn't be required to tell your opponent what units are in a transport, only that there is something inside.

it is perfetly fine to fool your opponent into reacting to a move of yours in a way that is benifical to you.

Think of all the cheating that opens up!

ok i wasn't clear on what i meant.


i would advocate you writing what is in each transport and you only have to tell him the transport is occupied.



in a real battle an opponent can't tell what is riding in a transport, but he might be able to tell if there is something inside.

Grey Templar wrote:ok i wasn't clear on what i meant.


i would advocate you writing what is in each transport and you only have to tell him the transport is occupied.



in a real battle an opponent can't tell what is riding in a transport, but he might be able to tell if there is something inside.

You would do well to remember that in a real battle, we also don't have teleporters, invulnerable saves, boltguns, orks, eldar, lascannons......

In fact, you should probably abandon any thought of making a comparison between 40k and real life combat in any means. Instead, contemplate the rulebook. It is the single mainstay that binds all players together to play in the same system. When people start ignoring bits of it that they don't like, the system starts breaking down.

when i say in a real battle it is going off the assumption that if 40k were "real" then that is what would happen.

I would probably get behind the thought that warhammer is a game, more than that it's meant to be enjoyed by all parties. In all our events down here before the judges lay out table assignments they always show the players the wall of shame (a little billboard with peoples pictures who are banned from local competitive events) and explain cheating or lying about units in an open list tournament.

Even in random little gamedays you can look around and see players that nobody wants to play, they don't even play each other. Just today I mentally added a guy to the wall for sheer unsportsmanship. It all started on turn two when he popped a razorback, with sternguard veterans, unleashing the death company goodies inside it and followed up by charging them and horrifically getting his ass handed to him by just the three death company carrying power weapons. His argument being that I should have told him there were power weapons in the squad when I told him it was a death company inside the razorback. To his credit, my death company are converted (rather well i think) but unpainted so they don't look as powerful as their custom chariot would portray them. To my credit, a lot of my army is unpainted and until Shakespeare stops writing my life i don't see that changing, also he had several proxies and subs that he had to borrow from my own stock of minis.

I suppose i have gotten off topic a bit, but its late and I'm tired so i suppose my message is, "If you cant play nice, go play warmachine".

infamousxiii wrote: His argument being that I should have told him there were power weapons in the squad when I told him it was a death company inside the razorback. To his credit, my death company are converted (rather well i think) but unpainted so they don't look as powerful as their custom chariot would portray them. To my credit, a lot of my army is unpainted and until Shakespeare stops writing my life i don't see that changing, also he had several proxies and subs that he had to borrow from my own stock of minis.

1. Were your models WYSIWYG? Are they modeled with power weapons?
2. Did you give your opponent a copy of your list, or your list itself?
3. Did you label which squad was in which transport; OR, do you only have one death company unit (IE, there can be no confusion when your death company gets out because they're THE death company unit in your army, as outlined in your list)


If the answer to all three of these is "Yes" then your opponent was being whiny. If the answer to any of those in no, then he had every right to complain.

If I can look at your models and see that a couple of them are toting something that isn't a standard chainsword/chainaxe, then I can at least ask what they are equipped with. Honestly, small detail can be hard to pick out though - bolters don't look terribly different from meltas; that kind of thing.

Or, if I have a copy of your army list, then I can ask where things are and what they are equipped with - I personally tend to do this before every game or after deployment: I go down the list and ask questions about things I don't know - what a piece of wargear does, or what a unit's initiative is, where an HQ is attached, what's in which vehicles - all standard 40k questions.

Your stuff should be very clear.

1.my models were WYSIWYG, i only have one dc painted up like i was saying and his "power weapon" is a chainsword painted up gold with fancy writing on the side, the other weapons in the squad are just denoted by gold dots on the sides as i havent had the time to finish off the paint job. In the future the power weapons will be nice and fancy golds while the others are simply a glossy black.

2. I had a copy of my list out on the table for anyone's viewing pleasure.

3. i don't have to label witch squad is where, my razorbacks are like night and day, my DC one has red crosses and skulls and purity seals all over it, the other one is kinda red with gold on it.

If he had asked more questions I'm sure it all would have worked out better but instead he decided to be sour. His other big surprise was my furioso dreadnought flying over some trees to eat his big unit of scout bikers, my army has 4 dreads in it right now and my furioso looks substantially different from each of the others but apparently i didn't tell him it was a librarian furioso. I'm just not gonna play that dude anymore unless we end up tabled at a tournament in witch case i will give him the pointy end.

infamousxiii wrote:1.my models were WYSIWYG, i only have one dc painted up like i was saying and his "power weapon" is a chainsword painted up gold with fancy writing on the side, the other weapons in the squad are just denoted by gold dots on the sides as i havent had the time to finish off the paint job. In the future the power weapons will be nice and fancy golds while the others are simply a glossy black.

2. I had a copy of my list out on the table for anyone's viewing pleasure.

3. i don't have to label witch squad is where, my razorbacks are like night and day, my DC one has red crosses and skulls and purity seals all over it, the other one is kinda red with gold on it.

If he had asked more questions I'm sure it all would have worked out better but instead he decided to be sour. His other big surprise was my furioso dreadnought flying over some trees to eat his big unit of scout bikers, my army has 4 dreads in it right now and my furioso looks substantially different from each of the others but apparently i didn't tell him it was a librarian furioso. I'm just not gonna play that dude anymore unless we end up tabled at a tournament in witch case i will give him the pointy end.

Nice.

There's a balance between telling your opponent what is what and your opponent asking questions about things they need to know, and it sounds like he just didn't bother.

infamousxiii wrote:"If you cant play nice, go play warmachine"

Hey! Some of the coolest guys/most laid back guys in my store play warmachine, I started an army myself thank you very much!

Anyway, about once a month I proxy an old harlequin as a warlock, clearly specifying before game.

Edit-I had a match last week, and my opponent had an awful case of "hidden-power fist-syndrome"...

i actually put my beastmen, blood angels and most of my WIP cult of mars together by selling/trading away my Menoth and circle. I don't miss it yet

In all honesty, I have to agree that the spirit of the rules is that Warhammer 40k tabletop is meant to be a simulation of what a real battle between these factions would be. In that sense, the rules about revealing your lists make sense. You can assume that your factions spies/recon aircraft/ships in space have given you the information on what types of enemy units your facing. However....once you get into the battle, you'd have to deal with the lack of information you'd have in a real battle. That means not knowing what are in transports, and all that other true LOS stuff.
I actually think it'd be kinda boring to play knowing what exactly is in my enemies transports, and less fun knowing exactly whats there. In all honesty, half the fun in a game is the surprises that your enemy deals to you. I rather enjoy those "OH WHERE THE DID THOSE TERMINATORS COME FROM!?!?!" and find it something to laugh about after the game rather than something to get all moody about.